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      Held Together With String, Can America Hold?

      by

      In December 2007, Mwai Kibaki beat Raila Odinga in the Kenyan general election and all hell broke loose. Odinga’s supporters took to the streets, alleging Kibaki had “stolen” the election. Police fired on demonstrators and some died. In retaliation, the targeted ethnic cleansing of Kikuyus, Kibaki’s community, began. 

      The Kikuyus themselves responded by targeting other communities. A bloodbath ensued. The New York Times observed that “ethnic violence, fueled by political passions” was threatening to ruin the reputation of a country regarded as one of the most promising in Africa. It turns out that this promise was illusory. Rival ethnic groups within arbitrary colonial borders were held loosely together by self-interest and little national identity. The country was held together with string.

      360° Context: The 2020 US Election Explained

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      About 20 years ago, Stephen Heiniger, then a British policeman, visited a dear friend in New York. Like my view of Kenya, he observed that New York was held together with string. The Guatemalan who worked in a restaurant’s kitchen had little in common with the owner. He did not really identify with New York or even the US. The immigrant was slaving away to make money to send back to his family, socializing largely with people from his part of the world.

      What Heiniger observed about New York 20 years ago is increasingly true for America today. The country is full of such loose groups held together by self-interest. This is largely defined in terms of success, which in turn is mainly measured by money. A strong social, regional or national identity and common purpose in a large, diverse and unequal land is increasingly lacking.

      In the 2020 presidential election, America might be about to emulate Kenya. Political passions run so strong that the threat of violence looms high. Not since the Civil War ended in 1865 has America been so divided. The reputation of a country long considered the most promising in the world faces damage, if not ruin.

      The Mother of All Elections

      Michael Hirsh, the deputy news editor of Foreign Policy, thinks this is the most important election ever. It is more important than the seminal elections of 1800, 1860 and 1932. These led to the triumphs of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt respectively, changing the course of history. In each of these elections, America was divided but managed to hold together and move forward.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Hirsh argues that the 2020 election is the most significant because President Donald Trump has damaged institutions of American democracy to such a degree that the future of “the 244-year-old American experiment of a republic of laws” is at stake.” He blames Trump for openly encouraging racial violence, stoking division and failing to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

      Hirsh reflects the unease of many members of the American elite. For a long time, they have self-consciously thought of themselves as a modern-day Rome. Now, they fear that America could end up “as just another abject discard on the ash heap of failed republics going back to ancient Rome and Greece.”

      As during the times of the Cold War, Americans fear an enemy. This time it is another communist country, a former ally named the People’s Republic of China. Hirsh believes the US is stumbling precisely at “a moment when [it] has lost its material preponderance” to China. Its “central place in stabilizing the global system” is on the ballot.

      The Economist shares Hirsh’s view. It makes a case for Democratic nominee Joe Biden in a breezy editorial that seems to have been penned in the Oxford Union. It declares Biden not to be the miracle cure for what is ailing America but a good man needed to “restore steadiness and civility to the White House.”

      Media organizations from The New York Times to The Times of India agree upon the importance of the 2020 election. They have published millions of words on the subject and sought out pollsters to predict the election outcome. As the day of reckoning draws nigh, campaigning has reached fever pitch. Candidates for the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House are all summing up their final arguments to Americans who have not voted yet. Even as citizens go to the polls on November 3, the Senate has confirmed Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, giving conservatives a 6-3 majority over liberals. Everything is on the ballot in 2020, including and especially the courts.

      To understand the presidential election, it might be useful to cast our eyes to an event 30 years ago. In August 1990, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein “invaded and annexed Kuwait.” The US swung into action to liberate an oil-rich country that its cash-poor neighbor had gobbled. Hussein threatened “the mother of all battles” but suffered abject defeat. This was a heady time for the US. The Berlin Wall had fallen. George H.W. Bush had come to the White House promising “a kinder and gentler nation” and “no new taxes.” Ronald Reagan’s revolution of getting the government off people’s backs and bringing the Soviet Union to its knees seemed to have succeeded. By the end of 1991, the Soviet Union had collapsed.

      President Bush had presided over the ultimate triumph of America. The dreaded Cold War with its specter of nuclear destruction was finally over. America’s liberal democracy and free market economy were deemed the only way forward. Francis Fukuyama waxed lyrical about the end of history and humanity was supposed to enter the gates of paradise, with all earthlings securing unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

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      After a spectacular victory in the Gulf and the glorious subjugation of the Soviet Union, Bush should have romped to victory in the 1992 election. Instead, he lost. The economy had been slowing and deficits had been growing, forcing Bush to raise taxes. Many Americans went apoplectic. They could not forgive the president for breaking his promise. There was unease even then with the new era of globalization that Bush kicked off.

      In that election, Texan billionaire Ross Perot made a dash for the White House campaigning against this brave new world. He warned against “shipping millions of jobs overseas” because of “one-way trade agreements.” Perot argued that countries with lower wages, lesser health care or retirement benefits and laxer environmental laws would attract factories away from American shores. With the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on the cards, Perot famously predicted “there will be a giant sucking sound going south.” Perot did not win, but he took enough votes away from Bush to pave Bill Clinton’s primrose path to the White House.

      In 2020, Trump is running for a second term as Perot’s angry child. He has jettisoned “bad” trade deals like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Biden is the successor to Bush and Clinton. He was vice president when the US negotiated the TPP. The die is cast for a clash between two radically different visions for the future.

      Who Will Win?

      In 2016, I had an uncanny feeling that both Brexit and Trump’s triumph were not only possible but probable. In February that year, I examined the UK’s troubled marriage with Europe and argued that British Prime Minister David Cameron had promised more than he delivered, which would cause him problems later. In July, I posited that we could soon be living in the age of Trump because of increasing inequality and rising rage against entrenched elites.

      I followed the two articles with a talk at Google in August on the global rise of the far right. Aggrieved by the superciliousness of journalists based in New York and Washington, I resonated deeply with the “left-behind” voters. They believed that American elites had turned rapaciously parasitic and sanctimoniously hypocritical. It seemed inevitable that some Pied Piper would lead a populist reaction.

      In 2020, I do not have my finger on the pulse in the same way as in 2016. Social distancing and limited travel in the era of COVID-19 has made it difficult to estimate what really is going on. Besides, Americans say radically different things depending on which candidate they support. Often, they are very guarded or say little, making it hard to judge what is truly happening.

      Democrats seem convinced that the nation is horrified by four years of a Trump presidency. They see him as crass, racist, misogynist, dishonest and deeply dangerous. Democrats believe that Americans will punish Trump for damaging institutions, spreading hatred and lowering the dignity of his office. Opinion polls give the Democratic Party a handsome lead even in some key battleground swing states. Pollsters were wrong in 2016, but they might have improved their methods since. Therefore, Democrats believe that they could retain their majority in the House of Representatives, flip the Senate and win back the White House.

      Republicans do not seem to have much faith in these polls. Many are confident of another close victory. They predict losing the popular vote but winning the Electoral College. Republican strategists are banking on the silent white vote to turn out in their favor. Many voters are uncomfortable with the Black Lives Matter movement, calls to “defund the police” and prospects of higher taxes. They fear Biden to be a Trojan horse for the culture warriors of the far left led by Kamala Harris, his running mate. They worry about identity politics and the strains it places on the social fabric. Republicans also hope to pick up minority support from Hispanics who oppose abortion, Indians who back Trump’s good friend Narendra Modi, Taiwanese who hate China and others.

