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      The Role of Foreign Policy in the US Election

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      It has become cliché to assert that unless their country is at war, Americans pay scant attention to foreign policy in their presidential elections. On the whole — and assuming a candidate isn’t seen as a warmonger, an accusation made of Republican candidate Barry Goldwater in his loss to incumbent President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 — this has been largely true. A corollary may be that when the US is at war, the incumbent usually wins, (George W. Bush being the most recent example in 2004).

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      The US isn’t technically at war now, though it has military forces deployed to high-threat areas and combat zones in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Those deployed numbers are pretty modest compared to recent years and have been trending downward since the Obama administration.

      So, will foreign policy matter to American voters when they vote in this election cycle? (November 3 is the official voting day, but millions have already begun voting by mail and are expected to continue in increasing numbers as Election Day approaches.)

      Foreign Policy May Matter to Voters But in a Different Way

      We won’t know the answer to that question until after the election when exit polls and surveys can more accurately measure voters’ attitudes and reasons for voting. It is probably true to say, however, that foreign policy won’t be at the top of most Americans’ agendas when they fill out their ballots. More important domestic issues will undoubtedly prevail. Those include the president’s response (or lack of) to the coronavirus outbreak, which has taken the lives of more than 215,000 Americans; the consequent devastating impact of the pandemic on the US economy; health care; racial justice and equality; and climate change.

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      There is another concern of voters and it is unprecedented in modern times. That is the heightened level of Americans’ anxiety over Donald Trump’s crisis-a-day presidency and an uncontrollable addiction to Twitter, which often only serves to exacerbate that anxiety. A return to a less apprehension-provoking presidency would be welcomed by many Americans.

      Part of that anxiety, one could argue, might stem from Trump’s dramatic departure from the foreign policy supported by every US president since Harry Truman following World War II. This was generally characterized as an alliance-based approach in which the US enlisted nations throughout the world in some form of alliance, partnership or understanding. It’s what drove the US to lead the effort to form — or support the formation of — multilateral organizations like the United Nations, NATO, the European Union and a myriad of UN-affiliated or regional organizations, from the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Bank to the International Monetary Fund and the Latin American Development Bank. It was also responsible in part for America’s successful emergence from the Cold War.

      Spoiled by Peace?

      This level of stability and security is taken for granted by far too many Americans. The enormous prosperity and development they have enjoyed since the end of World War II were possible because Americans need to worry as much as other nations about threats or invaders from abroad. The Cold War and the prospect of a nuclear Armageddon hung over Americans for decades. But most people understood that their leaders as well as those of the Soviet Union did not want — and most often sought to avoid through diplomacy — such confrontations from which neither would have emerged victorious. Through its far-sighted policy of alliance-based relations, America could also count on the support and partnership of other nations, including most of the world’s most advanced industrial nations.

      Today, Americans need not fear threats from abroad because their nation has maintained a foreign policy intended to ensure their security and promote their welfare. It has been the blessing that has allowed all other blessings of America to flourish virtually without hindrance from abroad.

      President Trump has cast this approach into doubt. Furthermore, he’s been challenged at times to lay out a cogent foreign policy alternative. What may best describe his approach is anti-multilateral and “America First.” That has meant directing harsh criticism at NATO and the EU as well as the UN, the WTO and the World Health Organization.

      Additionally, he has developed an unseemly and uncharacteristic (for American presidents) liking for autocrats, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un (among others). More shockingly, he has insulted and degraded some of America’s closest friends and allies, including Canada, Mexico, the UK, Germany, France, Japan, Australia and South Korea.

      Americans Support Active International Engagement

      These actions by their president disturb many Americans. How many exactly we can’t be sure of. But the previous alliance-based foreign policy is supported by a significant majority of Americans of nearly all political persuasions. Though far from perfect at times, it has permitted the country to avoid major wars. Even in America’s wars of choice like Vietnam and Iraq, the US could still count on the backing of many of our friends and allies, at least at the outset.

      Recent polling bears this out. Majorities of Americans support their country’s alliances and ties to such stalwart allies such as NATO, Germany, South Korea and Japan. Majorities also believe that maintaining America’s military superiority is important, and they even accept stationing US troops in allied countries. According to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 69% of Americans want the US to play an active role in international affairs but not dominate.

      Americans also believe that international trade, another hallmark of previous US foreign policy, is good for the country and its economy. According to a survey conducted by the Chicago Council, 83% think international trade is good for US companies and nearly 90% believe it is good for the US economy. More than three-quarters support compliance with rulings of the WTO.

      None of this would appear to comport with Trump’s foreign policy. In fact, his approach has flown in the face of what Americans believe, support and want.

      Other decisions affecting America’s standing in the world also weigh on their emotions and sentiments. For example, Trump’s unwillingness to cooperate with other nations to develop and distribute a vaccine for the novel coronavirus and his precipitous announcement to withdraw from the WHO sound out of character, if not ominous, to a nation that has historically led the global fight against viral threats and has been seen as a global leader in medical science.

      These actions detract from the country’s image and reputation in the world and contrast with Americans’ strong penchant for humanitarian action, especially in a crisis. Polling by the Pew Research Center indicates that as badly as foreigners evaluate China’s response to the coronavirus pandemic (61% negative), more people (84%) viewed the response of the US as poor.

      Temperament, Judgment and American Anxiety

      American attitudes about foreign policy are certainly shaped by interests. But interests in the US are as diverse as Americans themselves. So, very often, American values tend to play an outsized role in what citizens think their country’s foreign policy ought to be. Those values revolve around the same values that shape attitudes about their own government — i.e., democracy, freedom, equality, human rights, rule of law, and free and fair elections.

      Donald Trump’s affinity for demagogues, populists, illiberal autocrats and out-and-out dictators undercuts those values. And his administration’s failures to defend Hong Kong, stand up for the 1 million persecuted Uighurs in China, condemn Saudi Arabia’s execution of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, or to speak out against the many cases of Saudi human rights abuse against women and bloggers fall short of American values. His administration expresses occasional support for Venezuelans and Nicaraguans opposing the Nicolas Maduro and Daniel Ortega governments, respectively, but only when such support coincides with the Trump administration’s political self-interests in those countries, whose governments the US opposes.

      Nevertheless, it’s probably safe to say that not one of these issues will figure prominently on the minds of many American voters when they cast their ballots for either President Trump or his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. But they do contribute to their heightened anxiety over Trump’s leadership. That anxiety is driven by concerns about his judgment and temperament. Virtually every American is asking how comfortable and confident they feel with one or the other of these men in the White House for the next four years. The candidates’ positions on US foreign policy will directly impact that question.

      For most Americans, the candidate whose temperament and judgment on foreign policy — as well as the many other key domestic issues — gives them the predictability, reliability and comfortability they’ve missed these last four years is the one likely to get their vote.

