America Needs a Third Reconstruction

A lengthy piece in The Atlantic looks at the post-Civil War efforts and failures at bringing equality to black Americans.  The first Reconstruction more or less collapsed in the late 1870's and Jim Crow laws became the law of the South and even many non-Southern states had bans on interracial marriage, among other things.  What some call the second Reconstruction - the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's - while more promising, never fully delivered on equality and in many ways fizzled as the Vietnam War came to dominate politics and social issues.  Now, with an open racist in the White House and renewed focus on racial inequality, perhaps America can complete the work it has never completed as many whites find themselves forced to look at the ugly reality of the nation's history..  Here are long article excerpts:  

Along the unbroken chain of racism that links America’s past to its present, there have been two points when the federal government—otherwise complicit or complacent—saw the mistreatment of African Americans as intolerable. During these periods, the country had a response: Reconstruction. The Reconstruction efforts were not without their flaws but, without them, the U.S. would not have made what racial progress it has. Today, another Reconstruction is needed to avoid wasting the promise of its predecessors.

The first Reconstruction came in the Civil War’s aftermath. But the concept of reconstruction—that is, what a postwar, reunified America would look like—was being discussed even before the opening shots were fired at Fort Sumter. “If another Union is formed,” one newspaper wrote in 1861, “the slave States can have no part in it except on the principles of entire and perfect equality.”

Not surprisingly, the emphasis of that first Reconstruction was on the South. Ratified shortly after the war, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, thereby ridding the South of its “slave bonus” in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. Then, in fairly quick succession, the Fourteenth Amendment bestowed citizenship on the newly freed and Congress forced the South to enfranchise African American men, before the Fifteenth Amendment extended the franchise to men nationwide. The scale of progress ushered in over a decade was so consequential that historians have termed the era “America’s second founding.”

And yet, Reconstruction was an abysmal failure, subverted by policy makers whose acts and omissions made clear that America was giving up on Black people. First off, financial investment in the project was grossly inadequate, all but guaranteeing that formerly enslaved people would remain at the mercy of erstwhile petty tyrants. The Compromise of 1877, moreover, led the federal government to withdraw troops from the South prematurely, which emboldened regional actors to perpetrate campaigns of violence, intimidation, and political domination against African Americans. And the Supreme Court, hellbent on eviscerating the Reconstruction Amendments in the name of states’ rights and constitutional color blindness, issued a series of opinions that failed to vindicate Black liberty. Any aspirations of “entire and perfect equality” were relegated to a footnote in history, and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, dead letters.

Jim Crow had taken a sledgehammer to the edifice of a multiracial society and, for decades, the nation stood idle to the destruction—and even wallowed in the detritus.

The sorely needed Second Reconstruction came in the middle of the next century, though its timing is less neatly bounded. Some historians trace its origins to 1948, when President Harry Truman issued the executive order desegregating the military. Others suggest that it began when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. Most place its start between those two events, at the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education. But all agree that the Second Reconstruction was erected on the foundation of the first. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were lifted from abeyance, and soon became the basis for much of the federal government’s equality agenda.

The successes of the Second Reconstruction proved that lawmakers had learned some lessons from the failures of the first. To start, the vote was expanded dramatically—even nationally. Federal measures, most notably the 1965 Voting Rights Act, put the U.S. on a path toward becoming a true democracy. “What occurred in the course of a decade was not only the reenfranchisement of African Americans but the abolition of nearly all remaining limits on the right to vote,” the Harvard historian Alexander Keyssar wrote.

Another distinction between the post–Civil War Reconstruction and that of the mid-20th century is that the latter’s civil-rights agenda was coupled with an economic agenda. To be sure, the Johnson-era domestic policies, known as the Great Society, were not uniquely targeted to Black Americans. But unlike many programs of its forerunner, FDR’s New Deal, the Great Society’s health-care, education, housing, and economic-development initiatives envisioned Black participation.

Finally, in this Second Reconstruction, unlike in the first, the Supreme Court moved alongside advocates for progress—and sometimes ahead. The Warren Court did its share to sustain the momentum of the Second Reconstruction by ruling on the side of equality and upholding federal measures designed to further it. The Court took the lead by outlawing discrimination in schools and transportation hubs, as well as political machinations aimed at submerging Black votes. When pressed by the civil-rights movement, the executive branch racked up some crucial wins in Congress, most notably the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.  And the Court affirmed them.

