Saturday, October 05, 2024
Trump Is Lying About Disaster Relief
On Tuesday, I was part of a City University of New York event about economic perceptions, which was briefly disrupted by a protester yelling out that President Biden isn’t helping some of the areas afflicted by Hurricane Helene. The guy’s politics were unclear — he was also yelling something about Israel — but it was an indication that Donald Trump’s latest lie has gone viral.
In case you missed it, Trump has been trying to exploit the natural disaster for political gain, claiming he heard that the federal government — Biden — and North Carolina’s Democratic governor are “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas.” This claim has no basis: Major rescue and recovery operations are underway, and several governors of the affected states — including Republicans — have praised federal efforts. Trump said that Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, was “having a hard time getting the president on the phone.” On the contrary, Kemp said that Biden told him “that if there’s other things we need, just to call him directly — which, I appreciate that.”
But then, at this point, Trump’s campaign rests heavily on made-up stuff. And he clearly seems to believe that he needs new material, because the old material seems to be losing some of its effectiveness. . . . he has also constructed a whole dystopian fantasy world, trying to persuade voters that America is a nation with a collapsing economy overrun by violent immigrants.
In reality, America has low inflation and low unemployment, and the average worker’s purchasing power is higher than it was five years ago. Yes, some Americans are struggling, but that was as true when Trump was president as it is now.
At the same time, violent crime, homicides in particular, which rose significantly during Trump’s last year in office, has come down and appears to be continuing to fall.
What’s new is that Trump’s vision of America-as-hellscape seems to be losing its political mojo. For example, a new Cook Political Report poll of swing states, while still showing Trump with some advantage on the economy, showed Kamala Harris tied on the issue of who can best deal with inflation and the cost of living, and barely trailing on who can best deal with crime and violence.
So it must be time to conjure a new fake source of fear and outrage.
Where does the insinuation that Biden is denying aid to politically unfriendly disaster areas come from? In part it’s projection: Trump was found to have done something akin to that when he was in the White House. In part it involves condemning Biden and Harris for not immediately visiting the stricken areas.
Biden and Harris, though, were just acting responsibly. In the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster, a high-profile political visitor with a huge security detail is the last thing you want . . . .accommodating their visit would divert personnel and equipment away from the urgent task of saving lives and restoring essential services.
The key to Trump’s tall tales is to tell his supporters that terrible things are happening somewhere out there, even if those things aren’t happening to them or where they can see them. He and JD Vance keep perpetuating claims that Haitians are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio; not many people have been there themselves to see that this isn’t true.
He also says that immigrant “thugs” have taken over Aurora, Colo., and have taken over hundreds of towns and cities across America, “Including the big ones,” he says. “Look at New York.” Well, I look at New York — where immigrants are around 36 percent of the population — all the time, and what I see is consistent with official crime data: It’s one of America’s safest big cities, a place where people, including me, walk the streets and take the subway every day. But many Americans don’t experience daily life in New York and are prepared to believe that it’s a crime-ridden nightmare — part of a pattern in which people say crime is a serious national problem, just not where they live.
Until recently, Trump’s trash-talking of America appeared to be working politically. As I said, however, at this point his fear-mongering over crime and the economy seems to be losing traction. So now he’s claiming that he’s hearing the feds have abandoned hurricane victims, which may persuade voters who aren’t in a position to witness the huge efforts being made, under difficult conditions, to deliver essential supplies and restore communications.
Will it work? I have no idea. What I do know is that it’s more of the same. Trump is promising to rescue us from dire threats that exist only in his mind.
Friday, October 04, 2024
Kamala Harris: The Only Patriotic Choice
It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States than Donald Trump. He has proved himself morally unfit for an office that asks its occupant to put the good of the nation above self-interest. He has proved himself temperamentally unfit for a role that requires the very qualities — wisdom, honesty, empathy, courage, restraint, humility, discipline — that he most lacks.
