TEMPO and HUP

A Blog for Civil Debate on Political Philosophy

A Blog for Civil Debate on Political Philosophy

Not Too Nice

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[Information learned after posting has been added at end.]

During the run-up to the First Gulf War, when the U. S. led an international coalition to force Iraqi troops out of Kuwait in 1990, James Baker advised George H. W. Bush that he could ignore the disfavor his rescue of Kuwait might arouse among America’s Jews, because “they don’t vote for us anyway.” Although the Secretary of State’s cynical attitude addressed only Jewish Americans at that time, now, under Donald Trump, the Republican category of despised others has expanded to marginalize all minorities, especially when they tend to be Democrats.

It is interesting that Trump never or rarely refers to people of color as such, which is hardly remarkable for someone who made his reputation ridiculing political correctness. “People of color” (a term of art, it would seem, used only by academics, journalists, and other elites Trump scorns) belong to the groups Trump wants to send back to what he calls “the shithole countries.” They are brown and black, Muslim, and female. And opponents — those he terms “low IQ,” “horrible,” “weak,” “nasty.” They are “animals.”

President Trump and his supporters seek to diminish these people they despise. Exploiting the well worn dog whistles of populism, he charms his base using his and their racism to assure them that, being white, they are superior to these “others,” the people Trump calls “losers.” By this strategy, he seeks to boost the ego and consolidate the in-group bonding of stereotypical white Americans – especially those left unemployed by globalization (exporting jobs), affirmative action (they think), and every other current in the present culture they don’t like: women’s reproductive rights, same-sex marriage, religions other than their own (all religions but one being evil), and recipients of public funding, like everyone who receives food stamps or Medicaid or any other “handouts” to “parasites.” This is the classic strategy of the ruling class: divide and conquer. They flatter underpaid, under-educated whites, who also lack adequate medical insurance, with the illusion that they are superior to equally persecuted people of color to prevent an alliance that would be irresistible. It must be a thrill to hear them complain, as Arlie Hochschild reports (Strangers in Their Own Land, 221), “There are fewer and fewer white Christians like us.”

Because that strategy has worked so well, now the ruling class has only to prevent people of color and their liberal allies from voting. Trump made this goal explicit on March 30, when he said on Fox news that high levels of voting (not just mail in, but all voting) would mean “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” This strategy builds on long-standing gimmicks dating back to the Jim Crow South that have now spread wherever Republicans control the statehouse: have fewer polling places in strategically chosen areas (inner-city zip codes), limit the hours polls are open, restrict early voting, enforce voter ID laws with abusive strictness. If citizens wish to vote from home, cripple the postal service to prevent voting by mail — or try to.

These measures are shocking enough because they so clearly attack democracy, but the appearance of the coronavirus gave this unscrupulous, vindictive, authoritarian bully of a president a new opportunity. He chose to downplay the virus and allowed it to hit those already exploited, vulnerable populations. As early as April 12, 2020, Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced that in Michigan, “Some 14 percent of Michiganders are African-American, yet more than 40 percent of COVID-19 related deaths in Michigan are African Americans.” It was not only Democratic governors who made this analysis. A story in the Wall Street Journal of April 8, 2020, had already observed the problem as big-city mayors began to take action. In another Journal article of April 22, 2020, Dr. Lauren Weber of Meharry Medical College analyzes the causes of this situation: those people disproportionately dying from the virus live in multi-generational households, hold essential jobs that put them in close contact with many others. They are more prone than whites to have underlying conditions that derive from the environments in which their poverty forces them to live (in crowded, urban areas, near polluted, industrial zones, or, even in the country, near the open air lagoons of factory farms). The same holds for whites who live in similar circumstances, but Blacks live there in disproportionate numbers. If essential workers were paid a living wage, this situation would change. Given the erratic, state-by-state implementation of Medicaid, the availability of health insurance falls unevenly on people of color. The Kaiser Family Foundation has published a graph detailing the “Percent of Nonelderly Adults who are Uninsured, by Race/Ethnicity, 2014.” Of the nonelderly adults with no medical insurance, 11% are white, 16% are Black, and 27% are Hispanic. So, even if these patients recover from a bout of Covid-19, they will not be able to handle the resultant medical bills. The inequity that these figures make predictable continued for at least four months. As of August 8, 2020, adjusting for age difference in race groups, 3.6 times more Blacks and 3.2 times more Hispanics have died, nationwide, than whites. Moreover, the absolute numbers (as opposed to ratios) are astonishing. Between April 15 and August 15, 2020, Covid-19 infected 4,726,003 and killed 141,386 Americans. The chronology here is vital. By mid-April at the latest, the disproportionate impact of the pandemic was clear. If outsize harm, especially for the most vulnerable, was to be averted, immediate action was needed.

