Monthly Archives: July 2020

2020 General Election, Democracy, Donald Trump

Donald Trump escalates cultural war to divide Americans as the 2020 election looms

Three big issues confront the country right now: the coronavirus epidemic, which rages out of control in the United States; the stalled economy, with businesses shuttered and millions unemployed, that the epidemic has brought; and protests across the country that have shifted Americans’ attitudes (at least for a time) regarding deeply rooted racial injustices.

Regarding the first and foremost issue, the President made one reference to the virus in his speech – in the fourth paragraph, wedged between thank yous to “the very talented Blue Angels,” and to the two Republican senators and the Republican Congressman from South Dakota. “Let us also send our deepest thanks to our wonderful veterans, law enforcement, first responders, and the doctors, nurses, and scientists working tirelessly to kill the virus.  They’re working hard.”

Apart from the phrase, “working hard,” Trump didn’t reference the economy at all, much less the economic hardship Americans confront right now.

Regarding the reckoning over race, the President stood fast with his base, (mostly white) folks who are culturally anxious about demographic change in America, and rigidly opposed to predominantly young, multiethnic street protesters who welcome change. The President’s remarks validated the separation of Americans into these two camps, and extolled one and vilified the other.

Trump takes the stage at Mount Rushmore: PBS.

THE PRESIDENT: … as we meet here tonight, there is a growing danger that threatens every blessing our ancestors fought so hard for, struggled, they bled to secure.

Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children.

AUDIENCE:  Booo —

THE PRESIDENT:  Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our Founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.  Many of these people have no idea why they are doing this, but some know exactly what they are doing.  They think the American people are weak and soft and submissive.  But no, the American people are strong and proud, and they will not allow our country, and all of its values, history, and culture, to be taken from them.  (Applause.)

AUDIENCE:  USA!  USA!  USA!

THE PRESIDENT:   One of their political weapons is “Cancel Culture” — driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees.  This is the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and our values, and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America.  (Applause.)  This attack on our liberty, our magnificent liberty, must be stopped, and it will be stopped very quickly.  We will expose this dangerous movement, protect our nation’s children, end this radical assault, and preserve our beloved American way of life.  (Applause.)

In our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance.  If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished.  It’s not going to happen to us.  (Applause.)

Make no mistake: this left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution.  In so doing, they would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence, and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress.

To make this possible, they are determined to tear down every statue, symbol, and memory of our national heritage.

[White House transcript; emphasis added.]

Confederate battle flag: Wikipedia.

Should there be any doubt that champions of the Confederacy (who, in defense of their right to own slaves, waged war against the United States of America) are to be remembered as part of “our national heritage,” the President has done his best to offer confirmation.

Trump opposes renaming Fort Bragg and other military bases named after Confederate Army officers, and removing Confederate statues and monuments.

He demands that the only prominent Black driver in NASCAR apologize, though he doesn’t say what he should apologize for, and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEneny doesn’t know either.

He threatens to undermine a rule designed to end residential segregation.

He tweets a video of a Trump supporter calling out, “White power.”

He asserts that a sign proclaiming, ‘Black Lives Matter’ is “a symbol of hate.”

Trump is waging a cultural war against an internal enemy. It’s us vs. them. Just in case the sides weren’t clear enough, he namechecks the opposition party. “The violent mayhem we have seen in the streets of cities that are run by liberal Democrats, in every case, is the predictable result of years of extreme indoctrination and bias in education, journalism, and other cultural institutions.”

 While Trump’s address at Mount Rushmore is crafted in a way that appears, in places, as a call for unity, that’s rhetorical gaslighting. The point is to divide: “In the face of lies meant to divide us, demoralize us, and diminish us, we will show that the story of America unites us, inspires us, includes us all, and makes everyone free.” And, as we can see from the broader context (the Trump we see and hear every day, not just on July Fourth when he reads from a teleprompter) – from Trump’s leading role in the birther conspiracy to his tweet celebrating racially offensive names for NFL and MLB teams, the animus toward Black people (past and present), people of color, and their allies, is abundantly clear.

The subtext is racial. And the folks cheering him on in the Black Hills of South Dakota understand perfectly well what he is communicating. (CSA! CSA! CSA!) From Mitch McConnell to Bill Barr to John Roberts – every Republican in Washington understands perfectly well what he is communicating.

Richard Nixon developed the Southern Strategy, but ran as a centrist (wedged between Humphrey and Wallace) in 1968, as someone who could calm the country. Pat Buchanan wrote a memo to Nixon in 1971 that recommended ways to exploit racial tensions among Democrats. They could, he wrote, “cut the Democratic Party and country in half; my view is that we would have far the larger half.”