Those disqualifying characteristics are compounded by everything else that limits his ability to fulfill the duties of the president: his many criminal charges, his advancing age, his fundamental lack of interest in policy and his increasingly bizarre cast of associates.
This unequivocal, dispiriting truth — Donald Trump is not fit to be president — should be enough for any voter who cares about the health of our country and the stability of our democracy to deny him re-election.
For this reason, regardless of any political disagreements voters might have with her, Kamala Harris is the only patriotic choice for president.
Most presidential elections are, at their core, about two different visions of America that emerge from competing policies and principles. This one is about something more foundational. It is about whether we invite into the highest office in the land a man who has revealed, unmistakably, that he will degrade the values, defy the norms and dismantle the institutions that have made our country strong.
As a dedicated public servant who has demonstrated care, competence and an unwavering commitment to the Constitution, Ms. Harris stands alone in this race. She may not be the perfect candidate for every voter, especially those who are frustrated and angry about our government’s failures to fix what’s broken — from our immigration system to public schools to housing costs to gun violence. Yet we urge Americans to contrast Ms. Harris’s record with her opponent’s.
Ms. Harris is more than a necessary alternative. There is also an optimistic case for elevating her, one that is rooted in her policies and borne out by her experience as vice president, a senator and a state attorney general.
Over the past 10 weeks, Ms. Harris has offered a shared future for all citizens, beyond hate and division. She has begun to describe a set of thoughtful plans to help American families.
While character is enormously important — in this election, pre-eminently so — policies matter. Many Americans remain deeply concerned about their prospects and their children’s in an unstable and unforgiving world. For them, Ms. Harris is clearly the better choice. She has committed to using the power of her office to help Americans better afford the things they need, to make it easier to own a home, to support small businesses and to help workers. Mr. Trump’s economic priorities are more tax cuts, which would benefit mostly the wealthy, and more tariffs, which will make prices even more unmanageable for the poor and middle class.
Beyond the economy, Ms. Harris promises to continue working to expand access to health care and reduce its cost. She has a long record of fighting to protect women’s health and reproductive freedom. Mr. Trump spent years trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and boasts of picking the Supreme Court justices who ended the constitutional right to an abortion.
Globally, Ms. Harris would work to maintain and strengthen the alliances with like-minded nations that have long advanced American interests abroad and maintained the nation’s security. Mr. Trump — who has long praised autocrats like Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban and Kim Jong-un — has threatened to blow those democratic alliances apart. Ms. Harris recognizes the need for global solutions to the global problem of climate change . . . . Mr. Trump rejects the accepted science, and his contempt for low-carbon energy solutions is matched only by his trollish fealty to fossil fuels.
As for immigration, a huge and largely unsolved issue, the former president continues to demonize and dehumanize immigrants, while Ms. Harris at least offers hope for a compromise, long denied by Congress, to secure the borders and return the nation to a sane immigration system.
Ms. Harris is not wrong, however, on the clear dangers of returning Mr. Trump to office. He has promised to be a different kind of president this time, one who is unrestrained by checks on power built into the American political system. His pledge to be “a dictator” on “Day 1” might have indeed been a joke — but his undisguised fondness for dictatorships and the strongmen who run them is anything but.
Most notably, he [Trump] systematically undermined public confidence in the result of the 2020 election and then attempted to overturn it — an effort that culminated in an insurrection at the Capitol to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power and resulted in him and some of his most prominent supporters being charged with crimes. He has not committed to honoring the result of this election and continues to insist, as he did at the debate with Ms. Harris on Sept. 10, that he won in 2020. He has apparently made a willingness to support his lies a litmus test for those in his orbit, starting with JD Vance, who would be his vice president.
His disdain for the rule of law goes beyond his efforts to obtain power; it is also central to how he plans to use it. Mr. Trump and his supporters have described a 2025 agenda that would give him the power to carry out the most extreme of his promises and threats.
