Tag: Trump

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They’re NOT the Same!

You know how you feel when someone is being a real jerk to you, and you engage calmly and reasonably in a conversation with that person? Then a third person comes along and says, “Okay, you two, break it up. You’re both out of line here,” or something to that effect? And you want to protest, “NO, not you TWO! That ONE! I didn’t do anything out of line. Sometimes I might be a jerk, but today was not my day!” I’m an honest enough person to admit that sometimes I am the jerk, and I deserve to be called out; but when I get called out simply for engaging with someone who’s being unreasonable, it’s frustrating because the accusation creates a false equivalence between the jerk and me, which in that particular instance is unjustified.

That’s how I felt yesterday when I read this article on the CNN website: “The Hubris of the 2016 Candidates,” by Stephen Collinson. Attempts to draw a false equivalence between two candidates who couldn’t possibly be any further from equal has confused voters and made a farce of media coverage in this campaign. One of the candidates Mr. Collinson speaks of is clearly guilty of epic hubris, but the other is not. Hillary Clinton’s fatal flaws, which are not actually flaws, are in my opinion her natural introversion, her intellect, and her gender.

In Greek and Shakespearean tragedy, the protagonist—typically a man of high rank and power—is subjected to an external situation through which he is ultimately brought to ruin. The external situation is, however, only the catalyst, not the cause of his downfall; the real cause of his destruction is an internal weakness often referred to as the fatal flaw. Powerful as the external forces are, if the internal weakness were not present, the tragic hero could withstand the onslaught and prevail in the end.

The Greeks had a word for the flaw which is often present in those of high rank and power: hubris. Hubris is defined as overweening pride, arrogance, defiance toward the gods. It suggests a failure to recognize one’s humanity, a tendency to see oneself as existing above the natural laws that govern other mortals, a sense of immortality and immunity to fate and forces of nature. Hubris is often considered the fatal flaw of tragic heroes such as Oedipus.

Donald Trump is full of hubris! I agree with Stephen Collinson on that point. Trump is arrogant, he sees himself incapable of losing (despite his many losses and failures in the past) unless he’s cheated, and he sees himself as entitled to possess anything to which he lays claim. The normal rules of elections and the will of the majority do not apply to him. Last week, he made the statement that we should just cancel the election and “give it to Trump.” Of course, he can claim that he was only joking, but we know better; and besides, what other candidate has ever made that “joke”? He has refused to say that he will concede if he loses. Sophocles couldn’t have imagined greater hubris that Donald Trump has displayed!

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has in no way demonstrated hubris. She was president and valedictorian of her graduating class at Wellesley and graduated with honors from Yale Law School. With credentials like that, she could have applied to prestigious law firms, made lots of money, and retired at the top of her field. That would have been hubris. Instead, she chose to go to work for the Children’s Defense Fund and has devoted her career to helping exploited women, children, and families secure the same level of education, health care, and security afforded to those with more resources. I fail to see arrogance or placing oneself above the rank and file of humanity in those choices.

Nor do I find overweening pride in the inner compass which has guided her life. Her faith, her devotion to the cause of helping others, her compassion for those most in need, her inspiration by great leaders—none of these say hubris to me. The Methodist mantra which she frequently quotes, “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can,” speaks of humility, not arrogance. Her inspiration as a young woman came from her youth pastor, Martin Luther King Jr., and others who advocated equality and justice for all.

Daniel Burke, in his article “The Public and Private Faith of Hillary Clinton,” also dispels the notion that Mrs. Clinton is flawed by hubris.

Over her three decades in politics, Clinton has been quite willing to talk about how her work has been inspired by her Methodist faith. She traces some of her political positions, particularly concerning children and the poor, directly to Christ’s commandment to care for “the least of these.”

Speaking to an assembly of Methodist women in 2014, Clinton cited the Gospel story of Jesus multiplying the loaves and fishes to feed a hungry crowd.

“He was teaching about the responsibility we all share, to step up and serve the community, especially to help those with the greatest need and the fewest resources,” Clinton said.

Nevertheless, her critics cling to the unfounded claims that Mrs. Clinton is evil personified and deserving of jail rather than election to the presidency. The personality traits which Mrs. Clinton’s critics see as proof that she is dark and sinister—what Collinson calls “her obsession with privacy” and her “tendency for opaqueness”—might also be seen as classic characteristics of an introvert. She has admitted that she is not the natural politician or public speaker that her husband is. Trump accuses her of staying too secluded because she’s sleeping while he’s out bloviating and rabble rousing.

The two Clintons seem to be at opposite ends of the introversion-extroversion scale. Bill is the extrovert who gains energy from being with people, talking to them, hugging them, just hanging out with them. An introvert, like Hillary, doesn’t dislike people; but she needs privacy and seclusion. An introvert recharges her batteries by being alone, starts to shut down after being active for too long, often chooses an extrovert as a romantic partner, has an eye for detail, has an ability to see the big picture, and needs to balance solitude with social activity. (For more, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/20/introverts-signs-am-i-introverted_n_3721431.html)

Do those characteristics sound like anyone we know? Being an introvert myself, I can strongly relate. We do like people, and we enjoy being social, but we need to socialize on our own terms rather than being forced or dictated to; and after socializing for a while, we need to retreat. Hillary Clinton works the rope lines and poses for selfies with admirers, but that’s not where she gets her high. Doing those things seems to require much more of a conscious effort for her than for her husband. And speaking of her husband, she was forced to cope with the biggest personal crises of her life while in the public spotlight with the cameras rolling. As each scandal broke, instead of locking herself into her bedroom and crying her heart out, as many of us would have done and as she would probably have preferred to do, she had to hold her head high and face the world every day.

Therefore, the whole idea of saying both current presidential candidates “are like two Shakespearean protagonists falling prey to hubris” (Stephen Collinson) is absurd! And the oft-repeated mantras that she (or he) is the lesser of two evils or that they are two equally flawed candidates are equally absurd. These are all examples of the false equivalency which has made rational discussion of this farcical campaign all but impossible.

Carlos Maza, in his video “Trump, Clinton, and the Problem of False Equivalence,” uses the analogy of a horse race. He says the media are accustomed to reporting a presidential campaign as a horse race in which two normal horses are running neck and neck, some voters pulling for one horse to win and some pulling for the other. Regardless of which horse wins, we still have a relatively normal, qualified person in the Oval Office when it’s all over. Not so in 2016, however! This year, according to Maza’s analogy, we have one “pretty normal horse” running against a wild bull. This wild bull is charging about the track, attacking other candidates, attacking audience members, and generally creating havoc.

Because of this unique situation, members of the media find themselves in a dilemma. Do they report this as a normal horse race despite the fact that one of the horses is really a wild bull who has no business being in the race? Or do they say, “Holy shit! There’s a wild bull on the tracks! Run for your lives, everybody”? The second response would be the honest one; however, if they were to respond in that honest manner, they could be accused of bias, and they have enough of those accusations already. Some publications, such as the Huffington Post, have chosen to sound the alarm and issue clear warning of the danger of treating a wild bull as a serious contestant in a horse race. Others have focused on analyzing why this odd horse is doing the weird things he does, without ever admitting that he’s not a horse.

Possibly never in the history of presidential politics have we seen two candidates with as little equivalence as exists between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, so everyone needs to stop already with the “two equally flawed candidates” hogwash. There is nothing equal about these two people. One is the most knowledgeable, prepared candidate who has ever sought the office of president. The other is the least knowledgeable or prepared. One has been rated the most honest politician ever fact checked by Politico; the other has been found to lie to some degree in 71% of the statements they have checked.

One is arrogant, full of hubris, and sees himself as entitled to win whatever he sets his sights on. He is narcissistic in the extreme and thrives on the adulation of chanting crowds whose personal needs mean nothing to him. His life and career have been all self-service, not public service, and his presidency would be no exception to that rule. The other is so driven by her spiritual desire to serve others that she is willing to overcome her natural tendencies toward privacy and seclusion and put herself into the public spotlight if doing so allows her to accomplish her goal of doing all the good she can in all the ways she can. I’m with that one. I’m with her!

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Politics

The Christian Right Is Neither

When it’s difficult to see daylight between the alt-right and the Christian right, we’ve wandered into dangerously wrong territory. Today’s Republican Party has made strange bedfellows of some seemingly divergent groups: KKK sympathizers, alt-right thugs, the gun lobby, and others; and in the middle of them all is the “Christian” right, evangelicals whose voices are in unison with philosophies that undermine and threaten to destroy our republic and the values which we have always held inviolable. On the surface, it’s impossible to see what could unite groups that should be at opposite poles.

This strange new coalition which has formed under the umbrella of the Republican Party is not Christian, not conservative, and not Republican. The Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and even Ronald Reagan is so far from the party of 2016 that the two shouldn’t be called by the same name.

Republicans have proudly called themselves the Christian party and the family-values party, yet in 2016 they have nominated and are supporting and defending a candidate who has lived his life by the opposite of any definition of Christianity I know. And his campaign CEO, Steve Bannon, has ties to the darkest elements from the underbelly of American civilization. At Breitbart news, he, according to Sarah Posner of Mother Jones, “created an online haven for white nationalists.”

The new Republican Coalition is not conservative. Louis Guenin, in one of my all-time favorite articles called “Why Voters Should Turn from the Pseudoconservative Party of the Great Recession” (Huffington Post, 24 Dec 2012), offers this definition of conservatism:

Conservatism, as eloquently introduced by Edmund Burke (1729–1797), advocates esteem for government and established institutions. It holds that within them lies an accumulated wisdom that citizens and their leaders should respect and consult. Revering the established order, its constitution, and its history, conservatism cultivates a cautious disposition. Legislators should proceed by careful deliberation guided by the counsel of prudence. Policy should change incrementally. When government errs, all citizens should, in Burke’s words, “approach to the faults of the state as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude.”

Has anyone seen any esteem for government at the Republican presidential rallies of 2015 and 2016? I’ve seen angry mobs screaming their rejection of “the established order,” chanting for the opposing party’s candidate to be locked up, rejecting the politics that has made our country what it is. The “accumulated wisdom” which Edmund Burke says leaders “should respect and consult” is derided as “political correctness,” which they see as having too long constrained them from expressing their baser instincts toward their fellow citizens of different race, skin color, religion, gender, or sexuality.

The campaign chief said this week, “What we need to do is bitch-slap” the Republican Party, expressing his anger at the “party elites” who are not falling in line behind the rogue nominee. He went on to add, “Get those guys heeding too, and if we have to, we’ll take it over to make it a true conservative party.” His definition of “conservative” is obviously quite different from Edmund Burke’s definition.

The new Republican Coalition knows nothing of caution, prudence, or respect for traditional American values. The scorched-earth politics that allows low and dirty stunts such as bringing people from an opponent’s past to a debate to bully and intimidate her and a candidate’s declaring himself free from the shackles that have bound him to party principles and now in a position to declare war on the party doesn’t sound conservative by any definition. Other language I’ve heard this week is that Donald Trump wants to burn down the party if it won’t play his way.

The opposite of conservative is not liberal; most liberals better fit the definition of conservatism than today’s “conservatives” do. The opposite of conservative is contemptuous: contempt for the established order, for American politics, for our constitution, for their fellow citizens, for anyone who disagrees with them.

The new Republican Coalition is not conservative, and it’s not Republican. The founding father of the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln, devoted the last four years of his life to preserving our union when a racist, white supremacist group of states were determined to destroy it. In his second inaugural address, Lincoln eloquently said:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

The coalition at work today under the banner of the Party of Lincoln seeks not to bind up wounds and create peace but to inflict wounds and perpetuate conflict.

