June 2018.

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.

Here’s Desiree Zapata Miller’s editorial:

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.

Here’s the letter:

“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).

Just for good measure, here’s the unpublished editorial:

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 466^th 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.