Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Fake News
Remarkable, isn’t it, that Donald Trump has made decrying “fake news” his calling card? Is the press hostile to him? Sure. Do they lie about him? For the most part, no. Then again, the truth is not everyone’s friend. As William Randolph Hearst once quipped: “If Mr. Hughes will stop telling lies about me, I’ll stop telling the truth about him.” Or, even better, William F. Buckley said of Gore Vidal: “Anyone who lies about him is doing him a favor.”
On his visit to Iraq, the president lied to the troops. How can you claim to honor people you are lying to? Lying signals contempt. “We are always going to protect you. And you just saw that, ’cause you just got one of the biggest pay raises you’ve ever received. … You haven’t gotten one in more than 10 years. More than 10 years. And we got you a big one. I got you a big one.”
Sure. Here’s the Pentagon’s online account of pay raises over the past 10 years. The military received raises each year for the past 10 years.
Mr. Trump wasn’t finished. “They had plenty of people that came up, they said, ‘You know, we could make it smaller. We could make it 3 percent, we could make it 2 percent, we could make it 4 percent,'” Trump told the troops about the latest pay raise. “I said, ‘No. Make it 10 percent. Make it more than 10 percent.'”
The late William Safire once wrote a column about his old boss, Richard Nixon, who had a weakness for claiming that aides had counseled him to “take the easy way out.” Safire joked (I’m paraphrasing) “Yes, I’m the one. I always proposed that he do the expedient thing, not the right thing.”
Trump takes the Nixon tick to new levels. The Boy Scouts claimed his speech to the jamboree was the greatest ever. The NFL called to agree that the timing of a presidential debate was terrible. Federal workers have been ringing him up to say “Keep the government closed,” though they are working without pay. What a lively phone life he has.
Anyway, did Trump request a 10 percent pay increase for the troops? No. Trump’s administration requested an increase of 2.1 percent for 2018. Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act which included a 2.4 percent raise. In 2019, the troops will receive a 2.6 percent increase, which is the largest in nine years. But, even in the Trump era, 2.6 is not 10.
Speaking of previous efforts to visit Iraq that had been thwarted by security concerns, the president complained: “Pretty sad when you spend $7 trillion in the Middle East and going in has to be under this massive cover . . .”
It’s not the first time Mr. Trump has used this figure. On the campaign trail, he used to say that we had spent $6 trillion in the Middle East (“that’s trillion with a t”). And then, one day, he just began to say $7 trillion. And there it has remained. Don’t be surprised if it goes to $8 trillion when the mood suits him. Who says the inflation rate is low?
In 2014, the Congressional Research Service put the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts at $1.6 trillion. When questioned about the $7 trillion figure, the White House pointed to a paper by Boston University political scientist Neta Crawford. Her work factored together a great deal more than spending on Iraq and Afghanistan. She focused on all of our post-9/11 spending including not just the wars in those two countries, but also State Department and Agency for International Development spending, homeland security expenditures, and war-related veterans care and disability expenses. Still, even adding all of those extras into her calculations, she arrived at a figure of $3.6 trillion by 2016. She then also added something more – the cost of caring for veterans stretching into 2053, and “additional cumulative interest on past appropriations” to reach the number $8 trillion over 35 years.
Those are some loosey goosey numbers. But even assuming total good faith on Crawford’s part, and assuming Mr. Trump is even aware of her, he is grossly distorting her work. He constantly asserts that we’ve already spent $7 trillion on wars in the “Middle East,” not that our total post-9/11 expenditures on defense, diplomacy, homeland security, and veterans care until 2053 may add up to that.
So even while visiting the troops — a good deed — he managed to soil it by flinging lies in all directions.
Kicking Allies
President Trump’s behavior is unprecedented, but his decision to withdraw our troops from Syria, while unprecedentedly abrupt, is actually part of a tradition of unforced errors in American foreign policy.
Out of spite, or sometimes as a smokescreen to evade responsibility, Congress and past presidents have managed to lose wars that could have gone the other way. Seeking to make partisan points, we have cost ourselves dearly.
In June of 1973, with Richard Nixon wounded by Watergate, the Democratic-dominated Congress passed the Case-Church amendment, which forbade any further military action in Southeast Asia. We had withdrawn most of our troops the previous March. South Vietnam was attempting to fight the Vietcong and North Vietnam (both backed by the Soviet Union and China) by itself. Congress liked to tell itself that this was “Nixon’s war,” conveniently airbrushing out John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, not to mention that the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which passed the House with a vote of 416-0, and the Senate by 88-2. For 10 years, Congress had authorized the war through funding.
By 1973, however, most Democrats were endorsing a revisionist history that suggested that they had no role in the decision to fight; that it was forced on the nation by presidents. They passed the War Powers Resolution, and cut funds for our ally, South Vietnam.
Could South Vietnam have withstood the onslaught with only American money and equipment? It’s impossible to say. What is clear is that a combination of pique and score-settling caused Democrats to guarantee defeat. As Sen. Edward Kennedy explained, aid would “perpetuate involvement that should have ended long ago.”
President Barack Obama opposed the Iraq War. Fine. But when he took office in 2009, Iraq was largely pacified. Al Qaeda in Iraq had been defeated. ISIS did not exist. Iran was not pulling the strings in Baghdad, and no Americans were dying.
Obama could have said to the American people: “I opposed this war. I thought it was a mistake. But this is not 2003. More than 4,000 Americans have given their lives, and taxpayers have spent $757 billion to ensure a better future for this country and this region and to prevent the incubation of more terrorists to threaten us at home. A too hasty withdrawal could jeopardize what has been achieved. Accordingly, I plan to leave a residual force of 20,000 troops (fewer than we deploy to South Korea), to stabilize the situation.”
But Obama had a point to make. Instead of remaining to midwife a secure Iraq, he beat a retreat. Whatever you think of the decision to invade, at that moment in 2011, there was still a good possibility of stability. As Vali Nasr, a former State Department explained to The Atlantic: the “fragile power-sharing arrangement … required close American management. But the Obama administration had no time or energy for that. Instead, it anxiously eyed the exits, with its one thought to get out. It stopped protecting the political process just when talk of American withdrawal turned the heat back up under the long-simmering power struggle that pitted the Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds against one another.”
And so, we turned our backs on the Sunni tribes who had helped defeat Al Qaeda, as well as the moderate Shiites who sought to resist Iranian domination. The aftermath is well known: the rise of ISIS, the torment of the Yazidis and Iraqi Christians, the victory of Iran in controlling its neighbor, and the ongoing agony of Syria. At least Obama achieved one end – nearly everyone now says Iraq was a disaster. It needn’t have been.
Against the advice of everyone save Vladimir Putin, Bashar Assad, and Recep Erdogan, President Trump decided to pull all 2000 American troops from Syria. This is a gift to our enemies and a betrayal of our friends — especially the Kurds who fought ISIS when no one else would, and the Israelis, who will now have Iran more firmly on their doorstep. This is as foolish and short-sighted as Obama’s Iraq withdrawal, but with Trumpian flourishes, such as the claim that we have “defeated” ISIS (30,000 fighters remain) and that “Russia, Iran, Syria & others are the local enemy of ISIS. We were doing there work.” [sic] No, the greatest enemy ISIS faced were the Kurds, thousands of whom died fighting ISIS, and who currently hold 2000 ISIS prisoners. Turkey is threatening an offensive against the Kurds, which would be unthinkable with Americans in the way.
On April 30, 1975, the last helicopters lifted off the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon. This betrayal of an ally is equally shameful.
Collusion Is Possible
It has become an article of faith in some quarters on the right – well, most — that the Mueller investigation has found no evidence of collusion with Russia and has accordingly shifted gears to process crimes like lying to the FBI or obstruction of justice. Having decided that this must be true, many have called for Mueller to wrap it up.
But this requires a lot of wishful thinking.
Consider the sentencing memos. Most of the attention has focused on the payoffs to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. But the Office of Special Counsel advised a federal judge that Michael Cohen had committed other serious crimes. He “withheld information material to the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.” He later came clean. Mueller’s office recommended that Cohen be given some credit for this, and included this wording: Cohen “voluntarily provided the SCO with information about his own conduct and that of others on core topics under investigation by the SCO . . . the information he provided has been credible and consistent with other evidence obtained in the SCO’s continuing investigation.”
The “core topic” under investigation is Russian interference in the election. The “other evidence” is unknown to us at this point, but it’s safe to assume that it’s significant, because Mueller would not rely on Cohen’s word alone.
In the sentencing memo about Michael Flynn, Mueller’s office noted that he was cooperating on three criminal investigations. Three.
This should give pause to those who say “If there were any evidence of collusion with Russia, we would have heard of it by now.” Not necessarily. The Mueller investigation has been the most silent of any in memory. He doesn’t leak. His spokesman is said to have the simplest job in Washington, saying “no comment.”
