The Richmond Free Press in March 2019 ran a pair of articles touching on education, one of them a wire service report on the College Blues scandal, the other a story by Jeremy M. Lazarus on the mayor of Richmond’s resolve to improve the funding of the city’s public schools. The maladies assailing education from preschool to graduate programs are manifold and my ideas about the sources of the illness are well formed; perhaps there will be more about that later. Suffice it to say that it’s impossible to disentangle the issue from the country’s politics.
“Fallout Continues from College Admissions Scandal,” The Richmond Free Press, 14-16 March 2019, A1, A5 (http://richmondfreepress.com/news/2019/mar/15/fallout-continues-college-admissions-scandal/).
Jeremy M. Lazarus, “Stand By Your Plan,” The Richmond Free Press, 14-16 March 2019, A1, A4 (http://richmondfreepress.com/news/2019/mar/15/stand-your-plan/).
“Gaming the College Admissions System and Defunding K-12 Public Education,” The Richmond Free Press, 21-23 March 2019, A7 (http://richmondfreepress.com/news/2019/mar/22/gaming-college-admissions-system-and-defunding-k-1/).
My regard for Eric Alterman cannot be higher. When he took aim at Facebook for its exploitation of users’ data, it was an opportunity to roll out a short-form version of my spiel on social media. On this topic, consistency is categorically not the hallmark of a hobgoblin-infested small mind.
Eric Alterman, “The Social Menace,” The Nation, 28 January/4 February 2019, 6 (www.thenation.com/article/archive/facebook-spies-alterman/).
Thanks to Eric Alterman for his incisive assessment of the arrogance, avarice, and mendacity of Facebook’s top executives and of the platform’s toxic impact on the nation’s politics.
Equally troubling is Facebook’s sociocultural effect. Years ago, a friend – a recent Facebook hire – pressed my wife and me to join the nascent social media behemoth. I demurred because the enterprise seemed narcissistic, an invitation to drown in the trivial. My Facebook-free existence has been in no respect inimical to personal fulfillment. Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of boundless “connectivity” paradoxically leaves people atomized as, stricken by “fear of missing out” and grasping for “likes,” they tap, tap, tap and curate their lives for a faceless electronic throng rather than living them. Immersion in social media is not inherently bad but there are so many better things to do.
Early in 2019, a local guy – Raymond B. Wallace – had an opinion published by The Richmond Times-Dispatch in which he fulminated about the distressing decline in quality of broadcast news, especially the cable news outlets. By decline, he apparently meant that the news was not being reported in a pleasing manner, and pleasing was evidently some version of Fox News. The reasoning was more than a tad motivated. Mr. Wallace also purports to outline the history of the spiral downward in reportage that he perceived. The secret behind offering a history of anything is knowing the history of something; the salient facts of this history seem to have evaded his notice. The Richmond Times-Dispatch didn’t publish my response to Mr. Wallace.
Raymond B. Wallace, “What’s Happened to Television Journalism?” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 11 January 2019, A9 (https://richmond.com/opinion/columnists/ray-wallace-column-whats-happened-to-television-journalism/article_5d8598f6-9edc-548e-b68b-1e89bd73cec5.html).
Raymond B. Wallace’s excoriation of cable news suffers from lack of historical context. The genesis of today’s polarized cable news environment is not difficult to locate.
The FCC in 1987 suspended the Fairness Doctrine, under which the granting of broadcasting licenses was conditioned upon a commitment both to cover controversial matters of public significance and to present differing opinions regarding them. Efforts by the US Congress to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine legislatively were thwarted by President Reagan’s veto in 1987 and President Bush’s threatened veto in 1991. The quashing of the Fairness Doctrine fostered the proliferation of political talk radio and it is likely no coincidence that Rush Limbaugh’s show first went national in 1988.
The polarization was sharpened with passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Intended to foster media competition, the legislation has had precisely the opposite effect, the concentration of ownership of electronic media into progressively fewer hands. It likewise is probably not coincidental that Fox News went live eight months after President Clinton signed the bill.
