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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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      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!”

      360° Context: The 2020 US Election Explained

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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.

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      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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      Mitch McConnell and the Newspeak of Democracy

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      US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has the reputation of acting as a powerful unifier of his party’s troops in the Senate. He has demonstrated his ability to convince fellow Republicans of what needs to be done (or prevented from being done) and how to move forward with urgency (or not move at all), as circumstances require.

      McConnell, a Republican senator, famously blocked sitting Democratic President Barack Obama’s attempt to nominate Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court after the death of Justice Anthony Scalia in February 2016. He did so on the grounds that it was an election year. Now, McConnell is faced with a similar situation, but this time his aim is to force rapid confirmation of President Donald Trump’s candidate, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, less than a month before a presidential election that risks unseating the Republican president. 

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      From the announcement of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death on September 18, the task of pushing through Barrett’s confirmation already appeared to be a daunting task. It would require every bit of talent and energy McConnell is capable of, especially after learning that he was guaranteed only the slimmest of margins in a vote of the full Senate. Still, the odds of success looked good, at least until the nation learned on October 2 that President Trump had tested positive for COVID-19 and would be hospitalized. Worse, two Republican senators also tested positive.

      As everyone knows, the valor of great heroes will always be tested by the gods. Sensing the panic that might follow concerning the continuity of government itself, McConnell wasted no time reassuring an anxious nation that everything would continue as planned. After speaking to the president, he reported via Twitter the good news: that the president was healthy enough to govern and that Barrett’s confirmation was still on course.

      On Friday, McConnell tweeted: “He’s in good spirits and we talked business — especially how impressed Senators are with the qualifications of Judge Barrett. Full steam ahead with the fair, thorough, timely process that the nominee, the Court, & the country deserve.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition permitting to understand McConnell’s vocabulary:

      Fair, thorough, timely:

      Hypocritical, incomplete, rushed  

      Contextual Note

      McConnell provides a textbook example of a rhetorical device called a tricolon: “a series of three parallel words, phrases, or clauses.” Some teachers call it the “rule of three,” observing that three aligned items are “always stronger and more memorable than one.” It is the key to sounding authoritative.

      The senator insists that his precipitation, in this case, is “fair” because some people dared to suggest it contradicted the sacred principle he himself had invoked in 2016 to justify delay. At the time, McConnell insisted that only the newly elected president had the legitimacy to nominate a candidate. “The American people are perfectly capable of having their say on this issue, so let’s give them a voice. Let’s let the American people decide,” he said.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In effect, a US presidential election is the only time the will of the people of the entire nation is expressed. And so, in 2016 democracy prevailed. Trump was elected. McConnell had his way, effectively preventing the confirmation of Judge Garland. Alas, it wasn’t “the people” who offered Trump the keys to the White House but the Electoral College. In their clear majority, the people had voted for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee. 

      So much for fair. What about the idea of thorough? The New York Times reports that “Republican officials said they had no doubt that senators would find a way to muscle through the nomination over Democrats’ protests.” In US culture, the idea of “thoroughness” often implies exactly that: using muscle to overpower any opposition, making the result irreversible. The adversary must be thoroughly defeated. The terminator must be thoroughly terminated.

      Finally, “timely” normally contains the idea of optimal timing to produce an acceptable result in the general interest. For McConnell, it seems to mean any timing that achieves his own goals. In the current context, a timely confirmation must take place before November 3. This ensures that even if the will of the people in 2020 results in the election of Democrat Joe Biden, the more sacred will of the Electoral College in 2016 will be honored. The meaning of words sometimes evolves. In 2016, timely meant “not now.” In 2020, it means “immediately.”

      Historical Note

      Any lucid observer would agree that politicians tend to be disingenuous. Sometimes it is for laudable reasons, such as conveying an optimistic message in dire times to bolster the public’s morale. But more commonly, it reflects the simple fact that most of their public discourse is motivated by their electoral strategy rather than the logic of government or the needs of the people.

      This has become accepted as the normal hypocrisy of politicians. Mitch McConnell may be twisting the meaning of words, but he is guilty of nothing more than everyday political hypocrisy. In contrast, Donald Trump is one of those rare politicians who, lacking any serious training in political culture, consistently rises above the habit of everyday hypocrisy by boldly and brazenly prevaricating. Trump will never miss an opportunity to deny the obvious or affirm the absurd. 

      President Trump’s success over the past four years may have created a trend that has now infected others. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy demonstrated this trend on October 2 when, in an interview with CNN about Trump’s temporary absence due to COVID-19, he asserted that the president “is going to rely on his surrogates. And unfortunately, one of his surrogates is Vladimir Putin.”