WHAT ACTION? TESTS!

The dangers deriving from the novelty of this unknown virus were apparent early on. Some early tests used in China were inaccurate up to 47% of the time, but even in this country, even now, the tests are inadequate in number, in reply time, and in accuracy. Supplies such as swabs for collecting samples have been in short supply. Chemical ingredients have been impure. Given the resulting disorder, only patients with symptoms could get tested. Tragically, though, infected people do not manifest symptoms until about the fourth day, so they could still transmit their disease before their illness manifested itself. In crowded conditions, these circumstances were a recipe for great suffering and, indeed, death. In July the CDC circulated a paper by Le Chang, et al., based in Beijing with this advice: “As more asymptomatic cases occur, screening donors for viral RNA with high-sensitivity assays, as we are doing in Hubei Province, will be critical to ensure blood safety.” That means testing even people with no symptoms. In China, they began that policy by January 25, according to these authors. Drawing on information from Johns Hopkins University, as early as March 9, the Wall Street Journal explained the problem of asymptomatic incubation periods and the need for quarantines. These facts make extensive testing imperative. The need was clear by mid-March at the latest. In this country it was not done.

WHY NOT?

The disadvantages people of color endure make them likely to vote Democratic. 83% of Blacks, 63% of Hispanic voters are or lean Democratic, whereas, among whites, 53% are or lean Republican and 42% Democratic. That is one reason President Trump has ordered the U. S. Census takers to end their data collection a month early. If there are “fewer” of them, they will have less representation. It would also follow that, as Reuters put it on August 13, Trump used (or tried to use) the new coronavirus relief bill to block “Democrats’ effort to include funds for the U.S. Postal Service and election infrastructure” and so “to block more Americans from voting by mail during the pandemic.” The two policies reinforce one another:

REDUCE THEIR VOTE, REDUCE THEIR NUMBER.

Given the evident inequity that afflicts our most vulnerable populations, Trump’s despised losers and Democrats, it is hardly surprising that he offered no comprehensive initiative to combat the infection’s spread. Neither Donald Trump nor Howard Baker is the first Republican strategist to aim at a given minority group. In 1981, when describing Richard Nixon’s famed “Southern Strategy,” Lee Atwater, an advisor to Ronald Reagan and chair of the RNC under George H. W. Bush, approved abandoning explicit use of the N-word in shaping policy and instead recommended more neutral-seeming measures such as cutting taxes: “economic things, and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

Trump also had his own priorities. In order to allow business to continue as usual and avert the economic costs of sheltering in place, and because he thought its predictions were too negative and its scientific judgments contradicted his own intuitions, Trump purged scientists he considered disloyal to him and effectively crippled the CDC. In this weakened state, the CDC now proposes measures not as mandates but only as “recommendations” because they are contrary to Trump’s dream of a smoothly functioning economy not distracted by the health needs of the population. Besides, the racial minorities or ethnic groups disproportionately affected by the virus generally vote for his opponents. So Trump continued to ignore the virus or deliberately underestimate its impact. “It’s just like the flu.” “It will just disappear.” He offered no centralized, federal plan to distribute needed equipment (testing supplies, respirators, PPE). He allowed the pandemic to spread knowing it would disproportionately impact people of color, his target. This calculated policy of inaction during the first 6 months of the virus’s presence in the U. S. was achieving the desired result:

REDUCE THEIR VOTE, REDUCE THEIR NUMBER.

Here are the measures the Trump administration took or deliberately did not take with devastating disregard to the injury that would follow. He withdrew from international organizations, thus reducing the extent of global scientific cooperation. He left the American seat on the World Health Organization’s executive board vacant until May, 2020, when that “lapse” became too embarrassing. He removed “disloyal” staff from CDC. He dismantled “The Global Health Security and Biodefense Unit” in charge of national pandemic preparedness set up under Obama by Susan Rice as part of the National Security Council. And, as the keystone of his efforts to expose the very poor and unemployed to whatever illness might strike them, Trump dismantled Obamacare, as far as he was able. He has encouraged or pressured Republican governors (Abbot, DeSantis, Doucey, Edwards, Kemp, for example) not to order their states to wear masks, practice social distancing, and close businesses like bars and restaurants that involve close personal contact. He has actively opposed the expansion of diagnostic tests because he thinks tests embarrass him by revealing cases. Consistent with his xenophobia, Trump’s bans on immigration have deprived us of health caregivers. “The Trump administration’s policies have exacerbated the problem by reducing the influx of immigrants, who make up a quarter of long-term caregivers.” This goes with a neglect of public health administration because, as Ed Yong puts it, Americans view “health as a matter of personal responsibility rather than a collective good.” Indeed the Republican scorn for the word “public” feeds into this prejudice, as does the belief that the government should be as small as possible. These attitudes call for budget cuts and the reduction of staff responsible for public health. The reasons for these disparities follow from other policies favored by Trump and the Republicans. Don’t just scorn them, let them die. “They don’t vote for us anyway.”