Even so, the Second Reconstruction soon came to an end. Whereas the Compromise of 1877 marked the swift and dramatic demise of the First Reconstruction, the Second faded away slowly and quietly. Johnson’s War on Poverty morphed into Nixon’s War on Drugs. Federal programs were defunded and disbanded as cities deindustrialized. And color blindness came back with a vengeance, with claims of “reverse discrimination” in the fields of education and employment.

Dog-whistle politics also came to prominence. Because a certain word was not longer acceptable to utter, the mastermind of the “southern strategy” instructed conservatives to code switch. “So you say stuff like, uh, ‘forced busing,’ ‘states’ rights,’” Lee Atwater, a top Reagan and George H. W. Bush adviser, later admitted. “Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a by-product of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.” This approach had its intended effect: Because racism stopped rearing its ugliest faces—the George Wallaces and Bull Connors, and even police dogs—white Americans could psychologically and legally detach themselves from the nation’s racist underpinnings. With no Klan-initiated lynchings to point to, Black people could be hung out to dry.

As the rightward shift in policy continued to clip the wings of the Second Reconstruction, racial inequality soared. Circumstances in the 1990s and the 2000s began to make this painfully clear . . . . The need for Reconstruction pressed upon the country once again.

Then came a herald: President Barack Obama. Obama’s election was both problematic and promising. It was problematic because it allowed the country to applaud itself for being “post-racial” . . . . that opportunity was squandered with the election of Donald Trump, who governs as though we’re in the nadir of a Second Redemption.

This long legacy of racism has salience during the current COVID-19 pandemic: Black Americans have unequal access to health care and housing, while being overrepresented in low-paid, “essential” employment—factors that contribute to their suffering from the virus disproportionately. America’s sharp racial fault lines have proved an all-too-convenient path for the disease to follow. Even after the pandemic subsides, that trail will be littered with signs of the coronavirus’s wreckage. And yet, these dismal times, as the virus rages and historic protests continue in the wake of George Floyd’s slaying, can be the springboard for a Third Reconstruction.

So what is needed for a successful Third Reconstruction? Perhaps it begins with sweeping criminal-justice and voting reforms that could transform the United States from the world’s leading carceral state into a truly multiracial democracy. It might also entail direct investments in Black communities to guarantee stable housing, universal health care, and high-quality education, necessities for achieving a more inclusive economy and greater wealth parity. But whatever its shape, a Third Reconstruction must rekindle the aspiration of a nation molded in the ideal of perfect equality, understanding that thinking big—and going big, too—is the surest way toward “a more perfect Union.” Success also demands that national leaders heed some lessons.

The next period of Reconstruction must contend with the effects of the prior era’s deconstruction. . . . . . In addition, a Third Reconstruction will require many things, three of them vital: truth, reconciliation, and recompense. At no point in American history has there been a major national effort toward achieving any of these things separately, much less collectively. But we have no shortage of models for doing so. Many governments and universities have inquired into their ties to mass atrocities. The United States, too, should establish formal means to unearth and understand the enormity of state-sanctioned repression, dispossession, exploitation, and violence toward Black Americans, as well as the extent to which the remnants of those ills persists in our economic, political, and legal systems today.

Viruses may not discriminate but, unfortunately, U.S. policy does. The destruction from COVID-19, as Martin Luther King Jr. might have said, “is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced.” It has been said that life has no do-overs. When it comes to reconstruction, we can only hope that’s wrong. And if it is, we will have to undertake deep self-examination, be prepared to confront some hard truths, and remain open to substantial remedial action. The country cannot afford to lose a third chance to get things right.

Will America's Leftward Political Shift Continue

With more and more instances of police brutality caught on video and nationwide protests drawing attention to long standing problems, some believe America is shifting leftward politically.  Likely aiding in the current shift is Donald Trump's and the Republican Party's inept and tone deaf response to both the covid-19 pandemic and the increasingly obvious concentration of white supremacy in the Republican Party now largely defined by Trump.  Wile polls show a noted shift leftward, especially on racial relations, the question becomes whether or not the shift is permanent or whether the public - like the news media that has the attention span of a gnat - will lose interest over time and slide back to indifference.  Opinions are all over the map and ultimately only time will tell - some believe more of the older generations need to die off before change can become permanent. A long column in the New York Times looks at the shifting views and potential pitfalls for Democrats.  Here are column highlights:

America is at a racial and political crossroads. Protests over the past two weeks in response to an interrelated set of issues and events — the killing of George Floyd, police brutality, the Covid pandemic, a nation in lockdown, joblessness, a devastated economy and a presidential election — give rise to a key question. Will the Democratic coalition of minorities and liberal whites emerge empowered?

