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.
My Better Half and I found ourselves, as per custom, in Portsmouth-Norfolk for the Fourth of July holiday. On the day, we bought a copy of The Washington Post. It contained an editorial by Meghan McArdle on how to modulate one’s nationalism properly. I doubt that I can add anything to what others have said about Ms. McArdle. I thought the op-ed was clueless and wrote a letter to that effect. The Washington Post exercised a peremptory strike against it.
Megan McArdle, “The Nationalism We Need,” The Washington Post, 4 July 2018, A17 (www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/america-needs-more-patriotism/2018/07/03/aa16f54e-7f00-11e8-b0ef-fffcabeff946_story.html).
Megan McArdle’s political myopia is rivaled only by her capacity to frame a specious equivalence. Her exhortation that all genuflect to national symbols to preserve American unity is absurd. She conveniently forgets that labeling political opponents as unpatriotic is a particular impulse of the right and long predates the current moment. Is it difficult to draw a line from George H. W. Bush’s vow to be the “pledge-of-allegiance president” to Sarah Palin’s courting of “real Americans,” then to the political zero-sumism of the Tea Party movement and House Freedom Caucus, and then finally to the current chief executive’s casual demonization of all dissenters without gainsay from a supine national GOP? When Mr. Trump applies the Stalinist pejorative “enemy of the state” to a free press, blithely obliterates democratic norms, and openly admires dictatorial rulers, open expression of dissent is not only patriotic but also a bulwark against creeping authoritarianism. Will Ms. McArdle next propose a national loyalty oath to sustain our tribal cohesion?
There were good tidings in Virginia in the late spring of 2018. The US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the redistricting done by the GOP in 2011 for the Commonwealth’s House of Delegates was racially motivated and ordered a redrawing of the lines. Jeremy M. Lazarus of The Richmond Free Press reported the story and I sent a letter to underscore that this was happy news but that the battle to ensure proper access to the ballot was not over. Rereading the thing, I would amend it. I, like some others, made too much of the decline in Black participation in presidential voting from the high level of 2012 to a lower one in 2016. The larger problem is the appallingly low participation by voters of all backgrounds, an apathy that paves the way for the minority rule conservatives covet.
Jeremy M. Lazarus, “Federal Court Orders Redrawing of State House Districts by Oct. 30,” The Richmond Free Press, 28-30 June 2018 (http://richmondfreepress.com/news/2018/jul/01/federal-court-orders-redrawing-state-house-distric/).
The order by the US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to redraw districts for the Virginia House of Delegates is welcome news. The unsubtle gerrymandering perpetrated by the GOP-controlled General Assembly in 2011 contributed to Democrats remaining in the minority (49-51) in the House of Delegates despite having won the statewide vote by a near landslide last November.
No one, however, should assume that the matter is settled beyond contestation. The state GOP may choose to appeal the decision. Should the US Supreme Court intervene, the omens are not promising for advocates of voting rights. The court’s refusal last week to act in cases involving gerrymandered US House districts in Wisconsin and Maryland, coupled with Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement, President Trump’s vow of a speedy nomination, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s promise of a lightspeed confirmation, will likely produce a Supreme Court less inclined to rule against cynical efforts to abridge the right to vote and to intimidate and discourage qualified voters.
The Supreme Court’s changing complexion jeopardizes the hard-won gains made by African Americans and potentially will undermine LGBTQ rights, women’s control of their own bodies, collective bargaining by workers, curbing of corporate misconduct, and a host of other priorities. The most effective defense against the unraveling of a sensible progressive agenda remains the ballot box. Regaining control of the House and, if possible, the Senate by Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections is crucial and no voting demographic is more important than African Americans. Colbert King noted recently (“Decades of Progress Are Threatened,” The Washington Post, 30 June 2018, A15 [www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/decades-of-progress-are-in-peril/2018/06/29/b93edcaa-7bbb-11e8-93cc-6d3beccdd7a3_story.html]) that African-American participation dropped to 59.6 percent in 2016 from 66.6 percent in 2012, a decline that contributed materially to Donald Trump’s ascent. The president has crowed about this very fact to his adoring crowds. Erosion of rights, especially the right to vote, is best warded off by their continuous and informed exercise at every level of government.
I have never been well disposed toward George Will. I have regard for his knowledge of and reverence for baseball but his politics are appalling. A chasm separates his experience from that of most Americans and he seems unperturbed by this void in knowledge.
My distaste for his political commentary, both print and broadcast, is of long vintage. An anecdote from the way-back machine explains why. Sam Donaldson, the former ABC News correspondent, was skillful at exposing Mr. Will’s absurdities. During the Iran-Contra imbroglio, Mr. Will undertook the task of defending the indefensible Oliver North. He suggested that Mr. North had merely engaged in a justified act of civil disobedience and the left’s umbrage at the colonel’s conduct was hypocritical when considered alongside its tolerance toward acts of civil disobedience by sixties radicals. Ever the culture warrior, our Mr. Will. Mr. Donaldson made an obvious yet devastating point rhetorical point: The core principle of civil disobedience is acceptance of legal consequences for breaking the law the civilly disobedient has deemed unjust, in effect having the courage of one’s convictions. Mr. North was cravenly determined to evade responsibility for his actions; his doe-eyed presentation of himself as a cruelly victimized patriot was Oscar worthy. Mr. Will was rendered speechless, a delicious rarity. Despite his Brahmin mien, his education apparently had been a bit light on Henry David Thoreau. Sometimes the mask slips.
