Trump's Warped and Dangerous View of America

Personally, I have never fully bought into the American exceptionalism myth.  Truth be told, throughout history, various nations have viewed themselves as exceptional and special: Great Britain, France, Russia, ancient Rome - the list goes on and on. That said, America has been unique in that its better angels have relied on concepts and ideals that more defined the nation than its ethnic make up or one prevailing culture.  At least until now in the era of Donald Trump and his racist and religious extremist base.  To Trump and his followers, it is all about skin color and one's ancestral origin.  Those of white European ancestry count while everyone else does not. As a prior post noted, evangelical Christians are all on board with this limiting view of who are "real Americans" and "leaders" like James Dobson and Tony Perkins are preaching it to the hapless followers who can only see common humanity in those that look like them and hold the same archaic and exclusionary religious beliefs.  Michael Gerson, a conservative who in my view, like many never Trumpers, was far too slow in condemning the racist trajectory that the Republican Party began to follow years ago now, laments what Trump's view of America means for the country and the future in a column in the Washington Post.  Here are highlights:

The celebration of American independence is supposed to be a unifying national ritual. But we are a country with profound differences over the meaning of nationhood itself.

People in more typical countries — such as Belgium, Japan and Russia — are attached primarily to a unique piece of earth, a unique language, a unique culture and (perhaps) a unique ethnicity. Their celebration of nationhood is the celebration of particularity. One may become a naturalized citizen of such a country, but it is less clear what it means to become Belgian, Japanese or Russian. If possible, it would require total immersion in national distinctiveness.

This is how the current U.S. president appears to view his native land. President Trump’s Fourth of July remarks did make reference to the abstract promises of the Declaration of Independence, but he mainly praised his nation as a place and a power. . . He talked about the nation’s military victories, but not much about the nation’s character. He seems to love America because it is his country and a powerful country, but not because it is a country with a calling.

Contrast this with the national story told by Ronald Reagan or Franklin D. Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy or George W. Bush. American ideals — while growing out of a specific culture — are transcendent and universal. . . . It wins a global competition of ideals because it accords most closely with the durable dreams of humanity for liberty and justice.

This differing emphasis has dramatic implications. If the United States is primarily a normal nation, united by a common culture, then it is diluted by outsiders and weakened by diversity. In this circumstance, cultural differences lead inexorably to conflict and disunity. A nation defined primarily by culture or ethnicity is a fortress to be defended.

“America has never been united by blood or birth or soil,” said George W. Bush in his first inaugural address. “We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens. Every child must be taught these principles. Every citizen must uphold them. And every immigrant, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American.”

And if our main source of national unity is cultural, then the composition of America’s foreign-born population would matter greatly. According to Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), Trump expressed disdain for immigrants from countries such as Haiti and said, “We should have more people from places like Norway.” It is difficult to separate such statements from their racial context. In this view, a national culture largely shaped by white European migrants is better carried forward by white European migrants.

This conception of nationhood can descend quickly into dehumanization. If Hispanic migrants are defined as a threat to national security and national identity, then it becomes easier to separate crying children from their parents. It becomes easier to store migrants in overcrowded, unhealthy conditions. And it becomes easier — following the tragic drowning of a father and daughter trying to cross the Rio Grande — to blame migrants for their own desperation.

A broader definition of American identity does not require the decriminalization of all border crossings, or the abolition of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. It does require the construction of a humane asylum system that treats oppressed and frightened people with respect. It forbids the dehumanization or cruel treatment of migrants under any circumstance. And it embodies the generosity of spirit on which American greatness depends.

Requiem for American Conservatism

Conservatism has morphed into something both ugly and frightening.  The rise of Trump - who cares only about his own power and constantly fluffing his insatiable ego - has made what was already a growing cancer withing so-called conservative circles.  The cancer has metastasized and what was long known as conservatism in America is dead.  While most people outside of the political junkie set do not follow the events at the annual CPAC gathering, what was on display this year was complete insanity with a large measure of fascism.  Indeed, long time conservative columnist Mona Charen needed to be escorted out by security personnel after she called out the extremism on open display throughout the gathering.  The irony, of course, is that the falsely termed "conservative Christians" in attendance now support an agenda that is the antithesis of Christ's gospel message.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the death of American conservatism.  Here are excerpts:

It is time to read last rites over the American conservative movement. After years of drifting steadily toward extreme positions, conservatism is dead, replaced by a far right that has the Republican Party under its thumb.

