Democracy in Decline - Do Republicans Even Care?

Before both World War I and World War II, America pursued an isolationist policy and tried to ignore events happening in Europe and around.  Such shortsightedness ended up costing America and the world dearly.  Now, American foreign policy seems headed toward making the same mistake as Der Trumpenführer seeks to back out of international treaties and agreements and panders to the uglier and more extremist elements of American society who seemingly embrace authoritarianism, ignorance, and a contempt - if not open hatred - of others.  The long term ramifications could prove dangerous both at home and abroad.  Yet Congressional Republicans for the most part appear only to happy to abandon long term policies and objectives as they mimic Trump's disdain for foreigners and the defense of democratic values around the world.  The world is watching and coming to realize that the values of red America are toxic.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the disturbing trends.  Here are excerpts: 

It’s no surprise that when President Trump shot back at Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) last week, he failed to engage the substance of McCain’s argument.

But make no mistake: The challenge that McCain threw down a week ago, and that former president George W. Bush joined Thursday, is very much about an idea. It is about whether democracy, on the defensive around the world, can recover its confidence. That in turn depends in large part on whether the United States will honor what McCain called “the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of earth.’ ”

[T]he world is experiencing a “deepening democratic recession” characterized by fewer nations living freely, as measured annually by Freedom House; by increasing power projection from Russia and China; by the breakdown of democracy from Turkey to Thailand to Hungary; and by a “wave of illiberal populism” and a “decay of democratic values and self-confidence in the U.S. and Europe.”

You can debate the causes of this democratic decay, which obviously did not begin with Trump. Blame Bush’s invasion and bungled occupation of Iraq; President Barack Obama’s abandoning Syria to its grisly fate; or deeper, underlying trends of wage stagnation, economic inequality, fracturing social media.

But Trump’s admiration for strongmen and contempt for democratic values has accelerated the trend and shocked much of the world. Kori Schake, a Republican defense expert and Hoover fellow, said at the same seminar that the global anxiety today reminds her of what she was hearing from allies after the 9/11 attacks: People “are a little bit scared that America is becoming a different place than they thought they knew.”

Many Americans are worried about that, too. When I repeated Schake’s comment to Michael McFaul, a Hoover and Stanford scholar who served as Obama’s ambassador to Russia, he said he is “optimistic about our ability for renewal as a democratic society.”

But when it comes to global leadership, McFaul was less of an optimist. “The retrenchment period began under Obama, let’s be clear,” he said. “Trump is a more extreme version. That I fear may be permanent.”

The good news is the United States has hardly tried to counter the authoritarian offensive — which means that, if we stirred ourselves to act, we might yet shift the momentum. That is clearly what the old lions of the Republican Party are hoping for.

“For more than 70 years, the presidents of both parties believed that American security and prosperity were directly tied to the success of freedom in the world,” said Bush. “And they knew that the success depended, in large part, on U.S. leadership.”

The sad news is how few Republican leaders can bring themselves to defend traditional American ideals in the same way. Unless they do, the democratic recession will be increasingly likely to shift from cyclical phenomenon to the onset of something much scarier.

The Death of the Myth of Americans' Goodness

I have never been a fan of the myth of American exceptionalism.  Yes, preachers and politicians like to use the phrase, but if one looks at the details of America's history, it is filled with ugliness and hatred.  Most of us like to conveniently forget these past sins and overlook the still rampant racism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry and hate.  Looking the other way doesn't make the reality go away or magically become untrue.    For good or for bad, the results of the 2016 presidential election and the victory of Donald Trump's gathering of deplorables has torn the artificial veneer off the face of America and shown to the world that far too many Americans are not nice, decent or equality supporting people. Hopefully, this will be a wake up call and motivate the non-engaged to get involved and take back America from the 25,1% of the eligible voters who voted for trump.  Over 46% of voters stayed home and, bu their laziness and irresponsible behavior put Trump in the White House.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at this harsh reality hitting home.  Here are excerpts:

So this is America, after all. It’s not the one many of us hoped we lived in right now, but it’s the one verified by the electoral map, and it’s the one that others of us have feared we lived in for a very long time.

All through the election, Hillary Clinton’s surrogates tried to repudiate the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency and all of its strident, fear-laden rhetoric. America is better than that, they said. Those values aren’t American; those values don’t represent us.

All through Tuesday night, Wolf Blitzer and John King bickered in front of their CNN Magic Wall about the “surprise” and “upset” of Trump’s victory. No one saw it coming, they said. Nobody could explain it. It wasn’t until the wee, exhausted hours of Wednesday morning that Van Jones, an African American political commenter, broke in with a shaking, emotional voice and offered his explanation: “This was a white-lash,” he said. “This was a white-lash against a changing country. It was a white-lash against a black president, in part. And that’s the part where the pain comes.”

What if America isn’t better than that? What if this was America all along?

Not the America that welcomed immigrant “huddled masses,” but the America that kidnapped African slaves and made them build a country, brick by brick and cotton field by cotton field. Not the America that lets women work and dress and worship as they please, but the America in which a man who sexually assaults one of them can be imprisoned for only three months. Not the America pulled along by hope but the America pushed along by aggression.

The people who were truly shocked by the outcome are those who have never experienced certain behaviors of the citizenry. . . . Good white people don’t fully understand why people of color fear encounters with the police, because the police have been mostly kind to them.