      When politicians make statements as comically over the top as this on national television without being challenged by their hosts in the media, the very notion that a stable frame of reference exists in public life risks disappearing irretrievably. What emerges is the impression that democracy and the ritual of elections constitute little more than an entertaining facade, a form nor of reality TV but of hyperreality TV, produced by people whose business is to seek, manage and manipulate power. Nothing they say has meaning other than as a badge of power. The more brazen the lying, the more respect they earn for demonstrating their competence in playing with the levers of power.

      In recent years, the concept of democracy has come to designate little more than the toolbox successful politicians use to convince the populace that they are fulfilling their will, even when contradicting it. What better illustrates this truth than Brexit in the UK? Theresa May and Boris Johnson, the two prime ministers who succeeded the hapless David Cameron, argued that the official result of the poorly designed and clearly manipulated 2016 referendum asking people to answer “leave” or “remain” to a question no one could understand definitively represented “the will of the people.” Similarly, Trump has consistently claimed that any policy he supports, however absurd, reflects the will of the people who voted in 2016.

      In his book, “The Will of the People: A Modern Myth,” political theorist Albert Weale claims that “around the world, political parties and movements – on both the left and on the right – invoke the will of the people.” He compares the idea of “the will of the people” to unicorns, flying horses and the sunken continent of Atlantis.

      Gideon Rachman, writing for the Financial Times last year, detected a common thread to Trump’s and Johnson’s approach to governing. He saw their insistence that the result of one election or referendum in 2016 justified every one of their own most extreme policies as “signs that the laws and conventions that underpin liberal democracy are under attack in both the UK and the US, two countries that have long regarded themselves as democratic role models for the world.”

      Both the US and the UK are on the brink. We still have no idea of how Brexit will play out in 2021. What happens in the US after November 3 is anybody’s guess, but the result is unlikely to be pretty. Democracy, in its unnatural marriage with capitalism, is reeling from the unexpected structural and economic effects of a pandemic. It has aggravated capitalism’s unbridled tendency to upset human life everywhere in the world. The consequence of that is undeniable: It has become increasingly difficult for any politician to conduct business in a way that is fair, thorough and timely.

      *[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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      All the President’s Surplus White Men

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      The problem of America today is the problem of white men. Who lies at the intersection of guns, right-wing fanaticism, pandemic and climate change denialism? Who ensures that racism continues to course through the lifeblood of the country? Who stands in the way of gender equality? Who supports foreign wars and the military-industrial complex? Who is getting hit hard by the erosion of the manufacturing base in the heartland? White men.

      White men are twice as likely as non-white men and white women to own guns. Although white women espouse racist right-wing views as much or even more than white men, it is the latter who overwhelmingly show up to vote, to gather with guns on the street, and to intimidate non-whites in person and on social media.

      Conservative white men have been at the forefront of climate denialism, according to a fascinating sociological study from 2011, and it’s not just Donald Trump who hates wearing masks during a pandemic but men more generally. A significant gender gap exists on the use of force, with women considerably less likely to support military intervention.

      Take the example of Brad Pascale, Trump’s former campaign manager. He was detained in Florida this week after allegedly hurting his wife, waving guns and talking about suicide. After his demotion to a digital consultant position on the campaign in July, he no doubt was worried about losing work altogether after the November election. There it is in a nutshell: white male violence, right-wing politics and anxiety over economic security. And residual white privilege. If Pascale were African American, an encounter with the police like that might not have ended peacefully.

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      Of course, I’m not talking about all white men. Plenty of white women have jumped on the alt-right bandwagon. And American conservatives can always point to a few people like Clarence Thomas, Ben Carson and Diamond and Silk to allege that their ideology is colorblind.

      But white men who are all revved up and with no place to go pose the greatest challenge to American democracy. They are the core of Donald Trump’s support. They are showing up on the streets in militia formations and with Proud Boy banners. The “manosphere” of online anti-feminism is the gateway for many right-wing activists who worry about being “replaced” by minorities and immigrants. And white men have been struggling with a long period of enormous economic dislocation that has turned them into a surplus labor force.

      Go West

      If Donald Trump loses in November, these white men will remain a problem. After all, unlike liberals who threaten to decamp to New Zealand if Biden loses, disgruntled Trump bros are not going to just up and leave the United States. Yet that’s precisely how countries have long dealt with the problem of surplus white men.

      In the bad old days, countries handled surplus men by sending them off to populate far-off lands. The political and religious misfits of the incipient British Empire sailed off to settle the land that hugged the eastern seaboard of North America. Later, the British exported its unruliest men to the prison colony of Botany Bay in Australia. The imperial nations of France, Spain, the Netherlands and Portugal similarly redirected male energy into meeting, enslaving and killing the locals of distant places. Those white men who didn’t have imperial realms to colonize —  Germans, Italians, Scandinavians, Irish — ended up founding America’s early immigrant communities.