      Making Sense of Donald Trump

      When I speak to Americans, one thing is clear. This election is a referendum on President Trump. His manifest flaws have been chronicled by numerous publications and innumerable late-night comedy shows. Yet Trump still retains the trust of many Americans. Why?

      The best answer came from some militia members I spoke to in West Virginia. They conceded that Trump lies but gave him credit for telling one big truth: Things had turned much too ugly for far too many people like them. 

      Some of these militia members were veterans who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were filled with a burning sense of injustice. These gentlemen had withering contempt for the likes of Paul Bremer, Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton who served President George W. Bush. They viewed wars abroad as a criminal waste of American blood and treasure. These war veterans pointed out that Bremer, Wolfowitz and Bolton had been courtiers who climbed up the Washington greasy pole without ever serving in uniform. They remarked that Bush himself was a draft dodger who wriggled out of serving in Vietnam because of his father but sent others to die on foreign shores.

      Embed from Getty Images

      These West Virginians went on to say that their children had few prospects. Since 1991, working-class jobs have left for China. So, their children need a good education to compete for the few decent jobs in the services sector. However, they study in schools with few resources and overstretched teachers.

      The militia members’ argument is simple but powerful. Only children who study in private schools or state schools in districts where houses cost a million dollars or more get into top universities, which cost a mere $300,000 or so for an undergraduate degree. Affluent foreign students also make a beeline for America after high school. Such is the competition that most parents hire expensive admissions consultants for their children. So, those who come from hardworking ordinary American families are simply outgunned.

      The celebrated entrepreneurs of the US might be dropouts, but top corporates hire largely, if not exclusively, from top universities. The West Virginians pointed out that, before Barrett’s nomination, “all nine justices of the nation’s highest court would have attended law school at either Yale or Harvard universities.” Those who go to posh schools and top universities effortlessly enter the cushy salaried class. They can walk in and buy a million-dollar home with a tiny down payment. All they need apart from their job is a good credit score. In contrast, ordinary Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

      One militia member went on to discuss the bailout in some detail. He told me he had voted for change twice but got more of the same instead. This gentleman blamed President Barack Obama for caving in to Wall Street. He said veterans struggled to get by while bankers got big bonuses from taxpayer money. For him, this showed that Democrats had sold out to Wall Street. He declared that fortunes of the new feudal superclass have been made through the serfdom of an ever-increasing underclass. In his memorable words, the system has “f**ked us over. Now, we will f**k it up.”

      The West Virginians brought to life many arguments I have made over the last decade. In July 2013, I argued that increasing inequality, lack of access to quality education and an erosion of liberty were chipping away at the very basis of the American dream. Over the years, I have cited many studies that chronicled how America was becoming more unequal. In fact, inequality of both income and wealth has worsened even more during the COVID-19 pandemic. Note the economy has tanked but stock markets have stayed high. Social mobility continues to plummet. Poverty is shooting up dramatically. So is hunger. Surviving the terrible American nightmare has become more of a reality than achieving the great American dream.

      Such developments have led to much anger. In an eloquent interview, Trump supporter-turned-opponent Anthony Scaramucci explained why the president won the support of the white working class in places like West Virginia, Wisconsin and Michigan in 2016. For this class, the television celebrity was “an avatar to express their anger.” In rural and suburban areas, blighted factory towns and rundown neighborhoods, Trump was the “orange wrecking ball” to “disrupt and change the system.”

      Another interview by Trump’s former strategist, Steve Bannon, is equally instructive. He rightly says that the American economy is no longer based on capitalism but on neo-feudalism. This former Goldman Sachs highflier argues that the underclass and the superclass don’t pay for anything. The working and middle class are left taking the tab. Quantitative easing (QE) might have saved the economy from collapse but has largely benefited the wealthy. In a clever turn of phrase, Bannon calls QE the bailing out of the guilty who had crashed the system itself. Trump is a “very imperfect instrument” for this populist revolt.

      Likable Uncle Joe and Dancing Kamala

      Many Republicans tell me that they like Biden. They think he is a good and likable man. These folks have reservations about his son Hunter but admire his late son Beau who served in the US Army. However, Republicans fear Biden could be turning senile and Harris would be the real power behind the throne. They reserve their special ire for Harris who they damn for practicing identity politics. Even many Democrats are uncomfortable about her cozy relationships with the Silicon Valley mafia who Americans feel care more about India than Indiana. 

      For many Republicans, Harris is a disingenuous elitist who plays the race card to win votes and sympathy. She had no compunctions putting young black men into jail for minor crimes as a prosecutor to further her political career. They detest the fact that Harris played the race card against Biden during the Democratic presidential primaries. She made a big deal about his opposition to mandatory busing of colored children to largely white schools. Now, Harris is merrily dancing her way to the White House on a presidential ticket with the same man she excoriated not too long ago. Politics is a bloodsport, but some find Harris a bit too canny and bloodthirsty.

      Biden’s supporters take a different view. They think he is still in good health and has good judgment. As per The Economist, the former vice president is “a centrist, an institutionalist, a consensus-builder.” He is exactly what the doctor ordered for a deeply-traumatized nation. Biden will not only steer the Democratic Party forward but also get rid of the scourge of Trump for the Republicans. Decency and civility will return to public life and the White House. Many point to Biden’s impassioned 1986 speech against the Reagan administration’s support for the South African apartheid regime as evidence of his deep commitment to equality and justice.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Democrats see reservations against Harris as evidence of America’s deep-seated sexism and racism. With Indian and Jamaican parents, Harris is multiracial like Obama. For many, she is the future of America. She could be the first woman vice president, breaking the key glass ceiling. Immigrants like her parents provide America the talent to stay top dog. As long as Sundar Pichai, Elon Musk and John Oliver make a beeline for America, Uncle Sam will triumph over the Middle Kingdom.

      Democrats make good arguments for the Biden-Harris ticket, but they lack the passion Trump supporters displayed. The fervor of the 2008 Barack Obama or the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaigns is distinctly missing. Democrats are not offering a clear vision or a program for the future. They are running on kicking out Trump and restoring American democracy. It remains to be seen if this will enthuse working-class voters to switch their support to the party of Roosevelt.

      Another Battle in a Long War

      Both Biden and Trump have declared they are fighting for America’s soul. It is the mother of all battles in what could prove to be a protracted war. The country is now economically, educationally, socially, culturally and virtually divided. The division that cable news networks exacerbated a few decades ago is now on steroids thanks to social media. Algorithms have created filter bubbles and echo chambers. People see more and more of the same. In the post-truth world of fake news, people cannot even agree upon basic facts.

      In this unequal and polarized world, institutions are falling short. Congressmen who face reelection every two years are constantly fundraising. They have little time to write laws or hold the executive accountable. Senators often stick around forever, some until they die. Partisanship is so intense that little gets done. Judges are increasingly appointed on partisan grounds and this is damaging their legitimacy.

      At the heart of the matter is a simple question: What holds America together? Bannon has a point when he says that immigration and trade benefit the affluent by lowering costs and raising profits. If hedge funds in Greenwich, Connecticut and internet oligopolies in Silicon Valley, California invest globally and move money through complex legal structures in different countries, what do they have in common with a plumber in Hattiesburg, Mississippi or a carpenter in Great Falls, Montana?

