After Joe Biden’s speech Monday, during which he destroyed the president’s “law and order” message, Ed O’Keefe reported something that has since stuck with me. The CBS News political correspondent said Donald Trump prefers “law and order” as the dominant theme of the election, and that his team “was quite happy today to see Joe Biden scramble to put together this speech and make this quick trip” to Pittsburgh.

That stuck with me, but honestly, I’m understating. I was shocked. How on earth can the president’s advisors think Biden’s dismantling of his favorite message was just yippy-skippy? The former vice president, as I said Tuesday, said Trump has not only failed to maintain law and order; he’s fomenting anarchy and chaos. And by the way, he said, I’m not president. When I am, though, I’m going to maintain law and order.

I was shocked, because thinking Tuesday was a good day is so very stupid as to be inconceivable coming from highly compensated professional campaign strategists. Then I thought about it some more.

You could say, on the one hand, that the president’s campaign succeeded in pushing Biden into focusing on something other than the triplets of tribulation: pandemic, recession, and white supremacy. Trump is the incumbent. History suggests the electorate blames incumbents in times of trial and tribulation. I suppose getting Biden to talk about something other than the triplets, by this terrible president’s terrible standards, might be the equivalent of yippy-skippy.

On the other hand, that can’t be right. Biden destroyed Trump’s message. A new Morning Consult survey suggests I’m not alone in thinking that. Forty-seven percent trust Biden in matters of public safety. “No one will be safe in Biden’s America,” Trump said, yet only 39 percent believe him. (Thirteen percent had no opinion or didn’t know.)

It seems Biden has most people’s confidence no matter whom they blame for recent “urban unrest.” That’s a terrible place for a “law and order” president to be. My guess is his advisors understand his liabilities quite well — most voters don’t trust him — and are searching for ways to please him. And let’s be frank, Trump would be perfectly happy if Biden’s speech Monday was the equivalent of “Ha! Made you look!”

The president isn’t the only one confusing things that get the television media’s attention with things that get the electorate’s attention. (Sometimes they are the same, but not during a pandemic.) Covid-19 is still slicing its way through the populace. Nearly 190,000 have died since March. That’s about 63 times the number of dead in the US on Sept. 11, 2001. That’s about 47,500 times the number of dead in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.

I’d guess the biggest thing on your mind right now is getting back to work, getting your kids back to school, getting your adult kids to act responsibly at college, getting your parents the eldercare they need, or maybe a combination of all of these. The point is that national, and therefore personal, crises focus the mind such that there is no room for the political fictions the president is depending on for reelection.

Someone needs to tell half the pundit corps what’s going on, because it is so captive of the television media’s focus, and therefore the Trump campaign’s focus, that it keeps thinking in terms that were totally fresh in 1968. Half the pundit corps comprises baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) who still think of a 52-year-old contest between Democrat Hubert Humphrey and Republican Richard Nixon as the benchmark by which all elections are measured. And since 1968’s “urban unrest” was the backdrop for Humphrey’s undoing, 2020’s “urban unrest” must be the backdrop for Biden’s.

Punditry on the lookout for the emergence of a white backlash wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t so stubbornly quadrennial. No matter how many times pundits get it wrong, they keep at it, as if it’s only a matter of time before the times prove them right. The result is an electorate hugely misinformed, an outcome benefiting Donald Trump.

As a result of pundits seeing politics through the lens of 1968, James Fallows’ essay, “Why Americans Hate the Media,” remains as fresh as it was the day it was published 24 years ago. Such pointless predictions, he wrote in The Atlantic, build

the impression that journalism is about what’s entertaining—guessing what might or might not happen next month — rather than what’s useful, such as extracting lessons of success and failure from events that have already occurred. Competing predictions add almost nothing to our ability to solve public problems or to make sensible choices among complex alternatives. Yet such useless distractions have become a specialty of the political press. They are easy to produce, they allow reporters to act as if they possessed special inside knowledge, and there are no consequences for being wrong (my emphases).

Biden has moved on. Today, he’s back to talking about health care and the likelihood of an economic depression. That’s what most Americans are thinking about, even if they love them some Trump.

Will half the pundit corps give its attention the calamity facing us? Or will it continue doing what it’s always done? You know the answer.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 02 September 2020

Word Count: 872

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In normal times, Joe Biden’s speech Monday would have punctuated the end of the debate. We don’t live in normal times, however, so the “debate” goes on and on, long after facts are established, long after points are conclusively made.

Such is the effect of a president holding himself above everything, especially the authority of the truth. Such is the effect of a Washington press corps unable or unwilling to act morally.

Biden’s Pittsburgh address wasn’t an ordinary stump speech. It was a direct attack on the president’s latest reelection gambit — tying the Democratic nominee to flare-ups of riots, looting and violence occurring in some cities. Or as Amanda Carpenter wrote recently in The Bulwark, it’s “scaring the ever-living crap out of the Republican base.”

I won’t go into every detail of the speech, which you can read or watch, but I will say it destroyed Trump’s “law and order” message. Biden was unequivocal in his condemnation of violence in all forms while making clear Americans have a right to protest legitimately the injustice of white cops shooting Black people and never being held accountable.

