LA Times: Undoing the Great Mistake of 2016

In a reasoned main editorial The Los Angeles Times makes the case of why it is absolutely essential that Donald Trump be defeated in 2020 if he manages to avoid removal from office via impeachment thanks to Senate Republicans who have sold their souls to Trump and/or are as morally depraved as he is.  In the tussle to win the Democrat nomination, too many candidates seem to forget that "Medicare for All" and other policy pitches and differences pale in comparison to the most important goal: defeating Trump and hopefully many Republicans along with him.  Here in Virginia, in 16 days Virginians can fire the opening salvo in this repudiation of Trump and everything that he and the Republican Party have come to represent: open racism, religious extremism driven by hate, not the gospels, and, of course greed and envy.  Greed on the part of the wealthy and envy on the part of those who blame others for their poor life choices (including voting for Republicans who have consistently worked against their base's economic best interests and, of course the embrace of ignorance).  In its editorial, the LA Times is too kind to Trump voters, in my view, and says they were "hoodwinked" rather than face the reality that race, religious extremism, and greed and envy were the real motivations behind their votes.   That said, here are editorial highlights:

As the 2020 election approaches, the United States is deeply and bitterly polarized, shaken by acts of random and not-so-random violence, with wages still rising too slowly, income inequality continuing to increase and the American Dream feeling more and more out of reach for too many people. Despite low unemployment and a frothy stock market, voters feel a deep anxiety about the future and a dark anger at the political system.

With just a year to go before election day, global alliances are fraying as the U.S. turns inward. The culture wars are raging on campus and off. For only the fourth time in American history, a U.S. president is being investigated by the U.S. House of Representatives with an eye toward impeachment. Immigrants are being demonized and detained . . . .

Flitting above this chaotic landscape — fomenting, provoking, preening, spewing, tweeting, blustering and bullying — is President Donald Trump, the worst, most dangerous president in modern history.

All presidential elections are uniquely consequential, but a good case can be made that the next one is the most important of our lives. The time has come to undo the great mistake of 2016 and drive Trump out of office at the ballot box. It is time to pull our country out of the illiberal abyss into which it is sinking and put it on a path toward reason and fairness and empathy and constructive engagement with the world.

Voters need to keep their eyes on the prize: defeating Trump state by state, issue by issue, vote by vote in November of next year.

But stopping him is not going to be nearly as easy as common sense says it ought to be. The country is profoundly riven: More than 60 million Americans consciously chose this [narcissistic demagogue]  president over his opponent four years ago. And many voters remain entranced — hoodwinked, in our view — by his blunt, cocky, overpromising style. He may be coddling dictators, selling off the planet to oil, gas and mining interests, cynically stirring racial resentment and animosity toward immigrants, and provoking an angry trade war with a rising China, but his base remains steadily, stubbornly supportive.

Trump is temperamentally unsuited to be president . . . . Lies, threats and empty promises are his weapons of choice; enemies are mocked and belittled while the dumbly obedient are rewarded. Ignorant and incurious, unmoved by reasoned argument, contemptuous of laws and institutions, Trump is in thrall to exactly the special interests you would expect, he is schooled at the university of Fox News, he is on a constant search for adulation and short-term advantage. He must be defeated in November 2020.

[O]n two issues, we hope the [Democrat] candidates will agree: first, that the top priority has to be defeating the incumbent, who is too irresponsible to be allowed another term; and second, that his defeat is only a first step. Even before Trump was elected, the country was divided and the old system wasn’t working. Political paralysis was already on the rise well before November 2016 . . . Anyone who is not convinced of that should just remember the name Merrick Garland.

In this series we will seek to answer some basic questions: What is our brief against President Trump and why is it so important that he be defeated? . . . We’ll begin to look at some of the policy issues arising in the race, we’ll examine the battle between progressives and moderates, and we’ll consider the importance of race and racism in the election. For Californians in particular, whose policies are especially loathed by this president and who have so often felt the brunt of his disdain, this election is supremely important.

Now is no time to watch from the sidelines. Voters must become engaged, learn the issues, choose sides, speak out. Removing Donald Trump from office in November 2020 is absolutely essential — and yet it is by no means a sure thing. So do not sit this one out. Join in, and make America America again.

Trump must be defeated and/or removed from office by any means necessary.  Hopefully, the lazy and indifferent who stayed home and failed to vote in 2016 will not repeat their mistake and will make sure they go to the polls and cast their vote against Trump and Republicans in general.