         How can people like those in Trump’s base, who object fiercely, on grounds of conscience, to being forced into complicity (through government payments for medical care that funds birth control and abortion) force us into complicity, against our conscience, with a policy that causes disease, suffering, unknown long-term consequences, and death for their living fellow citizens? Trump and his faithful accuse us of “cancel culture” for removing statues while he himself tries to cancel segments of our population. Our military proudly displays its promise to “leave no one behind” and heroically rescues those in trouble. We might expect this ethical system to spread and benefit all Americans, but rather than “leave no one behind,” we get efforts to “push them behind,” with the weight of the administration, like the knee of Derek Chauvin on the neck of George Floyd, to hold down persons of color, women, liberals, Democrats, and all those despised “others.” Some ascribe this indifference to Trump’s callousness, his lack of empathy. These results, they say, are indirect, collateral damage resulting from his obsession with the economy to the neglect, as the Constitution puts it, of “the general welfare.” That analysis is inadequate. We all navigate between the pursuit of health and wealth, but Trump places the wealth of a few over the health of the many. This is not just negligence. Remember how Trump advised police not to be “too nice” to suspects as they arrest them; not to bother shielding their heads as they put them into squad cars? In our country, arrestees, suspects, are innocent until proven guilty. No harm should come to them until sentenced by a jury of their peers. Given the racial makeup of police arrests in this country, winking at rough treatment encourages it. There is a word for this de facto, systematic mistreatment of large populations. I hate to pronounce or even write it, because it is happening in my own country. Before the coronavirus, it was “merely” persecution. Now, with widespread death in the picture, it is more than criminal neglect. It is genocide. OK, maybe only murder.

NEW INFORMATION.

Update 1. August 23, 2020. As many as 215,000 more people than usual died in the U.S. during the first seven months of 2020, suggesting that the number of lives lost to the coronavirus is significantly higher than the official toll. And half the dead were people of color—Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans and, to a marked degree unrecognized until now, Asian Americans. . . . People of color make up just under 40 percent of the U.S. population but accounted for approximately 52 percent of all the “excess deaths” above normal through July, according to an analysis by The Marshall Project and The Associated Press.

Update 2. August 29, 2020. In testimony first before the Senate and then the House, on August 21 and 24th respectively, Donald Trump’s new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, promised that changes he wishes to effectuate in running the USPS would not be implemented until after the election. Today, however, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Lauren Hernandez reports that 6 mailboxes have been removed from their accustomed places in downtown Oakland. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports even more systematically distributed issues in its metropolitan area.

Update 3. Sept. 5, 2020. Paul Weyrich, key political advisor to Republicans, founder of the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and, with Jerry Falwell, the Moral Majority, clearly understood the need for voter suppression. He had this to say: “I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down. ”  Not “voters,” but “voting populace.”

Update 4. Sept. 9, 2020. Donald Trump’s taped interviews with Bob Woodward, revealed an hour ago, establish that, by February 4, the President was fully cognizant of the danger the virus posed. Already then he understood the implication of its being airborne. This shift in chronology is crucial. The longer he knew and the clearer his knowledge, the more deliberate his inaction and the more certainly he is guilty of murder by omission.