Earlier in his address, Lincoln said, contrasting the state of the nation at the time of his second inaugural address with its state when he gave his first inaugural address: “Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.” I think we’re seeing that same tension today. None of us want discord and strife, but some would rather accept disunity than compromise to bring about peace and harmony.

We have to recognize, of course, that Donald Trump did not destroy the Party of Lincoln; they destroyed themselves, and Trump is the result, not the cause. A Donald Trump could never have secured the Republican nomination for the presidency until the climate was right for it, and in 2016, it’s perfect.

In David Brooks’s article “The Governing Cancer of Our Time” (26 Feb 2016), Brooks explains that in a “big, diverse society,” there are “essentially two ways to maintain order and to get things done”: “politics or some form of dictatorship,” “compromise or brute force.” Having said that politics involves compromise and deal-making in an effort to please as many within the diverse group of people as possible, Brooks assesses what has led to the state of Lincoln’s party today:

Over the past generation we have seen the rise of a generation of people who are against politics. These groups—best exemplified by the Tea Party but not exclusive to the Right—want to elect people who have no political experience. They want “outsiders.” They delegitimize compromise and deal-making. They’re willing to trample the customs and rules that give legitimacy to legislative decision making if it helps them gain power.

That attitude is greatly at odds with Lincoln’s goal to “achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

The Republican Party freed the slaves and granted them citizenship; the new Republican Coalition wants to trample the rights of citizens of color. The new coalition has become the home of the alt-right white supremacists and KKK sympathizers who would destroy every bit of progress we have made in racial relations.

The new Republican Coalition is not conservative, it’s not republican, and it’s not Christian. Most shocking and perplexing of all those who now profess allegiance to this wing of the Republican Party are evangelical “Christians.” According to a new PPRI/The Atlantic survey released this week, “Nearly two-thirds (65%) of white evangelical voters remain committed to supporting Trump, while only 16% say they favor Clinton.” Among other Christian groups, the survey says support is more evenly divided.

The fact that two-thirds of the most vocal Christian group rabidly stand behind a candidate whose life and values are the polar opposite of their professed beliefs simply defies logical explanation. That their voices are indistinguishable from those of white supremacists and all manner of bigots is at odds with Christ’s words on Christianity. A group of Pharisees asked Jesus, the founder of the Christian faith, “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus’ simple response was

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22: 37-40)

“On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” In other words, it’s that simple. If you get those two things right, you’ve got it. Don’t fret over the details.

Micah 6:8 is powerful in its simplicity:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good: and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Joining forces with a coalition that demands justice for only certain citizens, that hates our government and our politics, that seeks to destroy whatever justice for all we’ve managed to achieve does not fulfill the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves or to love justice and kindness.

Often being the nasty voices in social media discussions also fails to demonstrate a love of kindness or love of other people. Presenting themselves as God’s spokespersons to silence anyone who disagrees with their narrow stance only alienates, especially when what they’re saying is filled with scorn and hatred, and is not in the spirit of walking humbly with their God. Memes about jailing Hillary Clinton, virtual high fives every time they hear Trump talking about locking her up—how do these show justice, love, or humility? They’ve adopted what David Brooks calls “the bashing style of rhetoric that makes conversation impossible.”

Defending lewd, vulgar talk and behavior and condoning sexual assault because it didn’t happen this week shows no love for one’s fellow humans. Claiming that one candidate has been forgiven by God’s grace but that the other cannot be and deserves only punishment is not only theologically screwed up, it’s not loving or kind.

When innocent children are gunned down in their little school desks, these loving, god-fearing people shrug their shoulders and say, “Bummer! But we can’t do anything because Second Amendment.” Ya know, God, guns, glory. Sorry, parents!

I listened to an interview last night with Jerry Falwell Junior, the president of Liberty University, the largest Christian university in the world; he defended Trump, says he still plans to vote for him, and nobody’s perfect. And he cited James Dobson, another prominent evangelical guru, as agreeing with him.

Falwell pointed out that Jesus was often criticized for dining with sinners. Yes, Doctor Falwell, you are correct. Jesus dined with whoever came to him, including those scorned by the Pharisees, religious elite and chief hypocrites of the day. But there’s a BIG difference. Jesus hung out with them and broke bread with them, but he didn’t talk like them; and his life and values were clearly distinguishable from theirs. He associated with them without becoming one of them. He didn’t adopt their attitudes or defend their lifestyles. He shut down the hypocrites who were persecuting the woman at the well and sent her on her way with the words “Go and sin no more.” He wouldn’t allow her to be judged, but he encouraged her to adopt a healthier lifestyle. His voice was always distinct from the voices of the people to whom he showed love and compassion by dining with them.

The majority of evangelicals I’ve talked to are single-issue voters. The candidate who says (this week) that he opposes abortion gets their vote, regardless of what else he does or stands for. This is what the Bible they claim to follow calls “straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel.” I’m not saying abortion is a tiny issue; it’s an important issue, but it’s ONE issue. If we elect someone to a powerful office because of his or her stance on this one issue but ignore gross violations on dozens of other issues, that’s not godly. If we love justice, as Micah so eloquently suggests we should, we will seek justice for all.

How did this unlikely coalition come together? What is the unifying element? Matthew McWilliams, who conducted a national poll of 1800 registered voters, says, “I’ve found a single statistically significant variable predicts whether a voter supports Trump—and it’s not race, income or education levels: It’s authoritarianism.” Bingo! This is what the alt-right and the Christian right have in common: the inclination to follow strong leaders (Falwell Sr. and Jr., James Dobson, Joel Osteen). It’s what David Brooks calls the opposite of politics. Yes, politics is messy, Brooks says, but the only alternative is the dictatorial leader; and that alternative has never ended well for any nation. We should be careful what we wish for!

Most deeply frightening is what will happen on November 9, 2016. As Americans, we’ve always prided ourselves on a peaceful transfer of power. Does anyone see Donald J. Trump making a sad but gracious concession speech and promising to get behind President Clinton to keep our country great? He’s already threatened to jail his opponent if he wins, and his supporters are already talking about revolution if he loses.

On November 9, I hope we will all—Republicans, Democrats, and everything in between—remember the words of Abraham Lincoln:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Politics

It Can’t Happen Here

The first presidential election I can remember is the one in which Dwight Eisenhower ran against Adlai Stevenson. I was in elementary school, and Eisenhower was the clear favorite in our little political world. We chanted on the playground, “We like Ike. He’s our man. We threw Stevenson in the garbage can.” Fast forward through 16 more presidential campaigns and we’re now living in that garbage can, thanks to a campaign that has dragged us so low into the political gutter that it’s hard to see how we can ever climb out.

Sunday night, October 9, the world watched in horror as an orange fascist strongman degraded a debate for the high office of President of the United States of America to a playground fight. Things that have never before happened in a U. S. presidential campaign—things we thought could never happen here—unfolded before our eyes in a nightmare scenario that has left sane voters reeling and running from the orange terror.

But not all voters. And that’s the frightening part. That there could be even one person left in this country still planning to vote for Donald Trump is beyond belief, but in fact there are millions who look at the same information you and I look at and see him as their messiah. How the hell did we, the United States of America, reach a point where sewer politics seems normal to a large contingent of our population? How is it possible for millions of Americans to be so oblivious to facts that no matter how much evidence mounds up, they stand by their man to the end?

These are some things I jotted down on my note pad as I watched Sunday night’s debate. Donald Trump said to Hillary Clinton at least twice, and I think more, “You should be ashamed of yourself.” At one point, he churlishly responded to her, “Yeah, because you have nothing to say.” He called her the devil. He asked the moderators more than once, “Why don’t you interrupt her? You interrupt me all the time. Why don’t you interrupt her?” He accused them more than once of siding with her: “Yeah, three on one. That’s real fair.”

In the 56-year history of televised presidential debates, beginning with the 1960 debate between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, Americans have never witnessed anything close to the churlish, fifth-grade, school playground language that we heard from the candidate representing one of our two major political parties. In past debates, did candidates clash? Of course! Did they have extreme differences? Plenty of them! Did any of them ever call his opponent the devil or whine about the moderators or directly attack the moderators? No! Dignity is dead.

Donald Trump, throughout the debate, resembled an angry, defiant child who has been chastised and is determined to reassert his bully stance and subdue those who have humiliated him. His face was expressionless, his posture stiff. The body language expressed rage and hatred. These things don’t happen in the U. S. A. But most menacing of all is not the childishness and fifth-grade bullying; we’ve been watching that for over a year. What has often been referred to as “scorched-earth politics” was the thing that made this second debate particularly ominous, and Americans have never before seen anything that comes close to Trump’s gutter tactics and strongman persona.

Before the debate began, as we all know, he gathered four women who have made past allegations against former President Bill Clinton and broadcast a video of himself sitting at a table with them. He then took them into the debate hall to sit facing Hillary Clinton to unnerve, humiliate, and intimidate her. This is NOT the America any of us have ever known! Even worse, according to CNN’s Dana Bash, Trump’s plan was to seat those women with his family and have them enter with his family, meaning that Bill Clinton would have had to greet each of them face to face and shake each of their hands (or not), as he greeted and shook hands with Melania Trump and the rest of the Trump family members. Fortunately, word of this plan reached the debate co-chair in time for him to stop it from happening. Who would have believed we’d see such strongman tactics used in American politics, with the whole world watching us? That stunt is stunning.

Then there was Trump’s physical intimidation and menacing behavior on the debate platform itself. When Trump was taking his turn at speaking, Clinton sat respectfully on her chair and laid her microphone on the table. She picked it up and rose to her feet only when it was her turn to speak. She also looked at him and listened to him while he was speaking. In stark contrast, when she was speaking, he roamed the stage, spent little time looking her in the eye, at times lurked menacingly behind her, invaded her space, and clearly intended to unnerve and intimidate her. His microphone was always in his hand, making it convenient to interrupt her 15 times. Several times, he snapped his mic to his mouth while she was speaking, ready to pounce at the first opportunity. These are bullying and intimidation tactics the likes of which Americans have never before witnessed.

But we’re still not to the low point of the night: his direct threats of prosecution and implied threat of jail for her if he is elected president. Wow! Russia, Venezuela, Taiwan, Chile, Egypt, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Iran—all of these places have in their history examples of leaders killing or imprisoning their political opponents. But those things could never happen in the U. S. A. Or so we thought. However, we’re now one step closer: the threat has been made in front of an international audience. That’s enough to keep every citizen awake at night.

Respected journalist Dan Rather’s takeaway from Sunday night’s debate is “I suspect . . . that this is a man who, at a fundamental level, does not understand what it means to be an American.” To be qualified to lead this country, one must understand who we are as a people; and that requires knowledge obtained through years of study, reading, observing, and understanding. Trump has done none of these.

Intelligent people who have been listening to Donald Trump since July of 2015 have observed the lack of specifics in his “policy” speeches, such as they are. He claims he will deport 11 million people, build a wall and make Mexico pay for it, ban an entire religious group from entering our country, clean up the inner cities, make everyone obey the law, and a lot of other things; but we have heard barely a word about HOW he would make these things happen. That’s because Trump is what’s known as a strongman. Ed Kilgore, in an article entitled “Trump’s Strongman Politics” published in the Daily Intelligencer,” explains:

Trump’s whole platform is himself, a strongman in the ancient tradition of tribal chieftains whose very presence is a guarantor of safety and prosperity. Whatever the problem is, he’ll “fix it,” and that’s particularly true of challenges where “strength” is, in theory, of inherent value, such as maintaining a credible deterrent to foreign aggression, negotiating trade agreements, or in general threatening law breakers with violence. Adopting policies like other politicians actually undercuts this message, so Trump doesn’t bother with them. The convention managers last night might as well have emblazoned on the screen behind him Pontius Pilate’s words in presenting Jesus to the people of Jerusalem: Ecce homo! Behold the man!