The Oxymoron (and Internalized Homophobia) of Gay Republicans

Being gay and being a Republican, in my view, ought to be mutually exclusive.  Why support a party that actively supports discrimination against you and seeks to roll back your civil rights (the Trump/Pence Justice Department has just filed a brief opposing LGBT workplace protections).  To me, it is akin to being a Jew in Germany in the early 1930's and being a member of the Nazi party. Yet based on 2018 results, roughly 18% of the LGBT community voted Republican seemingly either out of internalized homophobia or greed and a lust for lower taxes.  Some prominent members of this group are affluent gays who seem to believe that their financial/social status protects them from the results of the Trump/GOP anti-gay agenda even as they throw others in the LGBT community under the bus. They might do well to recall that wealth did not protect wealthy Jews during the Holocaust (I'd recommend the watch the movie, The Woman in Gold, if they need a primer). Now, with the surprising rise of Pete Buttigieg in the Democrat nomination contest we see these same individuals attacking Buttigieg even as they rally to defend Mike Pence, one of the worse homophobes in the GOP.  A piece in Politico looks at this phenomenon: 

Pete Buttigieg is creating a split-screen moment for gay Republicans: The rising 2020 presidential contender speaks passionately about the military, God and efficient government. Some gay conservatives have spoken positively about Buttigieg — a moderate-sounding Midwesterner who married his husband last year — being a leap forward for gay Americans and politicians.

But the South Bend, Ind., mayor’s public squabbles with Vice President Mike Pence are pushing some gay Republicans to fire back at Buttigieg to defend a leader of their party. The dust-up is riling up parts of the right and serving as a high-profile test of how the broader electorate might handle the nation's first prominent gay presidential candidate.

“What’s intriguing about this particular candidate is that he’s running on really, you could say, the ‘gay conservative platform,’” said Richard Tafel, who helped launch the Log Cabin Republicans and authored “Party Crasher,” a book about being a gay conservative activist. “He’s talking about his military service. He’s talking about his faith. And he keeps saying we should make a moral argument. So on those things that also makes him somewhat attractive to gay conservatives.”

The 37-year-old Buttigieg's rising stature within the Democratic presidential primary has moved some gay Republicans to defend him on a key front where he's vulnerable, pushing back against anti-gay attacks and sharing their own experiences. Their outspokenness could help shift conservative views on gay marriage and ultimately help Buttigieg connect with voters who would otherwise never give a gay candidate of either party a second look.

Guy Benson, a prominent conservative commentator who is gay, has jumped into Twitter debates to challenge derogatory statements about Buttigieg. When Republican E.W. Jackson said that a Buttigieg presidency would turn the country into a "homocracy," Benson commented he was "proud to have voted against this person."

“I think by just existing and doing his thing, it’s a step forward for the community,” Benson said in an interview. “It just kind of seems normal, which is I think indicative of progress. In terms of him as a candidate I think he is undeniably very bright. I think he is interesting. I think he can be very thoughtful on topics and deeply informed on a number of policy areas.”

“The perspective from which he speaks is one that I relate to, but his opinion on some of the policy issues I differ from greatly,” said Jerri Ann Henry, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans. “But I still think I would rather have a debate with someone like him than someone like a Bernie Sanders, who I can’t even figure out where he’s coming from — a millionaire who rails against the 1 percent.”

Buttigieg's recent public skirmish with Pence, one of the nation's most prominent social conservatives [religious extremists] who worked with the mayor when he was Indiana governor, has fueled an early backlash on the right. Buttigieg rose to the upper tier of the Democratic race in part by criticizing Pence and Trump last month in a CNN town hall. The broadside, and others that followed, energized Buttigieg’s fundraising and jolted his campaign out of the bottom rungs.

“I think he made a crucial mistake when he started attacking Pence,” said Chadwick Moore, a prominent gay Republican who supports Trump. “They had a close working relationship in Indiana. It was somewhat close. Pence has been nothing but respectful and courteous to him and I think when he came after Pence it made him look opportunistic.”

The squabbling has rallied some gay Republicans to Pence’s defense, arguing that Buttigieg is trying to pick a fight with the vice president to cement his bona fides among gay liberals and the broader Democratic community.

Among gay Democrats, Pence is often criticized as the highest-ranking anti-gay official in the country. Pence was in the national spotlight as governor of Indiana in 2015 for pushing a controversial religious freedom bill that rallied gay Republicans and a wide swath of businesses against it.

Buttigieg, then a relatively unknown mayor even in the Midwest, offered a polite but public rebuke of Pence’s push — in line with the relatively cordial relationship between the two officials, despite their opposing views on some major policy points.