      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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      America’s Maestro of Death and Destruction

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      Yes, when he was running for president, he did indeed say: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s, like, incredible.”

      Then he won — and on November 3 (or thereafter), whether he wins or loses, we’re likely to find out that, when it comes to his base, he was right. He may not have lost a vote. Yes, Donald Trump is indeed a “murderer,” but here’s where his prediction fell desperately short: As president, he’s proved to be anything but a smalltime killer. It wasn’t as if he went out one day on New York City’s Fifth Avenue or even in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and shot a couple of people.

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      Nothing so minimalist for The Donald. Nor is it as if, say, he had plowed “the Beast” (as his presidential Cadillac is known) into a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters, as so many other drivers have done this year. Let’s face it: that’s for his apprentices, not the showman himself. After all, Donald J. Trump has proved to be America’s 21st-century maestro of death and destruction, the P.T. Barnum of, as he put it predictively enough in his inaugural address, “American carnage.” In fact, he’s been a master of carnage in a way no one could then have imagined.

      Back in 2016, he was way off when it came to the scale of what he could accomplish. As it happens, the killing hasn’t just taken place on Fifth Avenue, or even in his (now hated) former hometown, but on avenues, streets, lanes and country roads across America. He was, however, right about one thing: He could kill at will and no one who mattered (to him at least) would hold him responsible, including the attorney general of the United States who has been one of his many handymen of mayhem.

      His is indeed proving to be a murderous regime, but in quite a different form than even he might have anticipated. Still, a carnage-creator he’s been (and, for god knows how long to come, will be) and here’s the remarkable thing: He’s daily been on “Fifth Avenue” killing passersby in a variety of ways. In fact, it’s worth going through his methods of murder, starting (where else?) with the pandemic that’s still ripping a path from hell across this country.

      Death by Disease

      We know from Bob Woodward’s new book that — in his own strange way — in February, Donald Trump evidently grasped the seriousness of COVID-19 and made a conscious decision to “play it down.” There have been all sorts of calculations since then, but by one modest early estimate, beginning to shut down and social distance in this country even a week earlier in March would have saved 36,000 lives (the equivalent of a dozen 9/11s); two weeks earlier and it would have been a striking 54,000 in a country now speeding toward something like 300,000 dead by year’s end.

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      If the president had moved quickly and reasonably, instead of worrying about his reelection on November 3 or how he looked with a mask on; if he had followed the advice of actual experts; if he had championed masking and social distancing as he’s championed the Confederate flag, military bases named after Confederate generals and the Proud Boys, we would have been living in a different and less wounded country — and that’s only the beginning of his Fifth Avenue behavior.

      After all, no matter what the scientific experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Protection and elsewhere were back then saying about the dangers of gathering in mask-less crowds indoors, it was clear that the president just couldn’t bear a world without fans, without crowds cheering his every convoluted word. That would have been like going on the diet from hell. As a result, he conducted his first major rally in June at the Bank of Oklahoma Center in Tulsa.

      Admittedly, that particular crowd would be nowhere near as big as he and his advisers had expected. Still, perhaps 6,000 fans, largely unmasked and many in close proximity, cheered on their commander-in-chief there. It was visibly a potential pandemic super-spreader of an event, but the commander-in-chief, mask-less himself, couldn’t have cared less. About three weeks later, when Tulsa experienced a striking rise in coronavirus cases (likely linked to that rally) and former presidential candidate and Trump supporter Herman Cain who had attended unmasked died of COVID-19, it didn’t faze the president in the slightest.

      He kept right on holding rallies and giving his patented, wildly cheered rambles in the brambles. As Rolling Stone correspondent Andy Kroll put it after attending one of his outdoor rallies in North Carolina, the president’s “remarks” that day (which ran to 37 pages and 18,000 words) were “practically a novella, albeit a novella that makes Finnegan’s Wake look like See Spot Run!”

      Nothing, certainly not a pandemic, was going to stop Donald J. Trump from sucking up the adoration of his base. Though in the first presidential debate with Joe Biden he claimed that he’s only been holding his rallies outdoors, in September in Nevada — a state whose governor had banned indoor gatherings of more than 50 people — Trump held a typically boisterous, adoring indoor rally of 5,000, largely unmasked, jammed-together Trumpsters. When questioned on the obvious dangers of such a gathering, he classically responded, “I’m on a stage and it’s very far away. And so I’m not at all concerned” — i.e., not at all concerned about (or for) them.

      If that isn’t the COVID-19 equivalent of a bazooka on Fifth Avenue, what is? And it summed up perfectly Trump’s response to the choice of pursuing his own reelection in the way he loves (and seems so desperately to need) or keeping Americans healthy. During these unending pandemic months, he regularly downplayed every danger and most reasonable responses to them, while at one point even tweeting to his followers to “LIBERATE” (possibly in an armed fashion) states that had imposed stay-at-home orders. He needed what he’s long called the “greatest economy in the history of America” back and reopening everything was naturally the way to go.

      Mimicking his boss’s style, Attorney General William Barr would even essentially compare lockdowns to slavery. As he put it, “A national lockdown. Stay-at-home orders. It’s like house arrest. Other than slavery, which is a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history.”

      Clearly at the president’s behest, “top White House officials” would, according to The New York Times, pressure “the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this summer to play down the risk of sending children back to school, a strikingly political intervention in one of the most sensitive public health debates of the pandemic.” (As the president would tweet in a similar spirit: “The Dems think it would be bad for them politically if U.S. schools open before the November Election, but it is important for the children and families. May cut off funding if not open!”)

      In other words, it didn’t matter who might be endangered — his best fans or the nation’s schoolchildren — when his reelection, his future wellbeing, was at stake. Murder on Fifth Avenue? A nothing by comparison.

      Supreme Assassins?

      And his response to the pandemic only launches us on what should qualify as an all-American killing spree from hell. In the end, it could even prove to be the most modest part of it.

      Embed from Getty Images

      For the rest of that death toll, you might start with health care. It’s already estimated that at least 2.3 million Americans have lost their health insurance in the Trump years (and that figure, according to the US Census Bureau, includes 726,000 children, some of whom may now be headed back to school under pandemic conditions). That, in turn, could prove just a drop in the bucket if his administration’s ongoing assault on Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) finally succeeds. And after November 3, it indeed might if Mitch McConnell is successful in hustling Amy Coney Barrett onto the Supreme Court in place of the dead Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who twice upheld the constitutionality of that act). A supposedly “pro-life” Trump version of the Supreme Court — unless the pandemic were to sweep through it — would undoubtedly turn out to be murderous in its own fashion. Think of them as potential “supreme assassins.”