Mr. Kilgore goes on to say that the strongman is reassuring to some, terrifying to others. This helps to explain the loyalty of Trump’s base and finally sheds a small glimmer of light on the ever-perplexing mystery of his popularity among evangelical Christians, whose stated beliefs are so starkly at odds with his rhetoric and life history. Central to Trump’s hold on his base is their authoritarianism. Matthew MacWilliams conducted a national poll of 1800 registered voters and published the results in Politico Magazine, titling his article “The One Weird Trait that Predicts Whether You’re a Trump Supporter”:

If I asked you what most defines Donald Trump supporters, what would you say? They’re white? They’re poor? They’re uneducated? You’d be wrong.

In fact, I’ve found a single statistically significant variable predicts whether a voter supports Trump—and it’s not race, income or education levels: It’s authoritarianism.

That’s right, Trump’s electoral strength—and his staying power—have been buoyed, above all, by Americans with authoritarian inclinations.

The problem with the strongman and authoritarianism is that it’s so starkly at odds with our better nature as Americans. To be sure, we have a long, dark history of human rights abuses, beginning with our robbing Native Americans of their ancestral home and continuing with kidnapping and enslavement of Africans, followed by another century of Jim Crow laws and oppression. Collectively we’re not exactly saints, but there is what we like to think of as our better nature: the part of us that promotes justice; that has fought against racism and extended equal rights to oppressed people; that hears the voices of Native Americans trying desperately to protect the remnants of their ancestral places from being raped by more corporate greed; that rushes to the aid of suffering people around the world; that says “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”; the part that has made us—with all of our sins—the shining example of democracy and human goodness.

The world is changing. Even in the country where we’ve always thought we were safe because we had abundant resources and power, and we’ve always come out on top in international conflicts, we’re now seeing other countries developing nuclear capabilities; we see leaders who don’t like us and who have not only the desire but potentially the ability to do us great harm. Our feeling of security is being threatened, and many now see the strongman as our only hope for peace and safety.

As ludicrous as the Orange Man’s promises are to many of us, many others see a system that has been increasingly rigged against them, that has ignored their ideas and needs and pandered to the richer and more powerful. The problem, and the enemy, in their minds is the government. Now someone who could possibly become the leader of that government has become their spokesman, voicing their sentiments, admitting that the system is rigged against them, and in true authoritarian fashion is assuring them that he will change it all and make their lives better.

Dan Rather wrote:

It was John Adams who penned the phrase, “a government of laws, and not of men.” This is how our Founding Fathers saw our national destiny. This is the spirit that our citizens, over the ages, have demanded of our political leaders follow. I suspect it is something most Americans still believe.

A government of laws. That’s our Constitution, the document which assigns power and authority to lawmakers and with which all of their actions must agree. Our Constitution calls for a separation of powers, our founders’ plan for making sure our nation would never be at the mercy of a strongman. The executive branch of our government must work with the legislative and the judicial branches; a president has limited power to act independently; but he can’t build 1900-mile walls, ban religious groups from entering the country, or deport 11 million people on his own. And such things can’t be accomplished within a week of a new president’s taking office; there’s a protocol in place for congressional action, which as we all know, can be a tortuous process which can takes months or even years. Donald Trump doesn’t know any of that, because he doesn’t read and has no experience with government; he knows only his own need for power.

A government not of men. That was the promise of our founders that our system of government would never allow for a strongman, a dictator, but that power would always rest on the will of the people expressed through their representatives who would be guided by our Constitution, “the Law of the Land.” And we’ve always felt secure in the belief that the atrocities we’ve seen happen in other countries couldn’t happen here.

Until now. Now we have a strongman who has captured the hearts and minds and unwavering loyalty of millions of our fellow citizens. According to MacWilliams, authoritarians “respond aggressively to outsiders, especially when they feel threatened.” Sound familiar? This tells us that at the root of authoritarianism is fear: fear of government, fear of oppression, fear of attack, fear of one’s own powerlessness against hostility. What’s the answer? The strongman: the person who “alone can fix it.” What authoritarians fail to recognize at the outset, however, is that such protection—even if it is real—comes at a high price. The problems they see in the current situation are nothing compared to the system that will be created by the strongman once in charge.

But that can’t happen here. This is the U.S.A. We don’t do things like that. Really? An authoritarian leader has a rabid core of supporters who will vote for him even if he grabs every single one of them by the crotch; and there are millions of them. He won the nomination of one of the two major political parties in the U.S.A. He’s polling in the 30% and 40% range for winning the presidency of the United States; unless he increases that percentage, he’ll lose, but let it sink in that over a third of your fellow citizens plan to cast their sacred vote for this empty suit. And last of all, the threat has been issued: this person plans to punish his political opponent if he is elected. It couldn’t happen here? It’s already happening. And we alone can fix it, through the power of the vote.

Since the root cause of attraction to authoritarian leaders is fear, we’d do well to remember these words from Martin Luther King:

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

 

 

 

 

Categories
Politics

Sometimes a Conscience Needs a Reboot

I grew up with such advice as “Always listen to your conscience,” “Follow your conscience,” and “Let your conscience be your guide.” Henry David Thoreau—in one of my favorite essays, “Civil Disobedience”—says the conscience is the highest authority, superseding the laws of one’s state or country. As members of the electorate, we’re often advised, “Vote your conscience.” Although all of those statements sound right and wise, they’re actually misleading. It may sound as if the conscience is the voice of the universe, which speaks the same language into the soul of every person. As we go through life, however, we learn a very different reality.

The conscience is not a single voice that speaks the same things to all, and conflicting loyalties and cross currents in life can make the conscience a confusing set of voices which don’t provide much of a guide at all. Adding to the confusion is the fact that what we believe is the conscience speaking is often our prejudices. And then there are some people whose consciences can’t be trusted at all, and we’d be scared of the results if they were to follow the advice “Let your conscience be your guide.”

Since at least the time of Socrates, philosophers have examined the concept of conscience, and so much has been written on the subject that it would take a long time to read and absorb it all. So I’m just going to select a few brief passages to illustrate the complexity of understanding the human conscience.

Larry May, in his article “On Conscience,” in the January 1983 edition of The American Philosophical Quarterly, compares conscience to virtue:

Conscience, like virtue, is a capacity which leads to socially beneficial consequences in those who develop it. . . .  Conscience places barriers in one’s path which contribute to the avoidance of wrong-doing. Yet conscience, unlike the virtues, seems to be grounded in a concern for the self, for the self’s inner harmony . . . Conscience does seem to be different from virtue in that it proceeds from and remains closely allied with self-love. [Conscience is] an egoistic concern which nonetheless leads to restraints on selfishness.

According to Mr. May, the chief end of the conscience is to act as inner peace keeper, not to make the world at large a better place.

Simpler definitions are found in a variety of online dictionaries:

An inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s behavior.

 

The feeling that you know and should do what is right and should avoid doing what is wrong, and that makes you feel guilty when you have done something you know is wrong.

Anyone who’s ever wrestled with a guilty conscience—and that’s all of us—knows it’s not a pleasant experience. So what Larry May says about the conscience’s primary purpose being to act as inner peace keeper sounds reasonable.

These simple definitions, however, raise more questions than they answer. If everyone follows their conscience and votes their conscience, why do we not all do the same things and vote for the same candidate? And if the conscience is the inner peace keeper, how the heck can some people do some really awful things yet never seem to feel guilty about them? Do you think Hitler had a hard time sleeping at night, tossing and turning as he thought of all the Jews and other people his minions were torturing and murdering? Most of us would feel more guilt for accidentally running over a squirrel with our cars than Hitler visibly showed for torturing and murdering millions of human beings.

Most discussions of conscience include the concepts that the conscience is those internalized social norms which help individuals make distinctions between what is right and what is wrong and which cause individuals inner guilt and pain after knowingly violating those norms. But that leads us right back to the question of why we don’t all have the same sense of what is right and what is wrong. Obviously, we’ve internalized different norms, determined by the teachings of our parents, our schools, and our religious affiliations or lack thereof, to name a few.

I know people who don’t believe in killing insects, even the scourge of Florida living: the cockroach. Their consciences would make them feel very guilty if they were to violate that social/ethical norm. I, on the other hand, can viciously murder a cockroach without the slightest twitch of guilt if it dares to invade my home. I leave them alone outside, but the occasional one that has the audacity to cross my threshold will be murdered, and I will celebrate its death. Don’t judge.

I was raised in a fundamentalist religious household; the church which my family belonged to taught us a long list of “sins”: drinking, smoking, dancing, watching Hollywood movies, and a whole lot more that you wouldn’t even believe. My first task as an adult was to begin retraining my conscience to stop feeling guilty every time I entered a movie theater or drank a glass of wine. I’ve looked over my shoulder many times in the wine aisle of the supermarket, knowing intellectually that I had nothing to feel guilty about; but that stupid conscience just wouldn’t shut up.

So for some of us, the social norms we internalized were a bit extreme, causing our consciences to be overactive and need retraining to function more normally. The vast majority of the people I know have never experienced the slightest twinge of guilt when entering a movie theater, since that taboo was never included in their social norms.

People raised in the Jim Crow South didn’t feel guilty about what we today see as blatant, extreme racism, because their social norms included the idea that the black race was inferior and that the white majority was therefore justified in not treating them as equals. That sounds outrageous—and it IS outrageous—but to many people in my youth and way before I was born, that made perfect sense.

We all know those racist attitudes didn’t simply evaporate when the Civil Rights laws acknowledged equal rights for every citizen, regardless of race or skin color. Since expressing such attitudes publicly was no longer acceptable, however, those who held onto their prejudices no longer felt free to voice them. So for them, their silence on the subject had nothing to do with their consciences; they simply didn’t want to be socially ostracized.

Other people negotiate deals with their consciences to keep them quiet: I’m justified in doing x because someone did y or z to me. As a very young woman, I worked briefly with a middle-aged woman who had engaged in a long-term extramarital affair; and even though extramarital affairs violate nearly every ethical code and set of social norms, her conscience was fine with her actions because she’d struck a deal with it. Her first husband had cheated on her, and she’d divorced him because of it; her second husband was a model of love and faithfulness, but she cheated on him. Her justification was “I never did it until it was done to me.” Never mind that the person she was doing it to was not the same person who did it to her.

This, of course, is called rationalizing, and most of us have learned that it can be quite an effective way to quiet a troublesome conscience. We justify everything from disregarding our parents’ instructions as children to shirking our professional responsibilities to treating other people with disrespect because of things they’ve done to us or because we’ve decided for the purpose of building our case that they’re not good people and not worthy of proper treatment from us.

It’s safe to conclude, then, that the conscience is an unreliable, inconsistent guide to our actions. In fact, in some cases, it’s hard to distinguish conscience from prejudice or rationalization. Hitler rationalized that certain groups of people—Jews and others—were inferior and therefore needed to be eradicated; so instead of feeling guilty, he believed he was doing the world a service by being the one to perform the extermination.

The loud, rowdy, vile chanters at some presidential campaign rallies are among those who’ve simply felt the social pressure to keep quiet about their prejudices until someone came along who created a new social environment in which bigotry and violence are the accepted norms. For them, voting their consciences would in reality be voting their prejudices, because their consciences have accepted norms that deviate from every standard of what is good and moral.

The New Testament writer Paul, in his first letter to Timothy, speaks of a seared conscience: one which has accepted so much wrongdoing that it no longer has the ability to feel guilt, as skin that has been seared, or badly burned, no longer feels the sensation of pain. Most people can relate to that idea on a limited level. You broke a house rule as a teenager, and your conscience went into full inner turmoil; but because it was so much fun or your peers encouraged you to continue participating, the guilt lessened with each repetition. I think lots of voters, particularly those at the rowdy rallies, have such numbed consciences that their conscience votes can’t be trusted at all.