In interviews, multiple gay Republicans likened the situation facing gay Republicans today to what black Republicans felt during the 2008 presidential campaign when confronted with the prospect of Barack Obama becoming the nation's first African American president.

Trump Appointees and Family Show They Are Clueless About Average Americans

"Let them eat cake" is the traditional translation of the French phrase "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche." While the phrase is commonly attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette, there is no record of her having said it.  Indeed, the first attributions did not arise until the 1840’s and was used by pro-democrat factions against the reign of Louis Phillipe. That said, the derogatory phrase could well apply to Donald Trump who suggested that grocery stores would “work" with unpaid federal.  See how far that gets you at your local Walmart, Kroger, Food Lion or Publix.  And his arrogant out of touch family members and political appointees are no better and have made it clear that they have no clue of real life for the vast majority of Americans.  A column in the Washington Post by former Republican Jennifer Rubin looks at the out of touch batshitery.  Here are excerpts:

The Trump cohort is living up to its reputation as a gang of heartless rich people who don’t care about the pain of others. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross declared on Thursday that he couldn’t understand why unpaid federal workers were resorting to food banks. (Because they have no money?) This follows equally clueless and uncaring comments by Lara Trump (“This is so much bigger than any one person. It is a little bit of pain, but it’s going to be for the future of our country”), and economic adviser Kevin Hassett, who explained the shutdown was like having a long vacation. (Minus the money to pay for the vacation. And if you are designated as essential personnel, minus the time off.)

Meanwhile, the shutdown’s effects on critical parts of society — such as air travel — get more and more perilous. . . . A group of former Homeland Security secretaries, including John F. Kelly, warned that the shutdown is threatening public safety and impairing border protection.

Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) went to the Senate floor to excoriate the commerce secretary. “Those comments are appalling, and reveal the administration’s callous indifference towards the federal workers it’s treating as pawns. Secretary Ross’ comments are the 21st-century equivalent of ‘let them eat cake,’” he said. “Many of these federal employees live paycheck to paycheck. Secretary Ross, they can’t just call their stock broker and ask them to sell some of their shares. They need that paycheck.”

Schumer continued . . . We support stronger border security. President Trump believes the best way to do that is an expensive and ineffective wall. We disagree sharply over that — but there’s no reason we can’t negotiate and figure it out.” [Trump’s] package, which included $5.7 billion for a wall, impediments for asylum seekers, and only temporary help for “dreamers,” bombed in the Senate. . . . . The 52-to-44 vote wasn’t enough to reach the 60-vote cloture threshold, but it’s an indication that Trump’s party is sliding away from him.

It would be a bitter pill for the anti-immigrant zealots and for Trump’s pride, but, without caving, the shutdown goes on, inflicting more pain and risking a calamity of some type. The damage to Trump and the GOP may not dissipate after this is over.

In 2020, be prepared to hear a lot about the Republican Party’s cruelty and contempt for the concerns of ordinary Americans. There will be plenty of ammunition, but none more powerful than the GOP’s conduct during the shutdown. Listen, if Republicans can’t keep the lights on and don’t much care about the harm they cause, why should they have the Senate majority and White House? 

 Mortgage companies, grocery stores and landlords do NOT cavalierly give away products or waive payments.  These horrid individuals who are so clueless should never been in positions of power in governing the country.

Trump Supporters: Maybe They’re Just Bad People

Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times

The previous post looked at what is in my view the moral bankruptcy of Bill White and his husband, Bryan Eure who have sold out the LGBT community out of sheer ego and perhaps narcissism by hitching their star to Donald Trump.  The immorality of Trump and the harm he and Mike Pence are doing to members of the LGBT community means nothing to them as long as their are on guest list along with other Trump sycophants who live for perks and perceived privileges that stroke their egos.  But White and Eure are hardly alone in their willingness to suck up to Trump displaying an attitude of what's in it for me and to hell with everyone else or the good of the country.  Columnist Michelle Goldberg makes this point in a recent column.  I've been involved in politics for decades not for what it might bring to me monetarily or in terms of status, but because I want to make a difference and I worry about the future of the country that my grandchildren will be living in.  My gay rights activism stems for wanting to make sure younger generations avoid the hell that so many of us older gays endured.  But for White, Eure and I suspect most Trump supporters, it is only about power and satiating overwhelming egos - the same motivations that drive Der Trumpenführer.  In today's America, supporting Trump requires rejecting true morality, decency and true Christian/gospel values (which I view as positive even if I reject the Christian label).  Here are column excerpts:

Seven years ago, a former aide to Ralph Reed — who also worked, briefly, for Paul Manafort — published a tawdry, shallow memoir that is also one of the more revealing political books I’ve ever read. Lisa Baron was a pro-choice, pro-gay rights, hard-partying Jew who nonetheless made a career advancing the fortunes of the Christian right. She opened her book with an anecdote about performing oral sex on a future member of the George W. Bush administration during the 2000 primary, which, she wrote, “perfectly summed up my groupie-like relationship to politics at that time — I wanted it, I worshiped it, and I went for it.”