      Barrett, in particular, is known to hold negative views of the ACA, and the court will hear the Trump administration’s case for abolishing that act within a week of Election Day, so you do the math. Wiping it out reportedly means that at least 23 million more Americans would simply lose their health insurance and it could, in the end, leave tens of millions of Americans with “pre-existing medical conditions” in an uninsured hell on earth.

      Death? I guarantee it, on and off Fifth Avenue — and it will have been The Donald’s doing.

      A Murderous Future

      All of the above should be considered nothing more than warm-up exercises for the real deal when it comes to future presidential slaughter. All of it precedes the truly long-term issue of death and destruction that goes by the name of climate change.

      It’s hardly news that Donald Trump long ago rejected global warming as a Chinese “hoax.” And as he withdrew the US from the 2015 Paris Climate Accord and — like the child of the fossil-fueled 1950s that he is — proclaimed a new policy of American energy dominance (“the golden era of American energy is now underway”), he’s never stopped rejecting it.

      He did so again recently on a brief visit to burning California amid a historic wildfire season, where he predicted that it would soon get “cooler.” The only exception: when he suddenly feels in the mood to criticize the Chinese for their release of greenhouse gases. As he said in a speech on September 22 to the UN General Assembly, “China’s carbon emissions are nearly twice what the US has, and it’s rising fast. By contrast, after I withdrew from the one-sided Paris Climate Accord, last year America reduced its carbon emissions by more than any country in the agreement.”

      He and those he’s put in place at the Environmental Protection Agency and elsewhere in his administration have spent his presidency in a remarkably determined fashion trying to destroy the American and global environment. So far, they have rolled back (or are trying to roll back) 100 environmental protections that were in place when he arrived in the Oval Office, including most recently limits on a pesticide that reportedly can stunt brain development in children. Air pollution alone was, according to one study, responsible for 9,700 more deaths in this country in 2018 than in 2016. Above all, at the service of a still-expanding American fossil-fuel industry, he and his crew have done their damnedest to open the way for oil, gas, and coal development in just about any imaginable form.

      In a season in which the West Coast has burned in a previously inconceivable fashion, leaving a historic cloud of smoke in its wake, while fierce storms have flooded the Gulf Coast, Trump has continued, for instance, to focus on opening the Alaskan wilderness to oil drilling.

      In short, he and his administration have, in a rather literal fashion, proved to be pyromaniacs of the first order. They’ve been remarkably intent on ensuring that, in the future, the world will continue to heat in ways certain to unsettle humanity, creating almost unimaginable forms of death and destruction. Despite the fact that Joe Biden called him a “climate arsonist” as the West Coast burned, somehow the potentially murderous nature of his environmental policies has barely sunk in this election season.

      If the legend was true, the Roman emperor Nero fiddled — actually, he was probably playing the cithara — while the capital of his empire, Rome, burned for six days. He didn’t personally set the fire, however. Trump and his crew are, it seems, intent on setting fire not just to Rome, New York or Washington, but to the Alaskan wilderness, the Brazilian rainforest and that giant previously iced in landmass he couldn’t figure out how to purchase: Greenland. He’s helping to ensure that even the oceans will, in their own fashion, be on fire; that storms will grow ever more intense and destructive; that the temperature will rise ever higher; and that the planet will become ever less habitable.

      Meanwhile, intently maskless and socially undistanced, even he (and his wife Melania) contracted COVID-19, officially becoming part of his own American carnage. The White House, Air Force One and the president and his aides became the equivalent of COVID-19 superspreaders, as senators and reporters, among others, also began to come down with the disease. It’s now proving a visible all-American nightmare of the first order. 

      Donald Trump has, of course, hardly been alone when it comes to burning the planet, but it’s certainly eerie that, at this moment, such an arsonist would stand any chance at all of being reelected president of the United States. His urge is visibly not just to be an autocrat, but to commit mass murder nationwide and on a planetary scale deep into the future.

      Murder, he said, and murder it was, and Fifth Avenue was the least of it.

      *[This article was originally published by TomDispatch.]

      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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      Can Donald Trump Steal a Second Term?

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      US President Donald Trump, who lost the popular vote by more than 3 million in 2016, is trailing his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, in most national polls. It looks like the writing is on the wall for Trump, with his ineptitude and disingenuity laid out for the world to see.

      Trump is a president whose bungled handling of the COVID-19 outbreak has resulted in the death of more than 215,000 Americans. Even after being infected by the virus himself, Trump tweeted on October 5: “I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”

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      As president, Trump received the best possible treatment anyone infected with the virus could hope for, including access to medication that an average American can only dream of. Trump’s insensitive tweet flies in the face of the lives lost, displaying his utter disconnect from reality and a cruel lack of empathy. This is a president who has a chronic compulsion for defrauding people and lying pathologically about seemingly everything, including his finances. As a recent investigation by The New York Times exposed, Trump not only managed to pay no tax at all in 10 out of the past 15 years, but he is also a consummate loser as a businessman.

      Trump is also the first president in the history of the United States to have been impeached and then seek reelection following an acquittal by the Senate. It is seemingly inconceivable that a tax evader, crook, pathological liar and callous narcissist can succeed in hoodwinking the public for a second time into electing him. Sadly, anyone who dismisses Trump as not reelectable would do so at their own peril.

      Voter Suppression

      President Trump has repeatedly tried to undermine the democratic process in more ways than one cares to count in the lead up to the presidential election on November 3. Without providing any credible evidence, he has claimed that voting by mail is fraught with fraud, sowing seeds of doubt in the election results should his bid for a second term fail. Wary Democrats have reacted to this by encouraging people to cast their vote in person, despite the raging pandemic.

      In an effort to further subvert mail-in voting, Trump trained his guns on the United States Postal Service (USPS), openly admitting that he opposed allocating additional funding. “They need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump stated unabashedly in an interview with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo in August. “If they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it.” Despite these attacks, Trump himself voted using a mail-in ballot during the March presidential primaries in his resident state of Florida.

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      One has to marvel at the brazen thoroughness with which he is diminishing the authenticity of the very process that propelled him to his current position. There are only two ways in which people can exercise their franchise: by voting in person or by using an alternate option that is available to them in their local jurisdiction, such as absentee ballots. On the one hand, Trump has discredited the usage of mail-in ballots. He has also appointed Louis DeJoy, a Republican donor, as postmaster general, who has crippled the operations of the USPS. On the other hand, Trump is employing scare tactics to turn people away from in-person voting. His comprehensive approach is aimed at lowering voter turnout, which he believes will be favorable for Republicans.

      In a statement that borders on voter intimidation, Trump stated in an interview with Fox News on August 20 that “We’re going to have sheriffs, and we’re going to have law enforcement, and we’re going to hopefully have U.S. attorneys and we’re going to have everybody, and attorney generals.” Trump was alluding to sending law enforcement officials to voting centers. Federal law prohibits any on-duty law enforcement personnel bearing arms from entering a voting center without the express purpose of casting their own vote. Yet the mere threat of sending police and sheriffs to voting centers, even if only to monitor polls, can terrify marginalized communities and prevent them from turning up to vote.