Many voters’ consciences pivot on a single issue, such as their disapproval of abortion. Their consciences simply won’t allow them to vote for a candidate who openly supports legal abortion, even though that candidate—if elected—would have little to no power to affect the abortion laws one way or the other. That means that their consciences then have to accept faults in the other candidate—faults which will strongly affect that candidate’s performance if elected—and that just doesn’t make much sense to me. As I’ve said before, I support having a more rational conversation about abortion, since it is an issue that has so deeply divided us as a country for so long. But single-issue voting can’t possibly be consistent. If your conscience’s rejection of the pro-choice candidate means it has to accept the pro-bigotry, pro-violence, pro-lying, pro-cheating, pro-unethical and possibly pro-illegal business dealings candidate, your conscience is really screwed up and it really needs a reboot.

Clay Shirky, in his Huffington Post article “There’s No Such Thing as a Protest Vote,” gives all of our consciences some things to chew on:

We’re in the season of protest vote advocacy, with writers of all political stripes making arguments for third-party candidates (Jill Stein, Gary Johnson), write-in votes (Bernie Sanders, Rod Silva), or refusing to vote altogether (#NeverTrump,#BernieOrBust.) For all the eloquence and passion and rage in these arguments, however, they suffer from a common flaw: there is no such thing as a protest vote.

The authors of these pieces rarely line up their preferred Presidential voting strategies — third-party, write-in, refusal — with the electoral system as it actually exists. In 2016, that system will offer 130 million or so voters just three options:

  1. I prefer Donald Trump be president, rather than Hillary Clinton.
  2. I prefer Hillary Clinton be president, rather than Donald Trump.
  3. Whatever everybody else decides is OK with me.

That’s it. Those are the choices. All strategies other than a preference for Trump over Clinton or vice-versa reduce to Option C.

Voting is not all about how virtuous and moral it makes us feel; it’s about intellectually deciding what is best for the prosperity and security of our country. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn about your conscience if our national security and our world standing are jeopardized because your conscience won’t allow you to vote for someone who supports Planned Parenthood. Get a grip!

I guess the only way to conclude here is to say that if you’re going to vote your conscience, you’d better first examine your conscience and, if necessary, talk some sense into it. We’re all in this together, so we owe it to each other to get it right.

 

 

Categories
Politics

Changing the Narratives

Everybody has a story; and factual or not, that story–or narrative–forms the lens through which each person is judged. Remember when your mom taught you that you should always strive to make a good first impression because “First impressions are lasting impressions”? Your mom may not have known it, but she was talking about narratives. That first impression becomes the lens through which everything else you learn about a person is viewed, and any new information that conflicts with the first impression is either twisted to fit the narrative or discarded because it won’t fit.

A few years ago, I met one of my neighbors from down the street for the first time. She was falling-down drunk in her front yard, trying to catch her little dog that had run across the street. I’m not really sure if I’ve ever met that neighbor again; but if I ever do, I’ll have to make a conscious effort to erase the image of her ridiculously sprawled on the grass and create a new narrative in my mind reflecting who she really is when she hasn’t emptied too many glasses.

Biblical literalists have been known to measure whales’ stomachs and study their digestive systems searching for proof that Jonah really could have gone down that whale’s esophagus, survived three days in its belly, been puked up on shore, and gone about his business only a little smellier for the experience. Those willing to consider a different narrative, however, find that the real message of Jonah is so much more important than whales and their digestive systems. The reason Jonah was headed in the wrong direction is the first place is that he was sent to express God’s love to a group of people he deemed unworthy of God’s love or of their fellow humans’ love and respect. What Jonah really teaches us is about our relationship with and attitude toward people who are different from us, whom we see as the “other.”

It takes time and a concentrated effort to change a narrative—or, as your mom called it, a first impression—once it’s set. Unfortunately, many people are the products of schools which for several decades have been so focused on teaching students to pass high-stakes standardized tests that they’ve had no time in the curriculum to teach critical thinking: challenging narratives and assumptions, analyzing sources of information, or even the necessity of having sources outside one’s own narrow “opinions” and biases. Add to that the overall dumbing down of our electorate and the anti-intellectualism that has dominated the last few decades, and it’s not too difficult to understand why we’re in the shape we’re in.

I watched an online video this morning in which Jordan Klepper, in a sort of man-on-the-street segment on Trevor Noah’s The Daily Show, goes to a political rally to interview some of the attendees on their opinions of the presidential candidates. After hearing some pretty outrageous narratives, he asks for their sources; and the interviewees proudly admit their sources are Facebook, Twitter, and “my own opinion.” Most smug of all in her ignorance is the last woman interviewed: “Do I have proof? NO. Do I have articles? NO.” In response to the interviewer’s question “So your mind is made up without any information?” she proudly responds with a self-satisfied smile, “My mind is made up.” Wow. This is scary.

How is it possible for voters’ minds to be made up without any information? Narratives. It’s all about the narratives: those stories that have been embedded in their consciousness and into which they have to fit any new information they may happen to hear.

Think about it.

Jimmy Carter was the fumbling, bumbling nobody from Plains, Georgia. His arrival on the political scene was greeted by the question “Who the hell is Jimmy Carter?” Largely ridiculed during his one-term presidency, he left office in 1981 widely regarded as a failure and an object of derision.

John F. Kennedy was the first member of the Catholic faith to become president. I remember hearing concerns that the Pope might wield too much power over U. S. affairs because of the narrative regarding his total authority over all members of the Catholic Church.

Ronald Reagan was a divorcee. Could a divorced person be president? Not according to the narratives of the time.

Lyndon Johnson was sworn into office on November 22, 1963, aboard Air Force One, just before it departed for the return trip from Dallas to Washington, DC. He became president amid conspiracy theories that he had been complicit in John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

President Obama is a Muslim. He was not born in America and is therefore not a citizen and not qualified to be president. He founded ISIS. He’s an ISIS sympathizer.

Hillary Clinton is a cold, aloof, deceptive, lying, murdering criminal who should be locked up. Oh, and she cofounded ISIS.

Donald Trump is a wildly successful businessman who would bring his financial acumen to the oval office and clean up our country’s debt problems. Also, he “shoots from the hip” (so does your drunk uncle) and therefore must be honest.

Jimmy Carter has overcome the narrative that accompanied him onto the public stage; he is now a Nobel Prize winner and the model ex-president. Historian Richard Norton Smith, cited in a New York Times opinion piece by James Warren,  says of Carter, “He invented the modern ex-presidency.” George Edwards III is quoted in the same article: “He’s shown how a former President can use his fame, status, connections and talent to make the world a better place.”

During President Kennedy’s brief time in office, the narrative of the Pope’s influence was dispelled; but after his death, we learned a new narrative which was not public information during his time in office because the media had not yet taken up round-the-clock stalking and the 24-hour news cycle was still a thing of the future. The new narrative about President Kennedy revolves around his dalliances with many women, and his relationship with Marilyn Monroe seems at times to have eclipsed his accomplishments as president.

President Johnson went on to sign the 1964 and 1968 Civil Rights Acts and is also credited with a long list of other significant domestic accomplishments, including overseeing the first manned flight to the moon and appointing the first African-American justice, Thurgood Marshall, to the Supreme Court. People pretty much forgot about the conspiracy theory narratives and replaced them with narratives recognizing his accomplishments.

Narratives can change, but change is usually slow, and many people resist change, a fact most graphically demonstrated in today’s refusal to believe any facts which don’t fit the narratives about our presidential candidates. Judd Legum, Editor-in-Chief of Think Progress, cites statistics from PPP (Public Policy Polling) showing that 65% of voters favoring Trump believe that President Obama is a Muslim. All facts, including his many personal expressions of his Christian faith, are wasted on those people, because when the facts don’t fit the narrative, the facts are discarded—not the narrative. According to that same article, 59% of Trump supporters believe—regardless of the overwhelming facts to the contrary—that our president was not born in the United States. When there’s a controversy, narratives win over facts far, far too often.

Let’s pretend for a moment that you just read an article about a woman named Gertrude McClintock. This article speaks of Gertrude’s brilliance and accomplishment. She began as a teenager, when many young people are interested only in partying and having fun, to take an active part in political activities and was inspired by Martin Luther King to enter a life of public service. She graduated with honors from Wellesley College, having served as senior class president, and went on to earn a law degree from Yale University.

During her summers as a college student, Gertrude continued her activity in politics. She served as staff attorney for the Children’s Defense Fund and a consultant to the Carnegie Council on Children. She cofounded Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, in alliance with the Children’s Defense Fund. She went on the serve as a very active First Lady of the United States, a U. S. Senator, and U. S. Secretary of State. The rest of the article is filled with enough other credentials and accomplishments to make your head spin. You’d probably think, “Wow! This Gertrude is amazing! How could one woman do all of that? I wonder if she’d ever consider running for president?”

Then we change the name from Gertrude McClintock to Hillary Clinton, and the narratives of Crooked Hillary, Lying Hillary, HilLIARy, eclipse ALL of the facts; the facts become meaningless because they don’t fit the narrative. It’s impossible for some to think of her as simply a clueless Baby Boomer who’s a little slow picking up on technology because their narrative says she’s crooked and evil, and she was intentionally subversive in her use of the wrong kind of email server. Even the testimony of the FBI Director is suspect for those blinded by the old narrative; instead of accepting his word for her innocence, they conclude that he obviously can’t be trusted either because his conclusion doesn’t fit their predetermined belief. No matter what she does, it is interpreted through the assumption of criminality.

Now imagine that every day for over a year, you’ve heard about the outrageous antics of Elmer Jones. Elmer has insulted every group of people in existence, he has criminal suits pending against him for fraud and child rape, he owns a lot of companies which send jobs overseas, he has a long history of stiffing the people who work for him on his big buildings and has ruined many small businesses, he even stiffed some little girls who sang at his convention, the only person who has benefited from his “charitable” foundation is himself, he is proven by Politifact to lie 71% of the time, he’s had four bankruptcies and three wives, he’s cheated on at least two of his three wives, he’s boasted publicly of his sexual exploits, he has discussed the size of his penis on national TV, and he has committed about a hundred or so other egregious acts. Elmer would rightfully earn your and everyone else’s disdain, he would never so much as be considered for public office, and he would quite possibly be in jail.

But change that name to Donald Trump, and those facts suddenly become meaningless, because the narrative is that he’s the consummate businessman who is worth ten billion dollars and therefore obviously knows what he’s doing. Also, his lack of political correctness and his reckless speech mean he is honest; so Politifact is clearly just a left-wing propaganda machine trying to discredit this good person. Of course, he is doing his part to see that the narratives don’t change by refusing to release the evidence of his fraud: his tax returns.

The most dangerous false narrative is that Clinton and Trump are equivalent choices, as would be the case in most presidential elections. Even a quick look at the facts would belie this narrative, but we’ve already seen that narratives supersede facts most of the time. This narrative is the one, however, that we must let go of. There is no equivalence between these two candidates, and treating them as equal but different is what has led us to the scary place where we are now.

The Republican Party narrative has also contributed to the problem. It is the party of family values and conservatism, although neither of these labels is supported by the current facts. Yet the power of the narrative compels party-line voters to believe it is their duty to support a con man in order to preserve the alleged values of their party.

Narratives can be changed, but it’s hard work; and lots of forces are at work to prevent changes in our thinking. Fear of rejection by one’s tribe wields a powerful influence. I know since I could list at least half a dozen topics which are avoided among various members of my own family because maintaining the family relationships is more important than being “right” about those topics. But we have to do better than we’re doing now. Facts matter. Say it with me: FACTS. MATTER.

 

Categories
Politics

A Tisket, a Tasket, What’s inside Your Basket?

