By William Hausdorff
This is the time of the year to reflect on the big events of
the year. For those of us who live in
Brussels, certainly the vicious bombings in March at a metro stop 10 minutes
away from my home and at the airport (15 minutes away) stand out. Fortunately, no one I knew personally was
hurt. But the Belgian flag is once again
flying at half-mast over the nearby city hall building, this time because of
the murderous attack on the Berlin Christmas market. Sadly, these tragic events
only temporarily overshadow the most-painful-of-all US presidential elections.
It was easy to be overwhelmed by the singularity and
bizarreness of the recent Presidential campaign. But US history is filled with nasty, colorful
campaigns; perhaps they are actually the norm. The election itself may turn out
to be one of the most momentous elections ever, but it’s worth recalling that
each of the past 3 or 4 Presidential elections truly seemed, at the time, to be
one of “the most important elections ever,” and not all of them were. True, without
Bush in 2000, there would almost certainly have been no Iraq invasion, no US-sanctioned
torture, and quite possibly no ISIS. And without
Obama in 2008… goes without saying.
So what’s really different this time around? There are at least 4 President-elect behaviors
that must be truly unprecedented in US history:
the baseless allegations of massive fraud in one’s own presidential election;
the naming of a truly delusional national security advisor;
the angry dismissal, without examining the evidence, of any possibility that Russia interfered with the US election; and
the commingling of the President’s personal business with that of the US government.
the baseless allegations of massive fraud in one’s own presidential election;
the naming of a truly delusional national security advisor;
the angry dismissal, without examining the evidence, of any possibility that Russia interfered with the US election; and
the commingling of the President’s personal business with that of the US government.
In a “normal” election year, I submit that any of these would
be considered by the vast majority of the American population as a sufficiently
disqualifying behavior for a President.
Why aren’t they now? Why are people—and their leaders—so cynical or
fatalistic? Many analysts point to stagnant economic trends, the widening gap
of haves and have-nots, the seemingly endless wars, underlying racist
tendencies in America--all of which undoubtedly play important roles.
Less explored has been the role of four major existential scandals in the past 15 years--concerning free elections, torture, invading countries without justification, and widespread financial malfeasance-- and more specifically the abject
failure of the Federal government, whether executive, legislative, or judicial
branches, to hold ANYONE accountable for them.
In each case, there were serious investigations that led only to partial political “fixes.” These substituted for the absence of any
serious national conversation regarding the unacceptability of what took place. I believe the culture of impunity among “the
establishment” from these scandals has fed much of the cynicism already haunting us in the
Trump administration’s pre-natal days.
1. It is unprecedented
for a President-elect to allege massive fraud in the election he participated
in without bothering to provide a shred of evidence. 52% of Republicans agree
he “won” the popular vote.
Why does Trump even have an opening there? Why do so many people, right and left, not
trust the voting system? One can argue it
is because the US political establishment never took seriously enough the
debacle that was the 2000 hanging chad election. It is chilling to re-read the
sequence of events leading to the Supreme Court’s stoppage of
vote-recounting efforts in Florida. The
political threats to have the Florida legislature declare Bush president
regardless of the popular vote, the “Brooks Brothers Riot” of Republican
operatives physically stopping a recount from occurring, the openly partisan
behavior of Supreme Court Justices leading up their final vote.
The federal remedy consisted of a bill that provided badly
needed funds to update election machinery in 2002 (Help America Vote Act). Yet elections
in the US are still via a hodgepodge
of voting methods, some states with paper, others with electronic machines with and without paper back ups. Gee-whiz stories
continue to abound as to how easy it would be to hack election
machines. In the meantime, the Green Party
aborted recounts
revealed ongoing, fundamental problems in the voting and auditing processes,
but these are almost totally ignored.
As a side note, we should not get too sacrosanct—US-led
manipulation of other countries’ elections is a time honored tradition, as
Ariel Dorfman reminds us, for example, in Chile.
2. It is not unprecedented for incoming Presidents to be
blissfully ignorant of basic history, geography, or facts. Both Reagan and Bush Jr wore their ignorance
as a badge of pride, and it was assumed by many that the knowledgeable,
experienced hands around them (e.g., Cheney, Rumsfeld) would more than make up
for that deficit. We know how well that worked out.
But I don’t recall any example where a president-elect has
steadfastly refused to even listen to the intelligence briefings produced by
his nation’s agencies regarding the interference of another country in our
national elections. Nor do I believe has
any openly ridiculed the apparently unanimous conclusion of Russian interference,
all the while praising Russia’s autocrat as a stronger “leader”
than the current US President.
Trump’s smug explanation is that the CIA gave “false
intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s weapon of mass destruction.” That certainly has been the
Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld defense—it was all faulty intelligence. But the larger story is the President
ignoring, fabricating and distorting the tenuous nature of the evidence to
advance his own political agenda—just as Trump is doing.