It was likely inevitable that Mr. Will would join the great migration of the Never Trump conservative punditocracy in the months following the 2016 election. Once Fox News made the pivot to become what Chris Hayes calls “Trump TV,” it was no longer welcoming for those of Mr. Will’s ilk. There was a stampede to secure spots at centrist or left-leaning outlets. MSNBC assembled a stable of these types: Steve Schmidt, Charlie Sykes, William Kristol, Rick Wilson, Jennifer Rubin, Bret Stephens, David Frum, Mr. Will, others.
Mr. Will was among the least successful of these commentators. There was an unmistakable tension inherent in his commentary. He had a tough circle to square. He simultaneously felt compelled to register his contempt for President Bone Spur while his ideology fueled his undisguised disdain for anyone not subscribing to his narrow brand of movement conservatism, effectively an attack on his new audience.
So Mr. Will in a column exhorted people to vote against the GOP – note, not to vote for anything – in the 2018 midterm elections in order to thwart Mr. Trump. That was all well and good. That’s what the voters should have done and by and large did. However, the efficacy of the message is undercut by the Never Trumpers’ lack of a constituency, as Sam Seder points out. Had the Never Trumpers been significant numerically, The King of Queens would never have been elected president and pundits like Mr. Will would still be opining at right-wing outlets. At least Mr. Will had the courtesy to make his plea general. Other Never Trumper pundits had the gall to define type of candidates the Democratic Party would need to put on offer to garner their votes, a tacit threat either to vote Republican or to sit out the election. In their view, beggar was by right chooser. Never Trumpism is clearly weak tea.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch routinely runs Mr. Will’s columns, which afforded an opportunity to unload on him. I did. The paper passed on it. “I can’t imagine why,” the Bourbon Progressive repeats ironically.
George Will, “This November, Cast Your Vote Against the GOP,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 24 June 2018, E3 (https://richmond.com/opinion/columnists/george-will-column-this-november-cast-your-vote-against-the-gop/article_8ec57b8d-843d-599c-80ce-c4d4054327c7.html).
George Will’s call to reject the GOP in the 2018 midterm and thwart President Trump’s quasi-authoritarian antics is welcome. He also properly chastises the Republican Party for fecklessness. No one, however, should harbor illusions about Mr. Will’s brand of “never Trumpism.”
Mr. Will affects high dudgeon at the ugliness Mr. Trump has exposed, yet one wonders whether the wellspring of his disaffection with his onetime party is found more in the ascendancy of a chief executive who offends his priggish sensibilities, who, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell quipped in 2016, refuses to “stick to the script.” [1]
The selfsame George Will has penned apologias for the race-baiting, segregationist presidential campaigns of George Wallace and Strom Thurmond, [2] has insinuated that President Obama’s race inoculated him from criticism, [3] and then has had the effrontery to accuse liberals of suffering from “Tourette’s syndrome” in matters of race. [4] Can we believe that Mr. Will was taken unawares when Mr. Trump incited intolerance and rallied broad support by substituting a bullhorn for the dog whistle used by the GOP since President Nixon’s hatching of the “Southern Strategy,” a political modus operandi in which Mr. Will’s complicity is more than tacit? Mr. Will suffers either from singular absence of self-awareness or impressive intellectual dishonesty. He is talented. Perhaps he manages both.
Should 2020 or 2024 offer Mr. Will a Republican president he admires, one wonders whether he will forgive all and scurry to a sinecure in the Conservative Punditocracy Industrial Complex. He labels a 2019 House potentially controlled by Democrats – a party operating in good faith – as a “basket of deplorables.” The Right Wing Noise Machine beckons with a “basket” in which he himself can rest companionably. If George Will’s politicized maundering represents the acme of “conservative intellectualism,” how can it not be deemed an oxymoron?
[1] Jordain Carney, “McConnell on Trump: ‘I’m Not a Fan of the Daily Tweets,’” The Hill, 17 February 2017 (www.thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/320114-mcconnell-on-trump-im-not-a-fan-of-the-daily-tweets).
[2] George Will, “Robert Sarvis, Virginia’s Other Choice for Governor,” The Washington Post, 23 October 2013 (www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-robert-sarvis-virginias-other-choice-for-governor/2013/10/23/1544f8d6-3b5c-11e3-b6a9-da62c264f40e_story.html?utm_term=.300984fb5eac&wprss=rss_homepage); Oliver Willis, “George Will Whitewashes Racism from Pro-Segregationist Presidential Campaigns,” Media Matters 24 October 2013 (www.mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10/24/george-will-whitewashes-racism-from-pro-segrega/196578).