      After the ethnic cleansing in 2007-08, Kenyan leaders signed a power-sharing agreement and the country drifted back to normalcy. As Kenya gears up for elections in 2022, fear and loathing are in the air again. The dormant divisions in this former colony threaten to erupt. The same is true for America. Young black men suffer violent policing and mass incarceration in America’s unjust criminal justice system. The white working class feels betrayed. The woke generation wants to upend the old social order. Feminists want to burn down the patriarchy. Catholics and evangelicals aim to outlaw abortion. With America’s different tribes pulling in different directions, things are truly held together with string.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Will Donald Trump’s Bad Deals Cost Him the Election?

      by

      Abraham Lincoln is generally credited with a famous adage that you can fool all the people part of the time, or you can fool some people all the time, but you cannot fool all people all the time. Until today, it is unclear whether or not Lincoln ever uttered the phrase. In the end, it is irrelevant, except for history buffs. I’m certainly not one of them. I love the saying because it expresses a deeper truth that once again has proven its power to get right to the point — much to the chagrin of Donald Trump.

      360˚ Context: The 2020 US Election Explained

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      Throughout his tenure in office, President Donald Trump has mastered the art of hoodwinking and fooling his supporters, mesmerized by his larger-than-life ego, his sloganeering, his ability to promote himself as “one of them,” as the chosen one who would make America great again. Of course, he wasn’t, and he didn’t. And he could have cared less about all these voters who fell for him. And fall they did, and hard.

      Ultimate Populist

      Four years ago, Donald Trump presented himself as the ultimate populist, as the one candidate who listened, who understood, who felt “your pain.” The tragedy is, of course, that those who fell for him did so because they actually did feel pain. A lot of it. Their pain was real, and still is, perhaps even more so than four years ago. It is easy to dismiss Trump’s 2016 supporters as misguided hoopleheads, ignorant and unsophisticated. This is what Hillary Clinton did at the time, and she paid dearly for it.

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      There is a kernel of truth to the disparaging notion of the East Coast elites who are largely clueless with regard to the rest of the country. Otherwise how to explain the wave of journalists from The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post rushing to obscure places in flyover country in a quest to find out how “these people” ticked. There is also more than a kernel of truth to the charge that the liberal elite has nothing but disdain if not outright contempt for “ordinary people” and a complete disinterest in their daily struggles to make ends meet. Unfortunately enough, today more than ever over the past few decades, the United States abounds in those who are in this predicament. According to official estimates, already in 2017, more than 50% percent of Americans did not have enough cash to cover a $500 unexpected expense. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, things have hardly improved.

      Trump won in 2016 because he managed to eke out a tiny advantage in critial swing states. Among the most prominent of these were Ohio and Pennsylvania. Once in the heartland of American industrial might, both states were devastated by deindustrialization. Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore confronted the American public with the heart-wrenching story of Flint, Michigan, once a major hub of the American automotive industry.

      Flint, however, was only one of many stories of the collapse of the American Dream, the end of an era where Americans still were the most prosperous people on the planet, where anyone who managed to expertly wield a screwdriver could aspire to a middle-class life with a housewife, two children and two cars. As it turned out, Flint was paradigmatic of what had happened throughout the Midwest, from northern Indiana to Ohio to western Pennsylvania.

      American liberals are quite inconsiderate. They have come up with a number of denigrating notions, such as “flyover country” for the vast swath of land between the two coasts. For the states devastated by deindustrialization, the moniker is “Rust Belt.” Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan — all of them are part of the Rust Belt — remnants of a bygone era, mired in nostalgia for a time when work in the steel mills was “recognized as challenging, dangerous, and important.” These were the days when cities, such as Youngstown, Ohio, Flint, Michigan, and Scranton, Pennsylvania, still counted for something, unlike today.

      Failed to Deliver

      Trump may lose tomorrow’s election because he fundamentally swindled his Rust Belt voters, much as he did his coal constituency. In both cases, he promised at the time of his election in 2016 that he would revive ailing industries. He failed to deliver on both counts. Steel and car manufacturing have not come back to the upper Midwest, and coal has virtually collapsed in crucial mining states such as West Virginia.

      To be sure, this was inevitable, given international competitive pressures engendered by globalization. Only, during his 2016 campaign, Trump chose a rhetoric of resentment instead of telling it “as it is.” Among other things, he blamed deindustrialization and massive job losses on unfair competition from low-wage emerging and developing countries that “enriched” themselves “while leaving the United States littered with abandoned factories and underemployed workers.”

      Not surprisingly, Trump’s rhetoric found open ears and minds among working-class communities in the Midwest hit hard by offshoring and deindustrialization. And for good reasons: Ordinary people could care less about the dynamics of international commodity markets, the profit margins of large corporations, shareholder value or the pressures exerted by financial markets. What they care about is primarily their ability to put food on the table, their concern that their children will lead a better life, and their concrete worries about the future. What they care about is that good-paying jobs return to their communities. This is what Trump promised in 2016.  This is what he failed to deliver.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Trump’s working-class constituency should have taken notice as early as 2017 when the president sought “job-creation advice” from the leaders of corporations that were shedding thousands of workers as they moved production abroad to Mexico, India, China and elsewhere. In fact, as a recent Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch report revealed, during Trump’s nearly four-year tenure, more than 200,000 workers lost their jobs as a result of corporate offshoring. Altogether, more than 300,000 jobs were lost to trade during his presidency.

      To add insult to injury, about “one of every four taxpayers’ dollars spent by the federal government on procurement contracts during the Trump administration went to the pockets of companies that offshored American jobs during his administration.” In fact, half of the top 10 recipients of public contracts were companies that were offshoring jobs during Trump’s tenure.” Trump also did little to dissuade corporations from continuing to close down factories in the American “heartland.”

      Decline

      Take the case of Youngstown, Ohio, one of Trump’s campaign hotspots in 2016 and one of those industrial cities where many former Democrats switched to Donald Trump. Once a flourishing industrial city, by the turn of the new century, it was little more than a shadow of its former self. Youngstown’s decline started in the late 1970s with the collapse of the steel industry. In the years that followed, the region lost more than 50,000 jobs. It never recovered. In the first decade of the 21st century, the region saw the largest population decline of any of the nation’s 100 largest metro areas. By 2018, it was among the fastest-shrinking cities in the United States.

      In late 2018, General Motors (GM) announced it would shut down its plant in the region, leaving 1,500 workers without a job. This came in addition to some 3,000 workers that had been let go since 2017. In 2016, some 40% of unionized auto workers (UAW) had voted for Trump. Yet when UAW leaders appealed to Trump to save their plant, he did not respond. When he finally met with GM’s CEO, she noted that the only thing that concerned her was “shareholder value.” Shareholders appreciated her determination. In late 2018, the industry’s leading trade magazine named her, for the second time, “Industry Leader of the Year.” So much for Trump’s heartfelt concern for the plight of ordinary American workers.

      And then there is coal. In 2017, a few days after taking office, Trump praised “beautiful clean coal” and viewed his administration was “going to put our miners back to work. Miners are going back to work. Miners are going back to work, folks. Sorry to tell you that, but they’re going back to work.” They didn’t. On the contrary, under Trump, the coal industry has virtually collapsed. By early 2020, not least as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were “more job losses and mine closures in the coal industry than at any time since Dwight Eisenhower was president 60 years ago, and despite Donald Trump’s fervent promises to revive the coal sector.”