At least 14 people in Donald Trump’s orbit were approached by Russian agents during the campaign and transition. These included his children, his lawyer, his national security advisor, and business associates. His campaign chairman, Trump had reason to know when he hired him, was up to his eyeballs in oligarchs. Supposedly, when Trump learned of Paul Manafort’s extensive Russia ties in 2016, he said “I’ve got a crook running my campaign.” Today he paints Manafort as a martyr and ostentatiously dangles a pardon, even though we’ve since learned of Manafort’s close ties to an asset of Russian intelligence. And it’s worth asking again: If Mr. Trump was such a keen businessman, why didn’t he question Manafort’s willingness to work for free? Shouldn’t it have alarmed him to have someone so indebted to shady Kremlin associates so close?
President Trump has repeatedly denied any connections to Russia. In July, 2016 he told CBS “I mean I have nothing to do with Russia. I don’t have any jobs in Russia. I’m all over the world but we’re not involved in Russia.” And in September, he told a rally “I have nothing to do with Russia, folks. I’ll give you a written statement.”
You don’t have to credit the lurid gossip in the Steele dossier to know that those statements were lies. It has since come to light that his children and top advisors met at Trump Tower with a Russian peddling dirt on Clinton. Or just check the guilty pleas of Michael Cohen. Cohen now confirms that Trump was pursuing a Moscow tower deal until at least June of 2016. The Trump organization was hoping to get Vladimir Putin’s approval and endorsement of the idea, and were apparently considering doing business the Russian way – offering Putin himself the penthouse, valued at $50 million, as a loss leader. Trump signed a letter of intent to go forward with the project on October 28, 2015, the night of the third Republican presidential primary debate – in the midst of denials that he had anything to do with Russia.
Felix Sater, a Russian-born Trump business colleague, was working on this with Cohen. After the letter of intent was signed, Sater wrote to Cohen saying: “Everything will be negotiated and discussed not with flunkies but with people who will have dinner with Putin and discuss the issues and get a go-ahead. My next steps are very sensitive with Putin’s very, very close people. We can pull this off.”
They didn’t. But not for lack of trying. Roger Stone, a longtime Trump pal and self-styled dirty trickster, boasted of ties to Wikileaks. Others who were weirdly friendly toward the Kremlin included George Papadopoulos, Michael Flynn, and, of course, Donald Trump, Jr.
The reason so many people of low character are proving problematic to this president is that he has always attracted that sort. If he let them conspire a little against “crooked Hillary,” would that really be a shock?
Katy Tur, France’s Riots, and Panic Mode
NBC’s Katy Tur, responding to an article in the New Yorker about climate, looked into the camera and asked “How pointless is my life? And how pointless are the decisions that I make on a day-to-day basis when we are not focused on climate change every day, when it’s not leading every one of our newscasts?”
It’s a safe bet that not only will climate change not lead all newscasts, it will not even lead Katy Tur’s very often. And the reason is not any of those often proffered for failure to act in the ways activists prefer. It won’t be that she is a climate change denier. It won’t be that she was bought off by the fossil fuel industry. And it won’t be that she doesn’t care.
It will not lead because her program is a business, and if she begins her newscast every day with the same story, people will tire of it pretty quickly and soon she’ll be out of a job.
Still, I don’t doubt Tur’s sincerity. Both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association have reported an increase in what is being dubbed “climate anxiety.” Fear of catastrophe is apparently widespread. Kids return from school fearful that they won’t live to adulthood. The National Resources Defense Council offers tips on “banishing the Climate Change Blues.” Al Gore may have many fine traits, but his effort to sow panic about climate with “An Inconvenient Truth” (2006) was a tremendous disservice to reasonable policy making and to the very cause he was promoting. It was not based on sound science, and when its wilder predictions proved false (“within a decade, there will be no more snows on Kilimanjaro”), some concluded that the whole issue was fraudulent.
Climate change is what social scientists call a “wicked problem.” Wicked problems are complicated, multi-faceted, and suffer from limited knowledge. They are not amenable to trial and error because there are too many different variables that could account for various outcomes.
Climate activists are a little weak on complexity. All that prevents humanity from solving the climate change problem, they say, is big business (Bernie Sanders calls it “putting short-term profits of polluters before people”) and Republicans.
Admittedly, Republicans who indulge the fantasy that global warming isn’t a problem are being, at best, irresponsible. But Democrats who suggest that we should simply enact measures like carbon taxes because it’s better to be safe than sorry ignore the fact that no policy is cost free.
Look at France in the past week. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets and many rioted, setting 240 fires and damaging the Arc de Triomphe. Why? Because to combat climate change, President Emmanuel Macron proposed to increase the already high taxes on gasoline. This doesn’t hit all Frenchmen equally. It’s particularly hard on rural people who rely more on their cars. Thus does a “precautionary” act cause social unrest and stoke urban/rural divisions. Additionally, the money spent to thwart climate change is money not spent on other social goods, like helping the poor, or finding cures for diseases. Nothing is cost free.
People who are taxed to save the planet are inclined to ask hard questions, such as: Should I forego a new roof on my house when countries like China are responsible for the lion’s share of emissions? Last year, China’s carbon emissions increased by 4.7 percent and India’s by 6.3 percent. The European Union’s emissions dropped by 0.7 percent, not nearly enough to offset Asia’s growing economies.
The idea behind carbon taxes is that higher prices will incentivize the search for alternatives, but unless governments can devise methods to ensure that the poor and near poor are not made worse off – say by providing the taxes back in the form of credits – the burden will be rejected by voters.
Speaking of being rejected by voters, another misguided fear-mongering campaign by environmentalists has come home to roost now. Remember the movie “The China Syndrome,” the Three Mile Island accident, and the hysteria about nuclear power that followed? That tantrum essentially halted the construction of new nuclear power plants in the U.S. – the one form of energy that is cheap, noncarbon emitting, and abundant. After the tsunami that crippled the Fukushima plant in Japan (causing no deaths), Germany closed down its nuclear industry altogether. Unreasoning fear blots out clear thinking. Nuclear power is safer than any other.
Solutions to this wicked problem will likely be technological. Government has a role in funding basic research (not companies like Solyndra). Hysteria is not policy.
Why Are We So Sad?
The Centers for Disease Control delivers sober news – average life expectancy at birth in the United States has declined for a third straight year due to extremely high rates of death from drug overdoses and suicide. As the Washington Post reports, this is the longest sustained decline in life expectancy since the early 20th century. Between 1915 and 1918, a period that included the First World War and the worldwide flu pandemic that killed 675,000 Americans, life expectancy showed a similar decline.
Today, we are at peace (with the exception of the occasional death in Afghanistan); we are experiencing an economic boom; and we face no epidemics of communicable diseases.
Some might say that our problems are those of overabundance. For millennia, our species was haunted by plagues, famines, and droughts. Our minds and bodies evolved to grab what nourishment we could when we could. Those years in the caves and on the savannah didn’t equip us very well to cope with a world of constantly available Frappuccinos and cupcakes – to say nothing of fentanyl.
But overabundance has been with us for decades, while the rise of deaths from overdoses and suicide is relatively recent. Nor are other developed nations seeing similar declines in life expectancy. In 2017, 70,237 Americans died from drug overdoses, which is higher than the peak of the HIV epidemic in 1995 or car crash deaths in 1972.
As economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case of Princeton have been documenting for the past several years, the plagues we are suffering now are “diseases of despair.” These include cirrhosis of the liver, suicide, and drug overdoses. In 2015, the pair noted the decline of life expectancy among white, middle-aged Americans from these causes (outstripping other ethnic groups), and in a follow up paper in 2017, they found that the trend was persistent. In addition to overdoses, this population was also more likely to report chronic pain, which is associated with depression and can be a marker for suicide. Case/Deaton cited family breakdown as one cause of the trend.
Suicide has been rising dramatically since 1999 and particularly since 2006. Rates in rural areas far exceed those in cities (perhaps due to the greater availability of guns).
There is some evidence that the fentanyl spike is ebbing – as the crack cocaine craze did in the 1990s. Preliminary data from the first four months of 2018 show the number of drug overdoses plateauing or dropping slightly. An anti-overdose drug called naloxone may be making a difference.
But the overall picture of significant unhappiness in America is clear. Rates of depression have been rising for decades with marked increases since 2005.
What is making so many Americans turn to alcohol and drugs and still others to take their own lives? Explanations will run the gamut. Usually, people will cite their own particular hobby horse, and I may be guilty of that. My obsession is family decline. Due to unmarriage and divorce, more Americans are living alone that at any time in our history. Let me quickly acknowledge that the steep rise in adolescent depression in recent years may well have more to do with social media than anything else. Jean Twenge’s work suggests that girls are particularly vulnerable to online cruelty.
But back to family decline. Not only do divorce and rapidly cycling relationships (and living arrangements) leave adults and especially children emotionally scarred, the loss of secure families also leaves millions of people lonely. In 2010, an AARP survey found that one third of American adults were chronically lonely. In 2000, only one in five had reported feeling that way. The Atlantic magazine has described loneliness as “more dangerous than obesity, and . . . about as deadly as smoking.” In Them, Senator Ben Sasse quotes psychiatrists who believe people are more comfortable describing themselves as depressed than lonely. They noticed that their patients felt “deep shame” about their own isolation.
There ought not to be shame about missing the company of others. We are not meant to be alone, and we don’t find emotional succor or physical satisfaction in relationships with screens. The Washington Post suggests that the solution may be found in more funding for mental health services and drug treatment. Maybe. But it seems to me that we facing not so much a drug problem as a heartbreak problem. The road back to emotional health must include a reemphasis on commitment to family.