Some of the people Mr. Trump appointed in his last term saved America from his most dangerous impulses. They refused to break laws on his behalf and spoke up when he put his own interests above his country’s. As a result, the former president intends, if re-elected, to surround himself with people who are unwilling to defy his demands. Today’s version of Mr. Trump — the twice-impeached version that faces a barrage of criminal charges — may prove to be the restrained version.
Unless American voters stand up to him, Mr. Trump will have the power to do profound and lasting harm to our democracy.
That is not simply an opinion of Mr. Trump’s character by his critics; it is a judgment of his presidency from those who know it best — the very people he appointed to serve in the most important positions of his White House. It is telling that among those who fear a second Trump presidency are people who worked for him and saw him at close range.
In the years since he left office, Mr. Trump was convicted on felony charges of falsifying business records, was found liable in civil court for sexual abuse and faces two, possibly three, other criminal cases. He has continued to stoke chaos and encourage violence and lawlessness whenever it suits his political aims, most recently promoting vicious lies against Haitian immigrants. He recognizes that ordinary people — voters, jurors, journalists, election officials, law enforcement officers and many others who are willing to do their duty as citizens and public servants — have the power to hold him to account, so he has spent the past three and a half years trying to undermine them and sow distrust in anyone or any institution that might stand in his way.
In 2020 this board made the strongest case it could against the re-election of Mr. Trump. Four years later, many Americans have put his excesses out of their minds. We urge them and those who may look back at that period with nostalgia or feel that their lives are not much better now than they were three years ago to recognize that his first term was a warning and that a second Trump term would be much more damaging and divisive than the first.
Kamala Harris is the only choice.
Thursday, October 03, 2024
How the North Carolina Legislature Left Homes Vulnerable to Helene
The amount of rain that Tropical Storm Helene unleashed over North Carolina was so intense, no amount of preparation could have entirely prevented the destruction that ensued.
But decisions made by state officials in the years leading up to Helene most likely made some of that damage worse, according to experts in building standards and disaster resilience.
Over the past 15 years, North Carolina lawmakers have rejected limits on construction on steep slopes, which might have reduced the number of homes lost to landslides; blocked a rule requiring homes to be elevated above the height of an expected flood; weakened protections for wetlands, increasing the risk of dangerous storm water runoff; and slowed the adoption of updated building codes, making it harder for the state to qualify for federal climate-resilience grants.
Those decisions reflect the influence of North Carolina’s home building industry, which has consistently fought rules forcing its members to construct homes to higher, more expensive standards, according to Kim Wooten, an engineer who serves on the North Carolina Building Code Council, the group that sets home building requirements for the state.
“The home builders association has fought every bill that has come before the General Assembly to try to improve life safety,” said Ms. Wooten, who works for Facilities Strategies Group, a company that specializes in building engineering. She said that state lawmakers, many of whom are themselves home builders or have received campaign contributions from the industry, “vote for bills that line their pocketbooks and make home building cheaper.”
In 2009 and 2010, lawmakers from the state’s mountainous western region wanted statewide rules to restrict construction on slopes with a high or moderate risk of landslides. Their legislation failed in the face of pushback from the home building and real estate industries, according to Pricey Harrison, a state lawmaker who supported the restrictions.
The push to build on hillsides reflected the growing demand in North Carolina for mountain retreats that would attract tourist dollars, according to Robert S. Young, a professor at Western Carolina University who focuses on climate resilience.
“Everybody wants a view in their vacation home,” Dr. Young said in an interview. “It’s really hard to shut off that kind of economic activity in a small local community.”
Efforts to weaken building standards in North Carolina picked up steam after Republicans won control of both houses of the state legislature in 2010.
In 2011, lawmakers proposed a law that limited the ability of local officials to account for sea-level rise in their planning. The comedian Stephen Colbert panned the change, quipping: “If your science gives you a result you don’t like, pass a law saying the result is illegal. Problem solved.”
Two years later, lawmakers overhauled the way North Carolina updates its building codes. That change attracted far less attention than the sea-level rule — but would be more consequential for Helene.