Update 5. Oct. 3, 2020.  Two days ago, Thursday, Oct 1, at about 1:00 AM East Coast time, the White House announced that President Trump had tested positive for Covid-19. But today, Saturday, Oct. 3,  Dr. Sean Conley announced at Walter Reed Hospital that the President had first tested positive “72 hours ago.” That would put the date of the positive test on September 30, about 36 hours before Mr. Trump’s condition was publicized. No statement by the White House on this situation is accurate. The Trump people have concealed when he last tested negative, whether he gets tested daily, as they have repeatedly said, or how serious a case he has. Because a person can be contagious before symptoms appear, it is possible that the President was infected at the time of his debate with Joe Biden in Cleveland on September 29th. Then, because he and his entourage refused to wear masks, he and they could have spread the disease to the Biden party, who did wear masks. Most important: on Thursday, Oct. 1, even knowing that he had already tested positive for Covid-19, Trump went to  a fund-raiser for wealthy donors at his golf course in Bedminster, NJ and mingled with influential, wealthy people from around the country. This is not negligence; this is reckless endangerment. Whatever the crime (homicide, manslaughter), it is wrong for an infected person to knowingly expose others, especially others who had gathered to offer him their support. Matt Friedmann of Politico quotes Peg Schaffer, a local Democratic leader, who calls Trump’s behavior “unfathomably selfish.”  Note that some accounts, such as in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post go with a slightly different chronology. In this schema, it was only Hope Hicks who had already tested positive before Bedminster, and the President would have tested positive only on Thursday evening, possibly after Bedminster, with the announcement coming at about 1:00 AM on Friday morning.

Update 6. October 5, 2020. Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman of the NYTimes report today that President Trump’s first got a positive reading on a “rapid” test in the evening of Thursday, Oct. 3, after Bedminster. Later that night, a more sophisticated PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test was done that was also positive. Soon thereafter, the President tweeted out the result. It seems, then, he did not test positive prior to his fund raiser at Bedminster, but he did go there knowing that his close associate Hope Hicks was already showing symptoms and had isolated herself on the plane ride back from Cleveland. Kayleigh McEnany (not known for her honesty) asserted that the President did not learn of Hicks’s positive test until Thursday, just as he was about to board the helicopter to go to New Jersey. As for the President, “the first positive test he received (i.e. the rapid one) was after he returned from Bedminster.” A chronology published today by Christina Morales and Allyson Waller of the NYTimes also states that although Hope Hicks had been obviously ill on Wednesday, her positive test results were known only on Thursday “as Mr. Trump left the White House by helicopter around 1 p. m.” to go to Bedminster. This implies that it would have been too late to call off the trip. However, Hicks had clearly been ailing for much of the previous day while traveling in close connection with the President, who was therefore  exposed in close quarters over an extended period to a symptomatic person.

Shortchanged !

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Those who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 have not got what they wanted. Between their hopes and his performance, there is a great disconnect. The coalition that backed 2016 candidate Trump falls into five sometimes overlapping categories. Let’s consider them one-by-one.

            Business conservatives measure the country’s strength by its economy and its openness to entrepreneurial creativity. They seek to provide goods and services, to employ others, to gain profit, accumulate wealth and pass it on to their children. Many favored Trump as a fellow business owner and assumed he would think as they do. Yet Trump is a negative example. He ridicules expertise, rejects information contrary to his intuitions, and lies. Who would hire such a man?

            Trump poses as a friend to business, but he is not. He opposes open competition, promotes his own family’s interests, those of his donors, and some industries over others. He manipulates markets with arbitrarily imposed tariffs (a hidden tax) and mistakenly identifies the country’s well-being with the stock market thereby favoring short-term over long-term thinking. His myopia incurs tremendous costs. The country will benefit most from industries geared to succeed in markets that are open, not manipulated to reward a select few. Investors avoid uncertainty, but he governs arbitrarily.

            Trump’s tax policies are counter-productive. Yes, his 2017 reform simplified tax filing (almost doubling the standard deduction), temporarily lowered tax rates for each bracket, and increased the child tax credit until 2025, but permanently reduced the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, increased the allowance for tax-free inheritance from $11 to $22 million, and continued a 20% “pass through” or “carried interest” deduction that favors larger businesses. These regressive policies deny opportunity, squelch creativity, and reduce competition. What’s more, since the tax cut and before the coronavirus arrived, the GDP and corporate tax receipts surged momentarily and have since declined. Fiscal conservatives should be concerned. 

            Libertarians see taxes as a “taking” by the government, whose size must be minimized. Individual rights are their core value. Obligations cannot be imposed, rights not removed. Guns may be owned, consciences protected, expert recommendations for health (such as in the current Covid-19 pandemic) ignored, because each citizen is autonomous—free from the nanny state. Yet this individualism weakens the ties between neighbors, between employers and employees, vendors and their clients, citizens and their representatives. Moreover, freedom is not absolute. Free speech is limited as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes illustrated with the example of crying “Fire!” in a crowded theater. The law prohibits deceptive advertising and requires accurate labeling. Appeal to conscience cannot promote discrimination because discrimination violates the rights of others.

            There’s a point where individual rights collide. Wearing face masks in the present pandemic is an excellent example. If you exercise your freedom not to wear a mask, you may infect me; but I have a right to my health. There are times when everyone should hunker down in cooperation with everyone else. By ostentatiously refusing to wear a face mask, the President promotes not libertarian, individual rights, but infection. His action undermines libertarian thought by reducing it to the absurd.