Giving Thanks
Our Thanksgiving family tradition is to go around the table and express gratitude for our blessings. It’s such a simple exercise, and yet almost as satisfying as the feasting. Maybe we shouldn’t confine it to Thanksgiving? We have observant Jewish friends who’ve done something like this every week at Shabbat dinners. Each person cites a “highlight of the week.” It sets a tone.
For me there is a spiritual dimension to giving thanks. But even from a purely instrumental perspective, there is good evidence that gratitude increases happiness. As the Harvard Healthbeat newsletter reports, a number of studies have tested this. Dr. Robert A. Emmons of the University of California, Davis, and Dr. Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami designed a study in which participants were divided into three groups. The first was encouraged to record things that had gone well for them. The second took notes on things that irritated them. And the third just wrote down matters that had affected them for good or ill. At the end of 10 weeks, those who wrote about gratitude were more optimistic and felt better about their lives. As a group they also exercised more and had fewer visits to physicians than the other study participants.
Dr. Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania tested a number of interventions on a group of 411 participants. When they were tasked with writing and delivering a letter of thanks to someone who had never been properly appreciated for an act of kindness, their happiness scores shot up, and the effects lingered for a full month.
We’ve focused a lot in the past few years about the darker aspects of human nature – our tribalism, our confirmation bias, our love of aggression – but those are not the whole story. If that were all humans were capable of, we’d all be lost. Consider than even in the sewer that Twitter can be, you will find stories of heroism, kindness to animals (have you seen the one about good Samaritans helping bear cubs escape from a dumpster?), and appreciation for the struggles of the handicapped.
The following people have not done anything near as great as saving bear cubs, but they deserve honorable mention. I hereby express gratitude to the commentators and other public figures who have kept their equilibrium in a difficult time. Some of the conservatives who have helped keep me sane: Jay Nordlinger, Bret Stephens, Ross Douthat, Anne Applebaum, Jonah Goldberg, Kevin Williamson, George Will, Yuval Levin, David Frum, Peter Wehner, Matt Lewis, Eliot Cohen, Bari Weiss, David French, Steve Hayes, and many more.
I am also grateful for a band of indomitable optimists who hope to preserve a humane and enlightened Republican Party: Sarah Longwell, Bill Kristol, Charlie Sykes, and Linda Chavez.
I am likewise deeply appreciative of those on the center left who have reached out to find common ground as tectonic plates shift: Benjamin Wittes, Rachel Pritzker, Ian Bassin, Mike Berkowitz, Bill Maher, Yascha Mounk, and many more.
The past two years have sparked a deeper gratitude for those stubborn non-conformists, the libertarians. We may disagree on some subjects (heck, I don’t even agree with myself 100 percent of the time), but I respect their adherence to principle, which, in our time, feels almost antique: Jerry Taylor, Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Michael Moynihan, Kmele Foster, Brink Lindsay, and many more.
I am grateful to the voters who rewarded more centrist Democrats over more extreme progressives in 2018. Whether the party will get the message is another matter. I am grateful to Republicans like Ben Sasse, Bob Corker, and Jeff Flake. Lindsay Graham? Some days. I hope he has a wonderful holiday.
I am thankful every single day for the genius founders of this country, who designed a system that is proving pretty near fool proof.
And finally, this may surprise you, I’m grateful that Donald Trump is not turning out to be quite as unstable as I feared. He thunders and fumes and has temper tantrums, yes, and he undermines important civic virtues daily. He is the antithesis of grace. He may well set back the cause of conservative governance by a generation, but he seems to be talked out of most of his craziest impulses. His presidency is feeling less like rabies and more like malaria. You can survive malaria.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Making Acosta a Federal Case
Question: What does CNN’s Jim Acosta crave more than anything? If you said “attention,” go to the head of the class. It’s a mystery why the White House has given Acosta way more than that. By yanking his “hard pass,” after last week’s press conference (don’t ask who was obnoxious, they ALL were), Acosta has literally become a federal case. CNN filed suit claiming that their reporter’s First and Fifth amendment rights were violated. More than a dozen news organizations, including Fox, have filed amicus briefs supporting CNN, and even the Trump-friendly FoxNews judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano has opined that Acosta has a strong case. Mr. Showboat is just where he wants to be – the center of attention – but thanks to President Trump’s gratuitous swipe, he is also a free press martyr.
Acosta’s technique has been honed for many months – asking questions not to receive answers but to shame. At the November 7 press conference, Acosta rose to “challenge” the president on what he had said about the caravan during the closing days of the campaign. “As you know Mr. President, the caravan was not an invasion. It’s a group of migrants moving up from Central America towards the border with the U.S.”
It’s not Acosta’s job to joust with the president over interpretations of words. Leave that to commentators or politicians. He could have asked the president where he got his information about Middle Eastern terrorists infiltrating into the caravan, or what his evidence was that there were many criminals in its ranks. He might have asked what purpose U.S. troops would serve at the border in light of the Posse Comitatus Act. He could have asked whether the president thought any of the migrants might have colorable asylum claims. Instead, he demanded “Do you think you demonized immigrants?”
Frankly, if Acosta thinks the president demonized immigrants, let him write an op-ed. A press conference is supposed to be about eliciting information. Acosta doesn’t practice journalism so much as performance art.
The White House handled this mosquito in about the worst possible way. The president could have declined to call on him. Having called on him and been offended by his tone, the president could have refused to take the bait, saying “You might want to run for office yourself. In the meantime, I’ll call on someone who wants to ask a question, not stage a debate.”
Instead, in a fit of petulance, the White House revoked Acosta’s press pass. This is Trump not understanding the import of the office he holds. When Trump the businessman took swipes at press coverage he disliked, it was pique. When the president of the United States does it, it smacks of authoritarianism. Admittedly, the press corps are a high-strung bunch, but this White House flirts with intimidation, calling down contempt for them at rallies, deriding them as the “enemy of the people,” (which is an echo of Stalin, whether Trump recognizes it or not), threatening to sic the FTC on the owner of the Washington Post, and elevating the likes of Gateway Pundit.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who cannot be much more honest than her boss and hope to keep her job, issued a tweet explaining that Acosta was exiled because he had accosted the intern who attempted to remove the mic from his hands. “President Trump believes in a free press and expects and welcomes tough questions of him and his Administration. We will, however, never tolerate a reporter placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern…”
Anyone who watched the exchange – or looked it up on YouTube — knew that this was risible. Yet Sanders said it anyway and even released a video that had been slightly doctored (by speeding it up) to make it seem that Acosta had been physically swatting at the intern.
Within a few days, Sanders changed her tune, claiming instead that the White House cannot run a smooth press conference if reporters hog the mic. But let’s pause to consider where this White House has settled. Covering up for an intemperate retaliation against a journalist, the spokesman for the president of the United States attempted to rewrite the history that we had all seen with our own eyes just days before.
Ms. Sanders would be a great fit in the Ministry of Truth.
Who Votes Republican?
Exit polls aren’t always 100 percent reliable. For example, in 2016, the exit interviews suggested that Donald Trump would lose Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina by small margins. He won all of them.
Let’s take it as given that 2018’s exit polls are likely flawed in the same way. Still, they are among the most interesting polls because they reflect the views of actual voters — not “registered” or “likely,” but the real McCoy. Margins of error we shall always have with us, but it shouldn’t stifle all punditry.
Some of the data about this year’s crop of voters is similar to what we’ve seen in past contests, but there are some trends that should give Republicans and Democrats alike cause for reflection.
A majority of voters (56 percent) were over the age of 50. This helped Republicans, as older voters skew more Republican. But it didn’t help as much as it could have because even among older voters, enthusiasm for Republicans was muted. Among those aged 50 and above, only half gave their votes this year to a Republican candidate. Among the younger set, by contrast, lopsided percentages voted for Democrats. The 18 to 24-year-olds gave 68 percent of their support to Democrats. Among the 25 to 29s, 66 percent voted Democrat. It was 59 percent among voters in their 30s, and 52 percent among those in their 40s.
As in the past, white voters have tilted Republican while minorities strongly favor Democrats. Fifty-four percent of white voters chose the Republican this year, while 90 percent of blacks, 69 percent of Hispanics, 77 percent of Asians, and 54 percent of other races voted Democrat. That Republicans have failed to make inroads with minority voters – who, come what may, will constitute a larger and larger share of the electorate in coming years – will yet cause tears. But even in the shorter run, like 2020, this should make Republicans nervous. Whereas 53 percent of white women voted Republican in 2016, the party lost ground in 2018. An equal number of white women gave their votes to Democrats (49 percent) as to Republicans (49 percent).
Another old reliable group for Republicans has been married adults. Fifty-two percent of married voters chose Trump in 2016. Fifty six percent had been Romney voters in 2012. But in 2018, the percentage of married people who voted Republican dropped to 47 percent. Now it’s possible that many Republican voters sat out this midterm and we are thus getting a skewed picture of how married voters will behave in 2020. But that’s not a good sign for the party’s health either. Republicans are usually better about voting in off years than Democrats.
