Category: Trump effect

March 28, 2020

     Earlier this week, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves issued an executive order which closed all but “essential businesses,” but defined them so broadly that most businesses, including department stores, factories and offices, were deemed “‘essential’ and thus exempt from social distancing requirements,” (Source:  “Governor Orders Limited Gatherings, Declares Most Business ‘Essential,’ Supersedes Local Safety Efforts,” by Nick Judin, Jackson Free Press, 3/24/20).  Despite Reeves’ protestations that he was not a “dictator” after being savaged on The Rachel Maddow Show, his order explicitly prohibited localities from imposing more stringent restrictions on businesses in order to protect public safety, (Source:  ibid).  

    Similarly, Alabama’s Governor, Kay Ivey, ordered “non-essential” businesses to close, but declined to issue a statewide “shelter in place” order. Ivey explicitly voiced her concern that “government can choke businesses” and stated that Alabama was “not Louisiana…not New York State…not California,” as if the Coronavirus checks partisan i.d. at the state borders, (Source:  “Coronavirus: Governor Ivey orders temporary closings of businesses in Alabama. Read the order,” by Brian Lyman, Montgomery Advertiser, 3/27/20).

      These edicts fly in the face of science, privileging a robust economy over public health. They fail to calculate the cost of lost lives and an overburdened healthcare system on that economy.  After all, dead people don’t buy things and can’t come to work. These head-scratching decisions are merely the Republican philosophy made manifest— that profits are more important than people.

      Trump began last week lamenting the “cost” of prolonged social distancing, tweeting that “the cure can’t be worse than the problem itself.”  Rather than thinking about the toll a prolonged shutdown would have on low and middle income workers, Trump made clear that his primary concern was the impact of the shutdown on the stock market.  The theme was quickly picked up and repeated as a Republican talking point.  Texas Lt. Governor, Dan Patrick opined that grandparents would willingly risk death in order to salvage the economy for their grandchildren!  Soon, a chorus of pundits on Fox News were regurgitating the morbid idea that it was noble to die for the Dow, (Source:  “Right Wing Media is All Aboard Trump’s Coronavirus Death Train,” by Caleb Ecarma, VanityFair.com, 3/25/20).

      By week’s end, the depth of Trump’s depravity was made shockingly evident.  After doubting the veracity of New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo’s impassioned plea for 30,000 ventilators, Trump stated that disbursement of critical medical aid was conditioned on governors treating him well. On Friday, Trump upped the ante, savaging Washington Governor Jay Inslee and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, saying that if he were VP Mike Pence, he wouldn’t return their calls, (Source:  “Trump just raged at Michigan’s governor.  Here’s what is really behind it,” by Greg Sargent, The Washington Post, 3/27/20).

      We should all be long past the point where we are shocked by Trump’s cruelty and vindictiveness, but we should sear this moment in our consciousness and never forget that Trump was willing to let the people of New York, Michigan, and Washington die unless their governors paid him sufficient tribute.

      From the moment Trump was elected we could have seen this coming.  Those of us who mourned in November 2016 knew just what kind of calamitously unfit reprobate 63 million of our fellow Americans had thrust upon us.  We sifted through endless streams of claptrap about “economic anxiety,” but we knew the truth was that Trump’s election was a reaction to the existential crisis precipitated by the election of President Obama. Obama’s intelligence, integrity and urbanity was a constant rebuke to the sniveling mediocrity of many people that exposed the lie of white supremacy.  As revenge they elected his polar opposite- a vain, overstuffed gasbag with the vocabulary of a 5th grader and the impulse control of a toddler. Their message, trumpeted loud and clear, was that the worst white man was better than the best and brightest Black man, and now we are all paying the price. I will never forgive them for that and I will never forget.  You shouldn’t either.

#StayHome

March 21,  2020

      It is hard to comprehend the speed with which the coronavirus pandemic has brought the country to its knees.  Here in the New York metropolitan area, the lucky ones among us are hunkered down in our homes working remotely.  The subways and the streets are eerily quiet, like a scene from “The Day After.” Pockets of defiance – weddings with more than fifty guests, young people crowding bars – make the evening news.  We wonder how long we will have to live like this – our friends and co-workers reduced to grainy video images on our laptop screens, only venturing out for groceries or medicine. We watch the numbers of positive diagnoses rise exponentially each day, wondering if, or when, the tsunami will hit us.