Every three years, the International Code Council, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., issues new model building codes developed by engineers, architects, home builders and local officials.
Most states adopt a version of those model codes, which reflect the latest advances in safety and design. But in 2013, the North Carolina legislature decided that the state would update its codes every six years, instead of every three.
The change proved important. In 2015, the International Code Council added a requirement that new homes in flood zones be built at least one foot above the projected height of a major flood. . . . . the state stripped out the new flood-prevention standard. Rather than make elevation mandatory in flood zones around North Carolina, the state decided that the requirement should only apply if local officials chose to adopt it.
The decision most likely left more homes exposed to flooding, according to Chad Berginnis, executive director of the national Association of State Floodplain Managers.
The Republican legislature took other steps that may have exacerbated flooding.
In 2014, lawmakers passed laws to weaken protection for wetlands, which can help reduce flood damage by absorbing excess rainfall, according to Brooks Rainey Pearson, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center.
Three years later, the legislature made it easier for developers to pave green spaces, increasing the risk of flooding caused by heavy rains, according to the Southern Environmental Law Center.
The legislature passed a law that blocked the state from adopting new building codes until 2031. The law also included smaller changes, such as preventing local building inspectors from ensuring that home builders correctly install protective sheathing on homes exposed to winds of 140 miles per hour or less.
Governor Cooper vetoed the bill, saying it would “wipe out years of work to make homes safer.” But Republicans overrode his veto.
Building standards will help determine how well that new construction fares against future disasters, which are becoming more frequent and severe because of climate change.
Ms. Wooten, the engineer on the building code council, said she was not optimistic that the damage from Helene would change how North Carolina approached building codes.
“Money talks,” Ms. Wooten said. “Politicians want to get re-elected, and they are going to go where the money is.”
Wednesday, October 02, 2024
Climate Change Set North Carolina Up For Disaster
Save for Ashville, North Carolina, which is an island of blue in an area that is bright red politically, many of the areas devastated by Hurricane Helene are heavily Republican and vote for politicians who either claim climate change is a hoax or dismiss it as liberal propaganda. Now, in the face of catastrophic damage that will take years to recover from, if ever, perhaps a new recognition that climate change is real even as Donald Trump and his soul-selling minion, JD Vance, promise to roll back many of the Biden administration's clean energy initiatives. Laughably, during last night's debate, Vance said Trump supports clean air and clean water, ignoring Trump's efforts to roll back regulations that protect the environment and clean air and water. Meanwhile, finger pointing continues in areas ravaged by Hurricane Helene with some localities accused of having failed to give adequate warnings of the danger and some of the local populations having not paid sufficient attention located as they are 300 miles from the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. Hopefully, future storms will be taken more seriously from the outset and people - including climate change denying Republican politicians - will realize that a hurricane hitting a distant coastline can be a true danger to areas far inland. A piece in The Atlantic looks at how climate change put western North Carolina in danger. Here are excerpts:
When Helene swept through western North Carolina late last week, the rain fell heavy and fast enough to start washing away mountainsides. Rivers overflowed, and a chunk of one of the state’s major highways collapsed, cutting off communities; floods slung mud and muck into buildings. Cars, trucks, dumpsters, entire homes and bridges—these and more were carried away in the floods as if they weighed nothing. Much of what managed to stay in place became submerged in brown water. Thousands of people in Asheville remain without power, and boil-water advisories are in effect; evidence suggests that the city’s water system was severely damaged. Asheville’s River Arts District has been destroyed. At least 35 people in the region have died, and with cell service down, hundreds more are unaccounted for.
When a hurricane barrels toward land, “we really focus on the coast,” Michael Lowry, a hurricane specialist in Miami, told me as Helene headed toward the continental United States. But the inland impact “can’t be overstated,” especially in heavily wooded areas, where fallen trees can exacerbate the destruction. Before the giant hurricane even came ashore, North Carolina had endured a miserable amount of rainfall. On Friday morning, rivers in western North Carolina were already at record levels, and officials for a time feared that a dam at Lake Lure, which is surrounded by dense forest, would fail. Helene had weakened to a tropical storm by the time it reached the mountains, but this much more water was simply too much.