It’s not exactly a secret that politics is full of amoral careerists lusting — literally or figuratively — for access to power. Still, if you’re interested in politics because of values and ideas, it can be easier to understand people who have foul ideologies than those who don’t have ideologies at all. Steve Bannon, a quasi-fascist with delusions of grandeur, makes more sense to me than Anthony Scaramucci, a political cipher who likes to be on TV. I don’t think I’m alone. Consider all the energy spent trying to figure out Ivanka Trump’s true beliefs, when she’s shown that what she believes most is that she’s entitled to power and prestige.

Baron’s book, “Life of the Party: A Political Press Tart Bares All,” is useful because it is a self-portrait of a cynical, fame-hungry narcissist, a common type but one underrepresented in the stories we tell about partisan combat. A person of limited self-awareness — she seemed to think readers would find her right-wing exploits plucky and cute — Baron became Reed’s communications director because she saw it as a steppingstone to her dream job, White House press secretary, a position she envisioned in mostly sartorial terms.

It’s tempting for those of us who interpret politics for a living to overstate the importance of competing philosophies. We shouldn't forget the enduring role of sheer vanity.

That brings us to Monday’s New York Times article about Bill White and his husband, Bryan Eure, headlined “How a Liberal Couple Became Two of N.Y.’s Biggest Trump Supporters.” The answer: ego.

This story, like Baron’s book, is arresting in its picture of shameless, unvarnished thirst. White and Eure mouth some talking points about disliking “identity politics” and valuing “authenticity.” Like a lot of Trump apologists, White insists the president isn’t racist because African-American employment figures have improved during his administration. But the lurid opportunism that’s driving him and his husband to embrace Trump is obvious. Such opportunism is far from rare; it’s just not often that we see it exhibited so starkly.

Trump is hardly the first politician to attract self-serving followers — White and Eure, after all, used to be Clintonites.

But Trump is unique as a magnet for grifters, climbers and self-promoters, in part because decent people won’t associate with him. With the exception of national security professionals sticking around to stop Trump from blowing up the world, there are two kinds of people in the president’s orbit — the immoral and the amoral.

There are sincere nativists, like Bannon and senior adviser Stephen Miller, and people of almost incomprehensible insincerity.

As I keep stating, my Republican friends are running out of time to demonstrate that they are not among the ranks of the immoral and amoral.  The choice is between continued support for a pathological liar who endorses using tear gas- or worse - against women and small children and simple morality and decency. They cannot have it both ways.  And, I'm sorry, but wanting lower taxes does not justify embracing immorality.

Can America Survive Right Wing Tribalism?

Being gay, one quickly becomes accustomed to being viewed as "other" - and even worthy of death according to numerous "godly Christian" pastors.  So for me, it is easy to understand the term tribalism which drives us to identify with and surround ourselves with those like us or with similar beliefs.  But the downside is that it can cause divisions in society as a whole.  America now finds itself largely as a divided camp with those on the right, namely religious extremists, racists, those  embracing ignorance and the greed driven facing off against those who are secular, educated, and accepting of those who are different in terms of skin color, religious faith (or no faith) and ethnicity.  In a very lengthy piece in New York Magazine, Andrew Sullivan poses the question of whether or not America can survive this new tribalism.  Sadly, in my view, he gives a false equivalence to the far right and the far left when it is the far right that deserves the most severe condemnation.  It is on the right, not the left that one sees racism and religious based hatred as two of the pillars of the dogma of the right which results in a total denial of the common humanity we all share.  Add to this the greed of the GOP agenda that would literally throw millions into the gutter so that the wealthy can enjoy enormous tax cuts, and there simply is no equivalence between the agenda/tribalism of the right and that of the liberals and left.  Here are highlights from Sullivan's column:

From time to time, I’ve wondered what it must be like to live in a truly tribal society. Watching Iraq or Syria these past few years, you get curious about how the collective mind can come so undone. What’s it like to see the contours of someone’s face, or hear his accent, or learn the town he’s from, and almost reflexively know that he is your foe? How do you live peacefully for years among fellow citizens and then find yourself suddenly engaged in the mass murder of humans who look similar to you, live around you, and believe in the same God, but whose small differences in theology mean they must be killed before they kill you? In the Balkans, a long period of relative peace imposed by communism was shattered by brutal sectarian and ethnic warfare, as previously intermingled citizens split into unreconcilable groups. The same has happened in a developed democratic society — Northern Ireland — and in one of the most successful countries in Africa, Kenya.