            Respect for the individual rights might be Trump’s strongest suit were it not for his idiosyncratic abuse of the principle. In a president whose function our constitution delimited very carefully, his rejection of norms is destructive. His demands of personal loyalty, vindictive treatment of critics, repeated lying, and self-contradiction weaken the ideal. He said so himself at Mount Rushmore last night as he falsely projected his own crimes onto his opponents: “driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission . . . [are] the very definition of totalitarianism.” Libertarian principles require critical thinking, not obedience. Trump’s use of the bullying tactics he pretends to deplore, exposes in him the very tyranny against which libertarians consider themselves the most stalwart defenders.

            Patriotism connects citizens as individuals to the country as a community. Yet Trump debases those bonds. We should take pride in our achievements without putting others down. Disparaging countries with lower standards of living as “shitholes,” characterizing Latin American immigrants as “drug dealers, criminals, and rapists,” using the crimes of a few to smear all Muslims as terrorists, while —at home— praising violent bigots as “very good people” undercuts our reputation. Certainly, we must, as a people, define our own identity. “You can’t have a country without borders,” a conservative told me. Right. But if we are the country that the most outspoken, self-declared patriots claim it to be, we will bond among ourselves according to exemplary principles.

            Those principles are already enshrined in the constitution, specifically in the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, that abolish slavery, provide due process, equal protection, and voting rights. The constitution is a complex web of provisions —not just the Second Amendment, as the President seems to think. It is also an agenda. We still need to correct some of its initial compromises on women’s rights, the horrible legacy of slavery, and our oppression of native Americans. With these wrongs corrected, our patriotism will be more easily exportable and our pride will shine brighter.

            Our advancement of science, innovations in medicine, technology, the arts and education, are areas where, especially in the post-war period, we have stood out among nations and even in world history. Sadly, the President disparages these achievements. He encourages a mindless anti-elitism that lowers our goals and saps our national ambition. Even if libertarians and business conservatives wish to reduce the federal government, its personnel should still be an all-star cast, an Olympic team. Yet Trump and his cabinet members (often temporary and therefore not vetted by the Senate) have silenced or expelled from agencies that formerly provided leadership for this country and for the world experts and scientists who question erroneous beliefs cherished in the White House or pushed by top interest groups. OSHA is one example. They have made its coronavirus guidelines for workers in close quarters mere recommendations that can be ignored with impunity. They have weakened the once prestigious Center for Disease Control to the point that, as of today, leading medical schools can no longer rely on its reports. Consequently, our efforts against the coronavirus dramatically lag behind those of other countries. Under Trump, our national reputation suffers.

            National defense is perhaps the principal job of the Commander in Chief. Patriotic fervor marches in step with military success and national security. Coming of age in the ‘fifties, with relatives and teachers and cherished older friends who were Word War II veterans, I once knew this feeling. In the meantime, many presidents have erred, but perhaps none so egregiously as Donald Trump. He has undermined resistance to Russia, made a secret and therefore unenforceable deal with Kim Jong-un, and delivered our friends the Kurds to Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan. Like these despots who share his own authoritarian personality, he discounts the advice of his defense and intelligence institutions. America is no longer first among nations.

            Religious conservatives are vital to Donald Trump’s support. They respect moral purity in the sense of correct sexual behavior and therefore resisted divorce and premarital sex. Now they oppose same-sex marriage and abortion. To implement these prohibitions, they invoke the First Amendment and stress the freedom clause over the establishment clause. But how can they deny the symmetry the Founders instituted between those two tendencies? “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or infringing the free exercise thereof.” The two —designedly— oppose each other like the constitution’s other checks and balances. Their insistence ignores the threat the Founders feared most: imposition of a single, official religion on their new nation. If that’s what they wanted, they had a king. Yet Donald Trump courts the support of dogmatic backers whose sole interpretation of what is right should be, they say, the law of the land. Libertarians and others who appeal to conscience should reject such an infringement of our liberties.

            Although religious conservatives don’t stress it much, religious teachings also encompass correct behavior towards one another. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Of the Good Samaritan, Jesus commanded: “Go and do likewise.” The New Testament enjoins generous behavior towards “the least” among us. Judaism and Islam similarly elevate care for others as a moral obligation. The rabbinic sages as well declared that “the righteous of all nations have a portion in the world to come,” thereby sensitizing the community to outsiders of good will. These injunctions impose on all of us an obligation to care for others. But, in courting opponents of abortion rights, Donald Trump backs those with the most limited view of religion, sexual purity. That’s actually very funny.