Donald Trump — determined to split the country in half — has amplified fear, hostility, and racial conflict more openly than any president in my lifetime (post-WWII) has done. In 2020, Joe Biden and his multiracial coalition may well claim “the larger half.”

So I hope.

(Image of the shackles at the feet of the Statue of Liberty: National Park Service. “In 1886, The Statue of Liberty was a symbol of democratic government and Enlightenment ideals as well as a celebration of the Union’s victory in the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery.“)

Donald Trump, Off the Rails

Learn to live with it. Or die with it. Whatever. — Trump White House to Americans regarding out of control epidemic

“The virus is with us, but we need to live with it.”

After months of communicating mixed messages about the coronavirus, of making promises that weren’t kept and pronouncements that were plainly false, the Trump White House has belatedly recognized that “the virus is not going away any time soon — and will be around through the November election.”

NBC’s Carol Lee, Kristen Welker, and Monica Alba report that the administration and Trump’s reelection campaign has landed on a new message: Learn to live with it.

Predictions dating back nearly six months include: “the problem goes away in April”; on Easter Sunday there will be “packed churches all over our country”; “by Memorial Day weekend we will have this coronavirus behind us”; and by July the country will be “really rocking again.”

Trump has never made a genuine effort to squelch the virus (though he briefly posed as “a wartime president,” nothing came of that). The evidence suggests that Donald Trump is not much interested in governing. He has certainly been disinclined to craft a plan, marshal resources, and coordinate a national effort to defeat the coronavirus.

Trump has no plan to defeat the coronavirus and declines to make a plan. It is no wonder that none of the rosy predictions about the epidemic resolving itself have come to pass.

Throughout the first half of 2020, Trump has evaded accountability, while insisting that the nation’s governors are responsible for combating the coronavirus. And wishful thinking is still the order of the day. On Wednesday the President said:

I think we’re going to be very good with the coronavirus. I think that at some point that’s going to sort of just disappear, I hope.

But now — White House advisers tell NBC — they are ready to turn a corner, as they watch the economy reopen: “the White House is now pushing acceptance.”

As of July 4, 2020 (3 a.m.), the United States has had 2,794,153 cases of coronavirus and 129,434 deaths.

This graph from Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center shows what that looks like (in comparison with other hotspots in the world):

The United States leads the world in coronavirus cases.

As Donald Trump made the case in Tulsa for pushing aside concern with the coronavirus: “We have to get back to business. We have to get back to living our lives. Can’t do this any longer.” 

These infections, at this level, were not inevitable. The number of people who have died from coronavirus did not have to total more than one hundred twenty-nine thousand. Yet the spread of coronavirus and the number of deaths continue to increase — because Donald Trump has proved incapable and uninterested in leading a national effort to end this catastrophe.

Instead, the immediate future we will see more of the same. More infections. More pain and suffering. More deaths. And, at this stage, we can lay responsibility for virtually everything yet to come at the feet of Donald Trump.

A consistent theme of this blog is that the leadership of the Republican Party is complicit in whatever Donald Trump says and does. They made a Faustian bargain to lock arms with Trump and they’re not disentangling themselves. The devastation being wrought on our country now — and for the forseeable future — from coronavirus is also at the feet of the GOP. So I’m on board with Josh Marshall’s sentiments:

I seldom think anything good about Donald Trump. I hate what he has done to the country. I hold his enablers even more responsible for what has happened on his watch. 

Marshall concludes:

None of this had to happen. It is a failure of cataclysmic proportions. It has many roots. It has revealed many insufficiencies and failures in our society and institutions. But the scale of it, the unifying force of it is a man who never should have been president, who has abandoned his responsibility to lead and protect the country, making it every state for itself, a chaos only organized by a shiftless and shambling effort to help himself at all costs at every point.

The worst is yet to come.

(Image: NBC News report on mass graves of coronavirus victims at New York’s Hart Island in April.)

Off the Rails

Why in the world is COVID-19 out of control in the United States, not the E.U., not China, not New Zealand, Not Canada, not South Korea, not . . . ?

Gavin Newsom’s impact during his eight years as Lieutenant Governor didn’t convince me to vote for him in California’s 2018 Democratic Primary. But, watching him in the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic made a believer out of me. I was impressed by his timely, decisive actions in shutting down California before most of the country’s governors had any idea what was about to hit them.

More recently, as I suggested in my last post, the governor has stumbled.