      Men with little prospect of improvement have always been a potential source of trouble. They turn to drink, to crime, to revolution — and sometimes all three — if left to their own devices. The law of primogeniture, whereby the oldest son inherited all and left the other male heirs penniless, only compounded the problem by producing a seemingly endless supply of dispossessed men.

      For its first 100 years of existence, the United States had a convenient safety valve for such male restlessness: the Western frontier. In the Midwest, the Southwest and the Far West, the industrious built family farms, the greedy sought gold, and the opportunistic robbed banks. Along the way, they did what white men often did in those days: kicked the locals off the land and killed them when they refused to leave.

      When the frontier closed at the end of the 19th century, white men enlisted to expand a new American empire in the Spanish-American War and through expeditionary interventions in Latin America. World War I and the flu epidemic of 1918 “solved” the problem of the surplus with a ruthless cull of more than 100,000 men. Later, World War II removed four times that many from the equation. Since that time, America has continued to go to war. But the US government also made an effort to deal with its white male population by creating well-paying jobs in an expanding manufacturing sector and offering returning soldiers a leg up through programs like the GI bill

      This golden age of American economic growth, however, was primarily a golden age for the white American male. White women, if they broke with tradition to enter the workforce, earned considerably less than their male counterparts. And black Americans, especially prior to the successes of the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s, were relegated to second-class citizenship. In 1960, a mere 2% of women and black men worked in high-wage jobs like engineering and law. Virtually all doctors in the United States were white men. Racism and sexism permeated the immediate postwar government programs.

      Angry White Men

      In the 1960s, as a result of powerful social movements, women and minorities began to rise professionally. They continued to make gains in the ensuing decades, but the US economy as a whole hit a brick wall in the early 1970s. Real wages peaked in 1973. Imports began to appear more frequently on supermarket shelves and in car showrooms. Unions began to shed members in the 1970s and 1980s. And by the 1990s, the manufacturing jobs began to shift overseas — first with a massive expansion of the maquiladora program in Mexico after the passage of NAFTA and then to low-wage locations in Asia. Between 2000 and 2014, the United States lost 5 million manufacturing jobs.

      These economic transformations left behind many male blue-collar workers. They could still get jobs, but those jobs didn’t pay as well as the manufacturing positions of the golden age. In response, this proletariat didn’t organize against the ruling capital class. Increasingly, these workers listened to sexist, racist and xenophobic slogans that blamed women, minorities and immigrants for taking away their jobs. The financial crisis of 2008-09 swelled the ranks of the new right with many angry white men from the middle class as well.

      This is not a purely American problem. Angry white men have been a fixture in European right-wing politics, in Australia, in Israel. Machismo has long played a role in Latin American politics and, despite the rise of feminism across the continent, continues to influence electoral outcomes from Colombia to Brazil. Even China, where men can get jobs but not necessarily wives, has to deal with a problem of surplus men, given the population’s preference for male babies. India, too, faces an excess of 37 million men.

      But the United States must address a particularly toxic version of this problem because of the country’s endemic racism, polarized politics and Rust Belt economics. Angry white men contributed to the Reagan revolution of the 1980s, the Gingrich backlash of the 1990s and the rise of the Tea Party in 2009. But it wasn’t until 2016 that they found a leader just like them. Enter Trump, stage right.

      The Problem of Surplus

      Donald Trump would seem an unlikely spokesperson for white workers left behind by the deindustrialization of the United States. With his business empire, Trump has invested overseas in more than 30 countries, outsourced the production of his own brand-named items to foreign companies and hired undocumented workers for his US facilities. As his recently leaked tax returns reveal, he has also been spectacularly unsuccessful with his ventures even as he has cheated the government out of what he owes in income tax.

      Trump knows that playing to Wall Street is not a winning political strategy. Rather, as I point out in a piece on TomDispatch this week, the president has put himself at the front of a white male mob, channeling the violent vigilantism that has erupted periodically throughout American history. In this way, Trump lucked out by appealing to just enough white voters in economically distressed states to eke out an Electoral College victory in 2016. One month before the 2020 election, the polls suggest that Trump may not be so lucky this time.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The white mob still supports him for all his efforts at closing borders, suppressing minority votes and celebrating the racist history of the United States. And he still supports the white mob, this week refusing to denounce white supremacy in the first presidential debate. But the president hasn’t delivered on the economy, and the pandemic has claimed too many victims to be easily swept under the rug.