Biden went on, though. He said the president himself doesn’t want law. He doesn’t want order. He’s encouraging lawlessness, cheering on vigilantes, and hyper-activating chaos. And by the way, Biden said, I’m not the president. Trump is. All of this is on his watch.

Then came what I thought was the coup de grace. Biden said:

When I think of the presidency, I don’t think about myself. It isn’t about my brand. It’s about you, the American people. We can do better and we have to do better. I promise you this. We will do better. The road back begins now in this campaign. You know me, you know my heart, you know my story, my family story. Ask yourself, do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters? Really?

I want a safe America, safe from COVID, safe from crime and looting, safe from racially motivated violence, safe from bad cops. Let me be crystal clear, safe from four more years of Donald Trump.

I look at this violence and I see lives and communities and the dreams of small businesses being destroyed and the opportunity for real progress on issues of race and police reform and justice being put to the test.

Donald Trump looks at this violence and he sees a political lifeline. Having failed to protect this nation from the virus that has killed more than 180,000 Americans so far, Trump posts an all caps tweet, screaming, “Law and order,” to save his campaign.

With that “Ask yourself” bit, Biden demonstrated why pragmatic Black Democrats wanted him to be the party’s next standard-bearer. He was using his long record of supporting cops. He was using his status as elder statesman. He was using these and his immense white privilege to shield himself, his campaign and his supporters against the president’s offal-flinging, and it seems to be working so far. Few can look at Biden’s bald pate, noble squint, and high-beam smile, and think he’s Antifa’s patsy.

This president, long ago, forfeited any moral leadership in this country. He can’t stop the violence because for years he’s fomented it. He may believe mouthing the words law and order makes him strong. But his failure to call on his own supporters to stop acting as an armed militia in this country shows how weak he is. Does anyone believe there’ll be less violence in America if Donald Trump is reelected?

As I said, this should have been the end. It wasn’t. The president went on Fox last night to deliver pretty much the same message, totally ignoring Biden’s destruction of that message, which is what you can do when you have zero fidelity to the truth.

Making matters worse is the apparent befuddlement of reporters. They don’t know what to make of Trump’s double standard. He says Biden should condemn violence but he won’t do the same when it involves a supporter. This is worse than hypocrisy, but the press corps does not see the danger. This is saying violence by my enemies is bad but violence by my allies is good.

The law restrains them, but it does not restrain me. On Monday, when Trump defended Kyle Rittenhouse, the Kenosha shooter, what he was really saying, as he has said many times before, is the law does not apply to him.

What we’re seeing is a repeat of the same rhetorical strategy that made “birtherism” powerful. After Trump lies, he’s proven wrong. After doubling down, he garners more attention for having doubled down, thus amplifying the lie. When challenged again, he triples down, supercharging a vicious cycle. There is no end to it without action by the press.

The press, however, never wants to. It’s too direct. It’s too courageous. Yet it’s simple. To get the president to stop lying so much, ask why he’s lying so much. On rare occasion when reporters asked that, it was then, and only then, that Trump shut up.

Amanda Carpenter said Trump’s fear-mongering is chasing voters into Biden’s arms. Given what we know about him, and what we know about the press corps’ inability and unwillingness to act morally, I fear that’s too optimistic.

Biden destroyed the president’s “law and order” message. It cannot survive — unless reporters help it.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 01 September 2020

Word Count: 898

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Portland experienced more violence Saturday. A convoy of about 600 pickup trucks “packed with Trump supporters,” according to the AP, snaked its way through a city that has seen nearly 100 consecutive nights of protest, mostly peaceful, since George Floyd was murdered. The convoy was met by counterprotesters. Some kind of skirmish occurred. A white man was shot in the chest and died. The police are investigating.

No one knows what happened. It’s not clear whether the shooting death was the result of groups clashing or if it merely coincided with the fracas. We do know the victim was a member of Patriot Prayer, a right-wing militia group based in Washington state. He was identified as Jay Bishop but also as Aaron “Jay” Danielson. What we do know is city officials asked local residents to deescalate tensions and they pretty much did.

Again, no one knows the facts yet. Everyone should therefore be skeptical of those saying they know them. That includes the president and his right-wing allies. As they did after the Charlottesville massacre, when a white supremacist plowed his car into a throng, killing a woman, they are blaming it on “Antifa” or anything sounding like it that can be pinned to Joe Biden. Trump’s allies (and some of his critics) have demanded Biden condemn the street violence. The rest of the press corps has joined the effort.

Here’s the thing. The Democratic nominee has already condemned it. “The deadly violence we saw overnight in Portland is unacceptable,” he said Sunday in a statement. “I condemn this violence unequivocally. I condemn violence of every kind by anyone, whether on the left or the right. And I challenge Donald Trump to do the same.”

Here’s the other thing. The president and his allies won’t stop calling on Biden to speak out. Sure, he condemned violence, but what about Antifa! Say it Joe! AN-TEE-FA! If he doesn’t say it, that’s proof he supports it, which is proof of … something.