      Logic Defying Loyalty

      Anyone with an iota of common sense can see the hypocrisy of Trump’s statements. Sadly, there is an intransigent base of followers that he has cultivated who refuse to see him for the charlatan president he really is. Cognitive neuroscientist Bobby Azarian’s article in Psychology Today, entitled “A Complete Psychological Analysis of Trump’s Support,” enumerates more than a dozen elements that energize Trump’s voter base, which include terror management theory and the Dunning-Kruger effect.

      There are several Republican politicians who have stated that they will not be supporting Trump in this election. Nearly everyone on the list is someone who held office as a Republican in the past and is not seeking reelection. Other than Senators Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski, both of whom have not categorically stated who they intend to vote for, most sitting Republican politicians have forsaken their dignity and self-respect in order to do Trump’s bidding.

      Former Nevada Senator Dean Heller brazenly lied in a Fox News interview that the state’s vote-by-mail process will allow people to vote once by mail and once in person. Trump echoed this in September when he seemed to suggest voters should “test” the system by casting their ballot twice.

      Serving as an election officer in my local county, I know for a fact that when a person’s vote-by-mail ballot is received, it is recorded in the system and it is impossible for the same person to vote again without committing fraud under the penalty of perjury. Truth notwithstanding, Trump and Heller have managed to sow seeds of doubt among the gullible, making some of them question the robustness of the country’s democratic election process.

      South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham has been one of the biggest turncoats in his criticism of the president. In 2015, Graham called Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious-bigot.” Today, he is one of Trump’s staunchest cronies. Fighting a tough reelection bid in his home state, Graham shamelessly kowtows to the same person who was the object of his scathing criticism that has made an interesting case study on the fluctuating loyalties of politicians.  

      GOP Machinery

      However disingenuous and self-serving Trump’s actions may be, to win in November, the president needs the help of well-oiled machinery that is unafraid to flout the democratic process, engage in voter suppression and set the stage for a possible showdown in the judiciary system overruling the will of the people. That machinery goes by the name of the GOP.

      In Santa Clara County, California, the Registrar of Voters has made available nearly 100 vote-by-mail drop-off locations spread across the county. In stark contrast, Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose ordered just one drop-off box installed in each of the state’s 88 counties, some of which have a population of more than a million. LaRose reluctantly yielded after a judge in Franklin County rescinded his order. LaRose has since agreed to allow individual counties to decide to have more drop-off boxes if they wish to, but he has mandated that the location of those boxes has to be within the premises of the board of elections’ property, doing his best to make it as difficult as possible for people to cast their ballots.  

      It is worth remembering that, in 2004, the partisan actions of Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell may very well have played the decisive factor in George W. Bush getting reelected. Ohio continues to be a battleground state in 2020, and the actions of LaRose are dangerously reminiscent of what happened 16 years ago.

      In Texas, Republican Governor Greg Abbott has managed to succeed where LaRose fell short. Abbott has issued a proclamation limiting the number of drop-off locations to just one per county. Elections are already underway even as the legal wrangling over Abbott’s decision is likely to ensue. Concerned by the changing demographics of the voting population in his state, Abbott’s actions show how scared Republicans are and the extent to which they will go to subvert democracy.

      Setting the Stage for a Grand Finale

      Should he lose, Trump has categorically refused to commit to an orderly and peaceful transfer of power to his Democratic opponent. The president believes that this election will be decided by the Supreme Court, not the people of America.

      The sudden demise of the liberal Supreme Court icon, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, has provided Trump and the Republicans a fortuitous opportunity to shift the ideology of the court to decidedly conservative. No doubt, Democrats will do everything within their power to appeal to the logic and conscience of Republican senators to stop the confirmation of Trump’s nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, to replace Ginsburg just weeks before the presidential election. Unfortunately, both logic and conscience are in dangerously short supply, if not downright nonexistent, among Republican politicians in a Trumpian world.

      Can America see a blue wave of unprecedented proportion, awarding the White House to Joe Biden and flipping the Senate majority to the Democrats? Or will the machinations of Donald Trump and his coterie preclude such an occurrence from coming to pass? Whatever happens, if Trump fails to get the result he desperately craves, we should not be surprised to see more flagrant acts aimed at subverting democracy unfold before us.

      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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      The 2020 US Election Explained

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      With elections due on November 3, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has busted a plot against Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer. An armed militia allegedly planned to abduct and overthrow her. Whitmer had ordered stringent lockdown measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus that many Michiganders opposed and that the state’s Supreme Court recently ruled against.

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      Trouble has been brewing in Michigan for a while. In May, armed protesters stormed the state capitol building. Such anger has been rising in much of the United States along regional, race and class divides. This year, a spate of police killings ignited outrage and Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests erupted. On June 6, half a million people turned out in nearly 550 places across the US. According to some analysts, the US is at its most divided since the 1861-65 Civil War.

      Such is the rancor in the country that President Donald Trump has refused to participate in a virtual town hall debate, accusing the bipartisan debate commission of bias. In the first debate, Trump and his challenger Joe Biden traded insults, causing many to term it the ugliest such spectacle since televised presidential debates kicked off in 1960. This has grave implications for the elections and American democracy itself.

      The Story of the 2020 US Election

      The US is a young country with an old democracy. On April 6, 1789, George Washington was unanimously elected president. This was three months before a mob in Paris stormed the Bastille on July 14, kicking off the French Revolution.

      In contrast to the French who now have a fifth republic, Americans have stuck with their first one. The US Constitution is venerated in the same way as the Bible and has been amended a mere 27 times since 1787. The last amendment is of 1992 vintage and neither Republicans nor Democrats are proposing further changes. Despite the Civil War, the American republic, its democratic experiment and its Constitution have endured to this day.

      Embed from Getty Images

      American democracy follows a quadrennial cycle. Every four years, Americans go to the polls to elect the president and vice president. At the same time, they also vote in 435 members of the House of Representatives, the lower house of the US Congress that controls the purse, for two-year terms. Voters also get to pick around a third of the seats in the Senate, the upper house that confirms appointments — including those to the US Supreme Court — for six-year terms.

      This year, 35 Senate seats are in play at a time when Trump has nominated Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In the US, judges are appointed for life. Barrett is a conservative Catholic while Ginsburg was a liberal icon. The 48-year-old Barrett would give conservatives a 6 to 3 advantage vis-à-vis liberals in the Supreme Court. It could potentially lead to an overturning of the landmark 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion.