Hillary Clinton said Donald Trump’s supporters can be placed into two baskets: the “deplorables” and the people who are “desperate for change.” I’ve taken the liberty of creating my own categories: The Deplorables, the Government Haters, the Party Liners, the Trump Book Club, and the Hillary Haters. Not all of these people are bad, of course; but their votes will all contribute to an unprecedented disaster in our government, our national security, and the status of the United States of America on the world stage.

Let’s go ahead and talk about the “deplorables” first since they are the scariest ones. I applaud Mrs. Clinton for calling them what they are, and I believe she should neither recant nor apologize for her statement. Trump’s most rabid supporters are angry white men, many of whom are racists who identify themselves with the alt-right, a group that promotes white supremacy and who are—according to NPR—against “multiculturalism, immigration, feminism and, above all, political correctness.”

Sound familiar? Those are the very pillars on which Donald Trump has built his preposterous “presidential campaign.” Flying in the face of political correctness was his rallying cry, and these alt-right supporters, according to Nicole Hemmer, see political correctness “as the greatest threat to their liberty” (quoted by NPR). Ms. Hemmer goes on to say, “They believe saying racist or anti-Semitic things . . . is not an act of hate, but an act of freedom.”

As if having alt-right people and David Duke sympathizers as followers were not enough, Trump hired the man who gave this fledgling group a platform—Steve Bannon—to be the CEO of his then floundering campaign.

Those who cheer for Trump’s racist, xenophobic, Islamaphobic rants, who chant “Lock her up!” whenever he mentions Hillary Clinton’s name, who believe every bit of vomit that spews from his mouth and stand ready to use violence if necessary to support him are indeed deplorable and a menace to our society.

Not all of Trump’s supporters, however, fall into this category, or to use Hillary Clinton’s word, “basket.” The other groups I have mentioned are not deplorable; in fact, some are pitiable, but they are no less a threat. The deplorables won’t change; they have dark, menacing ideas, and Trump has given them credibility and a safe place to vent their bile and venom. The other groups of Trump supporters are not dangerous in themselves; but ballot counters don’t count motive, so they are just as hazardous as the alt-right people.

Most pitiable of all Trump supporters are the Government Haters. These people are so unhappy with their lot in life that they grasp every delusional word Trump says as if it were a lifeboat that would take them to a better place. In the greatest and richest country on earth, millions of people feel so angry, so betrayed, so powerless, so disenfranchised, so cheated, and so dehumanized by their government and their politicians that the rantings of a crazy man sound like words of hope and promise!

Hillary Clinton describes them this way:

people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.

I’ve often said that Trump is the effect, not the cause. Anti-intellectualism, failing schools, failing churches, hatred, prejudice of all sorts, political polarization—these are our real problems. Trump simply played on people’s vulnerability, the spineless Republican Party allowed him to take over, and the even more spineless media gave him the free air time to do so. The Government Haters are correct in much of what they say but sadly misguided in what they see as the solution. Their messiah is using them to achieve his goal but would do little for them if elected.

Then there are the Party Line Republicans. They’d vote for a hamster if the Republican Party nominated it. In all fairness, some Democrats would do the same for their party; and party loyalty is not all bad. It becomes problematic, however, when loyalty to party supersedes loyalty to country. President Obama is credited with the statement that we are not red states and blue states; we are the United States. When either party loses its mind and nominates a menace to our democracy as its presidential candidate, every citizen—regardless of party affiliation—should unite to extinguish that threat and keep our country united and safe. The Party Liners are not deplorable, just naïve and misguided.

Certain members of the Party Liners, however, are deplorable: the high-ranking Republicans such as Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and the snake in the grass Reince Preibus, who don’t agree with a word Trump says but urge voters to support the party candidate. With leadership like that, the party as we know it is in danger of extinction. But that won’t affect Trump since–even though he’s riding on the wave of party loyalty–he himself has no loyalty to any party. Now that he’s built his mob of supporters who are loyal to him alone, he doesn’t need the support of any party; and he would certainly not work with any party if elected. A demagogue’s power comes from his exploitation of crowd passions, not from checks and balances or due process.

Next up are the Trump Book Club. Book? Oh, that’s right, Trump doesn’t read; and neither do these followers. They’re not bad people; they’re just used to trusting the process to the “experts” and showing up on voting day to follow their leaders’ recommendations. Many in this group pride themselves on “doing their own research,” but that usually means seeking and following the opinions of sources who lean the same direction they do and scoffing at anything which challenges their personal biases. They’re not deplorable, but they are a threat because they’re not informed enough to know what they don’t know.

For me, the most disturbing group in this election cycle is the Hillary Haters. I’m not saying Mrs. Clinton is above criticism or that all of the criticisms against her are unjustified. She has spent her entire life in public service, so she has made mistakes along the way. Ever make a mistake on your job? I made my share of them. Anyone who’s doing anything is going to screw up periodically, and the more a person is doing the more opportunities there are for screw-ups.

What’s disturbing to me about the Hillary Haters is that most of them have bought the false narratives spread by her enemies and have closed their minds to any information that contradicts those narratives. This weekend, I read an excellent article called “Media Narratives Imprison Clinton, Trump—and Voters,” by Neal Gabler (published on Moyers and Company). Mr. Gabler’s premise is that narratives drive election coverage and largely contribute to elections’ outcomes. He explains:

Narratives are the stories and characteristics that the media attach to candidates, so the election turns into a “movie” pitting one protagonist’s qualities against another’s. In this election, we all know the narrative constructs because the media hammer at them day after day after day: Hillary Clinton is a cold, secretive, defensive liar who is nevertheless competent; Donald Trump is a loose cannon who is nevertheless plain-spoken and says exactly what’s on his mind. The media never deviate from these ideas. Indeed, they are high-security prisons from which the candidates cannot escape.

Applied to Mrs. Clinton, this means that

No matter what Clinton says or does, it will always be filtered through the pre-existing scrim. If she talks policy, she is cold. If she insists — rightfully, to my mind — that the email brouhaha is a molehill turned into not just any mountain but Everest, she is defensive. If she meets, as every politician does, with friends and favor-seekers, she is corrupt, whether she has doled out favors or not. These are the traits the media have assigned to her.

Gabler goes on to comment on the Trump narratives and then makes this comparison:

But you may have noticed something. Even the negative attributes the media have slapped on Trump . . . are better than the ones they have put on Clinton. Her actions can all be chalked up to duplicity; Trump’s, on the other hand, to his politically incorrect honesty. Never mind that Trump may be, if you follow PolitiFact, the single most mendacious [For the Trump Book Club people, that means lying] candidate in the history of presidential politics.

In another article, Neal Gabler says:

The bigger point is this: whatever you may think of the Clintons, the scandals didn’t create the meme of untrustworthiness about them. The meme of untrustworthiness created the scandals. The media just kept hunting for those scandals as confirmation of what they had already determined. That is how so many in the MSM work — backwards from presumption to incident. It also happens to be the surest path to career advancement for journalistic opportunists. (“The Media Have a Hillary Story and They’re Sticking to It,” Moyers and Company)

The obvious problem here is that voters have been so conditioned by these narratives that no amount of information about Trump’s criminal activity or his sleazy lifestyle can overcome the narrative that he’s just a straight shooter who wants to help the underdogs. And the much-publicized lists of bankruptcies, failed businesses, and frauds can’t tarnish the narrative that he’s the consummate businessman who will apply the skills that have made him a multi-billionaire (although we will never know his actual net worth) to the national budget and make the country financially great again.

As for Hillary Clinton, the press has never cared much for her or her husband, so it’s unlikely she’ll ever get a break. Press treatment of them is similar to the biblical literalists’ making up a doctrine or taking a position and then going through the scriptures in search of “proof” for their preexisting belief.

If she has a case of walking pneumonia, instead of giving her credit for being tough enough to work through it, they’ll dedicate the next several days’ news cycles to showing how this proves that she really is dishonest and deceptive because she didn’t make a public announcement the minute she was diagnosed. And they’ll demand that she release even more medical records to prove she isn’t hiding anything else. Never mind that her opponent has released a tiny fraction of what she has.

The Hillary Haters are not exactly deplorable, but they’re misguided, and they can be appallingly nasty. Like the media’s, their narrative is embedded, and anything she does will be viewed through that lens. Even when Politifact calls her the most honest candidate they’ve fact checked, her haters call Politifact a phony liberal organization that supports her evil agenda.

Washington Post writer Robert Kagan offers this astute summary:

What Trump offers his followers are not economic remedies — his proposals change daily. What he offers is an attitude, an aura of crude strength and machismo, a boasting disrespect for the niceties of the democratic culture that he claims, and his followers believe, has produced national weakness and incompetence. His incoherent and contradictory utterances have one thing in common: They provoke and play on feelings of resentment and disdain, intermingled with bits of fear, hatred and anger. His public discourse consists of attacking or ridiculing a wide range of “others” — Muslims, Hispanics, women, Chinese, Mexicans, Europeans, Arabs, immigrants, refugees — whom he depicts either as threats or as objects of derision. His program, such as it is, consists chiefly of promises to get tough with foreigners and people of nonwhite complexion. He will deport them, bar them, get them to knuckle under, make them pay up or make them shut up. (“This Is How Fascism Comes to America,” 18 May 2016)

The prospect of a Trump presidency is deplorable. The groups who vote for him have different backgrounds and reasons for their choice, but a vote is a vote; and every one of them is contributing to the apocalypse that will befall if this know-nothing is elected. Time to wake up!

 

 

 

 

 

Categories
Politics

DO NOT Vote Your Conscience!

Now that I have your attention, let’s talk.

I don’t know any delicate way to say this, but with early voting starting this week, it must be said: A vote for Donald J. Trump is a vote against America. If the unthinkable should happen and this utterly unqualified person becomes our president, the blood of our country will be on the hands of everyone who voted for him. Yes, that’s harsh, but the reality of what would happen to our country under a Trump presidency is even harsher.

Voting is a cherished right, one which many have died to preserve. Each of us owns our vote, and we are bound by conscience and duty to country to use that vote responsibly. Each of us has to search his or her conscience before exercising this most solemn of duties, so here are a few facts for your conscience to chew on before you cast your ballot in the next 7 weeks.

The most important fact that must drive our thinking and our voting in this election is that this is not a normal election. I’m not talking about the drama, the infighting within the Republican Party, and the daily reality-tv-esque antics. I’m talking about the fact that this is not a contest between two equally qualified and prepared candidates, a contest in which we could have robust debates about the two opponents’ policy proposals and positions on important issues. It’s not a contest in which we strongly prefer one candidate, but life will go on and our country will survive with the other one.

This election is a contest between the most highly prepared and experienced candidate in history and a builder of buildings, maker of reality-tv shows who knows nothing whatsoever about government and refuses to be taught. It’s a contest between someone who has made mistakes in a long career of doing good for the world because she has had a long career of doing good for the world, and it would be impossible to have such a career without having made a few bad judgments, and someone whose entire career has consisted of amassing a large personal fortune at the expense of taxpayers and contractors who have been the victims of his greed.

How’s your conscience feeling now?

The most deceptive part of this campaign has been the normalizing of a candidate who is anything but normal and the legitimizing of a claim on the presidency by someone who should never have been allowed to win the nomination. In other words, Donald Trump is a fraud. Oh, I know we can vote for him if we’re foolish enough; but his candidacy is a scam, and the fact that he has been allowed to become the nominee of one of our major political parties is nothing short of a crime against the voters of the United States of America. The media and others who have treated this “candidacy” as normal and legitimate have created a false equivalency which has led to the dangerous dilemma in which we now find ourselves.