Current polling reveals a shift to the left in the public’s position on key race-related issues. But there are also some potential warning signs for Democrats.

Let’s look at some of the contradictory narratives in American race relations, starting with Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at the University of Maryland: As white supremacy concentrates its power in the G.O.P., it fosters an alliance of those that oppose it in the Democratic Party. The U.S. has never seen this kind of coalition. But it is showing its power now. This is one cause for hope — that we may be at the beginning of an overdue national reckoning with our legacy of white supremacy.

Mason posted a seven-part Twitter thread in which she makes a strong case that the United States is in the midst of a major transformation: For decades we have been worried about the terrible power of an entire political party dedicated to maintaining the historical racial (and gender) hierarchy that has oppressed and denied justice to so many Americans.

While attention has focused on Trump and the Republican Party, Mason continued, What we haven’t focused on as much is the potential power of the other political party that has been amassing a coalition of those who would like to upend that social hierarchy.

Now, she writes, the other party, the Democrats, has begun to flex its muscles: “This is one cause for hope — that we may be at the beginning of an overdue national reckoning with our legacy of white supremacy.

Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, is among those envisioning a new era of racial reconciliation. In comments accompanying the release of the June 2 poll, Murray declared: It seems we have reached a turning point in public opinion where white Americans are realizing that black Americans face risks when dealing with police that they do not. They may not agree with the violence of recent protests, but many whites say they understand where that anger is coming from.

In what Monmouth described as “a marked change in public opinion from prior polls,” its May 28-June 1 survey found that for the first time “a majority of Americans (57 percent) say that police officers facing a difficult or dangerous situation are more likely to use excessive force if the culprit is black.”

The trends to date provide a basis for Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, to point out that 1) There has emerged a much stronger awareness of racism and discrimination especially around policing and the chance to get ahead. 2) The pattern of killings and the video have had a cumulative effect of creating a real turning point. 3) Trump’s response had been so out of touch with what people were feeling and the pain, healing, and change they want. 4) It’s a different America than Trump understands especially with young voters so diverse and white women so upset at his style of governing. 5) And then there are unexpected and vivid validators, the generals and police themselves.

Some analysts are cautiously optimistic that the country is finally becoming more liberal on matters of race.

Antoine Banks, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, argued that the killing of George Floyd has brought racial injustice up to the surface for many Americans, and the video footage makes it hard for many to deny the intent behind his death.

But, Banks continued, there are questions as to whether the leftward shift seen in the polls “is short-term or reflects a long-term trend.” Whites’ racial attitudes, Banks wrote: are fairly stable. Once their attitudes are crystallized, they tend not to change. It would take a shifting of racial norms to change the country’s (e.g. whites’) views about policing and the black community.” He added that “much more would need to be done from both political parties and activists to cause a major change in the politics of race.

Trump, and the strategists running his campaign, are desperately looking for an opportunity to force current events back onto turf favorable to the right.

On June 7, the Trump campaign sent out an email with the all-caps headline “DEMOCRATS WANT TO DEFUND THE POLICE” that went on to warn: While ANTIFA THUGS are destroying our communities and burning down our churches, the Radical Left is shouting “Defund the Police.”

Trump is gambling that the language some protesters have adopted, combined with the commitment of big-city mayors like Bill de Blasio and Eric Garcetti, to cut or divert police spending, along with the pledge of a majority of the Minneapolis City Council to dismantle the city’s police department, will keep moderate voters who supported Trump in 2016 in the Republican fold.

A May 29-30 YouGov poll found that when voters were asked whether they support calls to “cut funding for police departments,” both Democrats (62-16) and Republicans (75-15) were solidly opposed.

Ronald Inglehart, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, said that for liberals, this moment is a delicate balancing act. Trump’s clumsy handling of the demonstrators and his misuse of the military to clear the way for a photo op — on top of his inept response to the pandemic — have damaged his credibility. He is vulnerable.

But, Inglehart continued, the white working class has a deep-rooted — and well-founded — sense that the system is failing them. A facile lurch to the “left” that doesn’t take into account their concerns — which once were the dominant concerns of the left — would be costly.

In order to make progress in race relations, Inglehart argues, We need to move there with a balanced approach, not a one-sided lurch — especially since today’s context of economic and physical insecurity makes people increasingly vulnerable to xenophobic appeals.

Trump’s handling of the protests has been disastrous, in the view of Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, who wrote in an email: Playing the race card so transparently, misusing the military as a political prop and disrupting peaceful protests have so far proved to be bad tactics, and Trump is paying for it.