      Whoever wins in November, the problem of surplus white men won’t go away. The Democrats, entranced by “third ways” and “post-industrial” economics, have ignored white male workers at their electoral peril. Joe Biden has courted this vote by appealing to his working-class roots in Scranton. But he’ll have to pay more than lip service if he gains the White House.

      The past option of sending surplus white men off to other lands is no longer on the table. In taking the problem of surplus white men seriously, it’s not necessary to jettison identity politics or pander to sexism and racism. Rather, the answer is to create well-paying jobs for all through Green New Deal policies. The bulk of these jobs — retrofitting buildings, creating new energy infrastructure, building a fleet of new electric cars — need to be open to those without a college education. As automation advances, new educational opportunities have to be made available as well or else technology will just add to the problem of surplus labor.

      Racism and sexism won’t magically disappear with a Green New Deal. Nor are jobs alone the answer. They need to be jobs that promise a future and a sense of belonging to something greater. The Trump campaign has provided its followers with this sense of belonging. So, for that matter, have the Proud Boys. Together they have turned surplus white males into an urgent political problem for this country.

      A personnel change in the White House will not solve this problem. But putting into place a dramatic new economic program that relies on working-class Americans to save this country? That puts white men shoulder to shoulder with workers from all backgrounds on behalf of a common purpose? And that links up with Green New Deals in other countries? That might do the trick of turning a surplus into an asset.

      *[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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      The Science of Voter Suppression

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      Great traditions persist for centuries even as they change their style. New York’s Tammany Hall and its colorful leader “Boss Tweed” in the late 19th century perfected the art of “manufacturing votes” to elect the people they preferred and run the show in their manner. It set the standard followed by many other local political bosses across the nation.

      In his film “Kansas City,” Robert Altman presented a special world of corrupt 1930s politicians, black and white gangsters and late-night jam sessions in KC clubs. The film demonstrates the well-documented fact that “the Kansas City area has a rich legacy of election fraud, stretching from before the Civil War to after World War II.” More recently, former Kansas secretary of state and failed gubernatorial candidate, Kris Kobach, perfected a system he shared with Republican governors that arbitrarily suppressed voters in different states based on the principle that any two people who happened to have the same name must be fraudulently voting in two different states.

      Ever since Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election, Democrats have focused on Russian interference to explain Hillary Clinton’s defeat. Greg Palast, who exposed Kris Kobach and Georgia’s Brian Kemp, among others, has found evidence that points to Trump’s 2016 victory being a result of voter suppression. According to Palast, if all the ballots had been counted, Hillary Clinton most likely would have won the state of Michigan. Some 75,355 ballots, mostly from majority-black precincts, were discarded. For some mysterious reason, Democrats have never raised that issue, presumably because there was no way of placing the blame on Russia.

      With a new election approaching, some Democrats may have realized that their party establishment having over-exploited the theme of Russian meddling has to look for a culprit elsewhere. Motivated by the fear of another close election that might favor Trump in the Electoral College, they have found another theme related to meddling to explain their Clinton’s defeat in 2016.

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      Jamie Ross, a journalist at The Daily Beast, cites an “enormous data leak” obtained by the UK’s Channel 4 News that exposes an operation mounted by the 2016 Trump campaign that consisted of using Facebook ads to persuade black voters to stay home rather than vote for Hillary Clinton. The article’s subtitle sums up the scandal: “A huge data leak shows that three million Black Americans were unknowingly added to a list of people that Team Trump wanted to keep away from polling places.” Jamal Watkins, vice president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is cited as saying that “It’s not ‘may the best candidate win’ at that point, it’s ‘may the best well-funded machine suppress voters and keep them at home thereby rigging the election so that someone can win.’”

      Like the kerfuffle surrounding the Russians, the vehicle for meddling was Facebook. Because Facebook was willing to release private data to Cambridge Analytica — a British political consulting firm at the heart of this still-ongoing data breach scandal — who then made that data available to its clients, the Trump campaign could target black voters with ads or articles critical of Hillary Clinton. Though there is no direct evidence of this practice and even less of its effect, Ross asserts that “it’s likely that it was used to help the campaign micro-target people on Facebook in the months leading up to Election Day in 2016.”

      Anything that is “likely” must qualify not just as “rigging” but as a form of voter suppression. Ross reminds readers that Facebook has recently “cited its new rules prohibiting voter suppression,” presumably justifying his characterization of an act designed to demotivate voters as voter suppression.

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Voter suppression:

      A traditional practice that has been refined into an obligatory scientific tool of the two major political parties in the United States, though used more extensively and with far more skill by Republicans than Democrats.  

      Contextual Note

      The Daily Devil’s Dictionary sees three problems with calling this operation “voter suppression.” The first is that the supposed crime has only been qualified as “likely.” This is unconfirmed news. It may deserve a mention in passing, but not as the basis of a news story.