A friend of a friend said it this way on Facebook:

But while Trump was hosting a game show, Hillary was in the situation room, watching as Bin Laden was shot. Her record has stains, as does every Republican, Democrat and general who came before her. But she *has* a record, and she has admitted to her failures and shortcomings. She’s still learning and has the humility to admit that. She’s willing to listen, both to her advisers and constituency. Trump won’t even admit that President Obama was born in the United States. (Adam Tendler) [The last statement has changed, sort of, since this was written.]

President Obama said in a recent speech, “We can’t afford to act as if there’s some equivalence here.”

Eric Alterman, in an article titled “’Normalizing’ Trump,” says this:

Every effort by the media to treat Donald Trump as a “normal” presidential candidate brings us closer to the potential destruction of our democracy. And yet we can see it taking place at virtually every level of our media.

The media deserve a good deal of blame here, not only because of the billions of dollars’ worth of free airtime television networks have given to Trump but also because of their insistence — against all evidence — that he is someone other than the person he clearly presents himself to be. (The Nation, 15 Sep 2016)

Nicholas Kristof, in his New York Times op-ed “When a Crackpot Runs for President,” says:

This does raise the thorny issue of false equivalence, which has been hotly debated among journalists this campaign. Here’s the question: Is it journalistic malpractice to quote each side and leave it to readers to reach their own conclusions, even if one side seems to fabricate facts or make ludicrous comments?

There are crackpots who believe that the earth is flat, and they don’t deserve to be quoted without explaining that this is an, er, outlying view, and the same goes for a crackpot who has argued that climate change is a Chinese-made hoax, who has called for barring Muslims and who has said that he will build a border wall and that Mexico will pay for it.

We owe it to our readers to signal when we’re writing about a crackpot. Even if he’s a presidential candidate. No, especially when he’s a presidential candidate. (15 Sep 2016)

Veteran journalist Dan Rather, in a scathing Facebook rant, says this about Trump and the media:

This is not about partisan politics, about who is right on immigration or gun control. This is about the very machinery that has allowed our American experiment to persist and thrive, a machinery which is far more fragile than we would like to believe.

Trump’s relationship with the press is at the heart of so much that is troubling about his candidacy . . .

And yet when presented with this challenge, too much of the press has been cowed into inaction. This is a man who can be fact-checked into obscurity by any second grader with an Internet connection. And yet when he issues a mealy-mouth non-apology about President Obama’s obvious pedigree as an American, here we are with too many in the press not acknowledging his years of lies (check your Twitter feeds about how the New York Times initially covered this event). All of this of course sets the stage for Trump to lie again about somehow birtherism being Clinton’s fault. (“Stop Giving Trump a Free Pass and Do Your Damn Job,” 17 Sep 2016)

Donald Trump is not presidential material, and the press’s and voters’ treatment of him as a normal candidate has placed our country in grave danger.

Adam Tendler, in his Facebook comment, also says:

The danger is that when people view voting as fundamentally a form of self-expression, in a tight race where every vote counts, the reality is that this rugged individualism actually tends to undermine the actual tangible possibility for change in this country, including the change that voter actually believes in. You may *feel* fantastic and totally aligned with your values voting third party, and that’s wonderful for you, but the follow-through is essentially, in this case, one less vote for Clinton and a strengthened chance for a Trump majority.

And here’s the point: There’s a lot more to “voting your conscience” than just casting a ballot for the person you believe would do the best job. Your conscience should also tell you where your vote might do the most harm. You might argue that a vote is never wasted, but the reality is that a vote can be wasted and can lead to unintended results.

In this election, a vote for Donald Trump is a vote for evil and for the destruction of our democracy. A vote for Jill Stein is a vote for Donald Trump, because in our system as it exists now, a third-party candidate has no real chance of winning; and the only thing voting for them does is pull votes from someone who does have a chance of winning. A vote for Gary Johnson is also a vote for Donald Trump, for the same reasons, regardless of how pure the motive for which the vote is cast. Abstaining from voting is a vote for Donald Trump because Trump deplorables are the ones most eager to cast their ballots; none of them will be abstaining. The ONLY way to prevent the apocalypse of a Trump presidency is to vote for Hillary Clinton. To do anything else is naïve, idealistic, and misguided.

Will your conscience allow you to contribute to the election of an uninformed con man who has risen to prominence by peddling conspiracy theories, insulting just about every group of people in existence, and—according to fact checkers—lying in 71% of the statements that were checked?

Will your conscience allow you to contribute to the election of a 70-year-old man who speaks and reasons like a 5-year-old? A man who says nice things about a foreign leader hostile to American interests because that leader has said nice things about Trump? Are we in second grade?

But his immaturity, his lack of ethics, his lifestyle that does not mirror the beliefs of the far-right “Christians” who support him have all been hashed over; and his supporters are unmoved. What should be front and center, according to Melissa Bartick, is Trump’s criminal history. Ms. Bartick lists ten criminal charges against the man the Republican Party thinks should be our president:

-Trump and his father were sued by the federal government for housing discrimination in the 1970’s for refusing to rent to blacks.

-He is being charged with fraud in connection with Trump University.

– Trump Tower was built using undocumented Polish laborers to demolish the building that previously stood on the site.

-Trump is alleged to have violated immigration laws in hiring foreign models for Trump Model Management. These models worked illegally, and he failed to pay them fairly.

– Trump’s charitable foundation appears to have repeatedly broken IRS rules, according to the Washington Post.

-His charitable foundation violated tax laws by giving a $25,000 political contribution to a campaign group connected to Florida’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, in 2013.

-Trump is accused of bribing the Attorney General of Florida, Pam Bondi to drop her investigation of Trump University. She successfully solicited a donation from him before the fraud case, and afterward, he held a fundraiser for her at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.

-In 2007 and in 2012, Trump and his wife bought two gifts for themselves at charity events for his foundation, totaling $32,000, breaking IRS rules. One gift was a $20,000 painting of himself.

-A deposition describes him raping his first wife Ivana, pulling out fistfuls of her hair in a fit of rage, stripping off her clothes, then penetrating her forcefully without her consent, after which she hid in a locked room and cried all night.

-He is currently being charged with child rape in a case for which there is an eyewitness and credible information to support the claim. The woman filing suit in April 2016 claims that as a 13-year-old in 1994, she was enticed to attend parties with the promise of money and modeling jobs at the home of Jeffrey Epstein, a Level 3 registered sex offender (the most dangerous kind), after Epstein was convicted of misconduct with another underage girl.

The woman alleges Trump initiated sexual contact with her on four separate occasions, with the fourth being a “savage sexual attack” in which he tied her to a bed and forcibly raped her while she pleaded with him to stop. He threatened that she and her family would be “physically harmed if not killed” if she ever revealed what was done. (“Trump’s Criminal History Should Be Front and Center,” 14 Sep 2016)

Several of these cases are currently pending, so our president would be the defendant in a series of criminal trials. How does your conscience feel about that?

And if your conscience can swallow ALL of this to avoid voting for someone who was careless with her emails and waited 48 hours to reveal that she was suffering from pneumonia, something is seriously wrong with your conscience. If you can vote for an uninformed conspiracy theorist, alt-right/KKK sympathizer, 71% liar, and rapist to avoid voting for a woman who has lived her entire life by the mantra “Do all the good you can, for all the people you can, in all the ways you can, as long as ever you can,” something is seriously wrong with your conscience. If you can vote for a man who refuses to release the proof of his fraud and dangerous foreign alliances (aka, his tax returns) to avoid voting for a brilliant and gifted woman who is flawed and imperfect but who has lived a life of public service and to whom millions of people in the world are beholden for her goodness and charity, something is seriously wrong with your conscience.

Bernie Sanders says this is not the time for a protest vote:

Sanders continued making the pitch he’s been honing since he returned to the campaign trail: This isn’t a year to vote third party. Mentioning Clinton’s name sparingly, Sanders told several hundred voters — many still wearing gear from the Democratic primary — that their votes could stop the election of a Republican “who thinks climate change is a hoax.”

And finally, here’s the commonsense wisdom of American sage Garrison Keillor, in a September 13, 2016, Facebook post:

Hillary didn’t have a prolonged adolescence and fiction was not her ambition. She doesn’t do dreaminess. What some people see as a relentless quest for power strikes me as the good habits of a serious Methodist. Be steady. Don’t give up. It’s not about you. Work for the night is coming.

The woman who does not conceal her own intelligence is a fine American tradition, going back to Anne Bradstreet and Harriet Beecher Stowe and my ancestor Prudence Crandall, but none has been subjected to the steady hectoring that Mrs. Clinton has. She is the first major-party nominee to be pictured in prison stripes by the opposition. She is the first cabinet officer ever to be held personally responsible for her own email server, something ordinarily delegated to anonymous nerds in I.T. The fact that terrorists attacked an American compound in Libya under cover of darkness when Secretary Clinton presumably got some sleep has been held against her, as if she personally was in command of the defense of the compound, a walkie-talkie in her hand, calling in air strikes.

Wake up, voters! Our only choice is to vote for Hillary Clinton. If your conscience tells you anything else, trade it in and get one that works.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories
Politics

How Conservative Are Conservatives?

Image result for liberal conservative spectrum

Perhaps some of the most misunderstood and misused words in our 21st-century language are “liberal” and “conservative.” In a fractured and splintered political atmosphere, both ends of the spectrum have more factions than most of us can keep up with; and for many, both terms are nothing more than pejoratives used to describe the “idiots” on the other team.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a [person] from the vexation of thinking.” With our modern appetite for categorizing, combined with a widespread distaste for reflection and analysis, this saying has perhaps never been more accurate. Religious affiliations and political parties allow us the security of being surrounded by like-minded people and the luxury of having someone else articulate the beliefs to which we profess allegiance, whether or not we know or understand them.

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, in this year’s Democratic primary, demonstrated the various shades of blue on the liberal end of the spectrum. And that brings us to one of the problems with categorizing: most terms are relative. To an extreme conservative, for example, even a moderate or slightly left-leaning person can seem like a raging socialist. Add to that the tendency to bandy about terms about whose meanings we are clueless and you have a recipe for the confusion and tension that now exist.

Although there are clearly shades of blue, I think they may not be quite as confusing as today’s shades of red. A favorite article, which I review periodically, especially during election season, is called “Why Voters Should Turn from the Pseudoconservative Party of the Great Recession,” by Louis Guenin (Huffington Post, 24 Dec 2012).  In Mr. Guenin’s introductory paragraph, he suggests that modern conservatives and liberals have somewhat switched places, with liberals demonstrating more of the traditionally conservative principles than do those who currently call themselves conservative:

The politicians who now travel under the banner of ‘conservatism’ happen to espouse views and methods that . . . are incompatible with the philosophy bearing that name. Meanwhile members of the opposing political party have imbibed a dose of the wisdom conveyed by conservatism.

Guenin goes on to offer this definition of “conservatism”:

Conservatism, as eloquently introduced by Edmund Burke (1729-1797), advocates esteem for government and established institutions. It holds that within them lies an accumulated wisdom that citizens and their leaders should respect and consult. Revering the established order, its constitution, and its history, conservatism cultivates a cautious disposition.

According to Guenin, that was then; this is now:

Today’s Republican Party consists of pseudoconservatives, wearers of the ‘conservative’ mantle who repudiate conservatism. Rather than esteeming government, they disdain it. They seem to delight in ridiculing government’s failings.

Nowhere does one find a greater disdain for government than at Donald Trump’s rallies. The vile, abusive, violent atmosphere and language are the opposite of reverence for “the established order, its constitution, and its history”; and there is no evidence anywhere of “a cautious disposition.”

But la-de-da! We citizens of the 21st century are not ones to let facts get in our way. The pseudoconservatives of whom Louis Guenin speaks are actually a diverse group united around their religious beliefs on abortion and what they consider traditional family values.