            Here religious and business perspectives go in the same direction. Just as religion prescribes care for the stranger, so business rewards the objective evaluation of every individual’s talents. But Trump’s anti-immigration policy discourages precisely the kind of people business conservatives should welcome: daring, enterprising people willing to endure hardship and tackle the unknown. Acceptance of these immigrants would elevate both entrepreneurial and religious values. But, erecting barriers of ethnicity, race, religion, and class, Trump says “no.”

            Constitutionalists. Many of the 2016 Trump backers hoped to limit government to increase their own freedom of action: to conduct business, to bear arms, to exclude undesirables, to prohibit immorality. They were tired of “legislation from the Bench.” The appointment of conservative judges and Supreme Court justices would support these goals, they thought. Although he invoked “the law of society and nature” at Mount Rushmore yesterday, he has consistently violated the rule of law. Ignoring the 10th Amendment, he declared “When someone is president of the United States the authority is total,” hoping to combat the coronavirus pandemic by dictating to the states’ governors. In opposition to long established procedures of inquiry, his obstruction of justice in the Russia investigation was so consistent that Robert Mueller could only conclude that he could not be exonerated. The president’s authoritarian personality directly opposes the Supreme Court’s motto: “equal justice under law.” The president is a citizen, not a king. In choosing Trump, constitutionalists got shortchanged.

            Conclusion. Trump has therefore betrayed all these voters. Millions have donated, invested even, in this no-holds-barred, tell-it-like-it-is, non-conformist, often-bankrupt billionaire. They expected reinforcement of their worldview and possibly an improved economic outlook. But no hoped-for personal, financial, or ideological benefit should outweigh the duty to protect our constitution and our country. Patriotism, constitutionalism, faith, and allegiance to country should mean more than loyalty to one party’s leader. Fortunately, our constitution allows us to dismiss this self-serving, vindictive, autocratic, incompetent president. Given his authoritarianism, if we do not replace him now, we may never have another chance. Therefore, on this Fourth of July before the 2020 election, I urge Trump’s 2016 voters to repudiate him and begin as soon as possible to work for his defeat in November.

Substantive Wrongs

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June 6, 2020

76th Anniversary of Normandy Invasion, 1944.

A conservative person I deeply respect recently gave me this challenge. “Put aside Donald Trump’s vicious character and objectionable personality and tell me what he has actually done wrong.” So let’s ignore his psychology and focus on his behavior. Headings will make this easier, though some items will overlap. 

A. Isolates the country internationally.

  • In a 2017 conversation with Russian ambassador Segei Kislyak and foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, the President unwittingly revealed Israel as the source of highly classified intelligence about plans for terrorist attacks by ISIS.
  • Kowtowed to dictators: Putin (Helsinki), Kim (Singapore), Xi (G20 in Osaka), Erdogan (Dec. 4, 2019, the White House), thus undermining our democratic traditions.
  • Diminishes support for NATO, our bulwark against Russia, and co-defender of our democratic ideals. 
  • Withdrew from international accords limiting Iran’s nuclear development (the Iran Deal).
  • Abandoned the Kurds in Syria, our allies against Saddam Hussein, Al-Qaeda, and ISIS, to curry favor with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who opposes them in Turkey.
  • Weakened U. S. support of Ukraine against Russia.
  • Mercantilism (economic nationalism). Trade wars. Tariffs on all goods from China, on steel, aluminum from Canada and Mexico.
  • His exaggerated emphasis on a Southern border wall weakens ties with our neighbor, Mexico.
  • One good thing: opposes China’s theft of intellectual property.

B. Weakens environmental safeguards:

  • Removes many environmental checks on industries — unwise given global climate change.
  • Supports coal and petroleum industries, which emit carcinogens and carbon dioxide, thereby causing disease and warming the planet.
  • Withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement, the beginning of an effort to attack a global problem on a global scale.
  • Cuts budget of Environmental Protection Agency.

C. Exacerbates hatred.

  • After the “Unite the Right” Rally in Charlottesville, August 11-12, 2017, Trump, in a misguided effort to please everyone, declared “There were very fine people on both sides.” Note that one of the organizers of the rally took the internet alias, Crystal Knight, a punning allusion to the first, nationwide action against Jews in Nazi Germany, Kristallnacht, 9-10 Nov, 1938. Prior to the march that killed a counter-protester, the demonstrators prepared in neo-Nazi, White Supremacist, and Klan meetings and, online, declared their despicable loyalties. As they marched, they chanted, “Jews will not replace us.”
  • Stigmatizes categories of people with pejorative language: Muslims (“terrorists”), Mexicans (“animals, rapists, drug dealers”). Uses criminal or terrorist fringe, like MS-13, hardly a typical group, to characterize whole populations. Stigmatizes women, “who will let you do anything if you’re famous.”
  • Fostered cruelty against immigrants as a deterrent, thus undercutting U. S. reputation as a refuge for the persecuted (like many of my professors in graduate school).