      We are the lucky ones.  Unlike thousands of restaurant or hotel workers, we still have jobs.  Experts are predicting that 4.6 million people could lose their jobs this year in the travel industry alone, (Source:  “Coronavirus layoffs surge across America, overwhelming unemployment offices,” by Rebecca Rainey, Politico.com, 3/17/20).  With Trump tanking the markets every time he opens his mouth, erasing the gains of the last three years in the last two weeks, even Senate Republicans recognize that dramatic measures have to be taken immediately. Wednesday, the Republican-led Senate passed a House bill providing two weeks of paid sick and family leave, free coronavirus testing for all, including the uninsured, increased federal funds for Medicaid, SNAP and increased unemployment insurance benefits, (Source:  “The growing coronavirus stimulus packages,” by Alayna Treene, Axios.com, 3/19/20). Continue reading “An American Tragedy”

      Four years ago, when Donald Trump was elected, I felt compelled to start chronicling his daily assaults on public integrity, civil rights and the Rule of Law on Facebook.  When I launched the stand alone blog a few months later, I chose the title,“Journal of the Plague Years.” The name was a nod to Daniel Defoe, of “Robinson Crusoe” fame, who chronicled what it was like to live in London during an outbreak of the bubonic plague in 1665 in his historical novel of the same name.

At the time, I quipped that Trump’s presidency would be like the plague in Defoe’s novel, a brutal disease that sweeps through society,causing rampant suffering and destruction, but for a short time. As one of the 94% of Black women who voted for Hillary Clinton, I had no doubt that Trump would unleash a plague of racism, misogyny, Islamophobia and anti-semitism on this country. I anticipated that his crude prejudices would embolden violent white supremacists and allow casual racists to the police the mere presence of people of color in “white spaces”, from public parks to a Yale common room. Under Trump, hate crimes have reached an 16 year high, (Source: “Hate Crime Violence Hate-Crime Violence Hits 16 Year High, F.B.I. Report Says,” by Adeel Hassan, The New York Times, 11/12/19). Tell me that isn’t a plague. Continue reading “Journal of the plague years”

March 9, 2020

     Like characters in a Steve Soderbergh movie, we are all trapped in a miasma of dread.  There are coronavirus cases in 30 states, Governor Andrew Cuomo has declared a state of emergency in light of the 143 people who have tested positive in New York, (Source:  “How Many in Tri-State Have Tested Positive For Coronavirus? See Latest Cases By The Numbers.” nbcnewyork.com, 3/9/20).  The stock market has been plummeting, with trading halted today after stocks dipped 7%, the largest one day drop ever.

     Trump set the stage for this two years ago by firing everyone in the National Security apparatus charged with responsibility for managing global pandemics, (Source:  “Trump cuts to national security staff may hurt coronavirus response, former officials say,” by Laura Strickler and Ken Dilanian, NBCnews.com, 2/26/20).  The Trump administration’s response has been depressingly on brand.  The combination of mendacity, incompetence, ignorance and callousness has turned what could have been a manageable situation into a full-blown crisis. Continue reading “Contagion”

March 4, 2020

     The story of the last 72 hours has been the Lazarus-like resurrection of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, courtesy of African American voters.  Once Jim Clyburn’s endorsement anointed him, Biden trounced the competition with 48.4% of the vote and 64% of the Black vote, (Source:  “Biden dominates, Sanders slips and other takeaways from the South Carolina primary,” by Rebecca Morin and William Cummings, USA Today, 2/29/20).  After his win, the dominoes fell quickly, with one billionaire and the two moderates dropping out within 24 hours.  Beto, Buttigieg and Klobuchar endorsed Biden on the eve of Super Tuesday and he went on to win in ten states, although Bernie Sanders is on track to win delegate-rich California.

There will be a rush of hot takes from these results, all of them premature, and many of them wrong. We should approach our analysis with humility and patience, two things in short supply in an election year where we are desperate to rid ourselves of the pathogen of Trumpism that is laying waste to our democracy from the inside out.

       That said, the most obvious wrong takes should be called out.  The first, mostly from armchair activists on Twitter, is that Biden’s dominance with African-American voters is a function of them being “low information” voters.  The “low information” canard is simply proof that some on the left can be just as racist as their counterparts on the right. More than any other voter in this country, Black southerners know precisely what unconstrained white racists are capable of, since the violence of Jim Crow is part of their lived experience.  They also know that given the choice between justice and higher taxes on the one hand and lower taxes and repression of the marginalized on the other, many voters will pick lower taxes every time. Elie Mystal details the pragmatism of Black southerners with brutal candor here.

The race is far from over. California’s votes haven’t been fully counted and only one third of all potential delegates have been awarded. Upcoming contests next week in Michigan, Missouri, and other states may shift the dynamic in Bernie’s favor, but his campaign should be alarmed by the paucity of youth turnout yesterday. Only one in eight voters on Super Tuesday was between the ages of 18 and 29, (Source: “Five Takeaways From Super Tuesday,” by Aaron Blake, The Washington Post, 3/4/20). The lack of turnout may have been a function of the deliberate closing of polling places in Black and Brown communities, which tend to skew younger, leading to long lines in Texas and California, (Source: “California and Texas voters faced hours-long lines in California and Texas,” by Oliver Laughland and Sam Levine, TheGuardian.com, 3/4/20). Perhaps, rather than rail against the Democratic Party establishment, Bernie might consider spending some rhetorical firepower and campaign cash on fighting voter suppression and making sure his supporters can vote. By way of example, despite massive voter purges engineered by the gleefully racist, Brian Kemp, Stacey Abrams is registering voters faster than Georgia can purge them, (Source: “Rise of young and diverse voters may influence 2020 elections,” by Mark Niesse, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 2/11/20).