      This has been good news for the environment, but bad news for coal miners. The reality is, coal is one of the most toxic and harmful sources of energy — nothing beautiful or clean about it. The burning of massive amounts of coal in Siberia some 250 million years ago caused the most extensive extinction of living species in our planet’s history, wiping out 96% of all marine species and around 70% of terrestrial vertebrates. Of course, coal miners in West Virginia, Kentucky, Arizona and elsewhere could care less what happened some 250 million years ago. What concerns them is the fact that over the past four years, the source of their livelihood has virtually disappeared under their feet, Trump’s assurances notwithstanding.

      A Bad Deal

      And yet, some voters in West Virginia, the Appalachian state hit particularly hard by the collapse of coal, still maintained their loyalty to a president who had made boisterous promises and delivered little, if not nothing. Attracted by his “America First” rhetoric and his stance on abortion, they continued to support Trump as “the only one standing in the way of the entire industry closing down.” At the same time, they seemed more intent on blaming their predicament on those liberals harping on about climate change than on embracing policy options propagating a reasonable alternative to coal.  

      Embed from Getty Images

      One way Trump sought to make good on his promises is protectionism. By now, the story is familiar, particularly with respect to Trump’s trade war with China. Hardly surprising, the most important target of American protectionism was steel. By raising tariffs on steel — under the guise of security considerations — Trump intended to shield domestic producers against international competition and allow them to raise their prices. The policy was a great success. According to informed calculations, the tariff did raise the price of domestic steel considerably, boosting the earnings of the US steel industry and creating some 8,700 new jobs. At the same time, higher prices pushed up the costs for steel users by a whopping $5.6 billion. This meant that steel users had to “pay an extra $650,000 for each job created” in the steel industry. The art of the bad deal.

      Trump promoted himself in 2016 as a savvy businessman with vast experience in the art of the deal. As it turned out, his deal-making skills were more hot air than reality. Esquire magazine explored the huge gap between claim and reality as early as mid-2018, suggesting that “maybe the president isn’t actually that good a negotiator and/or businessman.” There was “abundant evidence,” the article charged, “that Trump, the consummate tough guy, often comes off worse in negotiations because he doesn’t actually know any details about the issues at hand and actually does not like confrontations.”

      The disastrous course of Trumpian brinkmanship in his confrontation with China was glaring proof of Trump’s ineptness — with dramatic consequences. One of the sectors affected by Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports were health-related goods, comprising a quarter of all imported medical products. Trump slapped tariffs on nearly $5 billion of US medical imports from China. With the global supply of medical wares drying up at the beginning of the pandemic, the United States faced serious shortages of vital medical equipment at a time it needed it most, partially crippling the country’s ability to confront the pandemic.

      To be sure, there are many reasons Donald Trump may lose the election. His letting down of his core constituencies in the Rust Belt is only one of many. At the moment, polling shows Trump’s challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, leading in the critical Rust Belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, with the two currently tied in Ohio. In-depth studies over the next few weeks and months will undoubtedly reveal whether Trump lost support among major constituencies that four years earlier had been seduced by his rhetoric and personal style. In the end, however, Lincoln’s purported phrase may once again prove its worth. After all, you can’t fool all people all of the time, not even all of your former supporters.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Breaking Down the Un-United States

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      As I casually went through my daily press review, I came across one of those articles that paint Joe Biden as the future redeemer of the United States. I couldn’t resist the urge of commenting, even if that meant breaking the rule I had set for myself to remain a passive observer.

      My comment questioned the physical and intellectual abilities of Uncle Joe, and the paranoid Facebook users didn’t wait, calling me a “Russian Troll” and reporting me for potential foreign meddling in US politics. I am neither a Russian hacker nor a Donald Trump supporter, but this small incident shows the extent of suspicion, tension and polarization preceding the US presidential election on November 3.

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      The United States of America — which has been the sole hegemon of the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and a crusader for democracy in several areas across the globe, notably in the Middle East — is actually not a democracy itself. With its bipartisan structure, the country is actually a biocracy where two big blocs dominate the political sphere. A classical binary of Democrats vs. Republicans that obstructs any new thoughts or movements from penetrating the system.

      Democrats encapsulate a big range of liberals, sexual and religious minorities, feminists, migrants and progressive ideologies, and they usually adopt a softer approach to foreign policy. On the other hand, Republicans are advocates of traditional family values, pro-life, the constitutional right of owning weapons, conservative beliefs and a more belligerent foreign policy.

      The peril of biocracies is the high risk of radicalization of the two poles in cases of deep social unrest or economic crisis, leaving the society in a Manichean dystopia. And this is exactly what is happening today in America.

      A Pre-Civil War Climate

      The extreme polarization of the political discourse across the layers of American society forces citizens into an impossible either-or logic that divides the country into two conflicting factions with a completely different set of values, visions and perceptions of reality. For external observers, this may even be symptomatic of pre-civil war climates. Narrow political calculations continue to feed fissures rather than concord, as if both the donkey (Democratic) and the elephant (Republican) parties are determined to disrupt social cohesion and destroy institutions for the sake of electoral gains.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The media are undeniably aggravating the crisis. With the constant insolence of the current president to correspondents, many iconic staples of US journalism decided to breach their pact of neutrality and declared themselves as anti-Trump militants. Outlets like The New York Times and CNN have even campaigned openly for certain candidates as a first in a school of journalism that has been praising itself for its impartiality and distance from partisan agendas. In February 2017, The Washington Post introduced a new slogan below its online masthead: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” In this case, it willingly ignored that darkness also means a politicized, subjective and biased press.

      One thing is for sure: Both presidential candidates are white, septuagenarian males who are equally uncharismatic, incompetent abominations. One is a populist reality-TV show clown with an obsession for posting blunt Twitter statements and making provocative, racist and sexist comments. The other is a demented “serial massager” with clear cognitive failure, doubtful links with Ukrainian oligarchs and whose only virtue is being Barack Obama’s wingman. Sometimes, I feel both parties are intentionally sabotaging themselves by presenting their worst contenders, or maybe it is another application of American chaos theory but domestically this time.

      Hawaiian Shirts and Cabal Vampires

      New trends are on the rise after this year’s Black Lives Matter protests and the calls to defund the police. Armed militias like a movement called the Boogaloo Boys started to appear during demonstrations armed to the teeth and wearing colorful Hawaiian shirts. This far-right, anti-government and extremist political group is not the only one. On the opposing side, we could observe organized armed African-Americans and violent Antifa activists. Limited instances of mutual provocations and incidents took place over the past few months between the two factions, but things could escalate fast at any occasion due the explosive mix of anger, historical baggage and firearms. 

      Another worrying phenomenon is the proliferation of conspiracy theories online. QAnon is the biggest online and offline umbrella movement that has boomed amid the COVID-19 crisis. Its followers believe that President Trump is a biblical savior sent to combat a shadow organization constituted of “Satan-worshiping pedophiles who are plotting against Mr. Trump while operating a global child sex-trafficking ring.” This mother of all theories then breaks into several tentacular sub-theories like 5G harms, human control through nanochips, alien and subterranean invasions, Bill Gates’ population control, NASA’s flat Earth lies and world leaders consuming minors’ blood, among more absurd and amusing conspiracies.