Tribal loyalties turned Beirut, Lebanon’s beautiful, cosmopolitan capital, into an urban wasteland in the 1970s; they caused close to a million deaths in a few months in Rwanda in the 1990s; they are turning Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, into an enabler of ethnic cleansing right now in Myanmar. British imperialists long knew that the best way to divide and conquer was by creating “countries” riven with tribal differences. Not that they were immune: Even in successful modern democracies like Britain and Spain, the tribes of Scots and Catalans still threaten a viable nation-state. In all these places, the people involved have been full citizens of their respective nations, but their deepest loyalty is to something else.

Over the past couple of decades in America, the enduring, complicated divides of ideology, geography, party, class, religion, and race have mutated into something deeper, simpler to map, and therefore much more ominous. I don’t just mean the rise of political polarization (although that’s how it often expresses itself), nor the rise of political violence (the domestic terrorism of the late 1960s and ’70s was far worse), nor even this country’s ancient black-white racial conflict (though its potency endures).

I mean a new and compounding combination of all these differences into two coherent tribes, eerily balanced in political power, fighting not just to advance their own side but to provoke, condemn, and defeat the other.

I mean two tribes where one contains most racial minorities and the other is disproportionately white; where one tribe lives on the coasts and in the cities and the other is scattered across a rural and exurban expanse; where one tribe holds on to traditional faith and the other is increasingly contemptuous of religion altogether; where one is viscerally nationalist and the other’s outlook is increasingly global; where each dominates a major political party; and, most dangerously, where both are growing in intensity as they move further apart.

The project of American democracy — to live beyond such tribal identities, to construct a society based on the individual, to see ourselves as citizens of a people’s republic, to place religion off-limits, and even in recent years to embrace a multiracial and post-religious society — was always an extremely precarious endeavor. It rested, from the beginning, on an 18th-century hope that deep divides can be bridged by a culture of compromise, and that emotion can be defeated by reason. It failed once, spectacularly, in the most brutal civil war any Western democracy has experienced in modern times. And here we are, in an equally tribal era, with a deeply divisive president who is suddenly scrambling Washington’s political alignments, about to find out if we can prevent it from failing again.

For the overwhelming majority of our time on this planet, the tribe was the only form of human society. . . . Tribal cohesion was essential to survival, and our first religions emerged for precisely this purpose. . . . Religion therefore fused with communal identity and purpose, it was integral to keeping the enterprise afloat, and the idea of people within a tribe believing in different gods was incomprehensible. Such heretics would be killed.Comparatively few actual tribes exist today, but that doesn’t mean that humans are genetically much different. . . . Successful modern democracies do not abolish this feeling; they co-opt it. Healthy tribalism endures in civil society in benign and overlapping ways. We find a sense of belonging, of unconditional pride, in our neighborhood and community; in our ethnic and social identities and their rituals; among our fellow enthusiasts.

None of this is a problem. Tribalism only destabilizes a democracy when it calcifies into something bigger and more intense than our smaller, multiple loyalties; when it rivals our attachment to the nation as a whole; and when it turns rival tribes into enemies. And the most significant fact about American tribalism today is that all three of these characteristics now apply to our political parties, corrupting and even threatening our system of government.

[I]n the first half of the 20th century, with immigration sharply curtailed after 1924, the world wars acted as great unifiers and integrators. Our political parties became less polarized by race, as the FDR Democrats managed to attract more black voters as well as ethnic and southern whites. By 1956, nearly 40 percent of black voters still backed the GOP.

But we all know what happened next. The re-racialization of our parties began with Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign in 1964, when the GOP lost almost all of the black vote. It accelerated under Nixon’s “southern strategy” in the wake of the civil-rights revolution. By Reagan’s reelection, the two parties began to cohere again into the Civil War pattern, and had simply swapped places.

Mass illegal Latino immigration added to the tribal mix as the GOP, led most notably by Pete Wilson in California, became increasingly defined by white immigration restrictionists, and Hispanics moved to the Democrats. Newt Gingrich’s revolutionary GOP then upped the ante, treating President Bill Clinton as illegitimate from the start, launching an absurd impeachment crusade, and destroying the comity that once kept Washington from complete partisan dysfunction. Abortion and gay rights further split urban and rural America.