Particularly worrisome for Democrats, according to Cain, “is the growing popularity of defunding the police.” He noted that terms like defunding the police or abolition are ready made for Republican 30 second ads. The Republicans are just much better at coming up with slogans that are harder to attack.

Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only African-American Republican in the Senate, struck a prescient note in an interview with Tim Alberta of Politico Magazine. In a story published June 8, Scott said that historically “the response from so many well-intended people was to overlook the brutality brought to African-Americans at the hands of the police.”

Now, Scott continued, I look at the public’s response to this situation and it feels like the first time in my lifetime that I’ve heard law enforcement agencies coming out with strong rebukes and condemnation of the officers in Minneapolis.

When Scott looked out his window in Washington at an overwhelmingly young crowd, he said he saw “10 protesters. Seven of them are white, and three of them are black.” Without question, Scott declared, “This is different. It feels different. It sounds different. The protesters are different.”

One can only hope that the trend continues to the detriment of Trump and the GOP.

The Root Problems with Police in America

Let me begin by saying that yes, there are good officers on every police force.  That said, I suspect every police force in the nation also has officers who have no business wearing a badge and carrying a gun.  One of the big problems as noted in prior posts is that rather than weeding out these unfit officers, the entire system within departments is focused on protecting them seemingly under a mindset that views admitting that some officers are toxic and need to be removed somehow discredits the entire force.  As people are now realizing (new study shows 74% of Americans see a problem with police), not getting rid of these toxic and unfit officers is what is what is destroying the image of the entire force.  If someone is racist, prone to brutality and gets an adrenaline rush by abusing citizens, they simply do not belong on a police force anywhere.  Add to this mix the militarization of police forces and  it is a recipe for problems.  A Washington Post column looks at the problem and possible solutions, which include ridding the country of an occupant of the White House who fans racism, division and violence.  Here are excerpts: 

Every day — every night, to be more precise — more bad apples roll before our eyes. The video is horrifying; the camera unflinching. So, more Americans — white Americans, even Republican Americans, a majority of Americans except, it seems, those who work behind fortified barricades for President Trump — have come to understand: The problem of policing is not individual apples, but bushels full of them. It is a diseased tree.

A diseased tree with three infected and intertwined branches that each must be lopped off. The worst, by far, is systemic racism in police departments nationwide — and here perhaps the arboreal metaphor fails, and the disease is in the trunk itself, if not in the soil of our national history. The second is the embedded culture of brutality and tolerance of brutality among police officers. The third, connected to the second, is the militarization of police departments, with combat-style equipment designed for battlefields and heedlessly deployed in American streets, that reinforces this culture of violence and, as Trump would have it, “domination.”

Those who were inclined, who had the distance — and, yes, the privilege — to be inclined to give officers and departments the benefit of the doubt can no longer soothe themselves with the illusion that these are random, unrepresentative incidents. Technology in the form of omnipresent video cameras has conclusively ended that debate. Those who are white can no longer rest comfortably in the fiction that this is a problem confined to the other.

[W]hile there should be no doubt that police brutality has a racial cast, there is also no doubt that lighter skin offers no absolute immunity. Witness the violent assault Monday on peaceful protesters of every hue at Lafayette Square. Witness the unprovoked shoving Thursday of 75-year-old Martin Gugino by police officers during a demonstration in Buffalo: Officers push Gugino, shove a baton into him, his head hits the pavement, he is motionless and bleeding, and the officers march on. We are not all George Floyd now, because not all of us are at similar risk. But all of us are at some risk when police believe they can act like this.

The gratifying news is that the public gets it, more than ever before. A new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds that three-fourths of those surveyed believe Floyd’s killing is not an isolated incident but part of a broader problem in the treatment of African Americans by police.

The shift is remarkable. Just six years ago, after the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the death of Eric Garner after he was put in a chokehold by New York City police, just 43 percent thought the incidents signified a broader problem, compared with 74 percent today.

No single measure will suffice to fix the situation; many individual steps can help.

Training to create a police culture of intervention against out-of-control colleagues, not a blue wall of silence. Swift — and, where appropriate, criminal — consequences . . . .Revamping police union contracts to end unwarranted protections for violent officers, including shielding their disciplinary records from public view and making it difficult to remove them.

Restoring the Justice Department’s role — abandoned by the Trump administration — in reshaping the behavior of rogue departments. Reconsidering the doctrine of qualified immunity that has shielded officers from civil liability for their abuses.