D. Oppresses the needy.

  • Although I cannot find the actual source, Ronald Reagan is frequently credited with expressing this sentiment: “Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.” Donald Trump fails to meet this deliberately minimized standard.
  • Oppresses women worldwide by eliminating reference to sex education, contraception, and abortion from international aid programs. He applies this “gag rule” at home and abroad.
  • His tax cut of Dec. 22, 2017 increased the national debt although it distributed its benefits inequitably. It (1) reduced corporate tax rate from an average in 2012 of 29% to a 22% stipulated rate (not counting deductions) and (2) limited deductions for state taxes, which impacts states that tax more heavily. Upshot: makes it more expensive for liberal states to offer social services.
  • Restructured Affordable Care Act. (1) Removed the individual mandate, which thereby reduced the size of the insurance market and increased premiums for sicker individuals. (2) Encouraged states to restrict Medicaid expansion (a benefit for the poor) by, among other things, adding work requirements. (3) Allowed states to essentially substitute their own Medicaid programs. Because many states are required to balance their budgets, the removal of federal aid reduces medical help to the poor.

E. Exaggerates Presidential Authority.

  • Banishes note takers from his summit meetings. Without notes, we cannot hold our leaders accountable. We cannot “trust but verify” (Ronald Reagan’s advice) whatever the foreign leader might have agreed to, so the arrangements cannot be enforced. This violates the first of Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points. “Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at. . . . Diplomacy [should] proceed always frankly and in the public view.”
  • Appointed Brett Cavanaugh to the Supreme Court because he wrote an essay exaggerating the powers of the executive branch and despite fact he was beneath inclusion on a list of 25 recommended by the conservative Federalist Society.
  • Appointed William Barr who, as an AG hopeful, wrote a brief (probably much like this speech) designed to augment the unitary executive, which misrepresents the president’s power to act alone.
  • Circumvented congressional power over the budget and declared an emergency, Feb. 15, 2019, where none existed, to obtain funding for a border wall.
  • Preference for acting heads of federal agencies, thus avoiding need for congressional advice and consent — a fundamental aspect of constitutionally mandated checks and balances.
  • Demanded loyalty from FBI Director James Comey even though Comey’s revival, in October, 2016, of the case against Hillary Clinton over her private email server was instrumental to his election. As the FBI is, in principle, an independent agency, a demand of loyalty is not appropriate. Loyalty pertains more to feudal lords than to constitutionally limited presidents.
  • The Mueller investigation into the possible collusion of the Trump campaign with Russian interference in the 2016 election, “does not exonerate” Donald Trump on 10 counts of obstructing justice. Because the president cannot be exonerated of obstructing the investigation into his collusion with the Russians, his participation in the collusion remains unresolved. Our president should be above suspicion of collusion with a foreign power to secure his own election. 
  • In Helsinki, on July 16, 2018, he naively, publicly, embarrassingly, accepted Vladimir Putin’s guarantee that the Russian president had not meddled in our 2016 election despite evidence to the contrary, which, at that time, was growing. At the very least, he should have declared it an open question and thanked Putin for his opinion.

F.  Errors of omission. Our president fails to solicit, engage, or heed information from experts in science, medicine, policing, diplomacy, international law, and military affairs. He ignored early signs of the danger from the Coronavirus, redrew the path of Hurricane Dorian contrary to expert projections, advised police not to shield heads of arrestees being put into cars, advised ingesting bleach to treat Covid-19, denies the status of refugees despite the international standing of the right to sanctuary, claims noise from wind turbines causes cancer, ignored CIA station chief in Iraq prior to abandoning the Kurds in that country. “Once again, we’ve turned our back on a loyal ally, an ally that not just shared our ideology and our goals, but actually bled for the United States on the battlefield. . . . The Turkish military was poised and immediately filled the vacuum,” said veteran Doug Wise.

G. Tells lies:  This heading violates the rules of this exercise because the president’s mendacity is part of his character. Still, it harms the country when a president makes untrue statements — especially if he does so often. A Republican supports this observation here. And here is a link to the fact-checkers of the Washington Post.