What about the white, male, non-college grads we’ve heard so much about? Seventy-one percent voted Republican in 2016. In 2018, there was a little slippage. Only 66 percent voted Republican this time. Results were similar for non-college women. It may not mean anything, but when races are won by such slender margins, who can say what’s significant and what isn’t?
Many politicos suggest that elections these days are decided by riling up and turning out the base, not by persuading the middle. Maybe that’s right. But if it isn’t, Republicans might want to look over their shoulders at what’s happening with independents. Fifty-four percent of self-described independents voted Democrat in 2018, compared with only 42 percent in 2016. Among those calling themselves “moderates,” 52 percent voted for Clinton two years ago, while 62 percent voted Democrat on Tuesday.
Democrats too should comb these exit polls for clues to where they’ve gone wrong. Fifty-three percent of voters said President Trump’s immigration policies are either “about right” (33 percent) or “not tough enough” (17 percent). Portraying immigration policy as a contest between the big-hearted and the bigots is not going to serve Democrats well.
A solid 56 percent of voters oppose the suggestion that Congress should impeach President Trump. While 54 percent of voters have an unfavorable view of the president, that is nothing like the 90 percent disapproval among Democrats. Opinions of the Democratic Party aren’t so hot either. Only 48 percent have a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party (versus 44 for the Republican Party), and only 31 percent have a positive view of Nancy Pelosi.
A number of high-profile, high-octane, lefty candidates were defeated – Beto O’Rourke, Andrew Gillum, and (likely) Stacey Abrams. This should cue the Democrats to look to their right for more viable choices. In the Republican Party, alas, it was mostly the moderates who were defeated – another artifact of Trump’s rise. The sensible middle still waits for a voice.
Thinking About Anti-Semitism
In the days following the murder rampage at the Tree of Life synagogue, I received several expressions of grief from friends who are committed Christians. One included in her note a verse from John Donne:
No man is an island entire of itself . . .
any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
This largeness of spirit is what I have come to know and love in America. The incubus of anti-Semitism, so ineradicable and durable everywhere else in the world, has been gloriously and nearly miraculously minimized in the United States. Of course there were episodes. Leo Frank, a young factory manager, was lynched in Georgia in 1915. Henry Ford publicized the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Following Kristallnacht in 1938, radio preacher Father Coughlin told his large audience that the Jews had brought it on themselves. “Jewish persecution only followed after Christians first were persecuted.” The Ivy League and other institutions maintained Jewish quotas, and country clubs and sometimes whole neighborhoods were “restricted.”
But on the whole, and particularly since World War II, America has been a paradise for Jews. I’ve personally encountered more philo-Semitism than anti-Semitism. Is that idyll coming to an end?
During the 2016 presidential campaign, I was among the Jewish journalists who were rocked by a flood of anti-Semitic messages delivered primarily (though not exclusively) through Twitter. The first time I saw a cartoon of myself wearing a yellow Star of David patch and being ushered into an oven, I was almost physically sick. When such messages proliferated, I was forced to ask myself whether this sudden upsurge of naked Jew-hatred was something that had just crawled out from under rocks, or whether it had been there all along and I’d just been unaware of it? I quickly recovered from the shock, and became more and more convinced as time passed that these were not genuine expressions from actual individuals, but fakes or bots generated by Russian trolls or other menaces. That they abruptly ceased after the election tended to confirm this suspicion. Perhaps the Mueller investigation will shed more light on this.
An Anti-Defamation League report about anti-Semitic incidents in the past year has received a lot of attention. It suggested that anti-Semitic violence, threats, vandalism, and other harassment has increased by 57 percent in one year. Others have questioned these data (noting, for example, that it included dozens of bomb threats to Jewish community centers that turned out to have been committed by a mentally unstable Israeli). What no one denies is that Jews still top the list of targets for religious hate crimes (54.4 percent), far outstripping Muslims (24.5 percent), Catholics (3.1 percent), or Mormons (0.5 percent).
And yet: this country remains extraordinary in its attitudes. A counterbalance to the ADL report is a 2017 Pew survey. Asked about various religious groups on a feelings thermometer, Americans reported the warmest sentiments toward Jews. Catholics were second, followed by mainline Protestants. Evangelical Protestants were fourth. I know, I was surprised too. These data are consistent with findings from 2014, except that feelings toward all religious groups have grown warmer.
The Pittsburgh attack was the deadliest crime against American Jews in history. We no longer have the capacity in America to pull together and grieve. There have been too many mass shootings, and polarization has supplanted solidarity in too many hearts. Even among Jews, there is little common ground. Some are quick to blame President Trump for the demagogic tone he has brought to the presidency. Others respond that Trump is a great friend of Israel, has Jewish grandchildren, and has condemned the attack.
The whataboutism is dizzying and dangerous. Liberals tolerate Linda Sarsour and booed the mention of Jerusalem at the Democratic convention in 2012. They close their eyes to intimidation of Jewish and pro-Israel students on American campuses. And conservatives bristle at the suggestion that Trump’s demagogic language and sinister conspiracy-mongering could have anything to do with the actions of Cesar Sayoc or Robert Bowers.
The truth is that anti-Semitism is a sickness of both left and right and fair-minded people must always be especially alert to it among their own. Frank Field recently resigned from Britain’s Labour Party over the anti-Semitism of its leader. All honor to him. William F. Buckley set a standard when he excommunicated anti-Semites and John Birchers from the conservative movement. Today, Trump winks in their direction, and too many on the right forget their principles and salute smartly.
Hyperventilating About the Caravan
A caravan of ragtag, would-be immigrants makes its way through the nations of Honduras (per capita income $4630), El Salvador (per capita income $7540), and Guatemala (per capita income $8000) to Mexico.
The response in the US (per capita income $60,200) – panic.
Hyperventilation is the mode we seem to bring to all challenges in 2018 America. We’ve seen caravans before. There was a 1,500-person caravan that marched north just this past April. Of the band, only 400 actually reached the border and requested asylum. On average, about 22 percent of asylum requests are granted.
Now, contrary to the tone of some left-leaning coverage, it is not inhumane to say that there is no “right” to enter the United States. We don’t have an open-door policy. We have laws and procedures. One of those is asylum.
The caravan coverage on the left is all about babies in strollers and desperate women seeking refuge from criminals. And those stories are heart-wrenching. What they rarely acknowledge is that many migrants, especially able-bodied young men, are simply seeking a better life. There’s nothing immoral about that (in their place, I would do the same), but neither do you get priority in immigration just because you live in a miserable country nearby. To abolish ICE, as some on the left demand, would be the equivalent of throwing open the borders.
Further, only the hopelessly naïve would deny that advocates for immigrants do sometimes coach them. Our asylum law permits entry for those who have a well-founded fear of persecution on the grounds of race, sex, religion, or national origin. Would-be entrants are told how to phrase things: “You will be asked why you are coming to America. Don’t say ‘I want to work.’ You must say you are afraid to return home because of persecution.”
Clearly not all asylum requests are bogus or manufactured, but some are. Things are desperately bad in Honduras and other Central American nations (though not in Costa Rica – per capita income $16,100). Some frantic people really do need asylum. Would you repeal our asylum laws because some make unverifiable claims?
That brings us to the right’s tone about the caravan. Congressman Matt Gaetz made the wild charge that the Hondurans were being paid by George Soros to make the trek and “storm the US border.” President Trump has been sounding the klaxon. The caravan is an “assault on our country,” that the “Democrats had something to do with” and contains “criminals” and “unknown Middle Easterners.” He threatened to cut aid to Central American nations, which the Heritage Foundation has cautioned against, since US aid helps those nations fight drug traffickers and other criminals. The White House issued talking points describing the caravan – still 1000 miles away – as a “crisis” and the Pentagon has announced the deployment of 800 troops to the border. Really? Even if all those folks with strollers and roller bags could cover 10 miles a day, it would still be 2019 before they reached the Rio Grande.
The right is treating these migrants as an invading army. Photos are ricocheting around social media showing Mexican police bloodied by encounters with the caravan. The photos are fake. They’re from 2012, when Mexican police and student protesters got into an altercation. Another inciting photo shows two masked men burning an American flag on which a swastika has been painted. That photo is from an unrelated protest near the US embassy and had nothing to do with the caravan.
There are an estimated 7,000 footsore marchers. Over the course of the next few weeks, it will dwindle. Many will seek asylum in Mexico. Others will turn back.
Though you’d never guess it from the tone of our politics, illegal immigration is at a 40-year low. Mexicans (per capita income $17,740) once accounted for 98 percent of illegal crossings. That has now dropped to 50 percent. Mexico is getting more prosperous, which, for many reasons including illegal immigration, is what we should want for all of Latin America. The total number of yearly illegal entries has declined from 1.5 million in 2000 to about 300,000 today. We might want to increase the number of immigration judges on the border, the better to process claims of asylum. But let’s keep our perspective. As the Weekly Standard’s Jim Swift reminds us, during its heyday at the turn of the 20th century, Ellis Island was admitting 5,000 immigrants per day.
A caravan of poor people marching north to signify their misery is not a national emergency. Our inability to keep our heads might be.
Elizabeth Warren Highlights the Danger of Racial Identity
She was mocked as “Fauxcahontas” long before President Trump began referring to her as “Pocahontas,” and frankly, Sen. Elizabeth Warren invited the ridicule. She is a poster child for the pitfalls of basing identity on race and reminds us of the many furies such self-definition unleashes.