Mr. Wallace seems curiously untroubled by elements of the media environment he decries: the nearly monopolistic domination of political talk radio by the right and the concentration of control of local electronic media into fewer hands, control responsible for the sad spectacle last year of dozens of anchors at Sinclair Broadcasting stations mouthing the same editorial verbatim in a “forced read.” One must wonder whether Mr. Wallace’s problem is less that each cable outlet has selected its editorial lane and more that some outlets have the temerity to gainsay and fact-check the notoriously mendacious Trump administration. Whatever the case, he asserts that a myriad of stories goes largely unreported except by Fox; nevertheless, I, no Fox viewer, was substantially informed regarding every story he cites. How could this have happened?
I don’t read The Wall Street Journal. By all accounts its reporting of news is good, even after having passed under the Mordorian Murdoch regime, but its editorial and opinion pages are, as the kids say, cra-cra, pure, unadulterated, high quality (which means low quality, sapientially speaking) movement-conservative fantasy and supply-side theology. Not wanting digits added to my blood pressure needlessly, I avoid it. I have bought a copy occasionally by accident or for lack of another national newspaper. That’s probably what happened here. When I purchase a newspaper, I want my money’s worth, so I went to the “comforting fiction” pages and was not disappointed. An unsigned editorial and an op-ed by Kimberley A. Strassel were bent upon perpetuating The Conspiracy Theorist in Chief’s assertion that the Special Counsel’s probe was part and parcel of the “Russia hoax” predicated on the mistreatment of onetime National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Ugh. I sent a letter with no expectation it would ever see the light of day. The Wall Street Journal didn’t disappoint.
“The Flynn Entrapment,” The Wall Street Journal, 14 December 2018, A16 (www.wsj.com/articles/the-flynn-entrapment-11544658915).
Kimberley A. Strassel, “Checking Robert Mueller,” The Wall Street Journal, 14 December 2018, A15 (www.wsj.com/articles/checking-robert-mueller-11544745831).
Michael Flynn’s guilty plea for lying to the FBI can be equated with “entrapment” only through willful self-deception, the shoveling of manifold facts into the memory hole.
One must first forget that Flynn was informed beforehand that the focus of the interview on 24 January 2017 would be his contact with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and that Flynn himself signaled his sense that the FBI was already privy to what had been said. He in effect received a take-home examination to which he knew the correct answer and prevaricated anyway. Into the pit of forgetfulness then must be cast Flynn’s dishonesty with Mike Pence, Reince Priebus, and Sean Spicer in the interval between his chat with Kislyak on 26 December 2016 and the FBI interview. Next to be consigned to oblivion are the potential charges against Flynn for his pre-election dealings with Turkey. One must also ignore Flynn’s grasping for immunity in March 2017 in exchange for testimony before US Senate and House committees because he had “a story to tell.” One finally must purge from consciousness the stated reason for Flynn’s departure from the Trump administration: his dishonesty. To accept that Flynn has been shabbily treated, one must nearly drink the river Lethe dry.
Nor can it be credibly asserted that Flynn was merely doing his job. He had the relevant conversation with Kislyak during the transition just as President Obama was imposing sanctions on Russia for its meddling in the election. There is only one president at a time and Flynn was undermining him, conduct that becomes even more troubling as signs emerge of conversations between Flynn and Kislyak before the 2016 election to arrange a geopolitical “grand bargain.”[1] In light of his misconduct, Flynn has enjoyed gentle treatment.
[1] David Corn and Dan Friedman, “Did Michael Flynn Try to Strike a Grand Bargain with Moscow as It Attacked the 2016 Election?” Mother Jones, 13 December 2018 (https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/12/michael-flynn-contacts-russia-campaign-robert-mueller/ [accessed 16 December 2018]).
President Sword Dance is a transparently defective human being, but that’s not to suggest that he doesn’t possess a singular talent. His capacity to up the ante on public degeneracy is nonpareil. In autumn 2018, the Saudis, apparently by order of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, converted their consulate in Istanbul into an abattoir. American resident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi was slaughtered, perhaps vivisected, because he had offended the prince’s delicate sensibilities (i.e., spoken truth to power). President Glow-Orb’s whitewashing of the matter was an appalling example of the potential convergence of his fanboy-level adoration of autocrats, his personal financial interests, and his transactional understanding of all relationships, whether personal, business, or diplomatic. Josh Dawsey, Shane Harris, and Karen DeYoung – reporters for The Washington Post – covered Mr. Trump’s apologia for Mr. Bin Salman; the story was picked up by The Richmond Times-Dispatch and a letter was dispatched.