Then there were other accelerants: The arrival of talk radio in the 1980s, Fox News in the ’90s, and internet news and MSNBC in the aughts; the colossal blunder of the Iraq War, which wrecked the brief national unity after 9/11; and the rise of partisan gerrymandering that allowed the GOP to win, in 2016, 49 percent of the vote but 55 percent of House seats. (A recent study found that a full fifth of current districts are more convoluted than the original, contorted district that first gave us the term gerrymander in 1812.) The greatest threat to a politician today therefore is less a candidate from the opposing party than a more ideologically extreme primary opponent. The incentives for cross-tribal compromise have been eviscerated, and those for tribal extremism reinforced.

The result of all this is that a lopsided 69 percent of white Christians now vote Republican, while the Democrats get only 31. In the last decade, the gap in Christian identification between Democrats and Republicans has increased by 50 percent. In 2004, 44 percent of Latinos voted Republican for president; in 2016, 29 percent did. Forty-three percent of Asian-Americans voted Republican in 2004; in 2016, 29 percent did. Since 2004, the most populous urban counties have also swung decisively toward the Democrats, in both blue and red states, while rural counties have shifted sharply to the GOP. When three core components of a tribal identity — race, religion, and geography — define your political parties, you’re in serious trouble.

Some countries where tribal cleavages spawned by ethnic and linguistic differences have long existed understand this and have constructed systems of government designed to ameliorate the consequences. Unlike the U.S., they encourage a culture of almost pathological compromise, or build constitutions that, unlike our own, take tribal conflict seriously. They often have a neutral head of state — a constitutional monarch or nonpartisan president — so that the legitimacy of the system is less easily defined by one tribe or the other. They tend to have proportional representation and more than two parties, so it’s close to impossible for one party to govern without some sort of coalition.

The United States is built on a very different set of institutions. There is no neutral presidency here, and so when a rank tribalist wins the office and governs almost entirely in the interests of the hardest core of his base, half the country understandably feels as if it were under siege. Our two-party, winner-take-all system only works when both parties are trying to appeal to the same constituencies on a variety of issues.

Our undemocratic electoral structure exacerbates things. Donald Trump won 46 percent of the vote, attracting 3 million fewer voters than his opponent, but secured 56 percent of the Electoral College. Republicans won 44 percent of the vote in the Senate seats up for reelection last year, but 65 percent of the seats. To have one tribe dominate another is one thing; to have the tribe that gained fewer votes govern the rest — and be the head of state — is testing political stability.

And so by 2017, 41 percent of Republicans and 38 percent of Democrats said they disagreed not just with their opponents’ political views but with their values and goals beyond politics as well. Nearly 60 percent of all Americans find it stressful even to talk about Trump with someone who disagrees with them. A Monmouth poll, for good measure, recently found that 61 percent of Trump supporters say there’s nothing he could do to make them change their minds about him; 57 percent of his opponents say the same thing. Nothing he could do.

Conservatism thrived in America when it was dedicated to criticizing liberalism’s failures, engaging with it empirically, and offering practical alternatives to the same problems. It has since withered into an intellectual movement that does little but talk to itself and guard its ideological boundaries. To be a conservative critic of George W. Bush, for example, meant risking not just social ostracism but, for many, loss of livelihood. . . . so, among tribal conservatives, the Iraq War remained a taboo topic when it wasn’t still regarded as a smashing success, tax cuts were still the solution to every economic woe, free trade was all benefit and no cost, and so on. Health care was perhaps the most obvious example of this intellectual closure. Republican opposition to the Affordable Care Act was immediate and total. Even though the essential contours of the policy had been honed at the Heritage Foundation, even though a Republican governor had pioneered it in Massachusetts, and even though that governor became the Republican nominee in 2012, the anathematization of it defined the GOP for seven years. After conservative writer David Frum dared to argue that a moderate, market-oriented reform to the health-care system was not the ideological hill for the GOP to die on, he lost his job at the American Enterprise Institute.

As for indifference to reality, today’s Republicans cannot accept that human-produced carbon is destroying the planet, . . . . Republicans cannot own the fact that big tax cuts have not trickled down, or that President Bush authorized the brutal torture of prisoners, thereby unequivocally committing war crimes.