   Given her dismal showing last night and Bloomberg’s decision to drop out and endorse Biden, the pressure is on Elizabeth Warren to drop out and endorse Bernie.  Those pressuring her to do so assume that all of her supporters would go to Bernie, but that isn’t necessarily the case. Some Warren supporters may be more moderate.  Others may legitimately believe that Biden will have better coattails, enabling us to keep the House and gain the control of the Senate we need to actually enact progressive change.  The truth is that nobody knows.

The fact that yet another accomplished woman has failed to get traction and the Democratic race has come down to two septuagenarian white men with problematic histories on race and gender is disappointing, but it should not be surprising. How could the broader society be unaffected by a four year assault on the very idea of racial or gender equality? The only silver lining is that neither Biden nor Bernie can win without us. Vote for the candidate who shows you they know that.

February 26, 2020

      Last night we watched six Democratic presidential candidates, in a desperate effort to boost their anemic poll numbers, attack Bernie Sanders as an extreme leftist.  Spooked by Sanders’ decisive win in the Nevada caucuses, on the heels of his victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, the other candidates clearly saw the debate as their last chance to blunt his momentum heading into South Carolina and Super Tuesday. The criticism ranged from fair-  Biden’s critique of Bernie’s five previous votes against gun control legislation- to ridiculous – Buttigieg’s derisive accusation that Bernie was nostalgic for the “revolutionary politics of the sixties,” conveniently overlooked the fact that the sixties gave us the Voting Rights Act and the Stonewall Rebellion! Continue reading “The Great Debaters”

February 16, 2020

     Over the past several days, we  have learned that the political manipulation of the Justice Department goes far beyond the ham-handed interference with Roger Stone’s sentence and extends into any case involving Trump’s political allies… or enemies, (Source:  “William Barr Moves to Take the Reins of Politically Charged Cases,” by Charlie Savage and Adam Goldman, The New York Times, 2/14/20).  Barr’s complaint that Trump’s tweets “make it impossible for me to do my job” was less an assertion of independence than a recognition that Trump had thrust Barr’s machinations into an uncomfortable spotlight.

      As Rachel Maddow pointed out, for Trump, the public announcement of his use of the Justice Department as a personal tool for retribution is precisely the point. Trump’s actions have already had the desired chilling effect. Federal prosecutors have already admitted that they are wary of bringing politically sensitive cases, (Source:  “After Stone Case, Prosecutors Say They Fear Pressure From Trump,” by Katie Brenner, Charlie Savage, Sharon LaFreniere and Ben Protess, The New York Times, 2/12/20). Continue reading “The Price (and who pays it)”

February 12, 2020

      As children, we all began our school days reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.  We mindlessly mouthed the oath, pledging our fealty “to the flag and the republic for which it stands.”  A republic is defined as “a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers responsible to them and governing according to law,” (Source;  Merriam-Webster, emphasis added).

     By that definition, we ceased to be a republic some time ago.  After all, widespread voter suppression ensures that a significant percentage of Americans are not entitled to vote.  Certainly, though, when a majority of Republican senators voted to acquit Trump after a sham trial without witnesses, defying the wishes of 75% of the American people, it is arguable that we ceased to be a republic. Continue reading “Allegiance”

February 4, 2020

     The epic disaster of Iowa’s “non-results” in yesterday’s caucuses cannot be exaggerated. The first contest of what is the most important election in American history was so badly bungled that results were still unavailable as of 8:00 a.m. this morning (Source:  “2020 Iowa Caucus Updates: Delayed Results Lead to Confusion,” by The New York Times, 2/4/20).   Continue reading “Iowa “clusterf—k””

January 30, 2020

     Since Sunday night, when The New York Times revealed the “explosive” revelations contained in the book by former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, the news media has been blanketed with wall to wall coverage of the “Bolton bombshell.”  The manuscript details a conversation between Trump and Bolton in August in which Trump admitted that he planned to withhold military aid to Ukraine until they announced investigations of the Bidens, (Source:  “Trump Tied Ukraine Aid to Inquiries He Sought, Bolton Book Says,” by Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt, The New York Times, 1/26/20).

    The manuscript also implicates Attorney General William Barr, Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo and Acting Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney.  Although Bolton’s book doesn’t break any new ground, pundits have speculated that, since Bolton is the highest ranking former administration official to implicate Trump, it will ratchet up the pressure on Republican senators to allow witnesses.  From Alan Dershowitz’s tortured, ahistorical argument that Trump’s conduct does not constitute an impeachable offense,  to the concerned murmurs of Romney and Collins,  to McConnell’s strategic admission that he lacks the votes to block witnesses, we have been reading the tea leaves in the hope that the “trial” will bear a passing resemblance to a procedure designed to reveal the truth, rather than cover it up. Continue reading “21st Century Apartheid”