The point of this exercise isn’t finding evidence of anything. It isn’t pressuring prominent public figures to speak directly to outbreaks of disorder. It’s to keep Biden and the Democrats on the defensive while also fueling more chaos, anarchy and lawlessness.

One more thing. Even after we know what happened, especially if it has nothing to do with Antifa, which isn’t a real thing, by the way — even after we know who did what to whom, how and why, the facts will change neither the president’s nor his allies’ behavior.

They will pretend the shooter is still Antifa. If they don’t, they’ll just move on to something else to pin on Trump’s enemies, whatever fits into the narrative of a strong president-protector saving “the country” from Democrat-run cities. They will do this, because nothing matters but power — not even calls for “law and order.”

So far, the press corps appears to understand the president himself is inciting the violence. Unfortunately, it doesn’t understand calls for “law and order” do not mean what they ordinarily mean. When you cheer on vigilantes, as Trump does, you’re cheering on lawlessness. When you cheer on lawlessness, as Trump does, you’re cheering on disorder.

The only way to make sense of “law and order” is to see it through a white supremacist lens. Law for you, not for me. My order, not yours. The late political scientist Frank Wilhoit defined “conservatism” accordingly: It “consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

The press corps can be credited for seeing presidential rhetoric as universally applied. What’s good for one group of Americans is good for all. But that’s not how this president’s rhetoric has ever worked. Luckily, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows made things clear. “You want to talk about Donald Trump’s America?” he told Chuck Todd Sunday on “Meet the Press.” “Most of Donald Trump’s America is peaceful. It is a Democrat-led city in Portland that we’re talking about this morning.”

I can’t think of a clearer explanation of native American fascism: there is a confederate nation-within-a-nation in the US wholly imagined by “real Americans” as being chosen by God to rule over those whom God has chosen to be ruled. Explicitly, “Donald Trump’s America” is “peaceful,” because of what it is: traditional, lawful, church-going and white.

Cities like Portland are violent, however, because of what they are: places where people from different races, religions and sexualities live, work, play and even have sex with each other, a perversion of God’s law. Cities embody “unlawful” violence. By encouraging vigilantes, the president was merely reaffirming “lawful” violence.

That’s how Trump and his allies think of America. However, most people most of the time, even if they have grave doubts about certain quarters of the country, still think of the United States as one country — not two, separate and unequal. Because of that, most people most of the time aren’t going to think, “Gee, why doesn’t the candidate for president, who has no power, do something about all this violence?”

They are going to think, “Why doesn’t the president, who is inciting violence, stop inciting violence?”

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 31 August 2020

Word Count: 872

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Daniel Dale is a reporter for CNN. His beat is unique, but it shouldn’t be. Every reporter and editor following the president’s reelection campaign should do what Dale does: report Donald Trump’s lies as lies, not as part of some opaque political strategy or part of another story of interest to the public.

This is different categorically from fact checking. Anyone can do that. Dale, however, makes the lies the story. Moreover, he permits his methodical reporting to culminate into a moral conclusion, one vital to the healthy functioning of a free and open republic. “Trump is a serial liar,” Dale said.

Before I go on, I should say Dan Dale is special. Not just anyone can give frequent, news-making, magisterial and awe-inspiring performances on live television without notes or visual cues, as Dale did last night after Trump’s acceptance speech, knocking down one falsehood after another, informing Anderson Cooper’s viewership of the whole truth, all from his prodigious memory alone.

But reporters need not be virtuosos to understand that their job — their American duty — is informing the citizenry. What’s more important than telling your fellow citizens that our president can’t be trusted?

There is something more important, actually, and it makes the press burden all the heavier. While every other word coming out of this president’s mouth is a lie, about 40 percent of the country, the same percentage approving unwaveringly of Trump, despite everything, isn’t just being duped. They desire being lied to.

They fear the responsibility of freedom while at the same time take immense pleasure in surrendering themselves to the authoritarian hivemind. And based on this dense thicket of desire, they decide to believe the president’s lies.

After all, believing lies — however harmful, poisonous, or even treasonous — is easier, and therefore better, than accepting and reckoning with the whole truth. More vexing, it’s a choice. Believing Trump’s lies is, therefore, rational.

This might sound surprising, but it shouldn’t. White Americans choose to believe the biggest lie of them all when they deny the existence of racism in our society and in ourselves. This lie is so omnipresent as to be blindingly invisible — unless you’re not white. In that case, you, my friend, see the truth plainly, and don’t need me explaining it. (You also don’t need me to say that you don’t need me explaining it, but I trust you appreciate the gesture.)

Every white person understands how our society treats Black people. That’s why few white people would opt for walking a mile in a Black person’s shoes (even if he’s rich, as Chris Rock once said; “That’s how good it is to be white!”) While some white people fight racism, most don’t. Why should we? The system works for us, even if we struggle as individuals. Inaction by white people is action in tacit form, which is a choice made in keeping with our self-interests. The lie is rational.

Racism does not need proving as a precondition to reporting, because it’s always already a precondition to our society. Journalists are therefore justified in thinking anyone denying racism is acting rationally in their self-interest. Journalists are therefore justified in thinking anyone denying racism is acting in bad faith. Such people, as University of Connecticut philosopher Lewis Gordon put it, are trying to “escape personal anguish” by deciding to ignore evidence counter to “cherished beliefs.”