Josh Dawsey, Shane Harris, and Karen DeYoung, “Trump Says Case Closed in Death of Khashoggi,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 21 November 2018, B5; “Trump Calls Saudi Arabia a ‘Great Ally,’ Discounts Crown Prince’s Responsibility for Khashoggi’s Death,” The Washington Post, 20 November 2018 (www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-defends-saudia-arabias-denial-about-the-planning-of-khashoggis-death/2018/11/20/b64d2cc6-eceb-11e8-9236-bb94154151d2_story.html). If The Richmond Times-Dispatch posted an online version of this article, its search engine is unable to locate it. The link above is to the version that appeared the The Washington Post.
Any uncertainty about President Trump’s affinity for authoritarians vanished with his bestowal of diplomatic absolution onto Mohammed bin Salman in the death of Jamal Khashoggi. His disjointed jeremiad – evocative of a college sophomore’s caffeine-fueled all-nighter with a superhero comic book’s sensibility – exposes his moral bankruptcy. His conduct appears even more tawdry if, as reported, the statement’s release proceeded despite a CIA report implicating bin Salman; furthermore, the president’s alleged willingness to surrender Fethullah Gulen to Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan to benefit bin Salman is superlatively cynical [1].
A thread runs through this: Trump’s incapacity to view any relationship through a non-transactional lens. Economic advantage must not be the sole driver of foreign policy. Soft power and moral suasion, the will and stature to condemn moral enormities credibly, are crucial and Trump squanders this. Why, moreover, does Trump deem bin Salman indispensable? There is no dearth of other Saudi princelings not ensnared in murder and mayhem. Does Trump’s official relationship with the Saudis meander into his personal affairs? Jared Kushner’s diplomatic canoodling with bin Salman, his pursuit of loans from Qatar, his support of the Qatar blockade, and bin Salman’s belief he has Kushner “in his pocket” [2] are not hallmarks of a diplomatic fair broker, nor is Trump’s assertion that “. . .I like the Saudis. I make money with them. They buy all sorts of my stuff. . . .They pay me millions and hundreds of millions.” [3] Trump’s recent denial of business dealings in the kingdom invites public scrutiny of his finances.
Trump bookends apologias for authoritarian rulers with bullying of allies and further attenuates the nation’s influence. Implicit in Guy Lawson’s analysis of Trump’s treatment of Canada is a truth Trump and his GOP enablers should ponder: Bullies rarely feel remorse while the bullied never forget indignities rained on them. [4]
[1] Tucker Higgins, “To Ease Turkish Anger over Journalist’s Killing, White House Considers Extraditing an Enemy of Erdogan: NBC,” CNBC, 16 October 2018 (www.cnbc.com/2018/11/15/trump-admin-considers-khashoggi-murder-trying-to-extradite-gulen.html [accessed 22 November 2018]).
[2] Julian Borger, “A Tale of Two Houses: How Jared Kushner Fuelled the Trump-Saudi Love-In,” The Guardian, 16 October 2018 (www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/16/jared-kushner-trump-saudi-khashoggi-mbs [accessed 23 November 2018]); Jessica Kwong, “Jared Kushner Backed Qatar Blockade a Month After Qataris Wouldn’t Finance His Property: Report,” Newsweek, 2 March 2018 (www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-backed-Qatar-blockade-after-Qataris-wouldnt-finance-his-property-828847 [accessed 23 November 2018]); Alex Emmons, Ryan Grim, and Clayton Swisher, “Saudi Crown Prince Boasted That Jared Kushner Was ‘In His Pocket,’” The Intercept, 21 March 2018 [ https://theintercept.com/2018/03/21/jared-kushner-saudi-crown-prince-mohammed-bin-salman/, (accessed 23 November 2018)].