The Tea Party Movement was a populist response within the Republican Party for whom the party was not quite “conservative” enough. Sparked by Rick Santorum’s remarks on February 19, 2009, opposing President Obama’s mortgage relief plan, the movement quickly grew through social media to include far-right voters whose common umbrella was hatred of the president.

The Tea Party ranks were swelled by ‘Birthers’—individuals who claimed that Obama had been born outside the United States and was thus not eligible to serve as president (despite a statement by the director of the Hawaii State Department of Health attesting that she had seen Obama’s birth certificate and could confirm that he had been born in the state)—as well as by those who considered Obama a socialist and those who believed that Obama, who frequently discussed his Christianity publicly, was secretly a Muslim. (Brittanica.com)

As I said, we modern Americans never let facts stand in our way! The Tea Partiers were angry at government, especially government spending policies.

According to Paul H. Jossey, “Today, the Tea Party movement is dead, and Trump has co-opted the remnants. What was left of the Tea Party split for a while between Trump and, while he was still in the race, Ted Cruz.” He goes on to say that Tea Party rallies have given way to Trump rallies (“How We Killed the Tea Party,” Politico Magazine).

Think about it: same people, same attitudes, and same utter disdain for government. Conservative? Not by a long shot!

The most disturbing right-wing faction now gaining attention is the alt-right movement. Until a month ago, I’d never heard of alt-right; and I was feeling embarrassed about that until I heard some very knowledgeable pundits on the news admit that they too were just learning about it.

The name is short for “alternative right” and, according to NPR (“What You Need to Know about the Alt-Right Movement”),

It is mostly an online movement that uses websites, chat boards, social media and memes to spread its message. (Remember the Star of David image that Trump received criticism for retweeting? That reportedly first appeared on an alt-right message board.

Hillary Clinton, in a Reno, Nevada, speech, commented on the movement:

This is not Republicanism as we have known it. These are racist ideas. These are race-baiting ideas. Anti-Muslim, anti-Immigrant, anti-women ideas—all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right.’

And Mrs. Clinton’s assessment is affirmed by the NPR description:

Most of its members are young white men who see themselves first and foremost as champions of their own demographic. However, apart from their allegiance to their ‘tribe,’ as they call it, their greatest points of unity lie in what they are against: multiculturalism, immigration, feminism, and, above all, political correctness.

Quoted in the NPR article, Nicole Hemmer, says, “They see political correctness really as the greatest threat to their liberty. So, they believe saying racist or anti-Semitic things—it’s not an act of hate, but an act of freedom.”

It should come as no surprise that this group found its ideal presidential candidate in Donald Trump, who has built his campaign on all of the same pillars articulated in the list of things they’re against. Before Trump, the Alt-Right found its home with Breitbart News Network, and now the merger between Breitbart and the Trump campaign has been completed by Trump’s hiring of Stephen Bannon, chairman of Breitbart News Network, as his campaign’s chief executive. And thus what was a radical lunatic fringe group has now moved center stage in American politics.

Although Nicole Hemmer does not believe Trump “pledges allegiance” to the Alt-Right, she believes “They are attracted to Trump [and]see him as a vessel for getting their ideas out there.” And I would add that Trump has not disavowed their support; so whether he pledges allegiance or not, he clearly welcomes any fringe element (KKK et al.) that will help get him elected. Such are the choices of those who have no moral compass.

In this same article, Hillary Clinton is quoted as saying, “Donald Trump has a ‘profoundly dangerous’ disregard for the nation’s values.” And her assessment is echoed by many newspapers, including the Dallas Morning News, whose editorial board has announced they are breaking with a tradition they have held to since 1964: they have always endorsed the Republican nominee for the presidency.

This year, however, the editorial board has announced that they cannot in good conscience endorse the Republican, since Trump is “no Republican and certainly no conservative.”

We have no interest in a Republican nominee for whom all principles are negotiable, not in a Republican Party that is willing to trade away principle for pursuit of electoral victory. Trump doesn’t reflect Republican ideals of the past; we are certain he shouldn’t reflect the GOP of the future.

(Huffington Post 6 Sep 2016)  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-dallas-morning-news_us_57cebaf3e4b078581f13d342?section=&

Tea Party, Alt-Right, birthers, conspiracy theorists, science deniers, guns are more important than lives advocates, racists, misogynists, “Christians” who know nothing of Christ’s example, white supremacists. Do any of these terms sound conservative?

On Thursday, September 8, the Family Research Council, a group that calls itself “Christian” and “conservative,” held a Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., and Donald Trump was the featured speaker. This is an excerpt from an article by Amy Sullivan:

Enthusiastic chants of “Lock her up!” filled the room in the middle of Trump’s speech, only to be replaced by earnest applause minutes later as he read from the New Testament: “No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us.”

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more graphic image of sheer hypocrisy: juxtaposing chants of “Lock her up!” with a scripture reading about love for one another as the evidence of God’s love being made complete in humans. Where’s the love? This behavior is neither Christian nor conservative, and it certainly doesn’t speak of any values I’d want to emulate. This sounds more like the alt-right than traditional evangelical values, but evangelicals have moved so far right of center that it’s hard to see the dividing line between the Christian Right and the Alt-Right.

I recall learning in my high school and college government classes about the liberal-conservative spectrum. According to the most simplistic explanation, in the center of the line are the moderates/centrists; to the left are the liberals, moving in degrees from “left-leaning” to the most extreme point: radicals. To the right of center are conservatives, also moving in degrees from “right-leaning” to the most extreme point: reactionaries. I see very little true conservatism among those to the right of center in our current political atmosphere, and I see a lot of reactionaries. According to The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought,

A reactionary is a person who holds political views that favor a return to the status quo ante, the previous political state of society, which they believe possessed characteristics (discipline, respect for authority, etc.) that are negatively absent from the contemporary status quo of a society.

Ring any bells? “Make America Great Again.” “Back to our roots.” “Back to the Christian beliefs our country was founded on” (our founders were mostly deists). These people left conservatism long ago, and they’ve been opening new right-wing territories ever since.

Donald Trump—in his ignorance and irreverence—and the Republican Party—with its factions, infighting, and collective spinelessness—have muddied the waters of true conservatism and brought the far-right fringe to center stage. The Trump Train has carried the Party of Lincoln to a place Lincoln—with his knowledge, wisdom, and eloquence—would never have dreamed of going. It’s time to turn the train around before it goes off the cliff!

 

 

Categories
Musings Politics

Facts Are Facts, and That’s the Truth!

Andy Borowitz, the Jonathan Swift of the Internet, wrote this about how contemporary humans often respond when confronted with facts:

Scientists have discovered a powerful new strain of fact-resistant humans who are threatening the ability of Earth to sustain life, a sobering new study reports.

The research, conducted by the University of Minnesota, identifies a virulent strain of humans who are virtually immune to any form of verifiable knowledge, leaving scientists at a loss as to how to combat them.

“These humans appear to have all the faculties necessary to receive and process information,” Davis Logsdon, one of the scientists who contributed to the study, said. “And yet, somehow, they have developed defenses that, for all intents and purposes, have rendered those faculties totally inactive.” (12 May 2015)

For the full post: http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/scientists-earth-endangered-by-new-strain-of-fact-resistant-humans

Satire is amusing, but anyone who has attempted to make a fact-based argument for or against any political candidate or issue has quickly learned the futility of such an exercise, and it’s not funny. I recently read a post on social media written by an avid Trump supporter. The writer declared that Trump supporters know he’s crass, he swears from the podium, he’s been married three times, he’s cheated on his wives, he’s an egomaniac, he frequently changes his positions, he’s picked public fights with multiple people, he’s filed four bankruptcies—in other words, just a few of the facts his fans have been confronted with for over a year. And the supporter’s response to this list of facts? “We don’t care.” In their minds, the truth is Trump can fix what they see as the problems with our country and the mainstream Republican Party; and their personal “truth”—however baseless it may be—trumps fact.

On the other hand, the “truth” about Hillary Clinton is that she’s a liar and a criminal, and no amount of fact will change that “truth” in the hearts of the true believers. Her humanitarian work on behalf of women, children, military families, and the 9/11 first responders–none of these facts can pierce the thick shell of hatred surrounding her enemies. “Lock her up!” they chant.

Even though PolitiFact, the Pulitzer-Prize winning organization that fact-checks candidates’ speeches, has rated Hillary Clinton (who told the truth or mostly the truth in 53% of 120 claims) among the most honest politicians they’ve checked and Donald Trump (who outright lied in over 60% of 158 claims) among the most dishonest, current polls show voters trust him more than they trust her. A classic case of “Don’t bother us with the facts! We’ll make up our own minds, thank you!”

I won’t even attempt to explain why or how we’ve reached this stage, but the truth is folks don’t care much about facts these days; and that’s a fact. How people feel about someone or something carries far more weight in swaying their decisions than hard fact does.

What is the relationship between truth and fact? Here’s a good way to remember it: All facts are true, but not all truths are facts.

Facts can be proven. They’re not arguable. They’re not affected by opinion. They’re more permanent than truth. Here’s a definition I found on Philosophy Stack Exchange, “a question-and-answer site for those interested in logical reasoning”:

A fact is a reality that cannot be logically disputed or rejected. If I say “fire is hot,” I don’t care how great your reasoning skills are, if you touch fire your skin will burn. . . . Now when I say this, I am not speaking a truth, I am speaking a fact. If you say “fire is not hot,” you are lying, you are incorrect. Facts are concrete realities that no amount of reasoning will change. When one acknowledges a fact, they are doing just that. Facts are not discovered, facts are not created, facts are simply acknowledged.

According to Diana Hacker,

A fact is something that is known with certainty because it has been objectively verified: The capital of Wyoming is Cheyenne. Carbon has an atomic weight of 12. John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. (A Writer’s Reference, 5th edition)

Truth, on the other hand, has to be discovered. Some people devote their entire lives to the “search for truth.” To those who believe in the existence of God, God’s existence is truth; to those who do not believe in the existence of God, God’s non-existence is truth. Each group can point to facts upon which they base their truth, but the facts alone don’t prove their claims. Truth is subjective; it’s subject to interpretation. Facts are objective; they can support an arguable premise, but they themselves can’t be interpreted.

Facts answer the “where,” “when,” and “how” questions; truth answers the “why” question.

Whether God exists or whether there’s life beyond the grave or whether there is life in other parts of the universe are all valid questions and warrant our most diligent and sincere efforts to search out the truth. Whether 2+2=4, whether fire will burn, or whether the Civil War actually happened are not open for debate. These are facts; they need only to be acknowledged, not sought out or proved.

Facts have, of course, been disproved. Look at a science or medical textbook from a hundred years ago. Everything in those books was fact at the time it was written, but much of it is laughably false in the light of new research and development. Yet even disproved facts are different from truth. The possibility of saying conclusively that something is false is part of what makes it fact-based.

You can choose your truth, but you can’t choose your facts. Climate change is fact; it’s backed by a plethora of scientific research. President Obama is a citizen; that’s a fact based on the same documentation the rest of us use to prove our citizenship. President Obama has repeatedly made clear profession of his Christian faith; to call him a Muslim denies fact.

Claims that the president and the Democratic presidential candidate are “coming to get your guns” and to repeal the Second Amendment have not a shred of fact to back them up, yet I can’t count the number of people who have posted such claims on social media as if they were indisputable truth.

I heard an interview on the news last night in which the reporter was stating facts about Donald Trump to one of his steadfast supporters. The supporter didn’t contradict any of the reporter’s statements, since they were clearly fact; but she said those facts don’t matter to her. In conclusion, she said with conviction, “I trust that man.”

