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Sunday, December 2, 2018
Weekend Roundup
Any week since Trump became president, spend a day or two and you'll
come up with a fairly long list of pieces worth citing, and the sense
that you're still missing much of what is going on. For instance, my
usual sources on Israel/Palestine have yet to catch up with this:
Josef Federman: Israeli Police Recommend Indicting Netanyahu on Bribery
Charges. Seems like that should be at least as big a story as
Putin and Saudi crown prince high-five at G20 summit. But this
is all I came up with for the week.
I probably should have written standalone pieces on GWH Bush and on
Jill Lepore's These Truths, but wound up squeezing some notes
here for future reference. Under Bush, I wondered how many articles I'd
have to read -- critical as well as polite or even adulatory -- before
someone would bring up what I regard as the critical juncture in his
period as president: his invasion of Panama. I lost track, but in 20-30
pieces I looked at, none broached the topic. I had to search specifically
before I came up with this one:
Greg Grandin: How the Iraq War Began in Panama. When Bush became
president, people still talked about a "Vietnam syndrome" which inhibited
American politicians and their generals from starting foreign wars. Bush
is generally credited as having "kicked the Vietnam syndrome," with two
aggressive wars, first in Panama, then in Iraq. Bush and the media
conspired to paint those wars as glorious successes, the glow from
which enabled Clinton, Bush II, and Obama to launch many more wars:
Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq (again), Syria, as well as
dozens of more marginal operations. Woodrow Wilson once claimed to
be fighting "a war to end all wars." Bush's legacy was more modest:
a war to kindle many more wars.
Oddly enough, the story below that links up most directly to Bush's
legacy of war is the one about the increasing rate of premature deaths
(suicides and overdoses). That's what you get from decades of nearly
continuous war since Bush invaded Panama in 1989. The other contributing
factor has been increasing income inequality, which has followed a straight
line ever since 1981, when the Reagan/Bush administration slashed taxes on
the rich.
Recently, we've seen many naive people praise Bush for, basically, not
being as flat-out awful as his Republican successors. They've done this
without giving the least thought to how we got to where we are now. The
least they could do is check out Kevin Phillips' 2004 book: American
Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House
of Bush.
Some scattered links this week:
Matthew Yglesias: President George H.W. Bush dies at 94: First line
here took me aback: "George H.W. Bush was a genuinely excellent president
responsible for historic achievements that are often overlooked because
of the arbitrary way we value presidential legacies." Indeed, my first
reaction was to look up how old Yglesias was when Bush was president: 7
when Bush was elected in 1988 and took office in 1989, 11 when Bush lost
in 1992 and left office in 1993. For comparison, I was 10-13 while John
Kennedy was president, and while I remember the 1960 election and a fair
amount from that period, most of what I know about those years I learned
later. The times were different, but I suspect a similar dynamic, as we
tend to view past presidents through the prism of their successors. Bush
had the good fortune to be followed by two much worse Republicans -- his
eldest son, and now Donald Trump. Yglesias would have us believe that Bush
was "the last of the Republican pragmatists," because his successors have
been very different: basically, ideological culture warriors -- the son
sometimes tried to hide it, which in turn has helped to rehabilitate him
relative to Trump. On the other hand, what I found most striking in Bush's
career was his role in normalizing, at every step along the way, the
right-wing descent of the Republican Party. Not that he was ever my idea
of a decent, principled Republican -- and note that there actually were
some in 1966, when he was first elected to Congress -- but two changes
he made c. 1980 are indicative: when he joined the anti-abortion forces,
and when he shelved his critique of "voodoo economics" to embrace Reagan.