If you’re escaping something, the reporter’s job is easy. Why is truth painful? What is there to lose? Are you prepared to be held responsible for your choices? Daniel Dale’s beat is holding Trump accountable for his lies. But the press corps is justified in doing the same for 40 percent of Americans choosing to believe them.

I’ve said the reason a handful Black people vouched for Trump at the Republican National Convention wasn’t to expand his appeal among Black voters, but to make white voters, especially Trump’s supporters, feel good about supporting a racist, and feel all right about the sadist outcomes of systemic racism. Indeed, you could say the entire point of this week’s convention was advancing, deepening and expanding the biggest lie of them all — that white Americans aren’t racists, that white Americans deserve their power and privilege, that Black Americans deserve their fate.

When journalists cover lies as part of another story, instead of the story itself, they not only spread the lie but, in the case of systemic racism, fuel America’s self-destruction. The point of a free press is enabling a free people. Instead, it’s enabling our captivity.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 28 August 2020

Word Count: 752

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I said yesterday, cities are key to understanding the authoritarian imagination. They are where races, religions and creeds intermingle. They are where ideas, businesses and individuals compete, leading to degrees of prosperity. To the authoritarian, the first is a perversion of God’s order. The second is an impossibility.

Intermingling cannot lead to the Good Life. It can only lead to crime, disease, and violence. When one of these things actually happens, it isn’t due to failed policies, corrupt leadership, or social ills with no solution. It’s due to what cities are. The answer isn’t getting rid of certain flawed systems, as liberals would argue. It’s getting rid of certain people.

Not all violence is the same, however. State violence against certain people deserving state violence is OK, even if the act of violence is morally and legally questionable. It’s not yet known why a white police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot Jacob Blake. But to the authoritarian, the reason is obvious. He’s Black. He deserved being shot, even shot seven times — in the back — because he’s Black. (His family reported this week Blake is now paralyzed from the waist down and may never walk again.)

Authoritarians know his being Black is not good enough for respectable people. So they seek out “reasons.” Police eventually found a knife on the floor of Blake’s car. Megyn Kelly, the former Fox anchor, tweeted: “Jacob Blake was armed with a KNIFE when cops shot him says Wisconsin AG.” Kelly’s tweet perfectly captures the authoritarian penchant for rationalizing violence she never thought needed rationalizing in the first place.

Kelly is a private citizen free to express trash opinions to her heart’s content. Problems arise when authoritarians are at work inside and outside law enforcement to prop up unsustainable social and political orders. Kenosha has since Sunday seen legitimate protests demanding accountability and change mixed with illegitimate rioting and vandalism (participants do not appear always to be distinct from each other). This has led to the use of legitimate and illegitimate law enforcement.

Kyle Rittenhouse, the white militiaman who shot three people Wednesday, killing two, was embraced by Kenosha police. Before the shooting, they thanked him for patrolling the streets, even gave him water. Video posted by the New York Times shows him trying to turn himself afterward, but cops in armed vehicles, evidently recognizing him as safely one of their own, drive on by. (Rittenhouse is now in police custody, facing first-degree homicide charges.)

The Rittenhouse-Kenosha connection probably stems from a years’ long effort on the part of white supremacists to infiltrate state and local cop shops. A 2006 FBI report “detailed the threat of white nationalists and skinheads infiltrating police in order to disrupt investigations against fellow members and recruit other supremacists,” according to a 2016 PBS report. The report:

 

identified white supremacists in law enforcement as a concern, because of their access to both ‘restricted areas vulnerable to sabotage’ and elected officials or people who could be seen as ‘potential targets for violence.’ The memo also warned of ‘ghost skins,’ hate group members who don’t overtly display their beliefs in order to ‘blend into society and covertly advance white supremacist causes.’

The difference now is authoritarians are no longer in the shadows. Instead of deescalating social unrest, chaos and lawlessness, they are escalating it in the open, as the Rittenhouse shooting demonstrates. Moreover, and more dangerous, is the police-vigilante nexus is taking on national contours the closer we get to the election.

Donald Trump sends frequent messages to allies inside and outside law enforcement, inciting legal and illegal violence to protect “real Americans” whose “traditions” are imperiled by the corruption, filth and disease in cities. Dangerous, too, is the deployment of Trump’s own paramilitary, agents of the Department of Homeland Security apparently more loyal to him than America.

Trump has vowed to send them to cities in swing states to defend against “voter fraud.” In effect, he’s announcing an intent to commit a crime, but local police, being mostly aligned with his authoritarianism, are unlikely to act without pressure from local leaders and citizens to equitably enforce the law.

Thomas Edsall was right today when he said the second of two planks on the Republican Party’s platform packs a bigger punch: “the preservation of the status quo by stemming the erosion of the privileged status of white Christian America.” But neither Edsall nor other respectable pundits seem willing to say what needs saying: that violence is the end as well as the means of preserving the white status quo.