And then there is the stance of white Evangelicals, a pillar of the red tribe. Among their persistent concerns has long been the decline of traditional marriage, the coarsening of public discourse, and the centrality of personal virtue to the conduct of public office. In the 1990s, they assailed Bill Clinton as the font of decadence; then they lionized George W. Bush, who promised to return what they often called “dignity” to the Oval Office. And yet when a black Democrat with exemplary personal morality, impeccable public civility, a man devoted to his wife and children and a model for African-American fathers, entered the White House, they treated him as a threat to civilization. . . . . And when they encountered a foulmouthed pagan who bragged of grabbing women by the pussy, used the tabloids to humiliate his wife, married three times, boasted about the hotness of his own daughter, touted the size of his own dick in a presidential debate, and spoke of avoiding STDs as his personal Vietnam, they gave him more monolithic support than any candidate since Reagan, including born-again Bush and squeaky-clean Romney.

How to unwind this increasingly dangerous dysfunction? It’s not easy to be optimistic with Trump as president. And given his malignant narcissism, despotic instincts, absence of empathy, and constant incitement of racial and xenophobic hatred, it’s extremely hard not to be tribal in return. There is no divide he doesn’t want to deepen, no conflict he doesn’t want to start or intensify. How on earth can we not “resist”?

Will Trump Risk Conflict with China to Further His Business Empire in Taiwan?

Numerous posts on this blog and stories in the responsible segments of the media have focused on the coming problems of Donald Trump putting his business interest ahead of the national interest.  Given Trump's narcissism and egomania, like Louis IV once said - l'estat c'est moi - Trump views himself/his business' best interests as synonymous with America.  Not even yet in office Trump has triggered possible conflict with China through his telephone conversation with the president of Taiwan - most likely as part of Trump's plan to build luxury hotels in Taiwan.  Even the typically reactionary and GOP apologist Wall Street Journal is alarmed at this blunder.  There is a reason almost all of the experience personnel in the intelligence and foreign affairs circles of government opposed Trump during the just ended campaign.  Here are story highlights:

President-elect Donald Trump spoke with the president of Taiwan on Friday, a conversation that breaks with decades of U.S. policy and could well infuriate the Chinese government.

The conversation between Mr. Trump and President Tsai Ing-wen runs counter to the longstanding effort by Beijing to block any formal U.S. diplomatic relations with the island off China’s coast. Chinese leaders consider Taiwan a Chinese territory, not a sovereign nation.

The Trump transition team didn’t give many details of the discussion but said Mr. Trump spoke with the Taiwanese leader, “who offered her congratulations.”

The White House reacted quickly, moving to calm a potential diplomatic dilemma. Ned Price, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said “there is no change to our longstanding policy on cross-Strait issues” and that the U.S. remains “firmly committed to our ‘one China’ policy based on the three Joint Communiques and the Taiwan Relations Act.”

“As President Obama has said, we are committed to ensuring the smoothest possible transition for the incoming administration,” Mr. Price said in a statement. “Every president, regardless of party, has benefited from the expertise and counsel of State Department on matters like these.”

The White House didn’t learn of Mr. Trump’s phone call until after it had taken place, a senior administration official said.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi referred to the call as “a petty trick on the part of the Taiwan side,” according to a notice published on multiple Chinese news portals and attributed to the ministry. The conversation between Mr. Trump and Ms. Tsai “can’t in any way change the ‘One China’ structure that has already taken form in international society,” he said.

Reaction could be so severe as to include sanctions against U.S. companies, said Victor Shih, associate professor in the school of global policy and strategy at the University of California at San Diego.

“China and the U.S. have both worked very, very hard to create a status quo where Taiwan has de facto autonomy without any international legal standing,” he said. “And with one phone call—I think—Trump did in fact undermine the status quo quite a bit.”

China claims Taiwan as its territory, though the island hasn’t been governed by the mainland since a civil war more than 60 years ago. The U.S. gave up formal relations with Taiwan in favor of Beijing.

President Barack Obama has walked a fine line on the issue. China has lobbied his administration against agreeing to arms sales to Taiwan, but Mr. Obama has done so anyway. The most recent was in 2015 when the administration approved a $1.83 billion deal.

On Taiwan, unlike trade, China isn’t prepared to bargain. No Chinese leader could be seen backing down on the one issue that could realistically draw the U.S. and China into war; there is no political room to maneuver.

Mr. Trump’s relationship with China already was complicated by his insistence that he would take a tougher line on Chinese trade practices. He threatened during the campaign to slap tariffs on goods imported from China and to formally declare China a manipulator of its currency, a step that would carry economic penalties.

At the same time, though, Mr. Trump faces international problems on which he will need China’s help, including restraining Iran’s nuclear ambitions but—more than anything else—restraining North Korea’s nuclear program.

Mr. Trump’s moves also have sparked concern that he believes he can engage with adversaries who have threatened allies in Europe and Asia, or with others even when the consequences may not be predictable.