      Elections for the House of Representatives and the Senate are relatively straightforward. All American citizens above the age of 18 can vote for representatives of their congressional districts in a first-past-the-post system. They also vote for two senators to represent the state they live in. When it comes to electing a president, the Electoral College comes into play. A total of 538 Electoral College votes are distributed among 50 states. Americans vote for presidential candidates in their states. The candidate who wins the majority in a state gets the Electoral College votes assigned to that state.

      To become president, a candidate must win 270 or more Electoral College votes. Most of the time, the winning candidate has won both the popular and the electoral college votes. However, this does not always hold true. In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote but won only 266 Electoral College votes, while George W. Bush won 271. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but she only won 227 Electoral College votes in contrast to Trump’s 304 because she lost key states by narrow margins. Currently, Biden and the Democrats lead in most opinion polls, but they have not entirely been accurate in the past.

      The US has a two-party system with no space for a third party. The Republican Party is conservative. Historically, it stands for smaller government, lower taxes and stronger national security. Called the Grand Old Party (GOP), it opposes abortion, supports gun rights and wants to limit immigration. The GOP has strong support in the more rural parts of the country such as the South, Southwest and Midwest. The Democratic Party is the liberal political party. Traditionally, it supports greater governmental intervention, higher taxes and more social justice. Democrats support abortion, oppose gun rights and take a more lenient view of immigration. Their power base lies in urban areas that are largely in the Northeast and the West Coast.

      Currently, while the Republicans control the Senate and the White House, the Democrats control the House of Representatives. The Democrat-controlled House and the Trump White House have clashed repeatedly over a new stimulus package to a coronavirus-ravaged economy. Prima facie, such partisanship and brinkmanship is not new. This is a recurring feature in American politics. Yet this time it is truly different.

      Trump’s election in 2016 was a seismic moment. He was the unlikeliest of candidates who emerged on top in the Republican primaries. During his presidential campaign, he survived many a faux pas and a scandal. In the process, both the Bush and Clinton dynasties bit the dust. Trump won power as a populist and has governed as one.

      President Trump has ushered in an era of protectionism, slapping tariffs on many countries, especially China. He has weakened institutions that the US itself created after World War II by threatening to pull out of the World Trade Organization and not paying remaining dues to the World Health Organization after withdrawing the US from it. Early in his presidency, Trump walked away from the 2015 Paris Climate Accord and jettisoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership that underpinned former President Barack Obama’s Asia Pivot.

      Why Does the 2020 US Election Matter?

      The US election matters not only nationally but also globally. First, Americans are choosing between two poorly-defined but distinctly alternative visions. Donald Trump champions populist nationalism, while Joe Biden supports the post-World War II order. The former will push protectionism and unilateralism further, while the latter will roll back some if not all of Trump’s measures. Under Biden, there will be freer trade and more US support for international institutions. The election result will change the world.

      Second, Americans are deciding between two starkly different ways of handling the coronavirus pandemic. Trump has emerged out of hospital after contracting COVID-19 — the disease caused by the novel coronavirus — to greet his supporters from the White House balcony, take off his face mask and declare that the country must get back to business. Biden believes in prudence, wears his mask and proposes following public health guidelines advocating social distancing, limited economic activity and lockdowns in case of spiking infections. Unsurprisingly, the Pew Research Center puts the economy and health care as the voters’ top concerns. The election might reflect the tradeoff that voters are willing to make between the two.

      Third, questions about the election’s legitimacy sound louder than at any other time since the Civil War. BLM marches and militia activity are symptoms of a deeper malaise. The US is deeply divided and trust in institutions is running low. At such a time, postal ballots could play a big role in deciding the election. All states provide for voting by post but rules differ widely. The final result could take days or even weeks. Trump has already cast doubts as to the legitimacy of postal ballots and there are real fears about a peaceful transfer of power.

      Fourth, law enforcement and criminal justice seem to be key issues for this election. Many voters fear mass protests in many cities. Others believe that the criminal justice system is unjust and victimizes black people, especially young black men. Both rallies in support of law enforcement officials and for defunding the police are taking place across the US. The election will decide the direction of law enforcement and criminal justice in the country.

      Finally, the result of the election has immediate global ramifications because Pax Americana is fraying. Like Rome, the US can go to war as was the case with Vietnam and Iraq. Yet like its ancient counterpart, it has been the global guarantor of relative peace. With the US withdrawing from the world stage, countries like Russia, China and Turkey are stepping in to fill the void. Furthermore, what Joseph S. Nye Jr. calls America’s “soft power” seems to be waning.

      Some surmise that American superpowerdom is unchallengeable. The US has the space program, the air superiority, the deepwater navy, the cutting-edge technology, leading universities, unrivaled innovation, seductive pop culture, cheap gas, bountiful resources and a relatively youthful population to be top dog. Others see the US as Rome in decline, plagued by corruption, division and discord. The 2020 US election might reveal which of these two views might be closer to the truth, with profound consequences for the history of 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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      Thoughts On Colonial History for Columbus Day

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      The 1619 Project, launched last year by The New York Times Magazine, injected the question of slavery into the core of the traditional narrative of US history. It raised the question not only of what counts in history but how history is taught. Implicitly, it calls into question the great dogma inculcated by schools and the media into generations of Americans: that they are citizens of the “greatest nation on earth.”

      The liberal Times editors knew what they were doing when they decided to promote the project and glean the rewards that come from putting forward an original and potentially provocative thesis consistent with the Democratic establishment’s commitment to identity politics and the party’s quest for black votes. In effect, the 1619 Project seeks to magnify aspects of US history that promote civil rights and black identity.

      The Uncertain Future of the Great Tradition of Propaganda

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      The 1619 Project turned out to be an immediate commercial success as “people lined up on the street in New York City to get copies.” It quickly earned several awards, including a Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times had clearly made the right bet. It even provoked the kind of reaction from conservative Republicans that the Times revels in, since its readership is 91% Democrat or leaning Democrat. 

      Republicans wasted no time coming to the defense of traditional history. Mike Pompeo, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz attacked the project for undermining what they deem to be the true vocation of history, whose purpose, as it is taught in schools, is to bolster Americans’ belief in their institutions. Senator Cotton even defended the institution of slavery as a “necessary evil,” passing it off as an innocent accident of history that was easily rectified by Abraham Lincoln (at the cost of 600,000 American lives). 

      Embed from Getty Images

      The New York Times then discovered an unanticipated problem. Some of its own editorialists are uncomfortable with the idea of giving such prominence to the question of slavery, not because it might dim the glory of past heroes, but possibly because it risks casting a shadow on the nature of the American economy itself, an institution The Times prefers to protect and promote.

      Times editorialist Bret Stephens, a lifelong Republican, underwent a conversion in 2017 in reaction both to President Donald Trump, whom he refused to vote for, and to his party’s support for the alleged pedophile Roy Moore in Alabama. He declared on that occasion that he “can never vote Republican again.” In an op-ed last week, Stephens felt impelled to announce and explain what nevertheless amounts to his alignment with Trump and other Republicans who have taken a stance against the 1619 Project. Trump himself has proposed to withhold federal funding from states that adopt the program.