      Social media platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, carried major crackdowns on accounts, groups and content promoting “the great American awakening.” Censorship is only aggravating the situation, promoting a single narrative and providing more reasons for conspiracies to flourish and become mainstream to the extent that many Republican politicians are publicly QAnon supporters. Some even call it a new religion. Add to the mix digital meddling and social engineering by Russian, Chinese and Iranian hackers and you will understand why I am being called a troll for expressing an unpopular opinion.

      French philosopher and lawyer Joseph de Maistre used to say, “Every nation gets the government it deserves.” That dictum does not apply to large portions of American society. A country that is a melting pot of ideas, innovations, hard work and diversity, and which cannot be reduced to its despicable leadership. Unfortunately, in politics, you only hear the loudest voices while much of the population lays in the center, silently observing the two clashing poles in horror as they un-unite the United States.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Emmanuel Macron Defends His Crusade

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      Throughout the month of October, French President Emmanuel Macron projected himself into the global news cycle as the leader of a new crusade launched ostensibly to bring Islam into conformity with French Enlightenment ideals. In reality, his campaign is aimed at bolstering his chances of winning a second term in the 2022 presidential election.

      Is Peace Religious or Secular?

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      The Muslim world’s reaction to Macron’s crusade has been one of stunned bewilderment. In an interview with Al Jazeera on Saturday, the president offered no apologies and instead sought to explain his motives: “I understand the sentiments being expressed and I respect them. But you must understand my role right now, it’s to do two things: to promote calm and also to protect these rights.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Promote calm:

      Engage in any action — however ill-conceived, unjust or destructive — that affords peace of mind to a politician worried about his diminishing chances of winning the next election.

      Contextual Note

      Can President Macron be serious when he says that his actions and discourse have served to promote calm? Has the world or France itself become calmer since his speech at the beginning of October, when he declared that Islam was in crisis globally? Can he be unaware that when a Western leader announces what Al Jazeera describes as “his plan ‘to reform Islam’ in order to make it more compatible with his country’s republican values,” some may interpret that as a sign of aggression against their culture by a European who appears to have retained a neocolonial mindset?

      Does Macron believe that by providing a supplementary motive to unhinged individuals driven by fanaticism and ready to engage in murderous violence against his own people he is promoting calm and protecting rights? President Donald Trump might claim the same thing when he encourages white supremacists and the police to attack protesters in the name of “retribution.” The only logical perspective that could lead to calm in the struggle he describes would be total victory. In other words, crushing and humiliating the other side. But even that would be a failed plan. Humiliation brings short-term peace but sets the stage for major revolt as soon as the winner’s grip begins to loosen.

      Macron proudly announces: “I will always defend in my country the freedom to speak, to write, to think, to draw.” The only threat to that freedom can come from institutions with the power to repress it, not from individuals who react irrationally to what some people write, think and draw. Macron’s language is fundamentally dishonest. The controversy that has been going on for over a decade is not about the right to speak, think and draw. It concerns the possible social consequences of publishing, disseminating and amplifying messages that some may interpret as an expression of hateful and discriminatory intimidation. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      Jules Ferry, the virulently anticlerical father of laïcité, created France’s modern public education system. As minister of education in 1883, he instructed teachers to speak “with the greatest reserve, whenever you risk even brushing against a religious sentiment of which you are not the judge.” He insisted that if “a single honest man may take offense at what you are going to say … abstain from saying it.” Macron has a different reading of laïcité. In fact, the controversy turns around a bigger problem at the core of today’s civilization: the role of the media. In its quest to increase its audience, the media routinely amplifies every difference of opinion or quarrel that it presents as a cause to be defended, on one side or the other. In such circumstances, every word and gesture may be perceived as a provocation of the other side. 

      By way of contrast, in a society that encourages healthy dialogue and debate, friction and tension will inevitably exist, but they contribute to building a culture of tolerance and open exchange. Social dialogue can have its ugly moments, as parties directly challenge each other. But respectful dialogue creates networks of understanding rather than pockets of conflict. As soon as debates are turned into defending “a cause,” dialogue disappears.

      Causes kill debate by invoking a higher principle that often exists only in the purveyor’s mind. Emmanuel Macron’s formulation of the idea of freedom is far more absolute than its actual practice in France, where restrictions on freedom of speech, including libel and hate speech, incitement to violence and insulting public servants, exist and are enforced. Jules Ferry would have expected his teachers to reflect on whether the Charlie Hebdo cartoons fell into any of those categories.

      French political culture has traditionally reserved a special status for satire. Its preservation ensures that the people may criticize the government and institutions of authority. The government is free to counter with its own arguments but runs the risk of being held to account if it goes too far in restricting citizens’ rights. The cartoons in question had nothing to do with the questioning of national authorities. They were much closer to nationalistic propaganda.

      The controversy over the cartoons appears to cross an invisible borderline between satire and gratuitous and xenophobic insult. There is no readily identifiable borderline but a culture that pretends to be as rational as France’s vaunted Enlightenment culture claims to be should acknowledge the reality of the borderline. Even in his attempt at an apology in the Al Jazeera interview, Macron clearly refuses to do so.

      It is a well-known fact that politicians distort everything to attain their ends. It is part of their job profile. Macron distorts even the idea of distorting. He complains about “distortions” that led people “to believe that the caricatures were a creation of the French state.” That is clearly a distortion on his part. No serious voice has made that claim. He then generously notes that “in the world there are people who distort Islam and in the name of this religion that they claim to defend, they kill, they slaughter.” That may be true, but the effect of his speeches has been to distort the nature what he calls the “global crisis” of Islam.

      Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, Marwan Bishara, sagely and humbly expresses the wish that Macron “should begin to improve the atmosphere between France, Europe, and the Muslim world.” Bishara nevertheless implies that is unlikely. On this occasion, he doesn’t mention the reason why, which he is well aware of. There will be a new presidential election in 18 months.

      Historical Note

      Samuel Paty, the assassinated teacher at the heart of all this, undoubtedly believed that the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, originally published in 2015, belonged to history and could be treated as artifacts of the past when he presented them in a civics class. After all, political cartoons published in newspapers are essentially ephemera. They quickly disappear from everyone’s cultural memory. The Greeks understand that since their word for newspaper is εφημερίδα — ephemerida. 

      If Paty believed that the cartoons belonged only to the past, he was wrong. Because of the media’s and politicians’ obsession with causes and the fact that the Charlie Hebdo murder trial was currently underway, the issues around the cartoons were very much alive. 

      In the late 20th century, Ireland endured a prolonged conflict between Protestants and Catholics marked by terrorism. The IRA was better organized and better equipped than any of today’s loose Muslim extremist networks. We might wonder today whether it would have made any sense for Protestant cartoonists to publish cartoons of the pope as a terrorist? (They obviously could not have taken Jesus as their target because both of the warring religions were Christian). 