That Helene affected western North Carolina so dramatically may force more people to incorporate those dynamics into their understanding of climate effects. For years, climate scientists warned that rising sea levels would worsen coastal flooding during hurricanes, and indeed, Helene broke storm-surge records along Florida’s Gulf Coast, some of which were set only a year ago. But one of the places still reeling most dramatically from Helene’s wrath are the southern Appalachian Mountains.
Helene bore some of the hallmarks of a hurricane in a too-warm world, such as rapid intensification. The hurricane drew fuel from abnormally warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, which likely helped extend the storm’s life. A study examining hurricanes that made landfall between 1967 and 2018, for example, found that modern-day hurricanes extend farther inland because they contain more moisture collected during their journey over warmer seas. Hurricanes are now decaying at a slower rate after traveling inland.
As some powerful hurricanes are known to do, Helene generated wet weather in North Carolina that arrived far ahead of the main system. This particular storm front delivered enough rain to prompt a rare advisory from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration about flood risk in urban areas including parts of the southern Appalachians.
The flooding that followed has drawn comparisons to Asheville’s dramatic 1916 flood, brought on by back-to-back tropical storms, which killed 80 people and stood as the city’s benchmark for all subsequent flooding events. . . . . These types of disasters don’t depend only on human-caused warming: Severe precipitation will always be influenced by natural weather patterns and happenstance. But climate change is opening the tap wider.
A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, and that excess moisture can contribute to more frequent and intense rainfall. Such conditions are supercharging rainy weather, tropical storms, and Category 4 hurricanes alike. A passing hurricane can wreak even more havoc if the land below is already soaked and its waterways are filled to the brim. A mountainous and temperate region such as western North Carolina might not have to worry as much about rising seas or scorching temperatures—Asheville has been described as a climate haven because it seems relatively protected from the most commonly cited effects of global warming, such as extreme heat and hurricane winds. But these places still have to contend with excessive rain and the resulting landslides, a deadly combination of land and water that can make the ground slip out from under whole communities.
As the floodwaters in North Carolina recede, more storms are already brewing in the Atlantic, with forecasters tracking which cyclones may pose a threat to the Gulf Coast. If a storm strengthens into a hurricane and makes landfall, it will become the fifth hurricane to reach the U.S. mainland this year, rivaling the record of six landfalls in a single season. . . . . Parts of the Southeast still cleaning up after Helene may be walloped again, with waves crashing on their doorstep as if the sea itself were knocking. One stretch of coastal Florida was still recovering from two other hurricanes when Helene swept through. Two months remain in the Atlantic hurricane season. It may still render communities inundated and stranded, with water so high that it is difficult to fathom how it can drain away, and what will remain once it does.
Tuesday, October 01, 2024
Monday, September 30, 2024
The Republican Party Freak Show
The GOP is a moral freak show, and freak shows attract freaks. Which is why Mark Robinson fits in so well in today’s Republican Party.
Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina, has described himself as a “devout Christian.” But a recent CNN story reported that several years ago, he was a porn-site user who enjoyed watching transgender pornography (despite a history of an anti-transgender rhetoric), referred to himself as a “Black Nazi,” and supported the return of slavery.
These allegations aren’t entirely shocking, because Robinson—a self-described “MAGA Republican”—has shown signs in the past of being a deeply troubled person. (My Atlantic colleague David Graham wrote a superb profile of Robinson in May.)