[3] Elspeth Reeve, “Actually George Will Has Been Obsessed with Race for a Long time,” The Atlantic, 2 October 2012 (www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/actually-george-wills-been-obsessed-race-long-time/322988/).
[4] Ian Schwartz, “George Will: Liberals Have ‘Tourette’s Syndrome’ When It Comes to Racism,” Real Clear Politics, 13 April 2014 (www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/04/13/george_will_liberals_have_tourettes_syndrome_when_it_comes_to_racism.html).
My fondness for the writing of Thomas Frank is nearly boundless. He’s an insightful spokesman for progressive populism and his diagnoses of the country’s political dysfunction have had the considerable merit of being largely correct. He warned of the potential of a sideways electoral result in 2016, and in 2018 in Harper’s Magazine he sounded the klaxon again regarding a credible possibility of a second term for President Golden Arches. The coronavirus of course made prognostication for the 2020 election a dicey proposition; despite this, Mr. Frank’s reading of the ways in which the Democratic Party has strayed from its values remains valid. A laudatory note was sent to the magazine.
Thomas Frank, “Four More Years: the Trump Reelection Nightmare and How We Can Stop It,” Harper’s Magazine, April 2018, 23-31 (https://harpers.org/archive/2018/04/four-more-years-2/).
“Fool Me Once,” Harper’s Magazine, June 2018, 2 (https://harpers.org/archive/2018/06/letters-869/).
The Grey Lady strikes again, and I was even trying to be nice. Drat. Dang, double dang, triple dang. Whatever. One of The New York Times’ reporters, Laurie Goodstein, wrote an informative bit on the Red Letter Christians, a group of evangelicals who emphasize the words of Christ, the dialogue printed in red in fancier Bibles. This proclivity leads them to push back against The Fantasist in Chief. The article was a corrective against the tendency to consign all evangelicals to the same basket.
Laurie Goodstein, “Confronting the Flock over a Zeal for Trump,” The New York Times, 29 May 2018, A11 (www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/us/anti-trump-evangelicals-lynchburg.html).
It was refreshing and uplifting to meet in Laurie Goldstein’s article a band of Christian evangelicals committed to their faith’s most foundational principle. In a possibly quixotic effort to persuade conservative evangelicals to reconsider their support for President Trump’s most objectional policies, the Red Letter Christians are an embodiment of amor alienum, the absolute love of others, the boundless compassion for the most downtrodden and the least among us. Jesus himself was ultimately a “social justice warrior” of the type now routinely derided by conservatives and misunderstood, perhaps willfully, by Mr. Trump’s more rabid evangelical adherents.
Michael Gerson is among a coterie of Never Trumpers – many of them onetime party apparatchiks – willing to assign some blame for the rise of The Facebook President to movement conservatism, yet not too much blame. If the intention is to deliver a mea culpa, perhaps it should be a mea culpa, not a John Ehrlichman-ish “modified limited hangout.” These political post mortems by Never Trumpers often come across as self-serving. Mr. Gerson’s is no exception. A self-professed evangelical Christian, he tried to explicate the evangelical movement’s seemingly unshakeable bond with the most morally and ethically challenged and irreligious of modern presidents. Mr. Gerson somehow failed to mention the strand of evangelicalism with the most intimate affinity to the Republican message, prosperity gospel. The letter addresses this.
Michael Gerson, “The Last Temptation,” The Atlantic, April 2018, 42-52 (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/04/the-last-temptation/554066/).
Michael Gerson’s recounting of evangelical Christianity’s recent history is fascinating more for what it doesn’t say than for what it does. A telling omission makes his picture of the movement’s entanglement with politics seem willfully soft-focused and airbrushed.
Mr. Gerson does not devote a single word to prosperity gospel, a strain of evangelicalism exerting outsize influence on GOP politics. John Hagee, Kenneth Copeland, Rod Parsley, Paul Crouch, et al., have no place in Mr. Gerson’s constellation of evangelical leaders. A central tenet of prosperity theology, that tithing and a proper relationship with God produce material benefits, dovetails well with GOP predilections regarding social justice. This belief’s corrosively empowering corollary – affluence as indicator of moral rectitude and poverty as sign of moral depravity – shows that casuistry was not the exclusive province of medieval scholastic theologians.
This omission dooms Mr. Gerson’s portrait of President George W. Bush to incompleteness. He is silent on the Manichaean and messianic elements in Mr. Bush’s weltanschauung, proclivities difficult to disconnect from the president’s response to 9/11 and the country’s descent into the quagmire of Iraq. Giving proper weight to prosperity gospel is not merely necessary in setting the record straight on the Bush administration. President Trump has among his counselors Paula White, a prosperity gospel leading light, and he has an affinity for Joel Osteen, perhaps its most influential apostle.