It doesn’t matter if Jacob Blake broke a law deserving a violent reaction from a white police officer. It doesn’t matter if Blake’s conduct was illegal. He himself is “illegal,” according to authoritarian logic. Being Black is “illegal.” He deserved what he got, and all the complaining from liberals is just betrayal of what “real Americans” stand for, another reason why they cannot be allowed to win control of this country, and every effort they make to win justifies all acts of violence required to prevent it.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 27 August 2020

Word Count: 843

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I logged on today to news of a young white militiaman who shot three people with a long gun last night in Kenosha, Wisconsin, killing two. The suspect, still at large, evidently clashed with protesters demonstrating against police violence.

On Sunday, a white cop shot an unarmed Black man in the back seven times. The city, halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago, has since seen riots and fires set to property. Jacob Blake is paralyzed from the waist down, his family said.

His sister, Letetra Widman, gave powerful remarks Tuesday: “When you say the name ‘Jacob Blake,’ make sure you say ‘father.’ Make sure you say ‘cousin.’ Make sure you say ‘son.’ Make sure you say ‘uncle.’ But most importantly, make sure you say ‘human.’ Let it marinate in your mouth, in your minds. A human life. … I don’t want your pity. I want change.”

I’ll have more to say about this another time. For now, I want to say whatever happens in Kenosha, whether the shooters soon see justice or whether peace and stability soon return, isn’t important to the president. What’s important is televised images of violence, chaos and fire in American cities. Donald Trump hopes these images will frighten just enough white people in just the right states into voting for him as their champion.

Cities play a key role in authoritarian politics. They are dens of disorder, crime and disease not because of failed policy or corrupt leadership, but because of what they are: sites in which different people from different walks of life live, work and play together in relative harmony. To the fascist mind, this is impossible. “Race”-mingling causes violence. Kenosha is proof. The solution is a president-protector.

There seems to be confusion amid this week’s coverage of the (virtual) Republican National Convention. On the one hand, the president and the GOP appealed to “minority voters” and women. Hence appearances by Tim Scott, one of two Black Republicans in the US Congress, Herschel Walker, the Black pro-football great, Nikki Haley, the Indian-American former governor of South Carolina and former US ambassador to the United Nations, and Melania Trump.

On the other hand, Trump and the GOP are terrorizing white Americans, issuing dire warnings that if they don’t vote for Trump, the world as they know it will be turned upside down. The Lord God will be condemned. Wives and children will rule over fathers. Black and brown people, soon to be a minority-majority, will use their new power to seek vengeance.

How can the Republicans court minorities and women while using them to scare white people?

The answer again can be found in authoritarian politics. As I wrote Tuesday, Tim Scott wasn’t appealing to voters of color. Moreover, Melania Trump and Tiffany Trump, the president’s lesser-known daughter, were not appealing to women. They were communicating to white voters who might be uncomfortable voting for a man who openly embraces fascists of the sort who killed two people in Kenosha that it’s OK to vote for Trump, even if you suspect he’s a fascist, because here we are, vouching for a fascist.

Indeed, they signaled, voting for Trump is the right thing to do, because if the radical left Democrat agenda is given a chance to run this country, you’re going to see more Kenoshas. Do you think Joe Biden is going to protect you from violent hordes of rioters and looters? The only man capable of that is Donald Trump. (No one said these exact words, of course, but this was the subliminal message of the words they used.)

All of this is bad enough, but making Trump’s reelection and the deterioration of the republic more likely is normal people not seeing, or refusing to see, what’s actually going on. The president does not want to establish law and order. He wants to escalate lawlessness by seeing vigilantes take the law into their own hands. He does not want to get rid of certain social problems. He wants to get rid of certain people from our society. He does not want to establish order. He wants to crush dissent.

And yet Matt Lewis, the Daily Beast’s respected conservative commentator (a so-called “Never-Trumper”), said during Monday’s convention proceedings: “If you’re from a liberal Democratic background, or have always lived in a cosmopolitan area, you may have no idea how potentially effective this message will be to a lot of conservative folks.”

Instead of explaining propaganda’s deleterious effects, respectable people might choose explaining the truth. Cities are full of people, not just Democrats, liberals and “cosmopolitans.” (Lewis himself lives in New York City!) Cities include people like me. We grew up among “conservative folks.” We understand intimately that many of them cannot tolerate disagreement. For that reason, they sublimate, and demand that others sublimate, their liberty to the authoritarian will of the “conservative” collective.

We are, in other words, people who fled to cities to get away from “conservative folks” in search of ourselves and our freedoms. Over time, I landed in New Haven, my current home, a city that to some “conservative folks” is supposed to be impossible. It is a minority-majority city with problems, to be sure, but otherwise gets on pretty well.

Yes, “conservative folks” believe Trump, but their views are demonstrably wrong.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 26 August 2020

Word Count: 880

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Tim Scott is one of two Republicans in the US Congress who is Black. The senator from South Carolina spoke Monday at the (virtual) Republican National Convention. His address was billed as an appeal to minority voters.

It was also seen as a glimpse of the GOP’s future. He “presented an autobiographical account of his own life — ‘from cotton to Congress,’ as he termed it — befitting a person potentially looking toward the wide-open Republican presidential race in 2024,” Buzzfeed’s Kadia Goba reported.