Regarding the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, in 2011, Robinson wrote, “Get that fucking commie bastard off the National Mall!” Robinson also has referred to the slain civil-rights champion as “worse than a maggot,” a “ho fucking, phony,” and a “huckster.” During the Obama presidency, Robinson wrote, “I’d take Hitler over any of the shit that’s in Washington right now!” . . . He is also an election denier, claiming that Joe Biden “stole the election.” . . . . He has used demeaning language against Jews and gay people. He has cruelly mocked school-shooting survivors (“media prosti-tots”). And he supported a total ban on abortion, without exceptions for rape or incest, even though he admitted that he’d paid for an abortion in the past.
Much of this was known before he ran for governor. No matter. Republicans in North Carolina nominated him anyway, and Donald Trump has lavished praise on the man he calls his “friend,” offering Robinson his “full and total endorsement” and dubbing him “one of the hottest politicians” in the country.
SOME REPUBLICANS ARE distancing themselves from Robinson partly because they are worried he’ll be defeated, but also because they’re even more concerned that he will drag down other Republicans, including Trump. But the truth is that Robinson is a perfect addition to the Republican ensemble.
The GOP vice-presidential candidate, J. D. Vance, has been relentlessly promoting the lie that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were abducting and eating pets. In 2021, he said that the United States was being run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs, and “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has blamed wildfires on a Jewish space laser, promoted a conspiracy alleging that some Democratic Party leaders were running a human-trafficking and pedophilia ring, and agreed with commenters who suggested that the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Florida, was a “massive false flag.”
The Atlantic’s Elaine Godfrey reported that Republican Representative Matt Gaetz, who is under House investigation for having sex with an underage girl, “used to walk around the cloakroom showing people porno of him and his latest girlfriend,” according to a source Godfrey spoke with.
The GOP is home to a Republican governor, Kristi Noem, who describes in her book shooting her 14-month-old dog, Cricket, in a gravel pit, as well as killing an unnamed goat. A Republican senator, Ron Johnson, claimed that COVID was “pre-planned” by a secret group of “elites” even while he promoted disinformation claiming that Ivermectin, which is commonly used to deworm livestock, was an effective treatment for COVID.
Earlier this month, Trump attended a 9/11 memorial event in New York City. He took as his guest a right-wing conspiracy theorist, Laura Loomer, who has claimed that 9/11 was an inside job, referred to Kamala Harris as a “drug using prostitute,” and said that Democrats should be tried for treason and executed. (Trump has called Loomer a “woman with courage” and a “free spirit.”)
Tucker Carlson, a keynote speaker at the Republican National Convention and an unofficial Trump adviser, recently hosted a Holocaust revisionist on his podcast. He praised the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones as having been “vindicated on everything” and described Jones as “the most extraordinary person” he has ever met. (Two years ago, Sandy Hook families won nearly $1.5 billion in defamation and emotional-distress lawsuits against Jones for his repeatedly calling the 2012 school shooting, in which 20 first graders and six educators were killed, a hoax staged by “crisis actors” to get more gun-control legislation passed.
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY today isn’t incidentally grotesque; like the man who leads it, Donald Trump, it is grotesque at its core. It is the Island of Misfit Toys, though in this case there’s a maliciousness to the misfits, starting with Trump, that makes them uniquely dangerous to the republic. Since 2016, they have been at war with reality, delighting in their dime-store nihilism, creating “alternative facts” and tortured explanations to justify the lawlessness and moral depravity and derangement of their leader.
None of this is hidden; it is on display in neon lights, almost every hour of every day. No one who supports the Republican Party, who casts a vote for Trump and for his MAGA acolytes, can say they don’t know.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in an essay titled “As Breathing and Consciousness Return,” warned that no one who “voluntarily runs with the hounds of falsehood” will be able to justify himself to the living, or to posterity, or to his friends, or to his children. Don’t surrender to corruption, the great Russian writer and dissident said; strive for the liberation of our souls by not participating in the lie. Don’t consent to the lies. The challenges facing Solzhenitsyn were quite different, and certainly far more difficult, than anything we face, but his fundamental point still holds.