      The second is that whatever it is and whatever its ultimate effects, it cannot be called voter suppression. Discouraging people from voting by exposing them to a negative message about a candidate is standard practice in political campaigning. It may be disingenuous and, when channeled through Facebook, passably devious, but it is little more than an original form of political advertising.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Finally, it implies that virtuous Democrats would never attempt to “micro-target people on Facebook.” Given the professionalism of modern political campaigns conducted by both major parties, that seems very “unlikely.” No one would doubt that the Republicans are always ready to go the extra mile — as they did by engaging Cambridge Analytica and profiting from Facebook’s complicity — but Democrats have always tried their best to hone their own skills. They may simply be more discreet in doing so.

      Evidence of Democrats practicing voter suppression can be found throughout the recent history of political campaigns. The hallowed practice of gerrymandering by both parties has more similarities with voter suppression than negative ads on Facebook. Former Democratic Party Chairwoman Donna Brazile admitted that the party deployed various means to rig the 2016 primaries in favor of Hillary Clinton. There have been documented cases of voter suppression by the Democratic Party establishment, though it was directed not at Republicans but at the Democratic candidate, Bernie Sanders.

      Can it be that the Republicans are specialized in voter suppression for general elections and Democrats for primaries? In any case, recent events — from the hanging chads and butterfly ballots in Florida in the 2000 election to Donald Trump’s outcry against mail-in ballot fraud as a pretext for canceling the result of this year’s election — have shown that American democracy, to the extent that democracy is defined by the act of voting, is seriously broken. The damage goes well beyond simple cases of Facebook advertising.

      In March, The Atlantic published an article by Ibram X. Kendi describing how the political establishment has systematically discouraged young voters from voting. Kendi writes: “Both Republicans and moderate Democrats share a joint interest in not increasing the voting rates of young people. Republicans lose general elections to Democrats when young people vote in high numbers. Moderate Democrats lose primary elections to progressive Democrats when young people vote in high numbers.”

      A sclerotic system designed principally to protect those who settled into a position of power within government and their parties has effectively disenfranchised entire generations, often sanctimoniously referred to as “the future of the nation” but clearly felt by those in power to be a threat to the sovereignty of the elite they identify with.

      Historical Note

      The Republicans have an advantage over the Democrats when it comes to voter suppression to the extent that large swaths of Democratic voters are easier to identify and target. Most minorities, especially blacks and Latino voters, have over the years consistently supported Democratic candidates in preference to Republicans. Since at least the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democrats have directed their appeal to the working class in contrast with the Republicans, whose ideology aligned with business interests.

      The effective rule of the WASP elite (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) permitted the creation of a class system in which racial and ethnic minorities were left to fester in the bottom rungs of society. The lowly economic and social status of blacks and Mexicans led them to line up behind a Democratic Party that seemed more sensitive to their needs. This turned out to be very convenient for the Republican specialists in voter suppression. Thanks to the statistical distribution of family names, especially for the Hispanics, and even first names, since African Americans have always been more creative and less conformist in naming their children, targeting “duplicate” voters could be done with a simple computer program.

      Some youngsters who study “political science” in college — with its focus on political systems, laws, ideology and economic theory — and manage to drift into politics, end up discovering that their job will really be about “electoral science” rather than political science. They will learn that politics nothing to do with the art of governing but focuses on the science of winning. In other words, it is mostly about intellectual suppression.

      *[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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      How Catholics Can Tilt the US Election

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      Few Americans these days are likely to recognize the name Thomas Nast. Yet in the Civil War era, Nast was arguably the most famous cartoonist in the United States, responsible for creating and popularizing iconic images, such as “jolly St. Nick” (aka Santa Claus), Uncle Sam and the donkey and the elephant — symbols of the Democrats and Republicans ever since. Nast’s fame was reflected in the Overseas Press Club of America’s decision, in 1978, to name their annual award for best cartoons on international affairs after him.

      Yet 40 years later, the Press Club decided to wipe Nast’s name clean of the official title of the award. This came at the heel of the controversy, a few years earlier, provoked by Nast’s nomination for induction into New Jersey’s Hall of Fame. The nomination, his third in four years, once again ended in failure, despite Nast’s merits of having exposed the corruption of New York’s infamous Tammany Hall boss William M. Tweed, and despite his commitment to the anti-slavery cause and racial equality.

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      Unfortunately, Nast had a serious blind spot: a pronounced hostility to the country’s Catholic, and particularly Irish Catholic immigrant, community. Nast routinely portrayed the Irish as drunkards with ape-like features, bent on creating havoc; one cartoon has an Irishman sitting on a powder keg, a bottle in one hand, a torch in the other. His famous cartoon, “The American River Ganges,” was a perfect expression of the way Protestant Americans viewed the influx of European Catholics. It depicts Catholic bishops as crocodiles crawling onto American shores bent on attacking innocent schoolchildren.