Those shifts were opportunistic more than pragmatic. They were moves he
could make because he was empty inside, little more than a hack serving
the class interests of his benefactors -- much like his Senator father
had done, and as his sons would do. Jack Germond liked to call him "an
empty suit." Yglesias is pretty selective about what he mentions and
what he leaves out. (Perhaps we should have an office pool on how many
Bush articles I read before anyone mentions Panama?) He does mention
the Iraq War as some kind of internationalist success, not mentioning
any connection to the thirty years of recurring chaos and conflict that
ensued. On the other hand, he doesn't mention two generally positive
foreign policy things that happened under Bush: a fairly broad shift
to democracy (including wins by left-ish political movements) in Latin
America, and pressure on Israel to negotiate peace (leading to the Oslo
Accords, which Clinton allowed Netanyahu and Barak to undermine).
Other Bush links:
Peter Beinart: What the Tributes to George HW Bush Are Missing: "The
41st president was the last person to occupy the Oval Office whose opponents
saw him as fully legitimate." Beinart attributes that to his WASP heritage,
and to the fact that he was elected with a majority of the votes -- something
only Barack Obama has since achieved -- but it really has more to do with
the security and sensibility of the opposition. Democrats controlled Congress
when Bush was president, and saw him as someone who would work with them.
On the other hand, Republicans saw Clinton as an usurper and a threat, and
dispensed with all pretenses of bipartisanship. When Obama came in, they
simply doubled down, opting for pure obstructionism. Democrats didn't react
to Republican presidents with such venom, but both Bush and Trump entered
office after having lost the popular vote, and both pursued hard-right,
strictly partisan agendas.
Ariel Dorfman: George HW Bush thought the world belonged to his family.
How wrong he was.
Franklin Foer: The Last WASP President: Not literally true, not
figuratively either, inadvertently showing the lengths some people
have to take to come up with a hook to hang Bush on. For example:
Take his record on race. Bush comes from a Yankee tradition that prides
itself on its liberal attitudes. His father, a senator from Connecticut,
sponsored legislation desegregating schools, protecting voting rights,
and establishing an equal-employment commission. George H. W. Bush
seemed to accept this as his patrimony. At Yale, he lead a fund-raising
drive for the United Negro College Fund. When he moved to Midland, Texas,
he made a point of inviting the head of the local NAACP to his house for
dinner. As the chairman of the Harris County GOP, he put the party's
money in a black-owned bank.
Of course, the next paragraph had to bring up "the notorious Willie
Horton ad," and the following one notes:
After so accurately decrying Voodoo Economics, he joined the administration
that enshrined them. He stood by Reagan as he opposed sanctions against
South Africa's apartheid regime, and as the administration mounted a
crusade against "reverse discrimination," an effort to undo affirmative
action.
The problem is that if the only reason you exhibit "liberal attitudes"
is for show, there's nothing to keep you from ditching them as soon as
the fashion changes. Personal aside here: I never heard of "WASP" until
I went to a college where more than half of the students were Jewish,
although I've also heard non-Jewish northeasterners use the term. It
was one of several identities I was grouped in but never thought of
myself as belonging to (including its constituent parts: white,
Anglo-Saxon, and protestant). But I picked up the term, even if it
rarely meant much to me. About the only time I've thought of it
lately was in regards to the Supreme Court. For much of American
history, the Supreme Court was exclusively a WASP club. That changed
a bit with Louis Brandeis, but remained pretty much the norm into
the 1980s. Since then Republicans have almost exclusively nominated
Catholics (including Clarence Thomas), and Democrats mostly Jews,
until at present we have six Catholics, three Jews, and no WASPS on
the Supreme Court. I suppose you could credit Bush with nominating
the last of the liberal WASP justices (David Souter) -- one of those
things that right-wing Republicans never forgave him for, even though
he clearly didn't mean to offend them. His other Supreme Court pick
was Thomas.
Mehdi Hasan: The Ignored Legacy of George HW Bush: War Crimes, Racism,
and Obstruction of Justice: Much about Iraq, but still no mention
of Panama.
Laura McGann: Eight women say George HW Bush groped them. Their claims
deserve to be remembered as we assess his legacy.