Friday morning on NRP, Steve Inskeep interviewed Dr. Emily Landon, a University of Chicago epidemiologist, who has been advising the governor of Illinois. She offered an account of Illinois’ success in acting “early on” – with a March 21 stay-at-home order that prevented the situation that developed in New York and the Northeast. Because of this success, Illinois is about to enter phase four – with more reopenings, including restaurants for indoor dining, gyms, the lakefront path, and – soon – beaches. As she explained:

Certainly, these are still risky activities. There’s still more infection than we want to be having. But if people are following the rules, keeping distance, wearing their mask – if we can keep doing those things, then it should be safe enough for us to go back to doing some of these things that we used to enjoy before the pandemic.

 Inskeep responds that there are “some similarities between Illinois and California,” and notes that after California’s reopening, the virus has now returned with a vengeance, resulting in a second shutdown. Dr. Landon acknowledges that this is a cautionary tale. She says that “we need to understand better what’s happened in California,” but expresses confidence in the path Illinois is taking. She explains that

with respiratory viruses and with infection in general, there’s kind of a tipping point that happens where every case is able to spread to one or more other people on average. Then you have to do some very drastic things, like a stay-at-home order or really closing down a lot of public buildings and activities. So I don’t know exactly what’s putting California back into this situation. But I do know that if they do the same things that they did before, that it should be successful in curbing the spread of the virus.

Inskeep then turns to Dr. Ali Khan (at the University of Nebraska), who weighs in skeptically about the course Illinois is following. He points to data showing the number of cases in Illinois is increasing (from 550 in mid-June to 800) and suggests that the opening up is likely to bring further increases. (The Washington Post reported 912 cases in Illinois on July 3.) Dr. Khan continues:

But let me talk about what we’re seeing here – is this is now being shifted. And I’ve seen this now – multiple places are shifting the blame to individuals not doing what they’re supposed to be doing. I’ve not heard one person talk about test and trace. And so if you’re going to reopen, what are you doing to get cases down to zero? So no metrics. How much – you know, how soon does it take to isolate somebody? How many contacts are people following? How many cases are from contact list. So no, we cannot go back to what we did before successfully because we were not a success before because we had failed to do test and trace.

So there’s four elements of getting this disease under control. So yes, one is the community component which, is, where you mask. Social distance. And wash your hands. That’s just one component. And it’s not the primary component. The primary component is the state and the localities and the national responsibility to get cases down. Test and trace. Add that to leadership. And then add that to dropping deaths with dexamethasone. Those are the four things we need to do to become a success, just like Europe and countries like New Zealand that have eliminated the disease. So they have zero cases. And China has two cases in 1.4 billion people. We can do this in America.

I was impressed, early on, not only by Gavin Newsom, but by Los Angeles city and county officials. When officials at all three levels moved to reopen, however, I wasn’t in the least tempted to eat indoors at a restaurant or visit a hair salon, much less to attend a film at a movie theater or drop by a neighborhood bar. Granted, at age 70, I have reason to be more conscientious about maintaining physical distance and wearing a mask, than younger people do; and unlike governors, mayors, and county supervisors, I have no leadership responsibility for the welfare of the community (not public health, not economic well-being). But (based on everything I’ve learned by reading about this virus), these reopenings seemed rushed to me. And, earlier this week, both city and county testing facilities had run out of appointments. While in California, as in much of the nation, there isn’t enough testing, this month the state has halted efforts to increase testing.

Dr. Landon’s emphasis on individual choices — “… if people are following the rules, keeping distance, wearing their mask – if we can keep doing those things …” and if people “do the same things that they did before …” – is a shaky foundation to rely on. We need to lean instead on safe, sound public policies (beyond injunctions concerning individual behavior). As Dr. Kahn notes, the other elements of a sound plan – including testing and tracing – have been neglected.

Color me highly skeptical that Illinois will escape the same flareups that most states are experiencing. Illinois, like other states before it, is reopening before gaining the upper hand on the coronavirus.

Until we gain the upper hand, reopening with the hope that the virus will somehow disappear is foolhardy.

Post Script: To put our individual choices in perspective, the Washington Post did a Q and A: “How Fauci and 5 other experts handle masking, haircuts, doctor’s appointments and more.” I’ll note that all six were in sync with me on two questions at the top of my list: All of them went grocery shopping (wearing masks and keeping their distance) and none of the six were willing to eat inside a restaurant.

(Image: Photo of Il Capriccio on Vermont, July 4.)