[3] John Kruzel, “Donald Trump’s Claim of ‘No Financial Interests’ in Saudi Arabia? That’s Half True at Best,” Politifact, 18 October 2018 (www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/oct/18/donald-trump/donald-trumps-claim-no-financial-interests-saudi-a/ [accessed 20 November 2018]). [4] Guy Lawson, “First Canada Tried to Charm Trump. Now It’s Fighting Back,” The New York Times Magazine, 9 June 2018 (www.nytimes.com/2018/06/09/magazine/justin-trudeau-chrystia-freeland-trade-canada-us-.html [accessed 23-xi-18]).
After the 2018 midterm elections, President Good People on Both Sides took not days but just hours to send Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III back to Alabama. The dream was had ended for Mr. Sessions. It was a pleasure to see him depart; however, concern arose that his exile from the Trump archipelago represented the initiation of a purge that would endanger the Special Counsel’s investigation. The axing of the Gollum of the South and the elevation of the sycophantic Matt Whitaker to acting attorney general led Indivisible and other activists to stage protests across the country to demand that Robert Mueller be kept in place; I attended one in front of Richmond’s federal building. I sent a letter to The Washington Post in response to its reporting of Mr. Session’s banishment.
Devlin Barrett, Matt Zapotosky, and Josh Dawsey, “Trump Forces Sessions Out as Attorney General,” The Washington Post, 8 November 2018, A1, A10 (www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/attorney-general-jeff-sessions-resigns-at-trumps-request/2018/11/07/d1b7a214-e144-11e8-ab2c-b31dcd53ca6b_story.html).
“Exit Mr. Sessions, Enter Chaos,” The Washington Post, 11 November 2018, A26 (www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jeff-sessions-exits-chaos-enters/2018/11/09/27e2351e-e38e-11e8-ba30-a7ded04d8fac_story.html). (Scroll down).
The Richmond Times-Dispatch often prints syndicated columns by Victor Davis Hanson, a classics professor and fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. I began to read some of his political opinions after the election from a commitment to peruse more right-leaning commentary to see how the election of Donald of Queens was being processed in those circles. His editorials seemed consistently dubious factually. When, in a single piece, he misleadingly asserted both that His Loathsomeness was making great strides with the Black electorate and that economic growth was substantially higher than under the Obama administration, a response was warranted. I took a dive into the data, my suspicions regarding Mr. Hanson’s factual claims were confirmed, and a letter was sent. The Richmond Times-Dispatch didn’t print the bit, but that didn’t alter a conviction I had formed. Mr. Hanson’s apparently willful, calculated distortions merited a rebuttal.
Victor Davis Hanson, “Trump Reaches Out for Black Voters,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 19 October 2018, A11; “Could Trump Win 20 Percent of the African American Vote in 2020?” The Providence Journal, 20 October 2018 (www.providencejournal.com/opinion/20181020/my-turn-victor-davis-hanson-could-trump-win-20-percent-of-african-american-vote-in-2020). If The Richmond Times-Dispatch posted an online version of this article, its search engine is unable to locate it. The link above is to the version that appeared the The Providence Journal.
Victor Davis Hanson engages in statistical sleight of hand to buttress his claim of burgeoning African-American support for President Trump.
An approval rating of 20% among African Americans in “some” unnamed polls provides grist for Hanson’s mill. He presumably relies on an August NAACP survey placing Trump’s rating at 21%; however, he neglects contemporaneous polls with lower figures (Gallup, Reuters, and YouGov/Economist, all 13%; Quinnipiac, 9%).[1] He ignores 3% approval and 93% disapproval found by Washington Post-ABC News [2] and does not trouble himself with the NAACP poll’s 79% disapproval.[3] Sober reading of the evidence places African-American support for Democrats somewhere between 85 and 90%, a range Hanson identifies as “usual.” His phenomenon is illusory.