In conclusion: It’s not true that character and personality don’t matter. Presidents should exemplify a leadership that emanates from probity, courage, service, patriotism, and statesmanship.

Static Action

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I wrote this essay in early April, 2020, just as physical distancing was emerging as a way to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus. The nation’s fate in this pandemic must be understood in the context of Donald Trump’s administration. The personal reality he has constructed undercuts the country’s medical experts’ efforts at fact-gathering and analysis. President Trump and key members of his administration have suppressed the rule of law, the balance of powers, and open debate. The President and his supporters consistently deny the scientific evidence of global warming. (By the way, I don’t call it “climate change.” If the temperature of the oceans rises, that’s a global phenomenon, not a variation in climate.) They deny the intelligence community’s evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Attorney General William Barr (March 24, 2019) gave a misleading summation of the Mueller Report, and Mueller himself wrote a “conclusion” far weaker than what his own team’s evidence required (April 18, 2019).

In early January, 2020, President Trump’s Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger, a former intelligence officer in the Marines, and a former Wall Street Journal correspondent in Hong Kong, learned from an epidemiologist there that the novel coronavirus, “which originated in the city of Wuhan, was being transmitted by people who were showing no symptoms.” (NYTimes, April 12, A1, 13-15 at p. 14 B). For Matthew Pottinger’s impressive career, see this link.) Thus, a Hong Kong doctor, during months of anti-China demonstrations in that city, revealed that China was covering up a more rapid spread of the disease than merely tracking the symptoms would indicate. The President did not wish to alarm the American people. At the same time, he was trying to conclude a trade deal with China, so he did not wish to upset the Chinese government. He was enduring the Senate’s impeachment trial. Even though his acquittal was a foregone conclusion, surely this was a difficult time for him. These are understandable distractions, but this sympathy can go too far. He is president of a republic, first among equals, not an isolated individual. The President’s premise is that nothing goes wrong in Trump’s America, and when it does, the fault lies elsewhere. The threat of an invisible pandemic should override the president’s ambitions on trade, his political fate, or his popularity ratings. As this article in the Wall Street Journal shows, President Trump’s priorities have hampered the doctors and scientists working to protect the public and to devise measures effective against COVID-19.

Nonetheless, following the advice of medical experts, a vast proportion of the U. S. population now cooperates by “sheltering-in-place” to avoid catching or spreading the coronavirus. There is naturally some resentment of those who violate the quarantine. Critics of those who, without good reason, refuse to shelter in place contrast our peers to the generation that fought WWII by saying “My grandparents went to war all around the world to make our country safe yet we refuse to help by staying home.” Right. Still, the coronavirus is a new threat that arrives in the midst of this broader, Trumpian crisis — less life-threatening in the short term, but more dangerous to the freedom we Americans cherish. So “just staying home” even though helpful in fighting the coronavirus, is not enough for the overall situation.

We must not let the fight for physical health become a moral decline. We’re in a weird situation: active cooperation by sheltering in place can become a sin of omission. We can’t just shrug and say, “that was something I couldn’t change.” The question remains: If culpable complacency is suicide, what is to be done? I asked that question once to my skeptics’ discussion group, and two folks roared back, “Ring doorbells. Get the hell out there.” Electoral politics. That may not be enough. We can bring change. With intellect, resilience, creativity, and resolve; with facts, and reason, and a clear view of the world as it is, we can devise constructive actions. Until the virus is somewhat tamed and it’s safe to go out, we must convert our physical isolation into action. We can donate online to worthy causes and candidates whose priorities we share. Even more important: we can write. They say “the pen is mightier than the sword,” but it might not be mightier than the lie. What we can do is expose the lie. Speak, write, and tweet the truth — often. Write the truth (very concisely) on a picket sign and, when the time comes, march.

In defense of science, UC Berkeley, 4/22/2017

     I hope these lines encourage many to act along with me, but there’s a proviso. We must convince others. Self-congratulatory circles have some benefit, but they risk being no more than collective isolation. I found an important clue in a New York Times opinion piece by Viet Thanh Nguyen. “What this crisis has revealed is that, while almost all of us can become vulnerable — even corporations and the wealthy — our government prioritizes the protection of the least vulnerable.” That formulation is too cryptic to use in exactly those words, but it is at the core of our troubles. Expound that truth as far as possible and we will burst from this confinement with new drive. We will strengthen our empathy and acknowledge that those who sheltered in place and those who bring them their food and hook up their oxygen have bonded, recognized the mutual responsibility their relationship demands, and will negotiate a far more equitable social contract.