The Trump movement is built on layers of lies. It’s late, but it’s never too late to liberate yourself from them. One word of truth outweighs the world.
Sunday, September 29, 2024
Musk’s Response to Taylor Swift Defines What Is At Stake for Women
Most people I know were repelled when Elon Musk responded to Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris with a post that said: “Fine Taylor … you win … I will give you a child.” It’s creepy to talk about impregnating people you don’t really know.
But Musk’s language – and statements by both former president Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance — represent a dangerous thread that runs deep in this presidential campaign: the unnamed but ever-present one in which right-wing men are fighting to restore old sexual hierarchies and reassert their control of women’s bodies and priorities. The same sort of guys who fear they will be “replaced” by migrants also fear that smart, capable and, yes, sometimes childless women will end the sweet deal they have long had as so-called alpha males. These retro dudes are watching closely as more women choose friendships, careers and sometimes cats over their peculiar kind of masculinity.
And now that Harris, a “childless” woman by their limited definition, is a whisker away from the presidency, well, let’s just say some men don’t seem to be handling this well.
The language in this corner of the culture war is decidedly predatory. We can start with Musk’s promise to “give” Swift a baby after she endorsed Harris. To “give” suggests that a child is bestowed by men on lucky women. Even if a woman were interested in Musk’s offer, it ignores the fact that women assume the physical burdens and risks of pregnancy.
Then there’s the odious use of the word “will,” which hinted that Swift has no choice in the matter. . . . . Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said that what Musk proposed was “another way of saying rape.”
Which isn’t far removed from something Trump said this month. While discussing one of the several instances in which he has been accused of sexual assault. Trump insisted the incident “never happened,” and explained that the woman in question would not have been “the chosen one.” It’s hard to know exactly what that weird, religion-inflected phrase means, but it is bizarre to suggest the victim of a sexual assault should be somehow grateful for being singled out.
Woe unto any woman who decides to reject him and choose for herself. Consider the way Trump, once the most powerful man in the world, reacted to Swift’s endorsement of Harris. “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,” he wrote. To which former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney responded: “Says the smallest man who ever lived.”
Trump followed up Friday with a another disturbing all-caps response to polling that showed him running well behind Harris among women: “WOMEN WILL BE HAPPY, HEALTHY, CONFIDENT AND FREE! YOU WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION! ... I WILL PROTECT WOMEN AT A LEVEL NEVER SEEN BEFORE.”
It’s unclear how a 78-year-old man who’s been found liable for sexual abuse would define women’s health, happiness and protection, but suffice it to say his vision might not be widely shared.
All this father-knows-best junk has long been in fashion among the tech bros in Trump’s Amen Corner. The kind of men who call themselves “alphas” often suggest that they should be the high-IQ deciders for all of us, and particularly for women.
In their imaginary world, there is a natural order of humans — and they’re at the top. Musk this month shared this post by Autism Capital with his millions of followers on X: The only people who can think freely are “high T alpha males and aneurotypical people . . . this is why a Republic of high status males is best for decision-making.
Among Musk, Vance and billionaire technologist and Vance-backer Peter Thiel, there’s considerable support for the idea that the greatest threat to the United States is falling birth rates. These men cannot seem to imagine women as anything except busy child-bearers. This philosophy dovetails with Vance’s extreme antiabortion views . . . .
In this alternate universe, reproductive choice isn’t an option; even women who are no longer of childbearing age must do their part. In a 2020 interview with Vance, Eric Weinstein, a managing director of Thiel Capital, declared that “the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female” is to help take care of grandkids — a remark to which Vance assented.
This election is going to test whether we want men who think like this to decide how we live our lives.
Vance has criticized no-fault divorce laws, which have helped many women escape abusive marriages. And, weirdly, he has complained that childless cat ladies “run everything.”
If only. However, it is true that Swift, an avowed cat lady, did snag a male dream job by becoming a billionaire adored by millions of women. And depending on how women vote in November, we might soon have our first female Decider in Chief.
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