      The answer is simple. It didn’t happen. Everyone understood the conflict had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with communities and conflicting loyalties. This is perfectly illustrated in a joke from that time: It’s night and a man is walking on the streets of Belfast. Suddenly a shadowy figure leaps out and thrusts him against a wall in a dark alley. He feels a gun pressed up against his skull. A voice shouts, “What religion are you?” He thinks: “If I say Catholic and he’s Protestant, he’ll kill me. If I say Protestant and he’s Catholic, I’m dead.” Thinking quickly, he said, “I’m Jewish.” He then heard the voice blurt out, “I must be the luckiest Palestinian in Ulster.”

      Now that is meaningful and effective satire. Though troubling, it can elicit a laugh from people of any religion. 

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      It’s Time to Change America’s Electoral System

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      America’s electoral system is structurally deficient and badly damaged. Its elections are decentralized, underfunded and prone to manipulation. It fosters partisan election officials who routinely engage in gerrymandering and accommodates active voter suppression that includes judges and courts that disavow legally registered votes. Today, only landslide results can bypass the many obstacles that exist to achieving a truly free and fair voting system in the United States.

      360˚ Context: The 2020 US Election Explained

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      Since the 1800s, the Electoral College system has not functioned as the framers of the Constitution had intended. It was designed to be representational by district, but since Thomas Jefferson instituted the winner-take-all approach, the regimen has morphed into a muddled, skewed, corrupt mess, leaving many Americans feeling like the system is rigged.

      Perpetuating Inequality

      Consider this: By 2040, 30% of Americans from smaller, more rural states will elect 70 of the 100 US senators. By then, 70% of Americans will live in just 15 states and 50% of them will live in just eight of those states. Rather than help ensure equal representation under the law, the Electoral College has merely become a means of perpetuating inequality and unfairness, and is not representative of the country’s diversity. And since each state governing body can decide how the electors will vote, it is rife with partisanship and amenable to corruption.

      It is only because the college exists that any candidate who may not have won the most votes can become a victor in an election. Electing leaders who do not have a majority of the popular vote is becoming more commonplace. The first time an election was lost to the candidate with the most votes was in 2000, when Al Gore won by about 500,000 votes. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won by nearly 3 million votes. On November 3, Trump could lose by 6 or 8 million this time and still conceivably win an electoral victory. Americans increasingly believe that their votes do not count and see the system as illegitimate. That must change.

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      The US House of Representatives hasn’t been enlarged since 1929. It is time to have a constitutional amendment to expand it to be more representative of population dispersion and the diversity of the country. Beyond that, the entire structure of the electoral system badly needs to be reformed and modernized to better reflect the composition of American society and remove some of its impurities. America needs meaningful systemic change that truly shakes up the system, not more business as usual. It is time for the American people to take back their government from career politicians, lobbyists, special interests and an elite who have all gamed the system to their own advantage.

      While around one in four Americans identify as independent — more than either Democrats or Republicans — the vast majority vote for Democrat or Republican candidates rather than independents. Independent parties have historically performed poorly in state and national elections because independent voters do not vote for them, part of the issue being that independent parties and candidates sometimes represent the “looney left” or the radical right. But a bigger contributor is the absence of a meaningful independent party platform.

      Meaningful Change

      Going forward, candidates for any party should agree in advance to serve only one term. The immediate effect would be to strip the lobbyists and special interests of their ability to influence the way lawmakers from any party voted because those lawmakers would not need their money to get reelected. Such an approach would permit lawmakers to focus on what they were sent to Washington or the state house to do: govern, rather than spend 80% (or more) of their time raising money for their reelection and perpetuating a corrupt political system.

      Meaningful, significant change is not going to occur from within mainstream political parties in America — it will only come from outside them. The party platform I would propose is based on all elected representatives subscribing to honesty, integrity, transparency and, more importantly, accountability for their action or inaction. If any elected representative in such a party fails to deliver what they say they will deliver, they would need to agree in advance to be removed from office before their term is finished.

      All such elected representatives would need to agree to adhere to the laws which they pass — that such laws also apply to them, with no health plans for themselves or their families that are different than what they pass into law for everyone else. The idea would be to bring fairness, honor and dignity back to their offices and to the people they serve.

      Too many of our elected officials have forgotten who sent them to Washington, who they work for and why they are there. The Democratic and Republican parties have been hijacked by extremists. The electoral system does not function as it was intended. That is why it is time for radical reform, and the American people should demand it from their government and parties.

      *[Daniel Wagner is the author of “The Chinese Vortex: The Belt and Road Initiative and its Impact on the World.”]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Ex-South Korean President Lee back to prison after ruling

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      Former South Korean President Lee Myung-bak was sent back to prison on Monday, four days after the country’s top court upheld his 17-year prison term for corruption crimes.South Korean television stations showed a convoy of black vehicles, including one carrying Lee, arriving at Seoul’s Dongbu Detention Center. Center officials later confirmed his imprisonment. Earlier Monday, Lee was taken from his home to a Seoul prosecutors’ office to be formally notified about his sentence and undergo identification checks there.Lee, 78, was convicted of taking bribes from big businesses including Samsung, embezzling corporate funds from a company that he owned and committing other corruption-related crimes before and when he served as president from 2008-13. A Seoul district court initially sentenced Lee to 15 years in prison in 2018. He was bailed out of prison several months later but was taken back into custody this February, after an appellate court handed down a 17-year term and canceled his bail. Days later, however, he was released again after he appealed the ruling on his bail cancellation. On Thursday, the Supreme Court confirmed the 17-year term. Lee, a former Hyundai CEO, won the 2007 presidential election on a promise to reinvigorate the country’s economy. But his five years in office were marred by the global financial crisis, massive public protests over the resumption of U.S. beef imports and military animosities with North Korea.Lee’s corruption case erupted after his successor, fellow conservative Park Geun-hye, was removed from the presidency and jailed over a separate corruption scandal in 2016 and 2017 that sparked one of the biggest anti-government protests in South Korea. More

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      A Counterweight to Authoritarianism, People Power Is on the Rise

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      Despite all the obstacles, Americans are voting in huge numbers prior to Election Day. With a week to go, nearly 70 million voters have sent in their ballots or stood on line for early voting. The pandemic hasn’t prevented them from exercising their constitutional right. Nor have various Republican Party schemes to suppress the vote. Some patriotic citizens have waited all day at polling places just to make sure that their voices are heard.

      Americans are not alone. In Belarus and Bolivia, Poland and Thailand, Chile and Nigeria, people are pushing back against autocrats and coups and police violence. Indeed, 2020 may well go down in history alongside 1989 and 1968 as a pinnacle of people power.

      Some pundits, however, remain skeptical that people power can turn the authoritarian tide that has swept Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and Narendra Modi into office. “People power, which democratized countries from South Korea and Poland in the 1980s to Georgia and Ukraine in the 2000s and Tunisia in 2010, has been on a losing streak,” writes Jackson Diehl this week in The Washington Post. “That’s true even though mass protests proliferated in countries around the world last year and have continued in a few places during 2020 despite the pandemic.”

      Diehl can point to a number of cases to prove his point. Despite massive popular resistance, many autocrats haven’t budged. Vladimir Putin remains in charge in Russia, despite several waves of protest. Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems to have only consolidated his power in Turkey. And who expected Bashar al-Assad to still be in power in Syria after the Arab Spring, a punishing civil war and widespread international condemnation?

      Could COVID-19 Bring Down Autocrats?