The manipulation of evidence is clearly documented in the bipartisan
report of the 2008
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which systematically walked
through contemporaneous statements by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, et al and
compared them with the intelligence from the CIA and other federal agencies available
at the time. Their damning conclusion is
that Bush and Cheney manipulated intelligence information to deliberately and
misleadingly promote the ideas that Iraq had nuclear weapons, and that Al Qaeda
and Saddam worked together on 9-11, to justify the invasion.
Nonetheless, the culture of impunity reigns. As far as I know, no member of the Bush
Administration faced any legal penalty for this brazen behavior with such far
reaching consequences. And unlike in the
UK, where ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair was forced to testify under oath to
Parliamentary inquiries, neither the President nor Vice-President have ever been
seriously confronted with their deeds. The Senate report is more or less forgotten,
and Trump is thus free to claim that it’s all the CIA’s fault.
3. I suspect one can
find a treasure trove of statements by past cabinet nominees, if not
Presidential candidates themselves, which are similar to those of Michael
Flynn, in openly disparaging major religions.
Flynn’s examples include his rants that Islam is a “malignant cancer”
and “Jews”
are blaming the “Soviet Union” for the DNC email leaks. But it surely is unprecedented for a
President-elect to name a National Security Advisor, or any high cabinet
official who, along with his son, disseminates bizarre and slanderous
information that the opposing presidential candidate
commits sex crimes with children.
Only after the recent shooting in Washington DC inspired by such garbage
did Michael
Flynn quietly delete those tweets, as if they never existed.
How “demented,” in the words
of former Flynn supporter General Barry McCaffrey, does a person have to be
to worry a Republican Congress that he’s the one advising the President—one who
is not interested in routine intelligence briefings—on what constitutes a real
national security threat? Although the National Security Advisor is not subject
to Senate confirmation, it would not be difficult for Congress to hold up other
nominations until Trump withdraws this one.
In Flynn’s twisted universe, the practice of summarily
jailing and torturing suspected “terrorists and their families,” as proposed by
candidate Trump, can easily resurface. Yes,
the torture practices of the Bush Jr administration eventually stopped, after
sufficient outcry. Yes, in one of his first official acts in 2009, President Obama
issued executive orders banning torture, and the Congress even finally (six
years later!) passed
a law to codify this over the objections of 21 Republican senators. These were crucial steps. However, they fall short of the necessary
public, painful conversation about torture, who ordered it, what happened, what
it achieved and what it didn’t, and most importantly, to hold senior
administration officials responsible.
A major step could have been taken by making public the 770-page
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on the CIA’s detention and
interrogation program, as requested by 7 senators. Yet the Obama administration very recently declined
to declassify it, for at least 12 years.
Why is the US unable to openly confront this admittedly painful issue? Even a South Africa that suffered so terribly
under apartheid was able to constitute a highly effective and cathartic Truth
and Reconciliation commission, widely credited for avoiding all out civil war.
Without an open, public conversation, and some kind of
personal responsibility assigned, there is no reason to believe that the
hallucinating Flynn-Trump duo won’t find a reason to institute torture yet
again, surreptitiously, and with impunity.
We are naive to put all our faith in the good intentions of Defense Secretary-designate James Mattis.
4. In some ways, most
stunning is the commingling of the President-elect’s company businesses with the US
government in a brazen, unprecedented fashion so that diplomats and military personnel won’t
ever know for sure whose interests they will serve. As President-elect, he is having his children,
who are actively running his business, directly participate in meetings and
calls with foreign leaders with whom they have business interests. He continues to refuse to fully declare his
economic holdings and therefore allow the American public to even see where potential
conflicts lie.
Trump and his apologists’ (such as Paul Ryan) main defense
here is that the US people knew of Trump’s conflicts when they voted for him. Unspoken
is a cynical tolerance of corruption--this is the way the world works, it’s all
about gaming the system. Indeed, there
is a plausible
suggestion that Congressional Republicans are willing to let these gross,
obviously unconstitutional conflicts slide in exchange for allowing Pence and the
Tea Party Republicans to essentially decide the composition of Trump’s cabinet.
Unfortunately, cynicism does seem to be the lesson of the Federal
response to the devastating 2008 economic crash. On the one hand, there were
investigations of the subprime mortgage scandal, and a serious legislative
effort to prevent it from happening again (Dodd-Frank). Yet after the banks were bailed out, not only
was no banker successfully prosecuted, but they ended up receiving millions in
bonuses, supported by the taxpayer bailouts.
No one was held legally accountable.
In short, I’m afraid that our unwillingness to hold establishment leaders responsible for the damage they have done to the American system has helped created the climate of cynicism and impunity that is fertile ground for the Trump Administration.
In short, I’m afraid that our unwillingness to hold establishment leaders responsible for the damage they have done to the American system has helped created the climate of cynicism and impunity that is fertile ground for the Trump Administration.