Rachel Withers: George HW Bush's "Willie Horton" ad will always be the
reference point for dog whistle racism. Withers also wrote:
Trump praises George HW Bush, the president whose vision he recently
mocked (hoary picture here: note how close the Clintons and Bushes
are); and
George HW Bush's state funeral arrangements: what we know.
Other Yglesias pieces this week:
Jason Ditz: UN Confirms US Airstrike in Helmand Killed 23 Civilians:
News reports focused last week on unapologetic murderers giving each other
high-fives at the G20 summit in Argentina, but week-by-week the US proves
to be the real killing machine. Also by Ditz:
US Says SW Libya Airstrike Kills 11 al-Qaeda 'Suspects';
Observatory: US Airstrikes Kill Dozens in Eastern Syria. If you're
surprised that the US is (still) bombing in Libya, learn about AFRICOM:
Nick Turse: US Military Says It Has a "Light Footprint" in Africa. These
Documents Show a Vast Network of Bases. Back to Afghanistan, consider:
Danny Sjursen: America Is Headed for Military Defeat in Afghanistan.
Marc Fisher: Trump borrows his rhetoric -- and his view of power -- from
the mob.
Bernard E Harcourt: How Trump Fuels the Fascist Right: I think this
gives him credit for deliberation that he probably doesn't deserve, but
here's the argument:
Everything about Trump's discourse -- the words he uses, the things he
is willing to say, when he says them, where, how, how many times -- is
deliberate and intended for consumption by the new right. When Trump
repeatedly accuses a reporter of "racism" for questioning him about his
embrace of the term "nationalist," he is deliberately drawing from the
toxic well of white supremacist discourse and directly addressing that
base. Trump's increasing use of the term "globalist" in interviews and
press conferences -- including to describe Jewish advisers such as Gary
Cohn or Republican opponents like the Koch brothers -- is a knowing use
of an anti-Semitic slur, in the words of the Anti-Defamation League, "a
code word for Jews." Trump's self-identification as a "nationalist,"
especially in contrast to "globalists" like George Soros, extends a hand
to white nationalists across the country. His pointed use of the term
"politically correct," especially in the context of the Muslim ban,
speaks directly to followers of far-right figures such as William Lind,
author of "What is 'Political Correctness'?"
Trump is methodically engaging in verbal assaults that throw fuel on
his political program of closed borders, nativism, social exclusion, and
punitive excess. Even his cultivated silences and failures to condemn
right-wing violence, in the fatal aftermath of the Unite the Right rally
in Charlottesville, for instance, or regarding the pipe-bombing suspect
Cesar Sayoc, communicate directly to extremists. We are watching, in real
time, a new right discourse come to define the American presidency. The
term "alt-right" is too innocuous when the new political formation we
face is, in truth, neo-fascist, white-supremacist, ultranationalist, and
counterrevolutionary. Too few Americans appear to recognize how extreme
President Trump has become -- in part because it is so disturbing to
encounter the arguments of the American and European new right.
Umair Irfan: Sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere, explained.
Jen Kirby: USMCA, the new trade deal between the US, Canada, and Mexico,
explained: Not all that different from NAFTA. One thing to keep in
mind is that when it comes to trade deals, the conflicts are less between
countries than between companies and people (workers, customers, and the
governments should they be tempted to challenge the companies). Also:
Paul Krugman: When MAGA Fantasy Meets Rust Belt Reality: Posits
two possible meanings of Make America Great Again: "a promise to restore
the kind of economy we had 40 or 50 years ago -- an economy that still
offered lots of manly jobs in manufacturing and mining"; and "a promise
to return to the good old days of raw racism and sexism." Krugman argues
that the former would be an impossible task even if Trump had a clue,
which he clearly does not -- most of this piece explains why. As for the
racism/sexism, Krugman does concede that "Trump is delivering on that
promise." I think he's overly generous there: sure, Trump knows how to
be racist and sexist, but are people following his lead or resisting it,
and are they making a real difference in the world? Maybe, a little bit,
but not so much as to actually satisfy Trump's supporters.