“I’m seeing so many posts, from mostly white friends, saying, ‘America, I don’t even know you,’ ” says Wendy Tien, a Milwaukee attorney and second-generation Taiwanese American. “And I’m thinking, ‘Where have you been? What do you mean you don’t know this America? Why haven’t you seen it?’ I’ve seen it. I see it all the time.”

This is America, the America that we built, the America that we all live in. But if this election taught us anything, it’s that we haven’t all been living in it in the same way.

“Now do you believe us?” tweeted Xeni Jardin, an editor in California, early Wednesday morning. “Us girls and women? Now do you believe Americans who are not white when they say white supremacy prevails?”

Jardin, who is white, grew up in a Southern city across from a prison, where she remembers that mostly white spectators would gather with coolers to celebrate the executions of mostly black inmates. But, she says, polite people didn’t discuss such things, just like they didn’t discuss sexual violence or other mistreatment of women.

It just existed, quietly, part of the rotten underbelly of that America.  Now it exists, loudly, part of the blaring horn of this one. 

 I grew up as a white male from a relatively affluent family with many of the perks that all of that entails.  It was really until I came out as gay, was fired from my job for being gay, was brutalized by a homophobic judge during my divorce and had anti-gay taunts and death threats aimed at me that I got the first real, honest to goodness look at the real America.  It is not pretty.  I like to believe that a majority of us are not like Trump's racist, homophobic, xenophobic and misogynistic base.  But for too long we the majority have been complacent and let organizations ranging from the GOP, to the KKK to falsely monikered "family values" organizations fan the flames of hatred.  If any good comes from this travesty election, I hope it will be that the majority who did not support Trump will mobilize and organize to take back our country.

Angry Crowd Shouts at Sarah Palin Book Signing

I will be the first to admit that I have nothing but contempt for Sarah "Bible Spice" Palin and I am of the view that most of her supporters are in need of serious mental health intervention - not to mention some serious reeducation on American history. Thus, it's more than just a wee bit fun to see some of her demented fans get their panties in a wad when Bible Spice refused to stick around and sign their books. Here's a video:

The video captures the scene as an angry crowd shouts at Sarah Palin at her book signing in Noblesville, Indiana on November 19, 2009 after Palin quits and refuses to sign books for around 300 families that spent roughly three (3) hours getting a wristband and another three (3) or more hours waiting in line to get the Palin book signed. At the Borders bookstore it had been announced that 1,000 individuals would be given wristbands and could get two books signed each. However, by the time Sarah Palin quit signing books, there were still about 300 individuals and there families who did not get even one book signed. So much for the backwoods diva living up to her promises.
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I truly have to wonder about anyone who would spend more than 6 hours in line to see Bible Spice. The reality is that Palin is so busy having a tempestuous love affair with herself that she cares nothing for the dolts who are insane enough to want to worship her. The woman is a narcisisstic, pathological liar who is a real menace.

Principle and pragmatism in ENDA

The Bay Area Reorter has a good Op-Ed by law professor, Dale Carpenter (http://www.ebar.com/columns/column.php?sec=outright&article=54) that again looks at what is politically possible versus what is idealistically pure. Like my earlier post, he notes that most of the "purists" are not the ones living in Red America and faced with the daily possibility of job loss because of their sexual orientation. Here are portions of the column:

That brings us to pragmatic considerations.

ENDA doesn't "include" anybody if it can't pass. Nobody knows how long it might take to educate Congress about trans issues. In the meantime, in 31 states there will be no job protection for gay people. Shall we make them wait a year? Five years? Forever?

Some have noted that even if a gay-only ENDA overcomes a filibuster in the Senate, President Bush might veto it. That's certainly possible and maybe probable, but a trans-inclusive ENDA would make both Senate passage and presidential approval less likely. Even if Bush vetoed ENDA, simply winning in the House would be a historic victory. It would build political momentum for more advances later.

Progress in civil rights has never been an all-or-nothing proposition. If it were, we'd still be waiting to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protected blacks from job discrimination, but left out the aged and disabled people. When the law was expanded in 1991, but still excluded sexual orientation, gay people didn't picket the NAACP.

Even an inclusive ENDA won't include lots of groups subject to systematic discrimination, like homely, short, or overweight people. Other nonconformists often thought part of the LGBT community, like leather fetishists and sadomasochists, won't be protected. Why shouldn't we wait for them, too?

Ironically, many of the activists demanding trans inclusion live in states where an incremental approach to gay and trans rights is well understood. California adopted gay civil rights laws long before trans protections. One of the groups opposed to a gay-only ENDA is the Empire State Pride Agenda, the New York gay rights group, which just four years ago lobbied successfully for a gay-only state anti-discrimination law because a trans-inclusive one couldn't pass.

The opposition to ENDA is coming mostly from a cadre of articulate, politically aware, and protected gay activists living in cocoons on the coasts and in large cities. They are imposing gender and queer theory on the lives of millions of gay Americans throughout the South, Midwest, and West. They charge that a gay-only ENDA manifests a selfish willingness to throw transgenders out of the boat.

Instead, the all-or-nothing ENDA manifests a self-satisfied willingness to sell the fly-over gays down the river. Hearts pure and integrity intact, elite activists who already have their rights will defend their high-minded principles right down to the last gay Alabamian.