Jay Cost, of the American Enterprise Institute, tweeted, “Why not Tim Scott in 2024?”

To the first, no. To the second, no. Sure, people said Scott was appealing to “minority voters” (read: Black), but Donald Trump’s approval among Black Americans is so small as to be statistically zero.

Sure, Scott might look like a potential Republican nominee in four years. But that’s before remembering the Republican Party for the last decade has been committed to erasing the history and memory of the first Black president. Put all of this together and it’s hard to understand why grown-ups believe political fictions.

Here’s who Scott was really appealing to: white voters discomfited by the prospect of voting for a president who stands openly with white supremacists, and who betrayed the country in myriads ways while robbing taxpayers blind. Scott’s objective was sending a message to these reluctant white Republicans.

Accusations of racism against the president can’t be all that bad. Look, I’m a Black man. I’m a Black Republican. I’m vouching for him. I know you want to support him. It’s OK. Go ahead. And, you know, it’s the right thing to do. We need a president to protect us from destruction. They say he’s a fascist. That’s nothing compared to the radical Democrat agenda. (As Charlie Kirk said: “I am here tonight to tell you — to warn you — that this election is a decision between preserving America as we know it and eliminating everything that we love.”)

Scott’s appearance is being reported and applauded this morning as if it were a glimmer of hope for a party gone to hell. It’s not. It’s more of the same, a poisonous snow job. It’s pretending to be something the Republican Party is not for the purpose of disguising its built-in advantages (e.g., the Senate). There’s no practical need for a party dedicated to whitewashing Barack Obama to search for its antiracist soul.

Our system favors the GOP structurally. The party can dismiss “demographic change” in virtual perpetuity. It can continue denying the moral and political legitimacy of a democratic majority. Given Trump’s larding of the federal judiciary, white animus will be enshrined in court precedent long after America has become a minority-majority. (If the Democrats gain control of government, they could change some of the above.)

This reality is apparent to anyone paying close attention, which is to say: I’m looking at you, beloved reporters. If the press corps is not talking about the above reality in plain English, it enables the GOP’s injurious bad faith, and so doing, strengthens the authoritarianism crawling over our democracy.

Lewis Gordon’s definition of bad faith is worth quoting again in this context. “It is a denial of human reality, … an assertion of being the only point of view on the world, an assertion of being the world, an effort to deny having a point of view, a flight from displeasing truths to pleasing falsehoods, … an act of believing what one does not believe, a form of spirit of seriousness, sincerity, an effort to disarm evidence, … a flight from and war against social reality” (my italics).

Consider a defining feature of Trump’s 2016 campaign, a feature he’s trying to replicate this year but to no avail — “lock her up!” Some said we don’t call for jailing opponents in America. Trump’s allies, however, said no, no. This isn’t fascism you’re seeing. All they want is accountability.

Hillary Clinton, during her time as US secretary of state, was responsible for the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi. Justice never came for her under Barack Obama. With Donald Trump as the president, however, justice will be served. And the campaign press corps dutifully wrote all this down.

You’ll notice that Hillary Clinton is not in prison. “Justice” never came for her.

You’ll notice, too, that Trump’s supporters, most of them, are far from outraged by the more than 180,000 Americans dead so far from the novel coronavirus pandemic. (That’s 60 times the number of dead in the US on Sept. 11, 2001; that’s 45,000 times the number of dead in Libya on Sept. 11-12, 2012.) Nor are they reconsidering their support amid a major recession-depression.

Clinton could never be forgiven for a situation out of her control. Obama’s economy could never be good enough. Trump, however, can always be forgiven for a situation over which he has a presidential degree of control. A million jobless claims a week, furthermore, aren’t his fault.

Accountability was never the point of “lock her up!” Neither was Tim Scott’s “appeal to minorities.” The more grown-ups pretend to believe in political fictions, the farther we go down the road to serfdom.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 25 August 2020

Word Count: 861

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Almost 3,000 Americans died on Sept. 11, 2001. That day led to the militarization of local police, the hardening of the southern border, the erosion of civil liberties and the destruction of a country that did us no harm. Republican voters said it was worth it, and for the most part, everyone else agreed. After all, nearly 3,000 died in a single day.

Everyone else has since reconsidered, but not Republicans. According to a Pew survey taken 15 years after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which killed nearly 4,500 Americans and countless Iraqis (no one truly knows how many), most Republicans (61 percent) said it was the right thing to do.

In 2018, when the poll was taken, you might have been in a generous mood and thought to yourself: well, I get it. They’re wrong, but they’re wrong for the right reasons. After all, nearly 3,000 Americans are still dead. Turns out they were wrong for the wrong reasons. The worst reasons.

According to a CBS News poll released over the weekend, fifty-seven percent of Republicans say the number of Americans dead from the Covid-19 pandemic is “acceptable.” The death toll is over 180,600 people, per Worldometer. That’s more than 60 times the number of people murdered on 9/11.

That 180,689 in 2020 is “acceptable,” while 2,977 in 2001 wasn’t, tells you something about a majority of Republicans: Loyalty and patriotism are less important, or not important at all, compared to partisanship. More precisely, that “acceptable” depends on who the enemy is.