I saw a meme attacking Hillary Clinton, the last line of which mentions her accomplishments, then says, “She doesn’t have any.” That statement is neither true nor factual. The fact is she has a long list of accomplishments, going all the way back to her college days. I doubt many of her critics could come close to her list of credits, yet their “truth” is that she’s a failure as a person and as a leader.

I think we’re headed down a dark path when we collectively make decisions which ignore fact and base our truth on feelings or outright lies. The more we ignore facts the further divorced we become from the truth, and that leaves us in a moral wasteland. Truth is not fact, but it must be married to fact. Truth divorced from fact is fantasy.

The Wizard of Oz, which contains many truths but few facts, is wonderful entertainment. Through the willing suspension of disbelief, viewers can enter the world somewhere over the rainbow, enjoy a delightful fantasy adventure on the Yellow Brick Road with Dorothy and her traveling companions, and end it with affirmation of the truth that there’s no place like home.

That’s great, but the evening news should not require us to suspend our disbelief while grown-up smart people sit around tables trying to make sense of the latest nonsense syllables spoken by the self-professed wizard who is going to save us all from the mess we’re in. It’s surreal! They may as well be discussing whether Dorothy will be victorious over the Wicked Witch or whether the wizard is real or a phony or what the wizard meant when he said “That’s a horse of a different color.”

Fareed Zakaria became my new hero last night when he said to the panel on which he was participating, “There are no flying monkeys!” Actually, it was more like Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about! We’re sitting here talking about what he meant, and he doesn’t even know what he meant. He’s ignorant, and when asked a question, he has to pull out an answer. We’re trying to analyze nonsense! But it meant the same thing: Let’s stop treating fantasy as if it’s real! “There are no flying monkeys!” or “This emperor is naked; so let’s stop discussing the color, texture, and fit of his clothes!” Bravo, Mr. Zakaria!

The dumbing down of America has reached a frightening stage. Fantasy land is a fun place to visit but a dangerous place to live. We need to make America smart again!

 

 

 

Categories
Politics Religion

If That’s Your Idea of Christianity, Count Me Out!

Image result for god, guns and glory graphic

Still befuddled by the disconnect between evangelicals’ avowed religious beliefs and their support of Donald Trump’s candidacy, opposition to reasonable measures for reducing gun violence, vitriolic hatred for our black president, and general opposition to any laws which might make life easier for people who look or think differently than they do, I have to ask myself “Who is this Jesus whom these people claim to follow?”

For the last several decades, the Republican Party has been known as the “Christian party”; but in 2016, the party has been tasked with trying to defend a candidate whose words, actions, and life history do not in any way represent what most of us have been taught are Christian values. Numerous writers have contributed to the mental gymnastics show, stretching and manipulating their scriptures to make a vote for Donald Trump seem the moral, godly thing to do.

In addition to the “conservative” writers who present their “Christian” messages supporting all manner of non-Christian ideas, some of my social media friends are fond of posting YouTube videos by a young woman named Tomi Lahren, an anchor for One America News Network (OAN). Her videos show the closing act of her “news” show, called “Final Thoughts.” These closing rants of hers are presented in an angry, accusing tone, with no facial expression, and with lots of finger pointing. In a particularly appalling rant, she “takes down” President Obama, whom she addresses as Barry, for his speech at this year’s DNC. She concludes her thoughts with the statement, “Keep your paws off our guns, our God, and our glory.” Now there’s a righteous combination for you: guns, God, and glory!

Ms. Lahren and other “conservative” Republicans are the most vocal opponents of even discussing the problem of gun violence and mass murders because their sketchy understanding of the Second Amendment—actually the second half of the Second Amendment—trumps the importance of saving lives. Yet ironically, those same people claim to follow a pacifist who willingly submitted himself to death by execution; who, according to the New Testament narratives, was often “moved with compassion” when he met people in need; and who spent his entire years of public ministry saving lives—not condoning their destruction.

And how often do you see the most vocal members of the “Christian party” moved with compassion on people who are down on their luck or who are desperately seeking refuge from war and oppression? There’s plenty of passion for saving unborn babies—and I support that discussion—but how about the people who are already here? How about the people whose families would be ripped apart by deportation or who would die on the other side of that great big wall?

I’ve been so baffled by these questions that I decided to review the first four books of the New Testament, also known as the Gospels, which contain the narratives of Jesus’ life. I focused on the first three—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—since these are known as the Synoptic Gospels because they are based on common sources and recount most of the same stories, often in similar sequence and wording. The writers’ point of view contrasts with that of John, who wrote the fourth book.

Quick disclaimer: I am not a theologian, and my comments should not be read as the definitive exposition of the first three books of the New Testament. I am just someone who thinks a lot and who tries to understand things that don’t make sense to me. It’s a curse. But moving right along.

It’s really no surprise that politics and religion so often overlap and even collide; both are part of our individual world views. In our human efforts to make sense of the world around us, we come to various conclusions about the existence or non-existence of a higher power and what our relationship to that higher power should be, if we decide there is one; the proper way to relate to and live in peace with the other more than seven billion humans with whom we share this small planet; and conflicting allegiance to human government and to God’s law. These are heady topics, and some people invest a great deal of time and energy into finding the answers to their questions.

A few years back, it became popular to ask the question “What would Jesus do?”when seeking answers to questions of morality and ethics. More to the point, I think, is “What did Jesus do?” This is the question that led me to review the narratives of Jesus’ life, and here’s what I discovered (again, from strictly a lay person’s point of view). Jesus’ public ministry lasted about three-and-a-half years; and during that time, he spent most of his time healing, teaching, and practicing civil disobedience.

He also invested himself in relationships, not just with people who liked him or agreed with him; he was frequently criticized for dining with “sinners.” On one such occasion, some Pharisees asked the disciples,

“What kind of example is this from your Teacher, acting cozy with crooks and riffraff?”

Jesus, overhearing, shot back, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? Go figure out what this Scripture means: ‘I’m after mercy, not religion.’ I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.” (Mt. 9: 11-13, The Message)

Everywhere Jesus went, large crowds followed him, many of them desperate for healing, either for themselves or for loved ones. Jesus healed without vetting, without expectation of payment. He never condoned the actions of those who didn’t take the moral high road, but neither did he make their morality a condition of his helping them. He seemed to understand that hungry and sick people would have a harder time listening to and responding to his teachings, so he healed and fed first and then preached.

Although I’m not a country music fan, I recall a Johnny Cash song from many years ago that expressed his response to those who want to teach first as a condition for meeting physical needs:

At the end of our street
Is a mission so sweet
Where me and all my friends
Get a little something to eat

Though you can’t pick and choose
You sure like their stew
And if you don’t get fried chicken
What you get you can use

Praise the Lord and pass the soup
Praise the Lord and pass the bread

Sister, you can bang on your tambourine
Just let my body be fed.

The greatest example of Jesus’ teaching is recorded in what is commonly known as the Sermon on the Mount, which includes a list that we often call the Beatitudes. I’ve discussed those in another article, so I won’t elaborate here, but I think those whom he calls “blessed” may not be the same as some might have expected. Also, in that sermon, Jesus addressed the question of the Old Testament law and whether it must still be observed.

His answer was that he came not to abolish the law but to teach a different understanding of it, an understanding which encompassed not only strict adherence to rules but also attitudes of goodness: it’s no longer enough to refrain from murdering; anger, hatred, and verbal insults are also assaults. It’s no longer enough to refrain from physically committing adultery; men must also cease to look at women only as sex objects and must honor their marriage vows in spirit as well as action. His followers were given a higher calling than merely keeping rules.

Jesus also taught, in Matthew 7 and in Luke 6, that it is not our place to judge others.

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, “Let me take the speck out of your eye, while the log is in your own eye?” You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye. (Mt. 7: 1-5)

Possibly Jesus’ most comprehensive statement on what his followers should do is presented in his answer to some of the religiously orthodox people of his day who asked him which of the law’s commandments is the most important. He responded:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

In other words, if you love God and love each other, you’ve fulfilled the law. These two commandments summarize all of the laws and commands in the scripture. I think some people have missed this passage, because I’ve met an awfully lot of people who are still worried about a lot of other rules on which they base their treatment of those who don’t share their views.

Another well-known teaching is found in Matthew 25: 31-40. Jesus created an end-of-time scenario when all people would be called to account for their deeds, and he listed six criteria for being judged righteous by God: feeding Jesus when he was hungry, giving him something to drink when he was thirsty, welcoming him when he was a stranger, giving him clothing when he was naked, caring for him when he was sick, and visiting him when he was in prison. Confused, the disciples wondered what on earth Jesus was talking about. “We never did any of those things for you!” Jesus’ answer is a frequently quoted line: “Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Wow! That’s pretty simple, but I wonder why he didn’t say anything about excluding people who don’t live the same way we do or who don’t look like us. Wait a minute! Did he just say everyone is a member of his family? Maybe we’re supposed to treat everyone the same? Nah!

In addition to his healing and teaching, Jesus had to deal with the religious and government leaders of his day; and these are the only people for whom I find he had harsh words: “hypocrites,” “brood of vipers,” “child of hell,” “blind guides,” among others. Along with the crowds who followed him around seeking what he offered, the Pharisees and the Sadducees also followed Jesus and began early on to conspire against him and to entrap him. As early as Matthew chapter 11, we’re told, “The Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.”

The Pharisees represented the religious orthodoxy of the time and considered themselves superior in virtue and piety because of their strict observance of the written law. The Sadducees were wealthy aristocrats who occupied the highest religious offices and also held a majority of the seats on the ruling council called the Sanhedrin; so they were politically powerful as well being religious leaders. Since Israel was under Roman domination at that time, the Sadducees attempted to keep peace by agreeing and cooperating with the Roman authorities.

Everyone knows how things ended for Jesus, but I’d like to look for a moment at how he responded to the conflict in the years before his eventual execution. As I read it, he practiced civil disobedience. In Jesus’ teaching, he focused on the concept of two different realms and two different kingdoms: the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of human governments. He acknowledged the possibility of divided loyalties and taught that in cases of conflict, those who follow him owe primary allegiance to God.

Like more contemporary examples—Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Henry David Thoreau and others—he lived according to the law of his conscience, even when that law was in conflict with the dictates of the government. Yet, like these others, his resistance was always non-violent. He usually simply left the place of conflict and sought another location to continue his work. He spoke the truth boldly to those who oppressed him, but he sought to stay on message rather than initiating conflict or retaliating against the wrongs done to him.

As President Obama likes to say, let me be clear: Donald Trump in no way exemplifies anything I have found in the narratives of Jesus’ life. None. There is NO resemblance. His words and his actions could not possibly be more diametrically opposed to the narratives of Jesus’ life and teachings. And no amount of theological gymnastics will make him what he is not: a representative of Christian principle. So the Republicans who feel they must choose the Christian candidate would more logically choose Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump; she has spent her entire adult life handing out “cups of cold water” to people in need. Donald Trump has lived his entire life seeking power and wealth for himself only; and so be it, but you can’t sell that as Christian virtue. That pig just won’t fly!

And for that matter, what about the other Republicans making news these days? Disrespecting our black president, scoffing at systemic racism, casually dismissing gun violence as being less important than their “right to carry,” disregard for the downtrodden and desperate, demonizing and vilifying their fellow humans who live or think differently than they do—the list could go on and on. Are those followers of Jesus and their “Christian party” representatives in Washington really doing what Jesus did, or are they doing the exact opposite? Does anything in Jesus’ life say “God, guns, and glory”?

Love God and love people. That’s it. Loving doesn’t mean always agreeing with or approving, but it means respecting and treating with kindness—not excluding or vilifying and not making laws which deprive others of their right to pursue happiness.

Which party better represents Christian values? Well, neither of them completely; but I’ll say those who call themselves the “Christian party” should examine their definition of Christianity. And if some of their examples are what it means to be a Christian, stop the bus and let me off!