Conservatism is a complex creed, some of it less than appealing and some of it noble. The less-attractive kind involves an ideology whose main purpose is to defend existing distributions of power and wealth, and to resist reforms that might redress the grievances of those facing discrimination and marginalization.

The enticing brand of conservatism is rooted in an affection for a particular place and its way of life. This conservatism is not always opposed to reform because reforms are often required to preserve the arrangements its exponents revere. Conservatism’s positive function is to warn against measures designed to fix things that are wrong, but whose main effects are to undermine institutions that are widely valued. 

Conservatism is more about tweeds and a good scotch. Neither brings to mind incitement and divisive anger.

Yet for two decades, the tweedy sort of conservatism has been giving ground to the extremists who want not simply to defeat their adversaries but to crush them; who traffic in conspiracy theories rather than in respect for facts and history; and who are willing to destroy the very institutions they claim to be trying to save.   This has happened before (as when the white South’s displaced leadership backed the Ku Klux Klan to end Reconstruction after the Civil War), and we are seeing it anew in the age of President Trump.

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in recent days was a clear demonstration of the far right’s success in displacing anything that deserves to be called conservative.

Before President Trump, it would have been shocking to see Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, a leader of the French neo-fascist National Front, appear at the same event with traditional conservatives such as Vice President Pence and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), and also with the president of the United States. But thanks to Trump, European-style ethno-nationalism has become so much a part of the movement that Maréchal-Le Pen’s visit seemed almost natural.

Encouraging responsibility in the sale and use of firearms would seem to be a thoroughly conservative cause, an effort to maintain order and protect the innocent from violence. But the National Rifle Association is one of the most powerful forces within the Republican Party and the conservative movement. It uses paranoid rhetoric and incendiary attacks on its foes to justify riotously permissive firearms policies that no other democratic republic would dream of adopting.

Shamefully, Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s top gun who is increasingly becoming America’s extremist in chief, showed few signs of being moved by the slaughter of high school students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.

What should worry us is that the radicalism of the NRA is not exceptional on the American right. It is what the right is all about.

This was brought home when the conservative writer Mona Charen had the courage to ask the crowd on Saturday why CPAC had invited Maréchal-Le Pen (“the Le Pen name is a disgrace,” she said) and called out “people on our side for being hypocrites about sexual harassers and abusers of women.”  . . . . She needed to be accompanied by security guards when she left.

And The Post’s Dave Weigel reported on an otherwise little-noticed CPAC speech by White House Counsel Donald McGahn linking Trump’s judicial appointments to his dismantling of regulation. . . . . McGahn is describing a judicial branch that is little more than an instrument of right-wing executive power. This should scare us, too.

[I]f those who still believe in moderation don’t face up to it now, they will be complicit in the far right’s ascendancy.

As for Charen, she describes her experience in a piece in the New York Times where she says she was proud that she was booed by the hideous gather.  Here are highlights:

I’ve been a conservative my entire life. . . . . So you’d think that the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, would be a natural fit. It once was. But on Saturday, after speaking to this year’s gathering, I had to be escorted from the premises by several guards who seemed genuinely concerned for my safety.

What happened to me at CPAC is the perfect illustration of the collective experience of a whole swath of conservatives since Donald Trump became the Republican nominee. We built and organized this party — but now we’re made to feel like interlopers.

[T]oo many of us have given up the fight. We’ve let disgust and dismay lead us to withdraw while bad actors take control of the direction of our movement.
 CPAC has become heavily Trumpified. Last year, they invited alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos (and withdrew the invitation only after lewd tapes surfaced). This year, in addition to the president and vice president, CPAC invited Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen and niece of National Front leader Marine Le Pen.

Matt Schlapp, CPAC’s chairman, described her as a “classical liberal” on Twitter. This is utter nonsense. Ms. Maréchal-Le Pen is a member of the National Front party, and far from distancing herself from her Holocaust-denying, anti-Semitic and racist grandfather, she has offered him a more full-throated endorsement than her aunt has.

So it has come to this: a conservative group whose worst fault in years past may have been excessive flat tax enthusiasm now opens its doors to the blood and soil nationalists of Europe.

While there were reasonable, mainstream Republican speakers at CPAC, the lineup also featured demagogues . . . .