      In an involved rhetorical exercise, Stephens begins by acknowledging that the ambitious project had “succeeded.” He congratulates its principal author, Nikole Hannah-Jones, on her “patriotic thought.” He then goes on to develop his subtle thought on the distinction between journalism and history, before citing everything that’s wrong with the 1619 Project. His main charge is that “it issued categorical and totalizing assertions that are difficult to defend on close examination.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Totalizing assertions:

      The usual content of all official history books used in education in most nations and most obviously in American textbooks printed in Texas and distributed throughout the United States

      Contextual Note

      “The Revisionaries,” a documentary released in 2013, revealed the disproportionate influence on the teaching of history of the Texas State Board of Education. It explains how the Texas Board “has the power to shape the textbooks that children around the country read for years to come.” 

      More recently, Times correspondent Dana Goldstein highlighted the ideological contrasts between history textbooks produced in Texas and California. If Stephens is truly concerned by assertions that cannot be defended on close examination, he might want to examine the current textbooks children use. As Goldstein points out, “Conservatives have fought for schools to promote patriotism, highlight the influence of Christianity and celebrate the founding fathers.”

      Goldstein cites some examples. Concerning the issue of immigration, the Texas but not the California textbook contains a clearly “totalizing assertion” designed to please President Trump: “But if you open the border wide up, you’re going to invite political and social upheaval.” On climate change, the Texas textbook asserts “that American action on global warming may not make a difference if China, India, Russia and Brazil do not also act.” This is patently absurd, since anything that the “greatest consumer nation on earth” does will always make a difference.

      Stephens blames the 1619 Project for provoking a political reaction, something he apparently believes both journalism and education should avoid at all costs. “This was stepping into the political fray in a way that was guaranteed to invite not just right-wing blowback, but possible federal involvement,” he writes. But conservatives can always be counted on for blowback against anything that calls into question their dogmas.

      Historical Note

      In his essay, “The Missing Key to the Texas History Textbook Debate,” educator Kyle Ward reviews the history of US  history textbooks, a narrative that begins in 1826. That first textbook by Joseph Worcester launched the still persistent theme of the nation’s exceptional “greatness.” As an example, Ward cites Worcester’s totalizing assertion concerning Christopher Columbus — that “the discovery of America was the greatest achievement of the kind ever performed by man; and, considered in connection with its consequences, it is the greatest event of modern times.”

      For well into the 20th century, all the history textbooks that followed — at least until Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” — “told a similar story: that progress, democracy and the American people were all good; especially if said were white Protestants.” Schools “had one goal in mind when teaching history: to make every student a good, patriotic citizen.”

      Textbooks did evolve. In the latter half of the 20th century, the idea of becoming “a good, patriotic citizen” began to include the complementary idea that a good citizen was also a good consumer. Once history could go beyond recounting the deeds of great leaders and violent warriors, questions such as flight to the suburbs and consumerist culture could be included and treated both as social problems to be studied and specifically American achievements, on a par with the discovery of America. 

      The 1619 Project undoubtedly contains some factual errors and exaggerations. All histories do. Certain events it highlights may or may not merit the attention given to them as to their impact on the course of history. But every historical narrative does precisely that by selecting what best illustrates and accounts for specific factors of change at work at any given time. 

      Bret Stephens objects to his newspaper’s appeal to the idea of truth. “It is finally time to tell our story truthfully,” the Times Magazine proclaimed on its on its 1619 cover page. Stephens legitimately casts doubt on its truthfulness, citing historians who have critiqued its details. But no matter how well researched, history is inevitably a story, not a repository of scientific truth. Stories are never true in the scientific sense. The traditional narrative highlighting the founders’ foresight and America’s greatness is one story. But as a story, it depends on excluding other narratives, such as the 1619 Project.

      Stephens pleads the case for history that focuses on a guiding ideal — Thomas Jefferson’s “all men are created equal.” But history is rarely about imposing ideals. It is about establishing and consolidating power. 1776 was clearly about power. If we had access to Jefferson’s mind when he set out to challenge the English king, we would most likely discover that his idea was closer to all British men of means are created equal. He wasn’t thinking about humanity in general, but about a group of people who had created a community on the east coast of North America.

      Kyle Ward deserves the last word: “At the end of the day, it is not the history textbook that educates students about America’s past, but rather the teachers who develop the lesson plans, organize the instruction and assess students on what they know about history.” The meaning of history can never be found in the content of textbooks. It exists in the shared understanding developed between real people, whether members or a community or teachers working with students.

      *[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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      The Uncertain Future of the Great Tradition of Propaganda

      by

      The Guardian’s world affairs editor, Julian Borger, has lambasted the Trump administration for undermining a vestige of US foreign policy dating from the Cold War. In an extraordinarily sloppy article with the title “Trump cuts aid for pro-democracy groups in Belarus, Hong Kong and Iran,” Borger excoriates the Trump administration for its radical decision to block the funding of political organizations working to destabilize certain foreign governments. He accuses the White House of putting “at increased risk” this vital work of supporting subversive movements in nations considered insufficiently deferential to the US.

      The victim Borger wants us to pity in the drama is the Open Technology Fund (OTF), a private non-profit technology company spawned by Radio Free Asia in 2012. In 2019, the OTF received a mandate for funding by the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), a global media agency of the US government. USAGM’s historic mission is “to inform, engage and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy.” In other words, though putatively independent, it is the US media propaganda arm, supervising Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio y Televisión Martí, Radio Free Asia and Alhurra, the historical pillars of what was once anti-Soviet, anti-communist propaganda.

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      Borger defines the OTF as “a small non-profit organization that develops technologies for evading cyber-surveillance and for circumventing internet and radio blackouts imposed by authoritarian regimes.” He avoids mentioning the fact, reported by Eli Lake for Bloomberg, that it was created at the initiative of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It reflected her “vision heavily influenced by the Internet activism that helped organize the green revolution in Iran in 2009 and other revolutions in the Arab world in 2010 and 2011.”

      Borger presents OTF as a Silicon Valley-style innovative tech company seeking to do good in the world by providing “daily help to pro-democracy movements in installing and maintaining them, with the aim of staying at least one step ahead of the state.” These movements are, of course, agents of America’s expansive regime-change strategy that has effectively destabilized entire regions of the globe in the name of promoting democracy.

      Borger supposes that his readers will uncritically endorse the idea that promoting democratic ideals in places where people can’t vote is the honorable thing to do. He consciously hides from view the easily observable consequences of such campaigns in the past. These include the enduring chaos that typically follows the overthrow of regimes judged hostile to the US. It usually leads to installing and then supporting iron-fisted authoritarian regimes. And in the worst cases, the havoc spawns uncontrollable migration crises affecting entire regions.