Nicholas Burns, a longtime State Department official who worked for both the Bush and Obama administrations, criticized the call in a Twitter message. “Taking a call from Taiwan’s leader a significant mistake by Trump,” Mr. Burns said. “Is he listening to the State Department?”

 No, he is not listening to the State Department.  He is listening to his insatiable ego and greed.  America's best interests mean nothing to this man. #NotMyPresident.

Will the Emoluments Clause be Trump's Undoing?

The Founding Fathers were very suspicious of potential efforts of foreign powers to influence the new nation's leaders, especially the president. As a result, they wrote the so-called emoluments clause into the United Sates Constitution which provides in relevant part as follows:

"no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States] shall, without Consent of Congress, accept ... any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State."

The goal was to prevent bribery of government officials and office holders and to seek to ensure that the best interest of the nation rather than personal financial gain was the guiding motivation for decisions made by office holders.  Up until now, there has been little focus on the Emoluments Clause because (i) most office holders were not in positions to be easily bribed or influenced by financial benefits and (ii) for decades Presidents have liquidated assets and placed them in blind trusts to avoid even the appearance of out right conflict of interest.  With the election of Donald Trump - a man obsessed with enriching himself and satiating his unrestrained narcissism - suddenly the Emoluments Clause is looming large. Indeed, it could be what leads to Trump's impeachment early on during his term.  A piece in NPR looks at the likely coming scandals and controversies.  Here are highlights:

Donald Trump's extensive business dealings around the globe have focused attention on an obscure provision of the Constitution most law professors barely look at — the Emoluments Clause. Now, one of the hottest legal debates around is whether the president-elect is going to violate the Constitution if he continues doing business with companies controlled by foreign governments.

Emolument is defined by Merriam-Webster as "the returns arising from office or employment usually in the form of compensation or perquisites."

The Foreign Emoluments Clause can be found in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution. It provides that "no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States] shall, without Consent of Congress, accept ... any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State."

The clause has been interpreted as an anti-bribery provision by constitutional scholars.

"The underlying concern of the clause is divided loyalties," said Erik Jensen, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University. "The founders wanted U.S. officials not to have any arrangements under which there could be questions about whether they were acting in the best interests of the United States, or in the interests of a foreign state."

Trump's companies do deal with businesses that are controlled or influenced by foreign government officials. Legal experts say the potential for constitutional violations is high.

Take the Bank of China, for example. It's a lender for one of Trump's buildings in Midtown Manhattan. If the Bank of China were to offer Trump a lower interest rate on that loan after he takes office, it might raise an Emoluments Clause issue. Some legal scholars say it could be perceived as an attempt to curry favor with the president or influence policy.

Not only have prior presidents been careful to steer clear of any perceived violations of the clause, there's never been a president like Trump, whose companies have such vast global reach. And Trump hasn't fully disclosed the full extent of his global business dealings.

"The services theory would be along the lines of, 'Well, if Donald Trump himself as president could not perform services for the foreign government, he can't have his hired help — people who work for him in that hotel — provide those services, and then he receives the payment.' That would be an end-run around the prohibition on any type of emolument," said Painter.

The issue of whether a U.S. government official is violating the Emoluments Clause for services rendered actually does comes up in real life, says Ken Gross, a government ethics lawyer in Washington, D.C. Sometimes government officials go on a foreign detail or sabbatical and want to earn compensation for teaching at a government-funded university in that foreign country. In those cases, Gross said, U.S. government officials have had to forego pay to avoid violations of the clause.

Legal standing depends on how you articulate the injury. Here's one theory of injury: Trump is enriching himself at the expense of companies that can't compete for business the way the president of the United States can. So maybe a company that's lost business because of some financial transaction between Trump Organization and a foreign government could articulate a legal claim.

Or, the perceived harm could be more nebulous. Here's another theory: Trump is opening himself up to attempts by foreign governments that want to influence U.S. policy. But who would have standing to bring a legal claim in that case? Legal experts say it's not clear.

[T]he best option for Trump is to simply liquidate his stake in his company — that is, take the company public, sell off all his shares and put the cash proceeds in a blind trust. That way, if there are any entanglements between the Trump Organization and foreign countries — he'll be cleared of any conflicts.

But nobody's holding their breath for that to happen anytime soon.

Given Trump's documented history of shady business dealings and selling others down the river financially so as to benefit himself, it is, in my opinion, a pretty safe bet that Trump will put his personal finances ahead of the interest of the nation.  This is why a greed driven narcissist should never be elected to high political office.