5 comments:
Donald J. Trump's foundation for his skills as a businessman was built on the "bestseller" success of "The Art of the Deal" "authored" by Trump but actually authored by Tony Schwartz, who did it for the money, with little input from Trump. During Trump's 2016 campaign Schwartz exposed his role and his views of Trump in putting the book together, for which check:
http://www.npr.org/2016/07/21/486924253/art-of-the-deal-ghostwriter-on-why-trump-should-not-be-president
for insights.The book was published in 1987. Presumably Trump did not have a non-disclosure agreement with Schwartz. Prior to the publication, Trump was mostly hype as a businessman. The book was a financial success, including for Schwartz. It was later that Trump got into the casino business in New Jersey. While Trump's casino businesses were conducted through a company whose stock was publicly-traded, prior to that, Trump's businesses were operated by his privately owned/controlled entities.. The casino businesses went through bankruptcies, with stockholders and creditors taking financial losses. Trump as a CEO of a publicly-traded company was a loser (except for certain tax benefits he received that permitted him to avoid federal income taxes for many years). So Trump went back to privately owned/controlled entities, where his decisions can be made with very little oversight and kept quite secret from the public. That's the Trump business empire today. Much of it is secret as he has not disclosed tax returns. This was Trump's role on his reality TV show "The Apprentice." That's how Trump is handling his transition as President-elect. That's how Trump will try to execute as President. Perhaps Trump will be able to handle Congress as it is under Republican control. But then there are Trump's voter base expecting delivery on campaign promises. But Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary by a significant number. So Trump as President may have a honeymoon of sorts, but as President - CEO? - America is not a privately owned/controlled entity. Trump's cabinet - even more so than a Board of Directors - will be subject to public scrutiny not only during the confirmation process but thereafter. And the entire House plus one-third of the Senate will be up for 2018 elections, such that those looking to re-election may have to address potential Trump chaos as President. And there's always the possibility that Republicans will return to patriotism. And the media has to recover from its guilt in having accommodated Trump's campaign. So I have some doubts about how fertile the ground will be for the Trump Administration, especially with actual, apparent, potential and appearances of conflicts of interest surrounding the Trump business empire.
So as a foundation for Trump's business acumen, was "The Art of the Deal" built on shaky ground? Schwartz thought so. Perhaps Trump's voter base should reconsider their candidate in terms of reality.
In an interview in the NYT Nicholas Kristof talks with 'Rev. Timothy Keller, an evangelical Christian pastor and best-selling author who is among the most prominent evangelical thinkers today.' Keller indirectly exposes how devout envangelicals can reconcile their religion with support for Trump. It turns out that for these self-proclaimed moral individuals good deeds doesn't really matter.
Kristof questions whether or not he can be a good Christian because while he supports the morality of Christianity he rejects the mythhology. Keller says no.
"Jesus’ teaching was not the main point of his mission. He came to save people through his death for sin and his resurrection."
and goes on to emphasize the point that the philosophy of Christianity, peace on earth,goodwill towards men i.e, is not the relevant part.
"You imply that really good people (e.g., Gandhi) should also be saved, not just Christians. The problem is that Christians do not believe anyone can be saved by being good."
So there it is, and it is very, very scary. We cannot count on deeply religious persons to save us from Trump, because in their world good deeds are pretty much irrelevant and immaterial to being 'saved'. And so regardless of the evil that a person like Trump brings forth, in the eyes of evangelicals as long as he accepts the mythology of religion it doesn't matter what else he does. Thus this is the way that tryrants are born and rule.
Elsewhere (Balkinization) regarding Evangelicals' support of Trump, I have referred to them as "Revengelicals" or "Avengelicals" for their betrayals of what I thought were Evangelical principles some of which even a long lapsed Christian as I, now an Agnostic, can support. One doesn't have to be a Christian to believe the teachings/philosophy of Jesus that Kristof challenged Keller on.
By the way, Evangelicals' support of Israel is not really support of Judaism.
As a Jewish American I have long known that Evangelical support for Israel was not support for or even toleration of Judaism. Evangelical support is self-serving, in part to insulate (unsuccessfully in my opinion) Evangelicals from charges of anti-Semitism and in part with something to do about the final days which I neither understand nor want to.
But until reading the Kristof interview I did not understand why Trump's persona (admitted assaults on women, cheating suppliers, extensive lying even when it was not necessary, cheating on wives, incestuous like comments on his daughter etc) did not doom him with the Evangelical community. But it turns out according to Mr. Keller, whom I have never heard of but who apparently is an unchallenged spokesperson for the Evangelical community, none of that matters. All one has to do is accept the mythology of Christianity to be rightous, good deeds are irrelevant to being saved or even to being a Christian. And note the certainty of Keller, his view is not something subject to debate or disagreement.
So not only can the nation not look to the fundamentalist religious community to insulate it from Trump, as long as he proclaims himself to be a Christian in the Keller sense they will support him and help further his agenda, and to repeat, that is very, very scary.
Off topic: Used my B&N gift card for "What Is Wrong With The First Amendment."
http://www.dorfonlaw.org/2016/11/whats-wrong-with-first-amendment-panel.html
Was $1.33 over, but probably worth it.
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