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Pro-democracy movement:

      Any political organization dependent on resources and propaganda originating in the United States and dedicated to opposing a regime considered hostile to the US, whether or not the organization and its leaders have a real interest in, or respect for, democratic processes.

      Contextual Note

      The various “pro-democracy movements” the US has supported in the past have used the proclaimed commitment to democracy to mask what is essentially their intent of bolstering US political influence and paving the way for American and multinational business interests to control key features of state economies.

      The idea of democracy put forward by such movements has less to do with giving the people a voice than it does with imposing the “liberal” economic ideology that ensures social decisions will be delegated to the private sector. Instead of aiming at “the good of the people,” it puts in place policies focused on “the good of the economy,” which translates as the effective integration of a local economy into the global network of finance and trade.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Another key feature of the transformations effectuated by pro-democracy movements lies in the fact that they tend to be amenable to tolerating, if not encouraging, US military presence on or within their borders. In terms of the economy itself, following a pattern established in the US, what this means is that democracy has literally come to mean little more than a system of government open to control by the highest bidders. Such systems justify their claim to being a democracy by installing a constitution and organizing elections.

      The idea of democracy, even in the cultures of the developed nations of the West, has been reduced to a checklist with a single item: the holding of elections. The kinds of democratic regimes created by pro-democracy movements enable citizens to vote and even to organize political parties. But with an economy controlled essentially by external forces, any idea of independent rule quickly loses all meaning. Only those parties and those leaders that know how to comport with the major financial and industrial actors as well as comply with the requirements of an economy built around the dollar will have a chance of taking over the reins of government. And even that will be a game of appearances since the reins of the economy are in the hands of others.

      Historical Note

      Writing for the independent policy watchdog, Global Policy Forum, in 2008, Stephen Zunes described the observable patterns related to US support of pro-democracy movements in recent history. He emphasizes the largely negative effect that support has consistently produced across the globe, seriously tarnishing the nation’s image: “The United States has done for the cause of democracy what the Soviet Union did for the cause of socialism. Not only has the Bush administration given democracy a bad name in much of the world, but its high-profile and highly suspect ‘democracy promotion’ agenda has provided repressive regimes and their apologists an excuse to label any popular pro-democracy movement that challenges them as foreign agents, even when led by independent grassroots nonviolent activists.”

      The Guardian’s Julian Borger has no time to waste on helping his readers understand the broad historical context. That is not the business of newspapers like The Guardian, who see themselves as the voice of the reasonable left, like The New York Times and The Washington Post in the US. They prefer stories crafted as an attack on their perceived enemies on the right, even at the cost of obscuring understanding of the issues they expose. Borger’s story is newsworthy simply because it appears to reveal another of Trump’s many failings.

      No one can doubt that Trump has contributed singularly to compromising the international prestige and image of the United States. But as Zunes observed, the damage was already visible in 2008. President Barack Obama’s administration and Hillary Clinton’s State Department maintained and sometimes amplified the existing trend. But Obama became famous for deploying his charm and rhetorical skills to create a much-needed veneer of comforting hyperreality. It changed little other than temporarily obscuring the perception of the real intentions for those who weren’t paying attention. 

      Borger doesn’t even bother to reveal to his readers the recent historical background of the conflict between OTF and USAGM, the details of which were compendiously reported by Axios on September 1. A paragraph labeled “Between the lines” provides the gist of the entire affair, based on “fresh evidence to support charges that the USAGM is trying to dismantle the OTF and other government-funded media agencies.”

      Even Axios fails to take the further step of exploring the deeper implications of this conflict. It helpfully reveals the suspicion some have that “the agency is withholding OTF funds in order to shift them to [a] new agency.” Though many of Trump’s actions have been in total contradiction with his stated aims, he has always expressed his desire to move US foreign policy away from the aggressive trends of the past and reduce overseas commitments. This latest move appears to be part of an attempt to dismantle some elements of the neo-imperial infrastructure.

      It would have been interesting to learn more about the “new agency” that USAGM intends to create: the Office of Internet Freedom. But neither article delves into that crucial question, though Axios at least mentions it and points to its importance. The journalistic result is that Axios provides some factual though inconclusive information on the story whereas Borger offers a what is little more than gossip and backbiting as part of a squabble, with the intention of confirming our impression that Trump is an irresponsible loser.

      *[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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      “Defund the Police”: A Simple Slogan for a Complex Problem

      by

      As Black Lives Matter protests continue to flare across the country and the presidential election looms, and with a Supreme Court seat suddenly in contention, law and order is front and center in American politics. The slogan “defund the police” in particular has become a lightning rod since gaining prominence following the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor earlier this year.

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      In North Carolina, the Republican speaker of the House recently tried to tie state Democrats to proposals to defund the police. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott proposed legislation to freeze tax revenues for cities that vote to defund. And both Joe Biden and Donald Trump have accused each other of supporting defunding. Police reform has already come up in the first presidential and vice-presidential debates, and it will surely remain in the public eye between now and the election.

      Simple Slogan

      Politicians using the idea of defunding the police against their opponents is hardly surprising, especially given the emotional charge surrounding the slogan and the events that brought it to mainstream attention. But it’s also a gross misrepresentation of the slogan and the movement, which is inexcusable for anyone claiming to support police reform. Anyone who wants to be involved with an issue should at least make a good-faith effort to understand it. In the case of defunding the police, anyone motivated to learn more can turn to dozens of explainers in respected journalistic and academic outlets about the meaning of the phrase, its history and its implications.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Arguments for defunding the police are complicated and, in some cases, contradictory. But despite gaining recent notoriety, they are neither novel nor unusual. “Defund the police” did not magically appear this year. Discussions of abolishing law enforcement are more than a century old and build on the work of respected scholars, including W.E.B. Du Bois and Bertrand Russell. Police abolition gained steam alongside prison abolition movements in the 1960s under the guidance of activists and scholars such as Angela Davis. The defund the police movement built on those earlier campaigns.

      There is also data. Some cities defunded their police years ago and have information about the results. Unsurprisingly, the results are complicated. They depend on local circumstances as much as scholarly research. They represent varied implementations and are hard to compare. In short, they don’t easily conform to a given political perspective. The point, however, is that anyone who wants to understand what defunding the police entails has plenty of accessible resources.

      Not everyone needs to know a social movement’s complexities, of course, but even this brief history illustrates that “defund the police” has complex influences and evolving objectives despite the oversimplification of the slogan. Dismissing a movement because of its slogan may be good politics, but it’s bad policy. Slogans are powerful because they are simple, and they attract attention and motivate supporters. But simplification complicates meaning and leaves slogans open to critique.