      Blind Spot

      Nast’s kind of bigotry was hardly something new. Anti-Catholic sentiments ran rampant throughout the 19th century, starting with the massive influx of Irish and southern German Catholics in the 1840s and 1850s, regaining steam in the decades of the Civil War, with the emergence of the American Protective Association and a wave of pamphlets peddling anti-Catholic conspiracy theories, most famously the claim that the Catholic Church had been behind the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

      Catholics were generally regarded with suspicion, if not outright fear, as an alien force sent by the pope to subvert the country’s republican institutions and destroy democracy in the United States. Even those who would concede that these allegations were highly exaggerated maintained that Catholic immigrants were not in a position to act as responsible citizens, lacking the independence of mind indispensable for being a good democrat. They were deemed to be under the influence of the pope and priests, who, in turn, were charged with being fundamentally hostile to American democracy.

      Most of its detractors maintained that the Catholic faith was fundamentally incompatible with the basic values that informed the American republic. Nativist and white supremacist organizations in the 1920s, most notoriously the second Ku Klux Klan, routinely targeted the country’s growing Catholic community.

      It took more than a century for American Catholics to be accepted as fully equal citizens. In 1937, when Gallup first asked the question, no more than 60% of respondents said they would vote for a Catholic presidential candidate. It took until the late 1970s that that number surpassed the 90% mark. As late as 2003, a prominent book on anti-Catholicism referred to it as the “last acceptable prejudice” in the United States. Some 15 years later, a commentary in the Catholic News Agency charged that it was “becoming more and more obvious that the Catholic Church is being targeted as the public enemy of our society.” For the author, a retired bishop from New Jersey whose diocese was marred in sex abuse scandals during his tenure, the main reason for anti-Catholic hostility was the church’s standing firm on “her teaching on contraception, abortion, stem cell research, in-vitro fertilization, marriage and divorce.”

      This is one side of the story and certainly an important one that must not be ignored or trivialized. For large parts of American history, Catholics represented a besieged minority, particularly if they happened to be of Irish or Italian descent. At the same time, however, as the size of the Catholic immigrant community grew in size, so did its influence. Many in the first wave of Catholic immigrants settled in large northeastern cities, such as New York and Boston, where they quickly became a major political factor, primarily for the Democratic Party, which built a whole patronage system on the largely Irish Catholic vote. From this perspective, Nast’s crusade against New York City’s Tammany Hall and his anti-Irish cartoons acquire a certain logic.

      It is also a fact that the American Catholic Church actively opposed abolitionism in the United States. And it is also a fact that there was little love lost between the Irish, and later Italian, immigrant communities and the African American minority, with animosities coming from both sides. Catholic immigrants had always voted for the Democratic Party, and the outcome of the Civil War only strengthened the association, as did Lincoln’s Republican Party’s association with the anti-Catholic cause, albeit rather subtle, even if it was well known that in some parts of the country there were strong ties between the Republicans and the American Protective Association.

      Historical Irony

      It is important to keep this in mind in order to appreciate the significance of the role of the Catholic vote for the November election. Gone are the days when Catholics formed a dependable vote bank for the Democratic Party, when the Republicans were seen biased, if not hostile, to the Catholic faith. In 2016, according to Pew Research, 56% of registered Catholics voted for Trump, 44% for Hillary Clinton. Generally, nowadays, about half of registered Catholic voters identify themselves more or less as Republicans; roughly the same share more or less as Democrats. This implies that the Catholic vote is a perfect reflection of the pronounced political polarization and partisanship that has characterized the country as a whole for the past few decades.

      At the same time, Catholics are no longer considered unfit for high political offices, their republican credentials questioned, as was still the case when John F. Kennedy ran for office. To be sure, this has not yet played itself out with respect to the presidency. Joe Biden, if elected, would only be the second Catholic to be elected to the country’s highest political office. It is, however, the case for the other branches of the American political system — the Congress and particularly the Supreme Court. It is perhaps one of the great ironies of American history that today, the majority of the Supreme Court justices who are supposed to interpret and uphold the Constitution of the United States happen to be Catholics — members of a faith that once was considered anathema to everything the country stood for, or at least claimed to stand for.

      With the passing away of Ruth Bader Ginsburg on September 18, the Supreme Court has once again become a focal point of attention. This might appear a bit strange. After all, the Supreme Court is generally seen as “‘the least dangerous branch’ because it can only tell you what the law means.” Its principal task is “to settle conflicting judgments from lower courts, and determine whether laws are in conflict with the Constitution or other federal laws.”