Blue State Blues

Trouble in Paradise: California struggles to defeat the coronavirus and change police culture

Defeating the coronavirus

Seven counties in the San Francisco Bay Area issued “sweeping shelter-in-place” orders on March 16. Reaction was predictable: “Public health experts praised the region’s action, while residents, business owners and workers were divided. Some welcomed the restrictions as necessary for the common good, while others feared they could threaten jobs and livelihoods, doing more harm than the virus itself.”

Governor Gavin Newsom followed with a statewide order three days later. These orders, sound steps to ensure public health, cast California’s political leadership in a good light and protected Californians before the virus had gotten out of control.

No longer. In spite of Governor Newsom’s vow, “Protests won’t drive our decision making. Political pressure will not drive our decision making. The science, the data public health will drive our decision making,” he was under intense pressure to reopen (a dynamic in red and blue states alike). People’s livelihoods were at stake. Not to mention government revenues to fund public programs and services.

To to get businesses up and running again and employees back at work, Governor Newsom shifted the criteria for reopening safely and permitted local governments to rush to reopen. By May 26, public health officials were pushing back against Newsom’s increasingly aggressive reopening timeline.

Three and a half months after California began to shut down, and then began to reopen, the Golden State is among numerous states that have experienced an out of control coronavirus. While the rate of infection (15 per 100,000) is not as high as in eight other states — Arizona (43); Florida (34): South Carolina (28); Nevada (22);  Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas  (20 each); and Georgia (19) — California is the nation’s most populous state. The number of people affected, with 237,068 cases and 6,152 total deaths, eclipses the impact felt in smaller states.

In blue states (which promised that data, not political pressure would drive decision making) as well as red (where following Donald Trump’s lead has been the dominant impulse), the United States has become an international outlier. This nation — an international leader in medical innovation — has bungled the response to the pandemic so thoroughly that it is now among the countries whose residents are banned from entering Europe.

Chart from vox.com

Of course the United States’ primary policy failures have been at the national level. While this crisis cried out for national leadership, Trump has steadfastly refused to take on the challenge. That left 50 state governors (plus leaders in D.C., Puerto Rico, and Guam) on their own. If that patchwork of policy responses – and the inevitable counterproductive competition among states for PPE and other resources to fight the pandemic – were not challenging enough, Trump told his base that reports of the pandemic were overblown, “fake news” generated by the mainstream media; he rejected wearing facial coverings as signals of disapproval of him; and criticized governors who imposed social distancing restrictions. Thus, simple, sensible measures to defeat the virus have been met with resistance every step of the way – in blue states and red states alike.

Republican men, who are particularly in thrall of Trump, are most likely to spurn sound guidance (when the President spurns it), but other folks (and not just Trump fans) have been misled by the mixed messages communicated by the President of the United States, his administration, his campaign, and a host of media enablers (led by Fox News Channel).

For a few weeks it appeared that states, individually and in concert, were on track to defeat this virus. The absence of national leadership and a unifying message, the refusal to marshal resources and coordinate a response across the country, and Trump’s deliberate undermining of governors determined to protect public health have defeated us. This calamity has starkly revealed Donald Trump’s unfitness for the office he holds. He is incapable of performing his job and declines to try.

While other countries have found a great measure of success, the United States will be wrestling with coronavirus for the rest of Trump’s first term – and well beyond.

Changing police culture

For many weeks across the country we’ve seen protests seeking to end pervasive discrimination based on race, with a special focus on law enforcement practices and policies that put Black men, especially, and Black women in harm’s way. Especially since 911, many police forces have leaned toward militarization, which clashes with more collaborative models of community policing.

Obviously, this problem isn’t confined to red states. The Los Angeles Police Department has a history of both militaristic and racially biased law enforcement. In 1965 (Watts) and again in 1992 (Rodney King), Black neighborhoods, sparked by anger over policing in the city, erupted in violence. While neighborhoods didn’t burn after the O.J. Simpson acquittal (1995), Black reaction to the verdict was undoubtedly influenced by LAPD Officer Mark Fuhrman’s taped interviews featuring racial slurs, tales of police brutality, and boasts of planting evidence.

LAPD circa 2020 is more than a generation removed from Daryl Gates’ department. We have seen significant changes since then. But there are still police shootings of unarmed suspects, including mentally ill individuals, and during street protests following George Floyd’s murder, there were numerous instances of police conduct that resembled the meting out of ‘street justice’ or torrents of uncontrolled anger, rather than disciplined law enforcement.

Image from the Telegraph on YouTube.