How can conservative women hope to have any credibility on the subject of sexual harassment or relations between the sexes when they excuse the behavior of President Trump? And how can we participate in any conversation about sexual ethics when the Republican president and the Republican Party backed a man credibly accused of child molestation for the United States Senate?

I watched my fellow panelists’ eyes widen. And then the booing began. . . . I almost welcomed it. There is nothing more freeing than telling the truth. And it must be done, again and again, by those of us who refuse to be absorbed into this brainless, sinister, clownish thing called Trumpism, by those of us who refuse to overlook the fools, frauds and fascists attempting to glide along in his slipstream into respectability.

For traditional conservatives, the past two years have felt like a Twilight Zone episode. Politicians, activists and intellectuals have succumbed with numbing regularity, betraying every principle they once claimed to uphold. But there remains a vigorous remnant of dissenters. I hear from them. There were even some at CPAC.

Just before I reached the exit, a woman approached me and called my name. “That was so brave!” she told me.

Sadly, had more Republicans put principle and decency ahead of winning, Trump would not be in the White House.  There are indeed times when losing is winning. Charen and other traditional conservatives have discovered this far too late.  

The GOP Now Mirror's Europe's Fascist Far Right

My Republican grandparents and even my Republican parents would not recognize today's GOP  on display at the CPAC gathering in Washington, D.C.  Indeed even during my own time as a GOP activist likely a majority of the attendees would have been viewed with outright horror given that the party base now consists of those that would not have been deemed politically, much less socially acceptable.  Sadly, as a piece in the Washington Post notes, the GOP looks more like one of European ethno-nationalist .  Ironically, one speaker attacked "European socialism" and ignored the reality that Europe now has more upward mobility than the United States, European citizens have better access to health care, and the social safety net does not view millions of individuals as disposable garbage.  Indeed, it was no accident that the niece of French far-right extremist Marine Le Pen (who has received funding from Putin's Russia) was in attendance and addressed the gathering yesterday.  Sane and moral people need to be afraid.  Here are column excerpts:

The Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual conclave of the American right, is underway just outside Washington. President Trump will deliver a speech there on Friday, while Vice President Pence opened proceedings Thursday with a paean to his boss's first year in office, a recitation of his Christian bona fides and a Republican rallying cry ahead of pivotal midterm elections this year. But it has not gone off without controversy. Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, the youthful niece of French far-right heavyweight Marine Le Pen, also addressed the gathering Thursday. Her appearance dismayed some establishment Republicans, who were not eager to associate with a political faction linked to the dark remnants of European fascism.
 The acceptance of people such as Maréchal-Le Pen and British anti-immigrant campaigner Nigel Farage, who is speaking Friday, seemed to underscore the hard-rightward drift of the Republican Party. “These are not conservatives; these are members of an international ethno-nationalist populist movement," Matt Lewis, a moderate Republican commentator, said to NBC News. But he added that this was in keeping with Trump's ultra-nationalism. CPAC has “featured speakers who raged against gays, Muslims and immigrants and, for years, it banned panel discussions about gay rights,” noted right-wing Washington Post blogger (albeit indefatigable Trump critic) Jennifer Rubin. “However, it was also a place where mainstream conservatives came to speak, and where policy gurus from think tanks had calm discussions. . . . Now CPAC encapsulates the GOP. Adherents of President Trump’s brand of Republican politics do not bother to disguise their extremism,  conspiracy theories, paranoia or xenophobia.” Maréchal-Le Pen displayed much of that paranoia and xenophobia during her 10-minute speech. “France is no longer free today,” the 28-year-old said. "After 1500 years of existence, we now must fight for our independence." She went on to bash the European Union, earning cheers from the CPAC crowd. Her remarks echoed Trump's own blood-and-soil rhetoric [first used by Hitler and the Nazi Party] over the past year. She decried what she called the scourge of immigration, bashed globalization, signaled a desire to quit NATO and cozy up to Russia, gestured at her opposition to same-sex marriage, and championed the “historical continuity” of her nation. . . . . It’s still hard to see what she gains at home by addressing this audience abroad: Public opinion polling regarding Trump in France finds widespread disapproval of the American president, even among National Front voters. . . . . She is also closer to her grandfather, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the National Front's founder who has a long record of Holocaust denial and other bigotry. More mainstream politicians on the center-right are aping Le Pen’s brand of identity politics. That is a phenomenon all too familiar to those watching Trump's America and the events unfolding in Washington this week.