      This, however, is not how America’s Christian fundamentalists see it. For them, the Supreme Court is the one crucial institution that is in a position to reverse what they consider the greatest abomination in American legal history, Roe vs. Wade, the decision that made abortion legal countywide. President Donald Trump’s choice of Amy Coney Barrett, a devout Catholic and mother of seven (two of the children by adoption), to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court is, therefore, of supreme significance. Not only because it would tilt the court decisively to the right, but also because it might help sway the outcome of the November election in Trump’s favor, particularly with respect to the Hispanic Catholic vote.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In a recent commentary in The New York Times, Linda Chavez called upon the Democrats not to take the Hispanic vote for granted. In 2016, almost 30% of Hispanics voted for Trump, despite his blatant denigration of migrants from south of the border. There are numerous reasons for the way Hispanics vote the way they do, not least their national origins. And there is the religious factor. As Chavez points out, a growing number of Hispanics identify themselves as Protestants or even evangelicals, and as such are more prone to vote for Trump.

      In addition, there is the question of abortion — an abomination to evangelicals and devout Roman Catholics alike. In a recent poll, more than 50% of Hispanic Catholics thought abortion should be illegal in most or all cases. In fact, Hispanics were the only distinct ethnic group to think so. Among white Catholics, for instance, roughly 40% took the pro-life position. To complicate things even more, a study from 2007 found a marked difference between first and second-generation American Hispanics on the question of abortion. Among the former, almost two-thirds indicated at the time that it should be illegal; among the latter, only a bit more than 40% thought so.

      God’s Tool

      In an earlier article, I have suggested that Trump’s core constituency, evangelicals and devout Catholics, have supported him not because they believe he is a man of God — he quite clearly is the opposite, all his pretending notwithstanding — but because they believe he is “God’s tool.” Ginsburg’s passing away a few weeks before the election, allowing Trump to choose an avowed abortion opponent to fill her seat, cannot but strengthen their belief that the president is on a mission from God. Trump, of course, has far more mundane motives, first and foremost to lock in all the conservative, reactionary and far-right groups in American society that might put him over the edge in crucial states.

      There is a certain irony to the fact that the most widely loathed president, both at home and abroad, in recent American history might be put in a position to impose himself for four more years both on the United States and the world at large with the help of a community that for a long time in the past was one of the most disparaged, if not outright abhorred religious minority in America. One might be tempted to see in this an instance of belated revenge for the treatment received in the past. As the good book states in Romans 12:19, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” Poor Thomas Nast must be spinning like a mad top in his grave.

      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 Reputation May Bounce Back After Trump, But Will the Country?

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      Donald Trump used to care what the world outside America thought of him. Before he ran for president, he was focused on turning his business into a global brand. The name “Trump” was supposed to connote all the luxury and success of the elite lifestyle. Trump hotels, Trump golf courses, Trump books and TV shows and knick-knacks: Donald Trump’s ability to sell all of that depended on his reputation as a globally successful businessman and negotiator.

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      Sure, the guy was a fraud. He wasn’t so much a negotiator as a shake-down artist. His businesses failed and went bankrupt. He had to be bailed out by his father and, later, by unscrupulous bankers. Everything about Donald Trump was a lie even before the man opened his mouth, which then added exponentially to the mendacity.

      Question of Perception

      But Trump has built his brand on the basis of perception. With his Brioni suits and inflated asset sheet, the man looks the part of a billionaire well enough to have played one on television. His hotels appear to be expensive, his casinos glitzy and his golf courses well-groomed. His reality TV show “The Apprentice” was edited to make its star look managerial rather than erratic and foolish.

      Then Trump moved from reality show to reality. Even with a team of spinmeisters, Donald Trump in the White House lost control of perceptions. His presidency couldn’t be reedited to make him look good. The corrupt underlings, the outrageous nepotism, the impeachable offenses in foreign policy, the brazen shift of wealth upward and the coddling of dictators were all on full display well before the pandemic hit and the economy tanked.

      Trump managed to elude removal and maintain his base of support despite all the bad press. But facts are stubborn things, as President John Adams once said, and the coronavirus numbers are particularly damning. If the United States had handled COVID-19 the way our neighbor to the north did, more than 100,000 Americans would still be alive today.

      Let’s dwell on that number for a moment: 100,000. Trump used to boast that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters. With his bungled response to COVID-19, the president has gone from murder to mass murder. The “excess” casualties of the pandemic are akin to Trump pulling out not a gun on Fifth Avenue but a 10-kiloton improvised nuclear device capable of killing tens of thousands of people. Yet, despite the carnage, Trump maintains a stable base of support among just under 45% of voters.