What people choose to call themselves shouldn’t matter to outsiders. If I want to call myself a post-Jerseyite dog lover, no one will care, unless there is affirmative action for former Jersey residents who can’t skip dog videos on Twitter.
What made Elizabeth Warren infuriating is that she was gaming the system. There is a clear career advantage at leading law schools, as in other institutions, to being a member of a minority group. Warren apparently secured a position at the University of Pennsylvania Law School without the minority credential. But while at Penn, she dusted off some “family lore” and began to list herself as “native American.” Who knows if this helped get her a slot at Harvard Law? As columnist Jeff Jacoby has reported, Harvard highlighted Warren as a Native American when it was accused of lacking a diverse faculty, and the Fordham Law Review bestowed on the blond-haired, blue-eyed Warren the title “Harvard Law’s first woman of color.” Seriously.
This charade reveals the bankruptcy of the practice – well-intentioned at first – of granting benefits based upon race. With DNA testing now routine, nearly anyone can rummage around in the genetic attic and come up with an ancestor, especially a distant one, who is of a different ethnic group. In fact, as Warren has been reminded 1,000 times in the past few days, most “white” Americans have roughly the same non-European genetic markers as she. Why Warren thought this excursion “even unto the 10th generation” would bolster her claim is anyone’s guess.
Even if Warren’s interpretation of the genetic test is correct, i.e., it proves that she has some tiny genetic contribution from Native Americans, it doesn’t make her disadvantaged, does it? She didn’t suffer discrimination or prejudice based upon her native American identity. Neither did her great grandparents.
Warren is hardly the first race impostor in academia. Ward Churchill had the University of Colorado buying his native American cock-and-bull story for decades, until a particularly vicious article calling the Americans who died on 9/11 “little Eichmanns” gained notoriety. Rachel Dolezal was an officer of the NAACP and taught Africana Studies.
But the problem with race preferences is broader than the inevitable frauds it encourages. What the left did not anticipate when it valorized identity politics for its favored groups was that eventually, some in the majority would begin to engage in the same kind of self-definition. When it seems that so many major institutions – universities, the news and entertainment media, big corporations – grant special status to some groups based on identity and not on disadvantage, the majority will be tempted to seize the same flag.
Also, the very idea of race as a place holder for disadvantage, and particularly for historic wrongs, is problematic. In 2004, two black Harvard professors, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Lani Guinier, noted that among Harvard’s black graduates, the majority and perhaps as many as two-thirds, were not the descendants of American slaves, but instead were West Indian or African immigrants, the children of immigrants, or the products of mixed-race couples.
Data from the Department of Education show that 59 percent of black college students are the children of college graduates. This is less than among whites (75 percent), but still raises the question: Are the black children of college graduates really in need of preferences? If the aim of affirmative action is to secure a certain percentage of minority students, race preferences are a success. But if the goal is to help the descendants of those who were enslaved and abused, they are much less so.
There are many other pitfalls to racial preferences (lower graduation rates and higher student debt among blacks among them), but their most pernicious effect is to enhance, rather than minimize, the importance we attach to ethnic identity.
A 2017 poll found that 55 percent of white Americans believe that they face discrimination, and some in the alt-Right are chugging milk to demonstrate the supposed superiority of white people. Sometimes, people can only see how toxic race identity is when the race they fear adopts it.
Why Do We Care About Jamal Khashoggi?
He had an appointment at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to collect some documents he needed to marry his Turkish fiancé — a certificate showing that he was divorced from his first wife. He entered the consulate on October 2 at 1:14 p.m., asking his fiancé to wait outside for him. She did. Until 2 a.m. He never emerged.
A number of news outlets, citing Turkish sources, are reporting that Jamal Khashoggi, the former editor of a Saudi newspaper, regime critic, and Washington Post contributor, was murdered. The New York Times quoted sources who said that 15 Saudi agents from the security services, including one autopsy expert, entered Turkey that same day on two chartered flights. They departed that evening. The Saudis claim that Khashoggi left the consulate an hour after he arrived and have no idea what became of him. The Turks would like to send a forensic team inside, but the Saudis have refused.
The story is making headlines around the world. Murder and possible dismemberment in a diplomatic facility will do that. President Trump, who has forged very close ties with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (“MBS”), has described it as “a very sad situation, it’s a very bad situation. We cannot let this happen, to reporters, to anybody.”
If, as looks very likely, Khashoggi was kidnapped and murdered on the orders of MBS, it should be a cautionary tale for the crown prince’s overly enthusiastic fans in the West. Just six months ago, the 33-year-old MBS spent three weeks in the U.S. meeting leaders of business and government. In addition to an Oval Office session, he met Hollywood bigwigs Morgan Freeman, James Coleman, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. CBS’s “60 Minutes” hailed MBS as a “revolutionary” who was emancipating women. He was received by Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Rupert Murdoch, and Steven Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group. Jared Kushner reportedly felt that the two young scions understood one another, and helped persuade President Trump to make Saudi Arabia his first foreign destination.
But Mohammad bin Salman’s nods in the direction of reform – he has permitted movie theaters in the kingdom to open for the first time in decades, and women now have the right to drive (at least in theory) – shouldn’t cause hearts to flutter. The history of western wishful thinking about “reformist” dictators is very, very long and nearly always ends in tears. After Brezhnev died, the American press was suddenly enamored of former KGB head Yuri Andropov. He spoke English! He “relaxed with American novels.” The Washington Post reported that he “is fond of cynical political jokes with an antiregime twist…. collects abstract art, likes jazz and Gypsy music,” and “has a record of stepping out of his high party official’s cocoon to contact dissidents.”
It was the purest KGB disinformation, but we so wanted it to be true. Andrew Young called the Ayatollah Khomeini a “saint.” George McGovern compared Ho Chi Minh to George Washington. And Hillary Clinton described Bashar al-Assad as a “reformer.”
MBS has made reformist noises, it’s true. But the arrests and convictions of peaceful protestors have not abated. If anything, they’ve increased. On October 28, Israa al-Ghomgham, a female Shia activist faces trial and possible execution. Human Rights Watch says the charges against her and are not recognizable as crimes. They include “participating in protests, chanting slogans hostile to the regime, attempting to inflame public opinion and filming protests and publishing on social media” (per the Guardian).
The crown prince has also prosecuted a war in Yemen that has drawn condemnation for heedless attacks on civilians.
MBS seems to have hair trigger about criticism from abroad as well. When Canada’s foreign minister tweeted out a call for the Saudi monarchy to release two jailed dissidents, bin Salman went to Defcon 4. He cut all ties with Canada, ordered all Saudi students home from Canadian universities, and expelled the ambassador.
According to the Washington Post, intelligence intercepts reveal that Mohammad bin Salman devised a plan to lure Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia and detain him. It looks as if he might have ordered something quite a bit worse.
Sometimes you have to deal with bad actors on the world stage. But you don’t have to delude yourself about who and what they are.
A Word on Behalf of Religion
These have been hard times for American institutions. Over the past four to five decades, confidence in nearly every institution of American life has declined. A 2018 Gallup survey found, for example, that trust in Congress stood at 42 percent in 1973 and dropped to 11 percent this year. Only 29 percent of Americans gave high ratings to public schools in 2018, compared with 58 percent in 1973. Newspapers have lost altitude too with only 23 percent today expressing “quite a lot” or a “great deal” of trust in them. In 1975, 52 percent had confidence in the presidency, compared with 37 percent today. The data are similar for the medical system, TV news, and banks. The only institution showing improvement was the military. (Small business was mostly trusted and held steady over the decades.)
However much some institutions may seem to merit this loss of trust – and we could throw in the political parties too – a generalized cynicism about our system and, in the end, one another, is a corrosive thing for a society. We might want to consider whether our curdled opinions are entirely merited.
Organized religion has suffered the worst loss of reputation. In 1973, 65 percent of Americans expressed strong trust. That has declined to 38 percent in 2018.
The ongoing scandals involving sexual abuse in the Catholic Church have doubtless contributed to organized religion’s loss of standing. That some major evangelical leaders, like Robert Jeffress, Tony Perkins, and Jerry Falwell, Jr., have become shameless flacks for a cruel and immoral president has sullied their own reputations while giving the side eye to the faith that supposedly commands non-situational ethics.
That’s why a recent survey by the Voter Study Group examining the views of religious versus secular Trump voters is so interesting. One of the myths that has hardened since the 2016 election is that religious people were particularly stalwart Trump fans. Emily Ekins, who authored the study, corrects that: “Religious conservatives were less likely to vote for Trump in the early G.O.P. primaries when Republicans had several candidates to choose from. Among the most devout, a plurality (39 percent) voted for Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) rather than Donald Trump (34 percent). However, Trump did best among those conservatives who never go to church, garnering fully 69 percent of their votes in the early primaries.”
Though most religious Republicans and conservatives eventually voted for Trump in the general election, their attitudes toward issues do not place them in what commentator John Ziegler has dubbed “Cult 45” – the rally-attending, diehard core of Trump fans.