Hanson’s assessment of the economic conditions undergirding his notional surge in African-American affection for Trump is likewise problematic. He cites a decline in African-American youth unemployment to 19.3% – a welcome development – but chooses for his comparative benchmark the highest figure from President Obama’s tenure, 48.9% in 2010, its Great Recession zenith, while forgetting that it fell as low as 23.2% (November 2015). A rate surpassing this Obama-era low has occurred nine times under Trump and was 29% this past April [4]. Hanson also plays fast and loose with measures of the nation’s overall economic performance when he places growth at “nearly 4 percent per year.”[5] Two facts emerge: Economic indices can fluctuate widely across short periods and Trump’s main economic accomplishment has been his inability to derail economic improvement that began years before his election.
One must ponder the reasons for Hanson’s unscholarly reading of evidence. Is he enlisted in Trump’s post-truth cadres? Is he endeavoring to manufacture a self-fulfilling prophecy through statistical obfuscation? If the GOP believes its prospects with the African-American electorate are sunny, then why the efforts, especially in Georgia [6], to suppress votes?
[1] Ramsey Touchberry, “Donald Trump’s Approval Rating Among Black Americans Is Actually Too Good To Be True,” Newsweek 17 August 2018 (www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-approval-rating-black-americans-1078598 [accessed 19 October 2018]).
[2] Washington Post-ABC News Poll, Aug. 26-29, 2018, published 4 September 2018 (https://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/politics/washington-post-abc-news-poll-aug-26-29-2018/2324/ [accessed 21 October 2018]).
[3] Paul Bedard, “Blacks’ Approval of Trump Reaches a High of 21% and NAACP Charges ‘Racism,’” The Washington Examiner, 7 August 2018 (www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/blacks-approval-of-trump-reaches-a-high-of-21-and-naacp-charges-racism [accessed 19 October 2018]).
[4] The rate under Trump was 24.8, 24.6, 28.7, and 26.5%, February-May 2017; 25.5%, November 2017; and 24.3, 27.2, and 2.78%, January-March 2018. “Unemployment Rate: 16 to 19 Years, Black or African American, Percent Monthly, Seasonally Adjusted,” Federal Reserve Economic Data, Economic Research Division, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS14000018 [accessed 19 October 2018]).
[5] GDP did rise 4.2% in the second quarter but was 2.8, 2.3, and 2.2 percent in the preceding three. Hanson’s math is fuzzy. By his reasoning, Obama could have trumpeted similar growth in 2014 from second and third quarter rates of 5.1 and 4.9% despite bookending figures of -1.0 and 1.9%. Bureau of Economic Analysis New Release, “Gross Domestic Product: Second Quarter 2018 (Third Estimate); Corporate Profit: Second Quarter 2018 (Revised Estimate,” 27 September 2018, p. 7 (www.bea.gov/system/files/2018-09/gdp2q18_3rd_3.pdf [accessed 19 October 2018]). “Quarterly Growth of the Real GDP in the United States from 2011 to 2018,” Statista (www.statista.com/statistics/188185/percent-chance-from-preceding-period-in-real-gdp-in-the-us/ [accessed 21 October 2018]).
[6] Astead W. Herndon, “Accusations of Voter Suppression as Some in Georgia Begin to Cast Their Ballots,” The New York Times, 20 October 2018, A15 (www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/us/politics/georgia-voter-suppression.html [accessed 21 October 2018]).
In September 2018, I was in the United Kingdom for several weeks and grabbed The Guardian at a newsagent every morning. My stay fell between the initial phase of the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and the later part involving Christine Blasey Ford. The Guardian published an unsigned opinion about the irregularities of the process, which were legion. The Guardian was on point on the overarching story but didn’t address the underlying dynamic in the lower federal courts, so I sent a note. It was essentially a replay of the details in an earlier letter to The Richmond Times-Dispatch regarding appointments to the US district and appellate courts. The Guardian passed on it.
“It Has Required Multiple Wrongs to Move the Supreme Court Right,” The Guardian, 10 September 2018, journal 2 (www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/09/the-guardian-view-on-the-us-supreme-court-the-wrongs-required-to-move-right).