      The world outside the United States is not fooled, however. According to a new Pew Research Center poll, only 16% of those polled across 13 major countries have any confidence in Donald Trump as a leader. That’s lower than European heads of state like Germany’s Angela Merkel (76%) and France’s Emmanuel Macron (64%), but it’s even lower than the generally negative perception of Russia’s Vladimir Putin (23%) and China’s Xi Jinping (19%). Trump couldn’t even generate majority support among right-wing parties in the countries surveyed. The closest he comes is in Spain, where only 45% of far-right Vox party supporters have confidence in the US president.

      The truly startling fact about the Pew poll is that the 13 countries included are all American allies. And it’s not just their perception of Trump. It’s also their impression of the United States. The share of the public that holds a favorable view of America has dropped to new lows in the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada and Australia. In only one country in the survey, South Korea, did a majority of the population (59%) have a positive assessment of America.

      Who Needs Love?

      Trump doesn’t seem to care very much about his plummeting reputation abroad. At the moment, he’s not focused on building resorts and selling Trump-branded products. For the last three years, he’s cared only about reelection. Winning a second term far outweighs any other personal indicators of worth or wealth. Spain, South Korea, Australia? These are not swing states. The citizens of other countries do not vote in US elections.

      Heck, Trump doesn’t even seem to care about the fires rampaging through the West Coast since there’s little he can do to win Electoral College votes in California and Oregon. The current US president does not consider blue states to be truly American. This is what it means to be a right-wing populist. You redefine “the people” to include only your supporters. Everyone else is anti-American. The logical conclusion of such thinking is to allow “the people” to vote and keep everyone else from the polls.

      If you’re a Trump supporter, you probably don’t care what the world thinks about you or your president. You believe that the world is divided into “shithole” countries that fear America and hoity-toity elitist countries like France and Germany that look down on America. As an exception to the rules, the United States stands alone. It doesn’t need the world’s love.

      If you despise Trump, you probably don’t care much about the Pew poll either. If Trump is defeated in November, America’s reputation will recover. That’s what happened, after all, when Barack Obama took over from George W. Bush. But here’s why the poll is important, even if Trump loses decisively in two months. 

      Regardless of the precise election results in November, a significant portion of the American population will have voted for a demonstrably incompetent, racist sociopath. You can be forgiven for pulling the lever for an untested politician, the world may allow. But continuing to support someone with Trump’s dismal track record may not reflect well on Trump’s base or, frankly, the country as a whole.

      Such a faction could maneuver itself back into power. They’ve taken over the Republican Party, and they’ve gone all-in for Trump. Congress will soon have its first QAnon believer in Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene. Is a QAnon caucus, promoting its conspiracy theory of Satan-worshipping pedophiles ruling the world, far behind?

      Why trust such a country? Why invest in such a country? Why call such a country an ally?Yes, of course, everyone knows that democracies can throw up unpredictable leaders every now and then. But outsiders may well conclude that Trump is so far outside the parameters of normal as to call into question the very democratic system in the United States.

      Infectious Delusions

      The United States has relinquished global leadership. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, given the quality of American leadership over the years. The international community should now be disabused of any illusions that the United States is acting on behalf of the good of the globe. When it comes to addressing climate change, for instance, other countries should lead. The same holds true for safeguarding public health, remedying global economic inequality, and restraining the arms trade. The United States has had a lousy global record on these issues and a pretty lousy domestic record, too.

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      The downside is that the United States isn’t passing on its mantle of global leadership, as Britain did to America after World War II. The tragedy here is not that there isn’t a logical successor but that the United States didn’t invest at least some of its political and economic capital into building stronger international institutions that could serve as collective global leadership.

      The “Trump effect” has been very limited globally. Brazilians elected their “Trump of the Amazon” Jair Bolsonaro. A couple countries have opted for outsiders, like comedian Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine. But otherwise, it appears that the disastrous record of Donald Trump has served as a form of immunization. What country would voluntarily embark on the same trip to Crazytown that the United States has taken over the last three years?

      It’s worth repeating here that even right-wing populists generally think that Trump has done a poor job and the United States screwed up its pandemic response. Even if illiberal nationalism continues to prevail in places like Russia, China, Hungary and Turkey, the peculiar American variant of this disease known as Trumpism has fortunately proven to be an ideological dead end globally.

      Politically speaking, the world will survive the Trumpocalypse. The United States is a different matter. Trumpism, like COVID-19, has both exposed and amplified the manifold defects of this country, from widespread racial injustice to a failing social safety net. All the world’s a stage, as the bard once said, and the international community has front row seats to watch, with a mixture of pity and fear, the tragic downfall of the once-great United States.

      *[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