Krugman also wrote:
The Depravity of Climate-Change Denial. I agree with most of what he
says here, but take exception to: "climate change isn't just killing people;
it may well kill civilization." That's really excessive hyperbole, the sort
of thing that lets deniers present themselves as skeptics vs. alarmists --
I read a letter in the Wichita Eagle last week that used that ploy. Even
fairly large climate shifts (say on the order of +6°C/10°F), while causing
large economic dislocations (as a first guess, North Dakota becomes Kansas,
and Kansas becomes Coahuila), are things people can readily adapt to easy
enough. Maybe overall habitability is diminished a bit (you lose land to
rising sea levels, but you gain utility from arctic lands; perhaps more
ominously, tropical diseases will spread). But unless climate change
triggers cataclysmic war, that's nothing civilization cannot handle.
I've long thought that people who think about climate change tend to
exaggerate its effects and importance, so I'm not surprised to find
the level of hysteria grow as evidence mounts and parties vested in
carbon fuel continue to thwart even modest attempts to reduce the risk.
Still, I doubt the solution is to ramp the rhetoric up to apocalyptic
levels.
German Lopez: After a mall shooting, police killed the wrong person --
and the real shooter remains at large: The mall was in Alabama.
The dead bystander was black. A follow-up article explains:
PR Lockhart: The Alabama mall shooting highlights the dangers of
owning a gun while black.
Ella Nilsen: House Democrats unveil their first bill in the majority: a
sweeping anti-corruption proposal: To be introduced as House Resolution
1, no chance of passing the Republican Senate let alone of overriding a
Trump veto, but this stakes out high ground from which to investigate
and judge the most thoroughly corrupt administration in US history. Also:
Akela Lacy: In Democrats' First Bill, There's a Quiet Push to Make Public
Campaign Finance a Reality.
David Roberts: I'm an environmental journalist, but I never write about
overpopulation. Here's why.
Jennifer Rubin: Trump has done nothing for rural Americans.
Aaron Rupar: Michael Cohen's plea deal shows that Russia did have something
on Trump.
Other links on Cohen:
Dylan Scott: Under Trump, the number of uninsured kids is suddenly
rising. Note that the chart shows a steady decrease in number
of uninsured children from 2008 through 2016, before the rise in
2017.
Dylan Scott: Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith wins Mississippi Senate
election: Duly noted, by a 54-46% margin. You know why. Still,
that's a lot closer than Mississippi split since, uh, the 1870s.
For more, see:
Bob Moser: Don't Hate Mississippi:
It's never a shock to see white Mississippians cover themselves in shame.
They've been doing it reliably throughout the entire history of a place
that became known as the "lynching state" long before the inceptions of
the Confederacy, the Klan, or Jim Crow. . . . In politics, too, white
Mississippians have always put passion -- for white supremacy and black
subjugation -- above all pragmatic considerations. With clockwork
regularity, every election, they've chosen to keep their state an
economic and educational backwater, an international symbol of America's
racial lunacy.
Emily Stewart: GM is closing plants and cutting jobs. Here's what it
means for workers -- and for Trump.
Julissa Treviño: Suicides are at the highest rate in decades, CDC report
shows: Up 33 percent since 1999, up 2000 from 2016 to 2017, something
which gets less press than the number of drug overdoses, which has surged
to even higher levels. On the latter, see:
German Lopez: Drug overdose deaths were so bad in 2017, they reduced overall
life expectancy. Also see:
Lenny Bernstein: US life expectancy declines again, a dismal trend not
seen since World War I.