In full-page ads, which ran in the Los Angeles Times, the San Jose Mercury News, and the Washington Post, the San Jose Police Officers Association, the San Francisco Police Officer Association, and the Los Angeles Police Protective League calling for police reforms: “No words can convey our collective disgust and sorrow for the murder of George Floyd,” said the statement, continuing, “We have an obligation as a profession and as human beings to express our sorrow by taking action.”

The statement acknowledged the existence of racist police officers but pledged, “Police unions must root out racism wherever it rears its ugly head and root out any racist individual from our profession.”

On the same day the ad ran, the union had an entirely different message (“Facing criticism, police union unleashes its ‘pit bull,'”) for its 9,900 members:

“The CHIEF! Never sell out and back the troops!” said a Facebook post by Los Angeles Police Protective League board member Jamie McBride. The message accompanied a video of Daryl F. Gates, a former LAPD chief who ran a department plagued by excessive force and brutal relations with communities of color.

That kind of defiant pose has become a trademark for McBride over a 30-year career in the Los Angeles Police Department and six years on the board of the powerful union, which uses campaign donations to influence city elections. The Police Protective League puts McBride in front of the news media to signal that rank-and-file officers have had enough of the city’s left-leaning political leadership.

The veteran detective exudes the swagger and tribal brio of the old-school LAPD. He was a street cop with a disproportionate number of on-duty shootings and an investigator who fought management discipline (including his own) and won, and he remains a sometime actor who plays street thugs and tough cops in movies and on television.

His frequent and public Facebook posts yearn for a bygone era when the LAPD wasn’t under attack by what old-timers view as a cadre of timid chiefs, desk-bound geeks and opportunistic politicians.

A 2018 post on McBride’s Facebook page, touting the “good ol days,” features an armored vehicle, gunfire, tasers, body slams, car crashes, rivers of blood, and corpses – all to the tune of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Gimme Shelter.’ At least not all the lawbreakers are Black or Latino.

“What you see in this video is a joy in search-and-destroy policing. … It’s not about protection. It’s not about safety. It’s warrior enforcement,” said Connie Rice, a civil rights lawyer who has worked with the department on reform measures.

Of officers like McBride, Rice added: “That’s the kind of policing they enjoy. That’s what they live for. … What the protesters are saying is: ‘Time’s up for that. It’s over.’ The consent of the governed for that kind of policing is done.”

McBride said that the video shows an earlier era of policing but that he acknowledges a need for change. “We as a department have instituted hundreds of reforms, yet there is more we can do,” he said.

The phrase, “hundreds of reforms,” is a tell, suggesting that it’s time to consider something more fundamental than a checklist of ‘reforms’ to eliminate us-against-them policing. Although Los Angeles is hardly ready to defund the police, the City Council just voted to cut $150 million from the police budget.

Supporters of Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles, who have proposed cuts of 90 to 100% of police funding, derided the action:

“That is literally pocket change,” said Rebecca Kessler, a resident of Van Nuys who called in to the council this week. “It’s a slap in the face. You need to defund the police, take way more money, put way more money into these programs.”

LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa reached his goal of increasing the size of LAPD to 10,000 officers in 2013. That’s not that many cops for the sprawling city of Los Angeles. At the time, I regarded this as sound policy. With today’s budget cut, the force will eventually fall to 9,757.

When the troubled city of Camden, New Jersey disbanded its police department in 2013, and reconstituted it as a county agency, it saved money (by withdrawing from a union contract) and the force grew from 250 to 400. That’s a model I might have endorsed a month ago – staffing up and retraining.

But the route Los Angeles seems headed for – pioneered by Eugene, Oregon in 1989! – may be more promising. When residents call 911, the dispatcher has a choice: send police (if an armed response is needed); otherwise, send a team consisting of a medic and a crisis worker – from the nonprofit, Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets (CAHOOTS).

Last year CAHOOTS handled 20% of 911 calls in Eugene and the neighboring city of Springfield. Denver and Olympia, Washington have embraced a similar model.

In Los Angeles many 911 calls involve mental health crises, substance abuse, homeless individuals — often nonviolent situations. There is no compelling reason for armed police officers to respond to these calls. Further, the police are receptive to an approach that designates another responder.

Los Angeles police union officials have welcomed the idea of spreading around calls for service to other agencies more equipped to handle mental health-related calls. In 2019, LAPD statistics show, officers responded to 1.9 million calls for service, with 20,758 of those related to mental-health issues, a 2 percent increase from the previous year.

“We have gone from asking the police to be part of the solution, to being the only solution for problems they should not be called on to solve in the first place,” wrote the authors of the Los Angeles City Council that directed city staffers to look to Eugene for answers.

(Image: KCAL.)