The “rottenness” driving the GOP’s confirmation of judges to the American bench runs far deeper than President Trump’s appointments to the Supreme Court. The selfsame Senate Judiciary Committee that questioned Brett Kavanaugh last week did all in its power to slow walk and withhold confirmation from President Obama’s nominees to federal district and appellate courts prior to the 2016 election. The scuttling of Merrick Garland’s appointment was merely the high-profile apotheosis of a broader dereliction of senatorial responsibility. As Mr. Obama left office, a trove of judicial vacancies fell into Mr. Trump’s lap. Mr. Trump and a suddenly energized Republican Senate have filled these positions at light speed. Some of Mr. Trump’s nominees are woefully unqualified. Others are ideologues. Many manage to be both. Few have been denied confirmation.
The federal bench is now poised to roll back hard-won individual rights and to remove sensible restraints from corporate interests for a generation. Mr. Kavanaugh is merely the final piece of the puzzle. The Guardian notes correctly that Americans should reject the GOP in November. To hobble the GOP’s assault of the judiciary, the Democrats must win the Senate, a taller hurdle to clear than gaining control of the House. A favorable outcome is by no means assured.
The GOP perhaps realizes that it controls a minority government whose days may be numbered and consequently is determined to ram through whatever it can while it can, damage to the American constitutional system be damned. Such cynicism is a marvel.
One thing can be said about George Will: He’s consistent. His effort to balance his contempt for President Smallhands and for the Republican Party that abets his atrocities with his distaste for the left, indeed for anyone not of his ideological stripe, turns him into a logical and factual contortionist. In this editorial carried by The Richmond Times-Dispatch, he makes broad, broad strokes with his false-equivalency brush as he strives to demonize antifascism, progressivism, and popular protests. The opportunity to take another run at Mr. Will was to be relished. I did. The Richmond Times-Dispatch took another pass.
George Will, “So Much to Protest, So Little Time,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 9 August 2018, A9 (https://richmond.com/opinion/columnists/george-will-column-poor-portland-progressives-so-much-to-protest-so-little-time/article_7142b880-f77c-5118-b2db-f5d7a38c9df4.html).
George Will’s message is muddled. Unraveling his larger point is difficult: Comparing Oregon’s dismal history of race relations with actions of progressive activists in Portland? Insinuating that all counter demonstrators are “antifa”? Equating early twentieth-century Klansmen with activists publicly opposing white nationalists and other extremists? None of this withstands scrutiny.
Progressivism vexes Will but it seems oppressive only to those who feel their privilege threatened. Personal experience in rallies, marches, and counter-protests tells me that participants, with few exceptions, are concerned citizens who abhor violence and are merely exercising their First Amendment rights. Conflating all antifascism with “antifa” is interesting rhetorical legerdemain but anyone sensible likely harbors antifascist sentiment. Furthermore, President Trump’s flirtation with authoritarian tropes legitimizes progressives’ concerns about the country’s direction.
What amazes is Will’s failure to mention the two men murdered on a Portland train in May 2017 when defending two teenage women of color from a racist tirade by an alleged white supremacist. Will’s reference to the Faulknerian epigram on the past’s omnipresence is on point but perhaps not as he intends. Trump has emboldened white nationalists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and neo-Confederates, movements meriting relegation to the past yet moldering in the present’s dark recesses. Does Will believe that this should pass without rebuttal by citizens of good will?
Will’s distaste for Trump has made him a man without a country politically. He has abjured the Republican Party, but his affinity with the right seems intact, his compulsion to demonize the left is unshaken, and his safe port appears to be the framing of questionable equivalences. Will is fond of apothegms. Perhaps he should ponder the words of conservative icon Edmund Burke: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
The Richmond Times-Dispatch in the summer of 2018 picked up an article by Desiree Zapata Miller, a sometime columnist for The Charlotte Observer. Ms. Zapata Miller hyperventilated about the hateful treatment Democrats were doling out to The Jackanapes in Chief and to all Republicans. She cited the nefarious influence of Saul Alinsky on Democrats’ tactics. It was as absurd as any opinion I had ever seen in print. I produced an editorial-length response to it and submitted it to The Richmond Times-Dispatch. An opinion-page editor informed me that the paper didn’t accept editorials in rebuttal to editorials and encouraged me to cut it down and submit it as a letter, so that’s what I did.