Alex Ward: Russia just openly attacked Ukraine. That could mean their
war will get worse. Like virtually all western reports, this is
rather slanted, but the crisis is significant. Basic background: after
anti-Russian, pro-West political factions in Ukraine affected a coup
in 2014, removing a more/less democratically elected Russia-friendly
president, several regions of Ukraine with large Russian demographics
revolted, especially Crimea and Donbass. Russia encouraged (and perhaps
orchestrated) these revolts, including a declaration by local officials
in Crimea of their intent to be annexed by Russia. There was a vote in
Crimea to join Russia, which was boycotted by opponents, so carried by
a large margin. Crimea has been under Russian control since then, and
the ties were made literal by the construction of a 12-mile bridge over
the Kerch Strait between Russia and Crimea. Since 2014, there has been
sporadic and indecisive fighting in Donbass and along the border, and
Ukraine (and its Western allies) has refused to recognize any changes.
The Kerch Strait separates the Sea of Azov from the Black Sea and the
Mediterranean, so it remains an important shipping lane for Ukraine, as
well as for Russia. With the opening of the bridge, Ukraine attempted
to reassert its rights to send naval ships through the Kerch Strait,
and Russia responded by blockading the channel, seizing the ships, and
imprisoning the sailors: that's what "openly attacked" means in the
headline above. Russia charged Ukraine with a "well-thought-out
provocation." For a counter view, see:
Ted Galen Carpenter: Ukraine Doesn't Deserve America's Blind Support.
Julian E Zelizer: Why the US Can't Solve Big Problems.
The federal government released a devastating report last week documenting
the immense economic and human cost that the U.S. will incur as a result
of climate change. It warns that the damage to roads alone will add up to
$21 billion by the end of the century. In certain parts of the Midwest,
farms will produce 75 percent less corn than today, while ocean acidification
could result in $230 billion in financial losses. More people will die from
extreme temperatures and mosquito-borne diseases. Wildfire seasons will
become more frequent and more destructive. Tens of millions of people living
near rising oceans will be forced to resettle. The findings put the country
on notice, once again, that doing nothing is a recipe for disaster.
Yet odds are that the federal government will, in fact, do nothing. It's
tempting to blame inaction on current political conditions, like having a
climate change denier in the White House or intense partisan polarization
in Washington. But the unfortunate reality is that American politicians
have never been good at dealing with big, long-term problems. Lawmakers
have tended to act only when they had no other choice.
Finally, here are some links reviewing Jill Lepore's big book
These Truths: A History of the United States (recently read by
me):
The Wilentz piece is probably the best of the bunch -- at least I found
myself agreeing with most of the substantive criticisms. It occurs to me
that there are two basic models for writing a 700+ page history of the US
from colonial times to Donald Trump: either briefly sum up most of the
stuff most people already know, or assume that readers already know that
stuff and add little side-glances they don't know that help round out the
picture. Lepore did the latter, and included a lot of material I didn't
especially know before. She also limited her focus to the ebb and flow of
ideals, corruptions, and manipulations in politics. I was surprised, for
instance, that from the 1930s on she focused mostly on the development of
polling and campaign management, which sort of logically led to Trump --
she actually gets to Trump before 2000, Bush-Gore, and Obama. But even
earlier, she spent a good deal of time on the rise of the partisan press
c. 1800, and the shift toward non-partisan journalism from the 1880s on
(papers like the New York Times, and later the big three TV networks).
Worth reading, but not for many clear lessons. A much more pointed book
on founders and ideals is Ganesh Sitaraman's The Crisis of the
Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our
Republic. But then I suppose she'd reply that history is always
messy, never cut and dried.
One more point to make: These Truths differs from most US
history books in that Lepore makes a conscious effort to recognize
and treat fairly everyone -- not just the dominant white males that
traditionally get all the pages. She balances off natives against
colonizers, slaves against slaveholders, women against men, and (to
a lesser extent) laborers against captains of industry. She writes
as much about Jane Franklin as her brother Ben, and as much about
Harry Washington as his one-time owner George. She writes way too
much about Phyllis Schlafly (but also Donald Trump, who probably
wouldn't have garnered a mention had she finished the book three
years earlier).
Ask a question, or send a comment.
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