Ekins has labelled the most Trump-sympathetic group, about 20 percent of his voters, as “American preservationists.” Of all Trump supporters, they are the least religious. But other identities have substituted. Fully 67 percent of them say that their race is “extremely or very important” to their identity (compared with a maximum of 39 percent among other Trump voters), and 48 percent expressed authoritarian tendencies, supporting a “strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress or elections.” Among more than weekly church goers, only 9 percent said being white was “extremely important” to their identity.
Among religiously observant Trump voters, strong majorities have favorable views toward blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, whereas secular Trump voters are cooler. The most religious Trump voters are also much better disposed toward international trade and more likely to favor a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants. The religious are also much less alienated than the secular. They are less likely to report annoyance at having to deal with limited English immigrants, and less likely to say that they “feel like strangers in their own country.”
Ekins found the same effects of church attendance that other studies have found – that the observant are much more likely to volunteer, for example, and not just at their own churches. But the most interesting finding in her work is the that the non-religious Trump voters are the ones who seem to have poured their need to belong into politics. Not only does this leave them unmoored from their local communities, and open to finding identity in ethnicity, it also substitutes the passions and hatreds of politics for the time-tested wisdom of faith.
Those on the left who reflexively cheer the decline of religion may want to reconsider. And those on the right should reflect on the damage that a too-close association of religion and politics does to both.
Show Trials
Karl Marx, commenting on the ascension of Louis Napoleon, wrote, “History repeats itself: The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” The drama over Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation has reversed the order. It began as farce. Protesters dressed in Handmaid’s Tale red capes lined the halls of Senate office buildings. Senator Kamala Harris behaved like a heckler at her own committee’s hearing. Senator Cory Booker invited martyrdom by claiming to break a rule that he didn’t actually violate. The Democratic senators demanded documents that might have passed over Kavanaugh’s desk in the Bush Administration despite the fact that they had already announced their intention to vote against him. (Senators Amy Klobuchar and Chris Coons clearly didn’t get the memo and conducted themselves as if they were actually seeking insight into Kavanaugh’s views of the judiciary.)
Then it descended into tragedy. Senator Dianne Feinstein, at the 11th hour, announced that she had referred an anonymous accusation to the FBI. She had been in possession of the information since July but held it. As Gregg Nunziata, former chief nominations counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee outlined in The Weekly Standard, such accusations are common. Procedures are in place to investigate them confidentially, sometimes involving the FBI, sometimes not. But this one was treated as an ace in the hole. Its existence was strategically leaked when it could do the maximum damage.
After someone on the committee leaked Christine Blasey Ford’s identity, the real show trial – the one conducted in the media – got rolling. Story after story appeared about women and girls who’d been attacked or abused and kept silent. The Atlantic ran a piece by Caitlin Flanagan subtitled, “When I was in high school, I faced my own Brett Kavanaugh.” Prejudicial, you think?
The New Yorker account of an incident at Yale seemed not so much reported, as extracted with forceps. Deborah Ramirez’s memory of an event was so hazy that she consulted classmates about whether they recalled it, and took six days to think over whether it was Kavanaugh or someone else. The Julie Swetnick story of rape trains seems literally incredible.
Dozens of retrospectives of the Anita Hill hearings have been lovingly presented, with agonized commentary suggesting that if Kavanaugh is confirmed it will be a verdict on whether our nation has changed since the 1990s. Left-leaning outlets basically decreed Kavanaugh guilty due to his skin color and background. USA Today said “prep school elites take care of their own.” Salon fumed about “class, social capital, and endless privilege,” and Vox filled us in on how elite schools “enable toxic masculinity.”
The stampede to judgment was reminiscent of the Duke lacrosse case and the Rolling Stone “rape on campus” story. In both instances, the accused were deemed guilty of being white and privileged and therefore presumed guilty of far worse. It’s the exact mirror image of presumptions of guilt that often attach to African American men. It all depends upon who is doing the presuming. If you’re generally hostile to white men, or nurture grievances about class privilege, you throw the presumption of innocence out the window. Similarly, if you’re afraid of black people, it’s hard to remember that, high crime statistics notwithstanding, the majority of black men are law-abiding. In any case, whatever observations we make about a group – and some are correct as generalizations, for example, women are less likely to be sexual predators than men – it is always unjust to judge an individual because of his membership in a group.
Another often-repeated theme is that in the past “women were not believed,” and accordingly justice demands that we believe them now. Well, it’s certainly true that women used to be impeached in rape cases when lawyers would use their sexual histories against them. Rape shield laws put an end to that. But the issue is more complicated than the slogan suggests. Rape and sexual assault cases are difficult because they almost always involve a crime that happens in private. The consequences of a guilty finding are so severe that every attempt has to be made to test the victim’s account.
Which brings us to the dueling stories presented Thursday. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford seemed honest and reliable. Judge Kavanaugh seemed equally so, as well as understandably outraged at what he called the “search and destroy” nature of this process. How are outsiders expected to judge where the truth lies? Shall we believe the woman because she’s a woman?
I don’t know who’s lying, if anyone is. But I do know that this carnival has had little to do with truth.
Kavanaugh in the #MeToo Era
In the wake of the revelation of Christine Blasey Ford’s identity, some have suggested that her allegation against Brett Kavanaugh will be handled more sensitively than such accusations once were thanks to the #MeToo movement. That may turn out to be true, but only if at least one other woman comes forward with similar charges.
#MeToo gave courage to women, and some men, to speak up about sexual harassment and abuse. It helped to clarify that gross sexual misconduct is not a perk of power. It revived a sense of shame. Whereas for too long, many women felt powerless in the face of this abuse, the movement offered strength in numbers. Once one victim of a brutish man found her voice, others summoned the courage to come forward.
And there were always others. The high-profile men felled by #MeToo: Harvey Weinstein, John Conyers, Jr., Louis C.K., Charlie Rose, Mark Halperin, Bill O’Reilly, Kevin Spacey, Roger Ailes, and others faced accusations from multiple victims. That’s the way such men are. They’re predators. Few of the accused even denied the allegations.
In this sense, the #MeToo movement was different from the message “rape culture” activists have cultivated on college campuses. Often, their slogan is “believe all women.” Why would a woman lie about something like that, knowing that her character is likely to be sullied?
Well, most women don’t lie about rape, but some do. The student accuser in the Rolling Stone account of a rape at the University of Virginia fabricated the whole story. She may have been seeking attention or sympathy, or she may have had emotional problems. Emma Sulkowicz, who gained fame dragging a mattress around Columbia University, probably lied about her experience. The university apologized to the man she accused. A Hofstra University student claimed to have been gang raped, but a cell phone video showed otherwise. She was apparently attempting to deceive her boyfriend about her whereabouts. The Scottsboro boys became the most famous falsely accused men in American history because white girls on a train during the Depression didn’t want to admit being friendly with black boys.
So, yes, women are human and flawed and sometimes dishonest. That’s important to keep in mind in any dispute. Another woman in this tale, Sen. Diane Feinstein, reeks of bad faith. She has had this information since July but held it until one week before the vote. She says she didn’t reveal it earlier, not even in closed session, because Ford wasn’t willing to disclose her identity. Yet Feinstein released the existence of the accusation on Friday, two days before Ford went public.
The Kavanaugh accusation has other complications.
Memories fade with the passage of time. It has been 36 years. Christine Blasey Ford herself doesn’t recall key details about the encounter such as the year it happened or the house where it took place. She told no one at the time (which doesn’t mean she’s lying, only that corroboration is absent). She may have him confused with someone else. According to Ford’s account, Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge locked her in a room. Kavanaugh had pinned her on the bed using his body weight and was tearing at her clothes. When she tried to scream, he covered her mouth. Judge then allegedly jumped on top of both of them. In the jumble, she was able to free herself. She says she locked herself in a bathroom until the boys stumbled down the stairs. Judge may not have a perfect memory – he has acknowledged trouble with alcohol – but he told The Weekly Standard that “It’s just absolutely nuts. I never saw Brett act that way.”
There is also the question of responsibility. Is 17 too young to be held accountable for such behavior? It’s a close call, but in the end, it’s a question of character. It’s possible to imagine a 17-year-old behaving like a lout and then regretting it deeply and becoming a pillar of society. And it’s possible that a teenaged abuser was just getting started on a career of assault.
Kavanaugh issued a blanket denial: “This is a completely false accusation. I have never done anything like what the accuser describes – to her or anyone.” If he’s innocent, that’s obviously right and necessary. If he were guilty, and reformed, the awful act itself might be forgivable, if he acknowledged guilt. And if, God forbid, he’s lying, his entire reputation as a man of integrity totters.
This is why it’s crucial to see whether this accusation is a one-off or part of a pattern. Everything we know about Kavanaugh — from his friends, colleagues, students, and community — suggests that that he is not just a good guy, but an extraordinarily generous and upright person. He coaches girls’ basketball. He volunteers at homeless shelters. He’s a good husband. He tutors needy kids. He does minority outreach for law school students. He attends church.
Maybe it’s all a charade, but we should be loath to draw that conclusion without at least one more woman stepping up to recount a similar experience. Absent that, his whole adult life tips the scales far more than one uncorroborated accusation.