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      Even where protests have been successful, for instance most recently in Mali, it was the military, not democrats, who took over from a corrupt and unpopular leader. Rather than slink out of their palaces or send in the tanks for a final stand by, autocrats have deployed more sophisticated strategies to counter popular protests. They’re more likely to wait out the storm. They use less overtly violent means or deploy their violence in more targeted ways to suppress civil society. Also, they’ve been able to count on friends in high places, notably Donald Trump, who wishes that he could rule forever.

      Pundits tend to overstate the power of the status quo. Autocrats may have the full panoply of state power at their disposal, but they also tend to dismiss challenges to their authority until it’s too late. As Americans await the verdict on Trump’s presidency, they can take heart that the tide may be turning for people power all over the world.

      Overturning Coups: Bolivia and Thailand

      One year ago, Bolivia held an election that the Organization of American States (OAS) called into question. The apparent winner was Evo Morales, who had led the small South American nation for nearly 14 years. The OAS, however, identified tampering in at least 38,000 ballots. Morales won by 35,000 votes. Pressured by the Bolivian military, Morales stepped down and then fled the country. A right-wing government took over and set about suppressing Morales’ Movement for Socialism (MAS) party. It looked, for all the world, like a coup.

      The OAS report set into motion this chain of events. Subsequent analysis, however, demonstrated that the OAS judgment was flawed and that there were no statistical anomalies in the vote. Granted, there were other problems with the election, but they could have been investigated without calling into question the entire enterprise.

      It’s also true that Morales himself possesses an autocratic streak. He held a referendum to overturn the presidential term limit and then ignored the result to run again. He came under criticism from environmentalists, feminists, and his former supporters. But Morales was a shrewd leader whose policies raised the standard of living for the country’s poorest inhabitants, particularly those from indigenous communities.

      Embed from Getty Images

      These policies have enduring popularity in the country. With Morales out of the political equation, Bolivians made their preferences clear in an election earlier this month. Luis Arce, the new leader of MAS, received 55% of the vote in a seven-way race, a sufficient margin to avoid a run-off. The leader of last year’s protest movement against Morales received a mere 14%. MAS also captured majorities in both houses of congress. An extraordinary 88% of Bolivian voters participated in the election. The victory of MAS is a reminder that the obituaries for Latin America’s “pink tide” have been a tad premature.

      The Bolivians are not the only ones intent on overturning the results of a coup. In Thailand, crowds of protesters have taken to the streets to protest what The Atlantic calls the “world’s last military dictatorship.” In the past, Thailand has been nearly torn apart by a battle between the red shirts (populists) and the yellow shirts (royalists). This time around, students and leftists from the reds have united with some middle-class yellows against a common enemy: the military. Even members of the police have been seen flashing the three-finger salute of the protesters, which they’ve borrowed from “The Hunger Games.”

      The protesters want the junta’s figurehead, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, to step down. They want to revise the military-crafted constitution. And they want reforms in the monarchy that stands behind the political leadership. Anger at the royals has been rising since the new king took over in 2016, particularly since he spends much of his time with his entourage in a hotel in Bavaria.

      It’s not easy to outmaneuver the Thai military. The country has had more coups in the modern era than any other country: 13 successful ones and nine that have failed. But this is the first time in a long time that the country seems unified in its opposition to the powers that be.

      Finally, the prospects for democracy in Mali received a recent boost as the military junta that took over in August orchestrated a transition to more or less civilian rule over the last month. The new government includes the former foreign minister, Moctar Ouane, as prime minister and several positions for the Tuaregs, who’d previously tilted toward separatism. Military men still occupy some key positions in the new government, but West African governments were sufficiently satisfied with this progress to lift the economic sanctions imposed after the coup. National elections are to take place in 18 months.

      Standing Up the Autocrats: Belarus and Poland 

      Protesters in Belarus want Alexander Lukashenko to leave office. Lukashenko refuses to go, so the protesters are refusing to go as well. Mass protests have continued on the streets of Minsk and other Belarusian cities ever since Lukashenko declared himself the winner of the presidential election in August. The last European dictator has done his best to suppress the resistance. The authorities detained at least 20,000 people and beat many of those in custody.

      This Sunday, nearly three months after the election, 100,000 again showed up in Minsk to give punch to an ultimatum issued by exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya: Lukashenko either steps down or will face a nationwide work stoppage. Lukashenko didn’t step down. So, people walked out. The strikes began on Monday, with workers refusing to show up at enterprises and students boycotting classes. Shops closed down, their owners creating human chains in Minsk. Even retirees joined in.

      Notably, the protest movement in Belarus is directed by women. Slawomir Sierakowski describes one telling incident in The New York Review of Books:

      “After receiving reports of an illegal assembly, a riot squad is dispatched to disperse it. But when they get there, it turns out to comprise three elderly ladies sitting on a bench, each holding piece of paper: the first sheet is white, the second red, the third white again — the colors of the pro-democracy movement’s flag. Sheepishly, these masked commandos with no identification numbers herd the women into a car and carry them off to jail.
      How many sweet old ladies can a regime lock up without looking ridiculous?” 

      Women are rising up in neighboring Poland as well, fed up the overtly patriarchal leadership of the ruling Law and Justice Party. The right-wing government has recently made abortion near-to-impossible in the country, and protesters have taken to the streets. In fact, they’ve been blockading city centers.

      It’s not just women. Farmers and miners have also joined the protests. As one miner’s union put it, “a state that assumes the role of ultimate arbiter of people’s consciences is heading in the direction of a totalitarian state.”

      Strengthening the Rule of Law: Chile and Nigeria

      Chile has been a democracy for three decades. But it has still abided by a constitution written during the Pinochet dictatorship. That, finally, will change, thanks to a protest movement sparked by a subway fare increase. Beginning last year, students led the demonstrations against that latest austerity measure from the government. Resistance took its toll: Around 36 people have died at the hands of the militarized police. But protests continued despite COVID-19.

      What started as anger over a few pesos has culminated in more profound political change. This week, Chileans went to the polls in a referendum on the constitution, with 78% voting in favor of a new constitution. In April, another election will determine the delegates for the constitutional convention. In 2022, Chileans will approve or reject the new constitution.

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      The protests were motivated by the economic inequality of Chilean society. A new constitution could potentially facilitate greater government involvement in the economy. But that kind of shift away from the neoliberal strictures of the Pinochet era will require accompanying institutional reforms throughout the Chilean system. A new generation of Chileans who have seen their actions on the streets translate into constitutional change will be empowered to stay engaged to make those changes happen.

      In Nigeria, meanwhile, the recent protests have focused on an epidemic of police killings. But the protests have led to more violence, with the police responsible for a dozen killings in Lagos last week, which only generated more protest and more violence. Activists throughout Africa — in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and elsewhere — have been inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement to challenge police brutality in their own countries. Accountable governments, transparent institutions, respect for the rule of law: These are all democratic preconditions. Without them, the elections that outsiders focus on as the litmus test of democracy are considerably less meaningful.

      The Future of People Power

      People power has caught governments by surprise in the past. That surprise factor has largely disappeared. Lukashenko knows what a color revolution looks like and how best to head it off. The government in Poland contains some veterans of the Solidarity movement, and they know from the inside how to deal with street protests. The Thai military has played the coup card enough times to know how to avert a popular takeover at the last moment.