      This has been a significant problem for “defund the police,” even among people who support the movement’s broader goals. The biggest misunderstandings of the slogan include the suggestions that it means that “there should be no police to protect the innocent,” that calls for defunding distract from meaningful reform or that defunding “invites anarchy.” It doesn’t mean any of these things.

      Good Controversy

      Oversimplification is a problem with all slogans. No matter how simple, however, they don’t erase an issue’s complexity. Simple slogans like “defund the police” still represent complicated contexts, histories and goals. And the complexity behind the “defund the police” slogan is a mere shadow of the complexity of the larger issues under discussion. Real efforts at police reform — reducing militarization, reducing shootings, funding social services, providing training and introducing accountability measures — are wrapped up with complicated municipal funding models, deeply-ingrained attitudes and beliefs, and entrenched incentive structures.

      In short, law enforcement reform is intensely complicated. It demands research, careful study and tough decisions. And the people who want to be involved in meaningful reform — politicians, law enforcement groups and citizens — need to be willing to evaluate the complications and make tough decisions. And here, people’s reactions to the slogan give us some insight.

      If a person can’t be trusted to learn about the “defund” slogan, how can they be trusted with the exceedingly complicated task of reforming law enforcement? Or if a person understands the slogan and still refuses to represent its complexities because it is politically or personally expedient, how can citizens, activists and voters trust their motives? Refusing to learn about the slogan or weigh its complications carefully is a warning sign that a person cannot be counted on to invest the time and energy necessary to address the actual problems at hand.

      To be sure, “defund the police” is a controversial slogan, and for good reason. It blatantly contradicts what many Americans believe about law and order. And it is certainly possible that defunding law enforcement is a flawed idea. Nevertheless, police reform has gained momentum around the country. Many cities and states are already pursuing it in different ways. No doubt it will be complicated. But since law enforcement reform affects every American, we should all be deeply invested in ensuring that the people involved in it are well-equipped to do the hard work and willing to do it in good faith.

      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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      Donald Trump, COVID-19 and America’s Love of Conspiracy

      by

      US President Donald Trump and his wife Melania tested positive for COVID-19 on the evening of Thursday, October 1. In retrospect, the diagnosis should not have become as a complete surprise. For months, Trump and most of his entourage ignored the advice of public health specialists, in his own administration, to wear masks in public settings and maintain social distance between the president, his key advisers and other White House personnel.

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      Despite warnings from infectious disease specialists inside and outside the administration, Trump persisted to hold public rallies, often in confined indoor settings, as part of his reelection campaign. These events appeared to gratify the president’s need for attention and unqualified adoration, irrespective of their partisan political benefits. Based on this behavior, extended over the course of the pandemic, it was almost inevitable that the infection caught up with Trump.

      Alternative Facts

      This interpretation seems perfectly reasonable. But it is unlikely to satisfy voices on the far right of the American political spectrum despite the House of Representatives’ bipartisan vote on October 2 to condemn the QAnon conspiracy. It requires some speculation, but not all that much, to expect QAnon believers and such deranged media figures as Alex Jones to produce a set of “alternative facts.” 

      These “facts” are likely to involve the discovery of still another “deep state” conspiracy within the federal government. According to such a conspiratorial view, Trump’s attempts to achieve his “pro-American” white nationalist objective are being sabotaged by a secret conspiracy formed among federal bureaucrats to thwart his policy goals. “Deep state” conspirators will stop at nothing to bring down Trump and his “conservative” administration. We should not be surprised if, over the remaining weeks leading to the November 3 presidential election, various versions of such a “deep state” conspiracy appear across the internet. It remains to be seen how much will be taken up by Fox News and other outlets.

      Multiple “deep state” conspiracy assertions and interpretations have surfaced in American political life over the decades. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the journalist John T. Flynn and other right-wing isolationists, including “Colonel” Robert McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, claimed that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had deliberately goaded the Japanese into attacking the United States to make gullible Americans abandon their “America First” ideals and support the country’s entry into the war against the Axis powers.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Flynn and others believed that Roosevelt knew of the Japanese plans to attack Pearl Harbor but deliberately did not alert US commanders in Hawaii, Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Lieutenant General Walter Short, so that the attack could proceed with maximum effect. According to this scenario, the blood of the sailors on the USS Arizona was on Roosevelt’s hands.

      During President Dwight Eisenhower’s second term, when fears of communism became a national obsession, Robert Welch, a retired Massachusetts candy manufacturer, formed the John Birch Society. (Birch was an American missionary in China who had been killed by Mao’s Communists in 1946.)  Welch went on to publish a widely publicized “Blue Book,” which, among other things, included a list of domestic “communists” and communist sympathizers who were scheming to bring down America. The president’s brother, Dr. Milton Eisenhower, then the chancellor of the University of Minnesota, was allegedly his superior in the communist conspiracy. The president himself was simply a dupe instrumentalized by powers that be inside the communist movement.

      The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in November 1963 yielded a bonanza of conspiracy theories. The assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, had defected to the Soviet Union, returned to the US and became a member of the “Fair Play for Cuba” committee while living in New Orleans. Those who espoused this conspiratorial interpretation claimed either the USSR — the assassination occurred after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis — or Fidel Castro, who had been targeted for assassination by the CIA, were behind the murder.

      Left-Wing Conspiracies

      At the time, competing left-wing conspiracy theories flourished as well, according to which Kennedy had been the victim of right-wing generals and businessmen who wanted the United States to abandon plans for a peaceful end to the Cold War. Film director and Vietnam War veteran Oliver Stone made a movie depicting the dynamics of this conspiracy, featuring an imaginary New Orleans district attorney uncovering the “truth.”

      The New World Order (NWO) conspiracy arose at the end of the Cold War. Following the expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991 by an international coalition led by the United States, President George H. W. Bush referred to the emergence of a new world order dominated by America as the world’s only “hyper-power.” His celebration of American dominance was understood by members of various active well-armed “patriot” groups around the country as the government’s attempt to compromise American sovereignty.

      Bush’s aim, according to this conspiracy, was to turn the United States over to the United Nations and other dark international evil-doers. In parts of the West and Midwest, NWO believers spotted black helicopters hovering above farms and ranches. Others detected the movement of black trains carrying Chinese communist troops to obscure destinations. Suspicions were aroused in the Northwest that detachments of China’s People’s Liberation Army were massing on the Canadian border, preparing to invade the US. Reverend Pat Robertson, a prominent televangelist, even wrote a book entitled “The New World Order,” warning  of the NWO threat and encouraging  followers to be prepared.

      If Donald Trump’s COVID-19 infection is blamed on the “deep state,” it will surely become part of a line of right-wing conspiracies involving American presidents, either as victims or, in the case of Roosevelt, perpetrators.  

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

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