What the NY Times Misses About Poverty
It’s an affecting story. Matthew Desmond, writing in the New York Times Magazine, profiles Vanessa Solivan, a poor single mother raising three children. Vanessa works as a home health aide, yet she and her three teen children are often reduced to sleeping in her car, a 2004 Chrysler Pacifica. In the morning, she takes her two daughters and one son to her mother’s house to wash and get ready for school. Vanessa has diabetes. Her work brings in between $10 and $14 per hour depending upon the health coverage of the mostly elderly patients she cares for. But because of her responsibilities to her children, Vanessa works only 20 to 30 hours per week. That doesn’t provide enough to keep this family of four above the poverty line.
Yes, Vanessa gets government benefits. Between the Earned Income Tax Credit and child credits, she received $5000 from Uncle Sam last year. She also gets SNAP (food stamps), but when one of her daughters qualified for SSI last year due to a disability and began receiving $766 per month, the family’s SNAP assistance was reduced from $544 to $234 per month.
And so, they struggle. When they can find an apartment Vanessa can afford, they have a home. But they fled the last one when a young man was shot and killed nearby. When they have no fixed address, they often eat grab-and-go food, which tends to be unhealthy, especially for someone with diabetes. The local food pantry offers mac and cheese, which is also an undesirable option for a diabetic, but it’s her son’s favorite. Vanessa’s son has gotten into trouble at school for fighting. Her father became ill and she nursed him too, spooning food into his mouth and changing his bed pans.
Desmond’s aim in this profile of poverty is to challenge the assumptions that many Americans harbor about the poor. “In America, if you work hard, you will succeed. So those who do not succeed have not worked hard.” This is the idea Desmond describes as “deep in the marrow” of the nation. He suggests that this is mostly myth, but the data he cites are carefully phrased, and frankly, misleading. He juxtaposes a survey showing that most Americans believe the poor don’t want to work with the following statistic: in 2016, “a majority of nondisabled working-age adults were part of the labor force.” Yes, but the data are quite different for the poor. Census Bureau data show that among adults living in poverty aged 18-64 in 2015, 63 percent did not work, 26 percent worked part-time, and 11 percent worked full-time, year-round.
The descriptor, “part of the labor force,” includes everyone who works at all and includes those looking for work. As for the disabled category – which has become somewhat controversial because the definitions are so variable from state to state – it includes a great many non-workers now for complex reasons. As Nicholas Eberstadt notes in Men Without Work, one out of six prime-age men (18-54) is not connected to the labor force.
Desmond cites changes to work itself. Vanessa’s story is meant to be emblematic. “Millions of Americans work with little hope of finding security and comfort. In recent decades, America has witnessed the rise of bad jobs offering low pay, no benefits and little certainty. When it comes to poverty, a willingness to work is not the problem, and work itself is no longer the solution.”
It may well be true that low-level, unskilled jobs are less of a ladder out of poverty than they once were. But the other aspect of Vanessa’s plight, and that of her children, Desmond and most analysts resolutely refuse to grapple with. It’s familial. We learn that the father of two of her children has made erratic child support payments, and apart from one trip to Chuck E’ Cheese, has played no role in his children’s lives. The father of the youngest was sent to prison when she was 1, released when she was 8, and murdered shortly thereafter. There is no indication that Vanessa was ever married.
Work is available in America, but for those with low skills and major family responsibilities, one income is simply not enough, especially for three children. According to US News and World Report, home health aides average $23,600 per year. If two home health aides are married, they earn enough to be comfortably in the middle class. They will almost certainly not face homelessness.
The New York Times Magazine was attempting to spotlight the failure of work to solve all problems. But it felled a straw man. Who thinks work alone is sufficient? And it failed to address the root of so much dysfunction in America – family dissolution.
Memo to Dems: Upholding Norms Is a Two-Way Street
Many of the current president’s critics on the left insist that they are standing up for norms of democratic conduct and for democracy itself. Some are sincere. Neal Katyal, for example, who served as principal deputy solicitor general in the Obama administration, endorsed Neal Gorsuch for the Supreme Court. Liberal feminist lawyer Lisa Blatt penned an op-ed in Politico praising Brett Kavanaugh. Her standard, she wrote, was whether the nominee was “unquestionably well-qualified, brilliant, has integrity and is within the mainstream of legal thought. Kavanaugh easily meets these criteria.”
But the Democratic members of the Senate judiciary committee have this week undermined the norms of decency they claim to uphold. They have contributed to the sense that things are out of control.
The opening of the Kavanaugh hearing was a circus. One after another, Democratic senators, starting with Kamala Harris of California, interrupted and talked over the committee’s chairman as he was welcoming the nominee. “Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman. We cannot possibly move forward.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal moved to adjourn the hearing, and was echoed by Senators Hirono and Booker. At the same time, scads of protesters arose, at carefully timed intervals, to screech their incoherent bile at the entire process. They were escorted out. Chairman Grassley must have been tempted to ask the sergeant at arms to offer the same treatment to Harris, et al. In fact, the Republicans must have been tempted to accept the Democrats’ challenge and cancel the hearing altogether. The Republicans have the votes, and can simply report out Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the floor. If they did, the Democrats would lose their soapbox. The final outcome – a foregone conclusion in any case – would not be affected.
The only Democrat to object to this descent into chaos was Sen. Dianne Feinstein. In a nod to the zoo-like tenor of the hearing, she told Kavanaugh “I’m sorry for the circumstances but we’ll get through it.” For this, she was predictably skewered by progressives.
Next, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker flamboyantly violated Senate rules (the penalty for which can include expulsion from the body) by releasing some of Kavanaugh’s emails that were deemed “committee confidential.” Booker, whose first name might as well be “likely presidential candidate,” chose his subjects with all the subtlety of a jackhammer. One email contained Kavanaugh’s caution to George W. Bush’s transportation department that a particular program looked like a “naked racial set aside.” Booker implied that Kavanaugh’s use of the term implied racial insensitivity, but in fact, the Supreme Court had ruled set asides to be invalid, so it was completely sensible for the staff secretary, a lawyer and former Supreme Court clerk, to alert the agency that it was on shaky legal ground. The other email Booker waved about like a bloody shirt bore the subject line “racial profiling.” This email, dating from the early post-9/11 era, apparently contains Kavanaugh’s recommendation – drumroll please – that the government refrain from racial profiling!
If Booker has made a fool of himself, and flouted Senate procedures in the process, most of his Democratic colleagues bought in too. As Booker himself crowed after several of his colleagues, including minority leader Chuck Schumer, weighed in on his behalf, “This is about the closest I’ll ever have in my life to an ‘I am Spartacus’ moment.” Someone also took the step of leaking many other emails to the New York Times.
Kamala Harris, in the most peculiar exchange with the nominee, darkly implied that Kavanaugh had some nefarious connection to someone who worked at a law firm founded by Trump’s lawyer Marc Kasowitz. Kavanaugh was perplexed, but clarified the following day that he had no connections of any kind to that firm. Harris’s sinister insinuations look both bullying and foolish.
If you’re truly concerned about norms, surely the rules of the Senate and ordinary civility and respect for one’s opposition should rank high. Yet Democrats were content to stoke absurd suspicions that Kavanaugh had snubbed the father of one the Parkland shooting victims, when any benefit of the doubt would have shown that it was simply a case of an unknown man approaching him and security intervening to usher him away. And in the fever swamps of the left, the accusation of a “white power” symbol blazed across Twitter for a few hours.
Some of us take our lumps holding our own side to account. The Democrats need to reflect seriously on the fact that norms are more than a cudgel to use against Republicans.
The GOP Is Monkeyed Up
There comes a point when even the most indulgent listener must doubt whether political figures deserve the benefit of the doubt. Ron DeSantis, that means you.
In what should have been a celebratory interview after his victory in the Republican primary for governor of Florida, DeSantis seemed spooked by the upset win of Democrat Andrew Gillum, the black mayor of Tallahassee. DeSantis called Gillum “charismatic,” and an “articulate spokesman” while also warning that he was too left for Florida. “I watched those Democrats debate,” he said “and none of that is just my cup of tea, but he performed better than the other people there, so we gotta work hard to make sure that we continue Florida going in a good direction.” So far, so good. But then DeSantis added “The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases bankrupting the state.”
He could have said “mess this up.” In our rude era, he could even have said “screw this up.” But he chose the word “monkey.” His spokesman says those taking offense are crazy to imagine that he intended a dog whistle. Maybe that’s true. I hope it is. A couple of years ago, I suspect I would have vehemently insisted that it was so. But I’m no longer so sure. I live in Virginia, where Republicans have actually nominated alt-right friendly Corey Stewart for the U.S. Senate. I’ve seen the Republican Party look down and kick the dirt as President Trump has poked his stick into one sensitive racial issue after another. Picking fights with black NFL players over the national anthem is a dog whistle that all of us can hear. Tarring all immigrants with MS-13, ditto.
Well, Republicans counter, there’s no purchase in criticizing Trump. See what became of Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, and Mark Sanford? We don’t approve of Trump’s cruel and dehumanizing language, but what good does it do to criticize him? If we speak up, we’ll just be replaced by a Trumpier Republican. Thus does cowardice masquerade as pragmatism.