      But in this cat-and-mouse world, people power is evolving as well. New technologies provide new powers of persuasion and organizing. Greater connectivity provides greater real-time scrutiny of government actions. Threats like climate change provide new urgency. Sure, authoritarians can wait out the storm. But the people can do the same.

      Here in the United States, periodic demonstrations have done little to push the Trump administration toward needed reforms. Nor have they led to his removal from office. Trump delights in ignoring and disparaging his critics. He rarely listens even to his advisers. But the four years are up on Tuesday. The American people will have a chance to speak. And this time the whole world is listening and watching. Judging from the president’s approval ratings overseas, they too are dreaming of regime change.

      *[This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Is Peace Religious or Secular?

      by

      Reporting on yesterday’ horrendous knife attack in Nice’s cathedral, Al Jazeera defined the context: “The incident comes amid growing tensions between France and the Muslim world over French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent speech wherein he said Islam was in ‘crisis’, and amid renewed public support in France for the right to show cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.”

      After the US Election, Will Civil War Become the Fashion?

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      Earlier this week, Fair Observer’s founder, CEO and editor-in-chief, Atul Singh, teaming up with the great and respected scholar Ishtiaq Ahmed, published an article with the title, “Macron Claims Islam Is in ‘Crisis.’ Erdogan Disagrees.” Citing the public quarrel that recently broke out between the French and Turkish presidents, the authors review various moments of violence in the political history of Muslim expansion in Asia.

      France finds itself undergoing a historical psychodrama with existential implications. At the beginning of October, Macron asserted that “Islam is a religion that is in crisis,” accusing it of the anti-republican crime of “separatism.” Commentators avoided noticing that this was a clever ploy on Macron’s part to distract attention from the fact that France and Europe have been in an existential crisis for some time. Pointing to someone else’s crisis is an efficient way of hiding one’s own.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Above all, Macron wants to convince voters in France that he, far better than the nationalist Marine Le Pen, has the stature to confront the consequences of Islam’s global crisis. The president has built a fragile center-right power base, and his main challengers in the 2022 election are on the right and the extreme right. He must at all costs occupy some of their terrain. The Muslim threat is the hot-button issue that has the most immediate impact.

      Shortly after President Macron’s denunciation of the global crisis of Islam, the gruesome killing and beheading of Samuel Paty took place. The history teacher’s 18-year-old assassin, born in Chechnya, had been educated in French public schools from the age of 6. Paty’s crime had been to show his class the controversial Charlie Hebdo cartoons ridiculing Islam in a lesson about freedom of speech. Macron has since made a point of defending the “liberty of blasphemy” as a basic right, protesting that he would not “renounce the caricatures,” which for some may sound as if he is endorsing their content.

      The article by Ahmed and Singh builds up to a fundamental question: “Does Islam lead to violence and terrorism?” After noting that “[m]any Islamic scholars and political analysts argue in the negative,” the authors boldly announce their “contrarian view that Islam can only be a religion of peace after it conquers the world and establishes a supremacy of sharia.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Religion of peace:

      Every religion at its spiritual core, just as every religion as soon as it is appropriated or overtaken by political forces becomes a religion of war

      Contextual Note

      Throughout mankind’s history, there have been so many sects, cults, churches and spiritual philosophies that generalizing about religion itself can only be a futile exercise. Generalizing about any single religion, especially one shared by more than a billion people and that has lasted over a thousand years, is equally fraught with ambiguity. Attributing to a religion the ambition of conquering the world begs so many questions of history, economy, political organization and culture that no discussion, however rational, can hope to produce an acceptable general conclusion.

      St. Augustine observed that if fire is used to produce warmth, we see it as good and peaceful, but if used to burn and destroy, it appears aggressive and evil. The same is true of any religion. History offers examples of both the good and evil uses of religion. Searching the sacred texts of any religion will provide examples of exhortations that may at times suggest aggressive inclinations and at others, peace and harmony.

      It is not the task of a Devil’s Dictionary’s to defend any particular religion or religion in general, but rather to recognize those occasions when even secular thought — and more particularly political thought — hides the fact that it has its own dogmas, often as categoric and absolute as the most puritanical religion.

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      Most media commentators have refused to notice what is obvious about the situation in France. Laicité in the hands of French politicians has become a surrogate religion. It has produced a belief system with doctrines increasingly formulated as dogmas. Political scientist Olivier Roy wonders whether Macron isn’t seeking to abolish the separation of church and state, the foundation of laïcité, by focusing only on Islam. Macron’s stance implies that “the simple fact of placing God above men is a declaration of separatism.” Laïcité risks becoming a religion of war, not peace.

      Emulating the Catholic Church, Macron’s government turned Paty into a republican saint and martyr when it instantly conferred upon him the Légion d’honneur. In the days following his killing, some had proposed to have him interred at the Pantheon, to be entombed with the “gods” of the republic. In contrast, the Vatican requires an elaborate procedure, the passage of time and the intervention of the devil’s advocate before canonizing its saints and martyrs.

      One prominent voice in French politics has suggested a subtle but necessary distinction that Macron’s government and the media prefer to avoid. Jean-Luc Mélanchon, the head of the party La France Insoumise, has consistently militated in the past for severe punitive measures directed not at “Islam in crisis,” “radical Islam” or even fundamentalism, but at the actors of “political Islam,” a term Roy defines as “the contemporary movement that conceives of Islam as a political ideology.” For this crime, Macron’s minister of education calls Mélanchon a treasonous “Islamo-gauchiste.”

      Historical note

      Though the characterization of Islam by Ishtiaq Ahmed and Atul Singh appears abusive in its generality, there is a very real sense in which is true. All systems of thought that claim to be universal are tempted by despotism. If we define secular peace as a state of shared understanding and harmonious interaction across an entire population, we must recognize that it implies some degree of submission and conformity to an order, usually a political order. It’s a question of degree and the means of enforcement available. France’s Reign of Terror was conceived by secular rationalists. Throughout history, submission and conformity have been achieved through fear and intimidation, conquest and slaughter.

      Both Christianity and Islam claim to be universal. In the history of both religions, we have seen examples that tended toward two extremes: the generous belief that the religion is accessible to all people and the insistence that all people in a specific region embrace it. The determining factor has always been the political climate and social traditions within which the universality of the religion and its moral system have been applied or imposed.

      The same is true of secular religions such as French republicanism and American exceptionalism. These non-religious cults play a determining role in the nations’ foreign policy. The US and France have each created a political religion that they believe is not only proper to their nation, but represents a universal model that other nations should emulate. In both cases, the separation of church and state plays an important role, clearing the way for universal adherence to the declared values of the republic and the civic religion.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Some point out that Islam differs from Christianity, whose founder insisted on rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s but not what is God’s. They may argue that Islam has never taken the trouble to distinguish between religious and political authority and has, throughout history, consistently invited confusion between the two. But in the Muslim world, the tradition of Sufism dates back to the early Umayyad period. Though it never had any pretension of becoming dominant, its historical reality demonstrates the awareness of a radical distinction between the spiritual (faith) and the worldly (politics).

      In short, religions play the role that history allows them to play. They also influence the politics we in the West, somewhat presumptuously, consider to be the unique basis of history. Moral philosophy always accompanies religion and can at times play a dominant role. But more often, political forces associated with religion manage to push it aside or mold it into something new. Whether any dominant religion becomes a religion of war or peace lies in the eyes of the beholder at a specific moment of history.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More