In 2001, it was “Muslims.” “They” killed “us.” The Iraq invasion was “our” revenge. In 2020, it’s other Americans. “They” are trying to destroy “our” country. That “they” are dying is quite all right.

It isn’t just “they,” of course. The new coronavirus is moving rapidly into rural states, where the president’s support is strongest, and it’s set to decimate areas that are aging faster than the national average while having less access to hospitals, urgent care and emergency services.

Reuters reported today that new pandemic cases have jumped by 15 percent in Oklahoma, 14 percent in South Dakota, and 9 percent in Missouri in the last week. The head of the White House coronavirus task force told CNN Sunday the pandemic is “extraordinarily widespread” in red states.

Dr. Deborah Birx said: “To everybody who lives in a rural area, you are not immune or protected from this virus.” I’m guessing Birx was pushing back against the mistaken notion that the pandemic is a city thing, not a country thing. But even if Republicans living in rural areas finally figure out that they’re just as susceptible to disease and death as Black and brown people are, they’ll still insist that Donald Trump is doing a fine job, and that even if a few of their kin are killed off, it won’t be the president’s fault.

What this tells you is that partisanship trumps patriotism. What this tells you moreover is never ever — ever — underestimate the power of masochism. Four and a half thousand soldiers died seeking vengeance against make-believe “Islamofascists.” That was the right thing to do. Dying to stop make-believe “Antifa” from destroying America is just as right.

I could be wrong, of course, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to anticipate a majority of Republican voters, perhaps 57 percent, flipping their view by the time of Joe Biden’s inauguration (if he wins, which is still a big if). They will accuse Biden before he even takes office of failing to contain the pandemic. They will say one death is too many.

Remember that most Republicans said the economy was terrible while Barack Obama was in power. A majority of Republicans changed their minds before Trump’s swearing in. The economy had not changed in a month. What changed was who was in charge.

And they will do this even as they mount resistance to the new president’s order to mandate wearing face masks in public. (Biden has promised to do this if that’s what public health scientists recommend.) They will defy the order in the name of “individual liberty” and rebellion against “the tyranny” of “big government.” And they will defy the order even if doing so kills them, adding a death toll that Republican voters themselves say is evidence of the new Democratic president destroying America.

Remember that red states could have expanded Medicaid, as a provision of the Affordable Care Act, and they could have done so in accordance with an old Republican plan for universal health care (Obamacare was hatched by conservative intellectuals in the 1980s). But most didn’t because it was the enemy’s idea. Yes, many Republicans died sooner than they might have, but so what? Better dead than tread.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 24 August 2020

Word Count: 790

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Joe Biden’s best mode is righteous indignation. That was true as a US senator, as a vice president and now as the Democratic nominee for president. “I give you my word: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst,” he said in last night’s acceptance speech. “I will be an ally of the light, not the darkness.”

Darkness and light are indeed the choices ahead of us. Donald Trump is bringing the country to the brink of ruin with his treacherous response to the Covid-19 pandemic that has killed over 177,000 Americans, infected 5.7 million others, and unemployed scores of millions. If he wins, expect more devastation — more corruption, joblessness, sickness and death. I haven’t even mentioned the broad attrition of our liberties. As one former administration official put it, if Trump wins, expect “shock and awe.”

The problem with this binary — the opposition of darkness and light — is that most Americans are preconditioned by Hollywood and rose-tinted interpretations of US history to believe that light will win in the end. Indeed, the Democratic National Convention, in order to gin up enthusiasm for the nominee and dispel voter apathy and cynicism, especially among youth, inadvertently reinforced that conditioning.

While citizens must believe in their abilities to defeat tyranny, they must not maintain the fairy-tale illusion that everything’s going to work out fine in the end. We can’t allow ourselves to trust that the system is fair and that all we need to do is ensure that enough people get out and vote. We need to imagine the worst-case scenario, and come up with a practical plan. We need to get out in front of the president, accuse him now of trying to steal the election. This is not panic or paranoia in the slightest. If you must, think of it this way:

Do you trust Trump to accept defeat? I didn’t think so.

Before Joe Biden gave the best speech of his life Thursday night, the president phoned into Sean Hannity’s show on Fox. He said he was going to send “sheriffs” and “law enforcement” out to the polls to make sure only Americans vote. Millions and millions of mail-in ballots are going out to people, he said in effect, and no one’s ever heard of such a thing! The implication here is there’s a massive underhanded conspiracy afoot. He was laying the rhetorical groundwork for calling Joe Biden’s victory fraudulent.

The best ending to this story is Donald Trump refusing to accept defeat, but walking away nonetheless, nursing his wounds by telling himself lies. The worst ending is Trump manufacturing a national emergency for which he must invoke national emergency powers.

“China attacked our elections!” Trump could say, triggering the US Justice Department to investigate “voter fraud.” While an investigation is pending, the election would be thrown to either the Supreme Court or the House, where factors could culminate in Biden’s defeat.

Timothy Wirth and Tom Rogers gamed out one scenario. Rosa Brooks’ group gamed out others. Each scenario except a landslide win for Biden resulted in street violence, which could reinforce Trump’s emergency powers.