Desiree Zapata Miller, “Dems Have Become Party of Haters,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 11 July 2018, A11; The Charlotte Observer, 6 July 2018 (www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/editorials/article214362199.html). If Ms. Zapata Miller’s editorial appeared in the online edition of The Richmond Times-Dispatch, the newspaper’s search function seems unable to locate it. The link here is to the online version in The Charlotte Observer.
“Don’t Overlook Trump’s Role in Demise of Discourse,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 24 July 2018 (https://richmond.com/opinion/letters-to-editor/letters-to-the-editor-july-24-2018-zuckerberg-is-wrong-to-allow-holocaust-deniers-a/article_b87295fc-37bf-509d-a818-576ad5e2a377.html). (Scroll down).
Unwarranted Demonization of Democrats.
Ms. Desiree Zapata Miller’s call for civility in political discourse is welcome (“Democrats Have Become the Party of Haters,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 6 July 2018, A11) but her characterization of Democrats demands a rejoinder. Her editorial is replete with accusations but virtually barren of particulars.
When Ms. Zapata Miller charges Democrats with systematic harassment of President Trump’s supporters as a tactic to frighten and intimidate them, she engages in a dubious brand of right-wing argumentation. Isolated instances in which a Democrat has an arguable lapse in politesse, though nothing outside the pale of constitutionally-protected expression, become grist for hyperventilating stereotypes of Democrats and for insinuations that a grand, dark conspiracy is afoot. Her editorial, moreover, exposes an unfortunate tendency to label any gainsaying of Mr. Trump on fact or policy as hatred. Ms. Zapata Miller should rest assured that the left does not hate Mr. Trump’s supporters but only wishes for the scales to fall from their eyes so that they can soberly assess the damage Mr. Trump inflicts on our politics and institutions.
Regarding Ms. Zapata Miller’s specific claims: She presents Mr. Trump as a grand dispenser of truth yet seems unaware that by this past 1 May, his 466th day in office, he had uttered upwards of 3000 lies or half-truths, more than six daily. The pace of his mendacity is accelerating (Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo, and Meg Kelly, “President Trump Had Made 3001 False or Misleading Claims So Far,” The Washington Post, 1 May 2018 [www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/05/01/president-trump-has-made-3001-false-or-misleading-claims-so-far/]). She blames President Obama for the absence of immigration reform yet forgets that the bipartisan Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 cleared the Senate 68 to 32 but was denied consideration by the GOP-controlled House. Mr. Obama’s 2014 executive order creating DACA was a response to the House’s legislative intransigence and was greeted with howls of constitutional overreach from the right. Does she not recall that Mr. Trump then rescinded even this and left DACA recipients in limbo? Her political amnesia extends to the Republican Party’s inability, despite full control of Congress and the White House, to produce even a shadowy simulacrum of immigration reform.
I must, however, thank Ms. Zapata Miller for prodding me to read Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. I, a Roosevelt Democrat, received the book from an old friend, a Reagan Republican, as a gag birthday gift during our college days and yet, somehow, I reached nearly threescore years without turning its pages. Perusal of it convinces me that Ms. Zapata Miller has neither read it seriously nor understood it. One must wonder whether it falls into a well-established genre: books infrequently read, especially by the right, yet selectively mined, misrepresented, misinterpreted, and decontextualized in order to frighten children.
The undiminished capacity of a decades-old how-to manual for community organizing to induce spitting apoplexy on the right is a marvel. Mr. Alinsky’s goals – to aid the powerless in gaining a voice by working within the political system and to foster positive change – indeed seem less threatening than the words of the late GOP Senator Barry Goldwater in accepting his party’s nomination for president a scant seven years before Mr. Alinsky put pen to paper: “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Does Ms. Zapata Miller believe that Democrats should mutely, even blithely, accept Mr. Trump’s indisputable undermining of democratic norms, his courting of autocrats, his denigration of allies, his ceaseless attacks on the fourth estate, his manifest conflicts of interest, his self-dealing through public office, his tolerance of governmental corruption, or his stunning dishonesty? To do so would be an irresponsible dereliction of citizenship. Ms. Zapata Miller should congratulate Democrats for their public spiritedness, not demonize them. And I would welcome having that proffered cup of coffee and chat with her.