What if an opportunity arises to make a point about racial harmony that doesn’t even involve Trump? Consider the proposal floated earlier this week by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to rename the Russell Senate Office Building after the late John McCain. You would have thought this was a no brainer. Senator Richard Russell was a segregationist Democrat who helped filibuster civil rights legislation and signed the Southern Manifesto. Here was an opportunity for Republicans to withdraw the honor from a Democrat who didn’t merit it in favor of one of their own, who did.
How did Republican members of the Senate respond? Senator Richard Shelby (R. AL), himself a Democrat until the convenient year of 1994 when Republicans took control of Congress, was sentimental about Russell. “Senator Russell was a well-respected man from the South and up here too,” said Shelby said, adding that he was “a man of his time. If you want to get into that you have to get into George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and all of our — most of our Founding Fathers, maybe with the exception of Hamilton,” he said. “It’s easy to prejudge what they should have done.”
Georgia Senator David Perdue, a Republican mind you, sprang to Russell’s defense in an even more surprising way. “This was an icon in the United States Senate. He was Lyndon Johnson’s close adviser. They did the Great Society together. So, people would criticize Richard Russell for maybe being on the wrong side of the integration movement, but my goodness he turned around and got the school lunch program done. He did that himself.”
Actually, the school lunch program was passed in 1946, long before Russell’s filibuster of the civil rights act. And it wasn’t an act of beneficence by Uncle Sam. It was a way to dispose of the surplus food that other government programs, namely farm subsidies, had created. But never mind the historical error, focus on the fact that a supposedly conservative Republican is praising Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society! Is it any wonder that their budget has exceeded the fondest wishes of Barack Obama?
Great swaths of Republicans are not just biting their tongues about Trump, they are convinced that his white nationalist path is the right one.
Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana didn’t want to insult McCain’s memory, but suggested that they find another way to honor him.
Maybe they will, but do they recognize how they have dishonored themselves?
Imperial Me
An avid fan of President Trump, she carried a red Make America Great Again hat in the backseat of her car. But when she was asked to render a verdict on Paul Manafort, she voted guilty. Juror Paula Duncan told Fox News that “Finding Mr. Manafort guilty was hard for me. I wanted him to be innocent, I really wanted him to be innocent, but he wasn’t. That’s the part of a juror, you have to have due diligence and deliberate and look at the evidence and come up with an informed and intelligent decision, which I did.” Duncan also revealed that 11 members of the jury were convinced that Manafort was guilty of all 18 counts, but one holdout forced a hung jury on 10 counts.
Duncan is a rare spirit in our polarized age. She adhered to values higher than partisanship, namely the truth. Duncan believes that Manafort’s criminality would never have been prosecuted had he not been connected to the Trump campaign (which is probably true, but irrelevant to guilt or innocence). She goes even further, and echoes Trump in labelling the Mueller probe a “witch hunt.” And yet, she would not discount the evidence before her eyes.
Not so the president. He saw the Manafort verdict (and the Cohen plea) as he sees everything –purely as a reflection of his own interests. So Manafort, who did not cooperate with the prosecution – perhaps in hopes of receiving a pardon — was “a good man . . . such respect for a brave man” who did not “break.”
It’s possible to imagine a different reaction. “I am disappointed to learn that my former associate was dishonest. Everyone has a duty to obey the law, whether those laws involve immigration, street crime, or white-collar crime. I’m thinking of his family at this difficult time.”
But Trump is indifferent to guilt. That Manafort flagrantly evaded paying taxes on millions in income the better to indulge his lavish lifestyle, hid income in overseas accounts, committed bank fraud, and specialized in serving a “torturers lobby” of foreign despots including Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, and Ukraine’s Viktor Yanukovych (a Putin stooge) apparently doesn’t factor into Trump’s evaluation of his character. Trump has one standard, and one standard only: How loyal are you to Trump?
Because that is the only yardstick by which Trump judges others, it’s possible to swing from hero to goat in no time. Reflecting for the 1000th time on Jeff Sessions, Trump whined to Fox News that the “only reason” he chose him for Attorney General was because he “felt loyalty.” Not because he agreed on policy. Not because he thought him honorable or capable. Rinse and repeat for Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, Joe Scarborough, Steve Bannon, etc, etc. Omarosa Manigault Newman was a “star” and a “fine person” in September, 2016. When John Kelly approached the president about letting her go due to erratic behavior, the president resisted. Why? Because “she says great things about me.” The imperial, sovereign, all-conquering ME. Now that she is peddling dirt on Trump, which is about as surprising as the sun rising in the east, she’s a “dog” and “vicious, but not smart.”
Note the “but.” Viciousness has its place apparently.
Which brings us to Michael Cohen, the lawyer who watched too many Mafia movies, but whose tactics apparently didn’t faze his employer. Having heard that a reporter might write a story concerning a rape allegation in Trump’s first divorce (later rescinded), Cohen phoned the man: “So I’m warning you, tread very f—ing lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be f—ing disgusting. You understand me? You write a story that has Mr. Trump’s name in it, with the word rape, and I’m going to mess your life up … for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet … you’re going to have judgments against you, so much money, you’ll never know how to get out from underneath it.”
Cohen, facing years in prison for a variety of crimes, has now violated omerta, and earned Trump’s contempt. Some, like the taxi medallion frauds, don’t involve the president. Others do. Still others are hinted at. Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis, is presenting his client as a latter-day Oskar Schindler, beset by conscience, and suggests that Cohen may have evidence of the one thing Trump most vociferously denies – collusion with the Russians.
Maybe he does and maybe he doesn’t. But nothing we’ve so far discovered about Donald Trump’s moral compass suggests that he would scruple to accept help from any dubious source. He might even praise Vladimir Putin as “fine” – oh, wait.
Define “Historic”
Tuesday’s primary results were hailed as “historic” by a number of media outlets. “Vermont Democrats made history Tuesday” declared the Burlington Free Press. NPR framed the matter with the same word, “historic,” as did the New York Times, ABC, and others. Most were pealing the bells for Vermont’s first “openly transgender” candidate for governor, Christine Hallquist. Hallquist was born male but now prefers to dress as a woman. Her success in the Democratic primary is being celebrated as comparable to the breakthroughs of African-American candidates (here is the New York Times video trumpeting a “night of firsts”).
The words “history” or “historic” in the mouths of progressives are always laudatory. They are honorifics, not descriptions. After all, lots of things are firsts – a Holocaust-denying, Nazi sympathizer made it onto the ballot on the Republican ticket in Illinois’s 3rd congressional district. That doesn’t get described as historic. Donald Trump is the first person to be elected without any previous governmental service at all. That’s not historic. No, progressives have a proprietary feeling about history. They are convinced that it “bends toward justice” as Barack Obama was fond of quoting, and that it will inevitably trend their way.
I’ve always found this an inexplicable fantasy since, among other things, the world witnessed within living memory one of the most progressive nations on the planet (Germany) descend into barbarism within the space of a few short years. Where was history’s benevolent guiding hand then? And where was it when those tribunes of history, the Soviet commissars, starved and enslaved and shot upwards of 20 million people? Or when Venezuela transitioned from the richest to the poorest country in Latin America?
Hallquist’s chief claim to office appears to be her sexuality since she confessed ignorance about economics during a recent CNN interview. Asked if she supported socialism, she said: “Yes, but I don’t even know what socialism is, so I’m not sure I have the background to answer that question.” Asked whether she supported capitalism, she said “Well, obviously, the long history of measuring ourselves by increases in the gross domestic product is a flawed measure because that just encourages consumption. And we can see what consumption is doing to our world.”
Part of the progressive project is to shoehorn certain new nonconformists, particularly sexual nonconformists, into the minority category. These favored groups – transgenders are the flavor of the month – are compared explicitly to African-Americans, and thus any accomplishment is celebrated as progress for them personally and for our society for shedding its prejudice. In fact, the civil rights template is the only way liberals can understand events at all. They have no other lens. And so they insist upon lionizing people who choose to behave and dress like the other sex as if they’re all Rosa Parks.
This is not to say that we should treat transgenders with anything but tolerance and understanding. If grown-up Americans choose to surgically alter their bodies and inject themselves with hormones to resemble the opposite sex, fine. That’s their business. And people deserve to be called what they choose to be called. If someone born a man now wears a dress and had breast implants and wants me to call him “she,” I will respect that (even if I do not believe that makes him a woman). It’s important to be polite and respectful.
But the celebration of transgenders doesn’t stop with adults. In the blink of an eye – and with no scientific consensus – honoring the “cross-gender identities” of even small children is becoming commonplace. The great portcullis of political correctness has slammed down on those who plead for a little common sense when it comes to kids. Tiny children too young for kindergarten are being dressed and groomed as the opposite sex. Older children are being given puberty-blocking hormones in preparation for surgical transition.
Parents are counseled by “experts” that if they do not ratify their child’s gender identity, they may be consigning him or her to depression or suicide. Look, there is a tiny minority of kids who have genuine gender dysphoria and they deserve compassionate care. But the vast majority of children who express a desire to be the other sex are going through a stage. I know. I was one of them. When I was about 6, I played with trucks, climbed trees, and asked my friends to call me “Timmy.” Thank God my parents shrugged it off. I’ve since married and had three children. Thank God I was a tomboy before it became dangerous.