About those emergency powers. They are potentially limitless. Elizabeth Goitein is the co-director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s national security program. She told CBS News recently that “presidential emergency action documents” (PEADs) were developed during the Cold War in the event of a Soviet nuclear strike. They are secret, Goitein said. Not even the Congress knows what they are.

“From public sources, we know that at least in the past these documents have purported to do things that are not permitted by the Constitution — things like martial law and the suspension of habeas corpus and the roundup and detention of people not suspected of any crime.”

It’s not hard to imagine Trump’s secret police force deployed as it was in Portland recently.

PEADs were secret because past presidents didn’t want to frighten people. Trump, however, has talked publicly of possessing “secret powers” that are “total.” “I have the right to do a lot of things that people don’t even know about,” he said in March.

A month later, he said: “When somebody is the President of the United States, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s got to be — it’s total.” Wirth and Rogers said US Attorney General Bill Barr is believed to be developing a legal opinion arguing that “the president can exercise emergency powers in certain national security situations, while stating that the courts, being extremely reluctant to intervene in the sphere of a national security emergency, would allow the president to proceed unchecked.”

If you trust your assessment of Trump’s trustworthiness, you know the worst-case scenario is not beyond imagining. It might not be likely, but it’s plausible, and as such, we need a plan. Just in case. Congressional Democrats need one. The Biden campaign needs one. Defenders of democracy need one.

More importantly, however, we need to talk about the worst-case scenario, openly and honestly, without paranoia but without expecting an ideal outcome. Do you trust Trump to accept defeat? Then get ready.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 21 August 2020

Word Count: 856

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You have noticed that Donald Trump surrounds himself with crimes and criminals. His first campaign manager was arrested for battery. His second was convicted and jailed for crimes related to Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. His third campaign manager, Steven Bannon, was detained and indicted this morning on a charge of defrauding donors to his charity. (This is, of course, just a trio from the orchestra of reprobates found among Trump’s “friends.”)

According to a press release by US attorneys in New York City, “Bannon and another organizer of the campaign, Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage, claimed that they would not take any compensation as part of the campaign, called We Build The Wall, but that was a lie. Bannon, prosecutors alleged, received more than $1 million through a non-profit he controlled, and Kolfage received more than $350,000,” the Washington Post reported.

Bannon’s indictment came a few days after we learned that the US Senate Intelligence Committee referred him to the US Department of Justice for possible criminal investigation. The panel released Tuesday its fifth and final bipartisan report with facts pretty much confirming that Trump, when a candidate, cheated by asking for and getting help from Vladimir Putin’s operation to sabotage Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. According to reporting by the Post, the committee “reserved its harshest allegations for the president’s former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, former campaign co-chair Sam Clovis and private security contractor Erik Prince, saying it had reason to believe all three had lied to congressional investigators — a potential felony.”

As this was happening, a judge this morning rejected Trump’s bid to block Manhattan’s district attorney from accessing his federal tax returns. The court dismissed Trump’s claim that Cyrus Vance “had embarked on a politically motivated fishing expedition, saying in his decision that ‘established judicial process’ did not ‘automatically transform into an incidence of incapacitating harassment and ill-will merely because the proceedings potentially may implicate the president,’” the New York Times said. The president is almost certain to appeal the case all the way to the Supreme Court.

I have no idea if Bannon is going to talk. I have no idea if the president is going to protect him the way he protected Roger Stone (Trump commuted his sentence). I am not a legal expert. I have no prosecutorial insight to offer. I’m here to point things out for the benefit of normal people trying to make sense of politics.

If you put all this and more together, you have to ask yourself honestly: what is the real reason the president wants reelection? It’s not because he likes the job. It’s not because he likes governing. I’m not even sure he likes the attention. It’s looking more like a way to stay out of jail.

Barack Obama spoke last night at the (virtual) Democratic National Convention. He talked about what he always talks about, wrote Jonathan Bernstein: “the challenges of American democracy, the collective enterprise of overcoming those challenges, and how the long struggle for equality by Black Americans is central to all of that.”

But he left his most acute criticism for his successor’s work ethic. “I did hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously; that he might come to feel the weight of the office and discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care,” Obama said.

But he never did. For close to four years now, he’s shown no interest in putting in the work; no interest in finding common ground; no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends; no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.

Setting aside Trump’s legal problems, that’s one way of looking at it. Centering on his legal problems, however, makes his work ethic seem secondary to criming and doing everything he can to prevent others from holding him responsible for those crimes.

No one knows what’s in his tax returns, but given the years’ long defense, using every tool available to the person running the United States government, it must be something big. It’s only a matter of time before the truth comes to light. It might be true that presidents can’t be indicted. Presidents aren’t presidents for life, though.

A new Justice Department won’t sit on criminal referrals the way US Attorney General Bill Barr is. Nor is a new attorney general going to protect a former president’s tax returns. At some point Donald Trump is likely to face ruin, and everything he’s doing now might be interpreted as desperate efforts to delay and bargain with the inevitable.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 20 August 2020

Word Count: 798

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