And demilitarizing police departments. Under a 1997 law, more than $7 billion in surplus military equipment, from grenade launchers to armored vehicles, has been transferred at no cost to local police departments. . . . . As researchers Ryan Welch and Jack Mewhirter explained in 2017, even controlling for household income, population characteristics and violent crime levels, “more-militarized law enforcement agencies were associated with more civilians killed each year by police.” In short, “Militarization makes every problem — even a car of teenagers driving away from a party — look like a nail that should be hit with an AR-15 hammer.

[A]nother necessary element of the solution: a president who will help change the culture of brutal and racist policing, not reinforce it. Not send out his national security adviser to contend that the problem is limited to “a few bad apples that have given law enforcement a bad name.” Acknowledging the scope and nature of the disease is an essential precondition to curing it.

Gay Bar Owner Shot At By Police After Giving First Aid to Peaceful Protesters

Ruby Deluxe owner Tim Lemuel.

The ongoing protests over police brutality have underscored something that I have believed for a long time: America's police departments have a serious problem of officers who should never been hired because of their bigotry and/or a mindset where they feel free to abuse the citizens who they are supposed to protect.  Sadly, most internal affairs offices are far more focused on protecting officers than weeding out the bad apples - something I learned first hand after I filed a complaint against Norfolk police officers years ago (before phones had video options) for anti-gay harassment and mistreatment I experienced. Obviously, better screening of applicants is needed as is a thorough review of existing officer ranks to rid them of bullies and bigots.  Perhaps too, strict liability for chiefs of police for the misdeeds of their officers might make the department leadership finally stop protecting those who should not wear a badge and carry a gun. A piece in The Advocate looks at a case of police brutality in North Carolina where police shot at a bar owner while on his own business premises.  Here are story highlights:

Over the weekend, police targeted a queer bar in North Carolina amid ongoing protests across the nation following the death of George Floyd.

According to The News and Observer, Tim Lemuel, owner of the bar Ruby Deluxe in Raleigh, North Carolina, discovered on Sunday evening the bar had been vandalized with a white supremacist symbol and that the doors and windows were broken.

The next day, he and his staff showed up to protect the building from more damage as protests continued in downtown Raleigh.

Lemuel and his staff had set up a first aid station in the parking lot to treat peaceful protestors who had gotten injured. They also handed out water bottles and light snacks to the near 1,000 people who took to the streets. 

According to Lemuel, they had been doing this work for almost seven hours without interruption from authorities when law enforcement approached them with weapons. 

In video that has since gone viral, an officer can be heard screaming at Lemuel, “Move! Move!” to which Lemuel yells back, “This is my business. I rent this place. I rent here!”

The group of officers didn’t stop. As they kept approaching, wielding their guns, one screams out, “You’ve been told!” followed by, “I don’t care where you go, you gotta go!”
Two shots were then fired, after which the officer yells, “Move! The game is over. Get out!”

[W]e weren’t chanting. We weren’t yelling. We weren’t gesturing to them. There was nothing that we were doing to instigate a response like that."

According to Lemuel and Varani, the deputies had been watching them for hours but chose not to approach them or express any concerns until the moment they pulled out their weapons.

Lemuel later took to Facebook in response to a heated discussion on Reddit about the situation.  “I own a business," he wrote. "I was there during normal operating hours. I was on my lot and kept my friends contained within the lot. We had been there for 7 hours. The deputy sheriffs could have, at any point, come over to see what we were doing or voiced their concern. This basically sums up the reason folks are mad. No thought what-so-ever [was] put into the decision to come at us guns blazing.

“I also think they had no business using riot control cs, tear gas, firing foam batons, or whatever blanks they fired," he continued. "I was out the day before and witnessed so many officers shooting grenades at civilian's chests and heads.

When the video hit the Internet, city council members were quick to disavow the act — including council member Saige Martin, one of two out LGBTQ+ people elected to the council last year.

“It is a safe space for so many people,” Martin the Observer of Ruby. “It is a home to queer folks. For the response to be the game is over? When I heard that, it made the hair on my body stand up.”

Martin added that the experience reminded him of “Black and brown trans and queer bodies that started the queer liberation movement in New York in Stonewall,” adding, “We are still dealing with those same issues for those same people today. And hearing those words echo so aggressively as if there was a game to be had? I think (it) speaks perfectly well to the kind of culture and thinking that exists and pervades law enforcement today.”

Raleigh city council member Nicole Stewart was also distraught at the situation, telling the Observer, "Had it been anybody, it would have been bad enough. The idea that it was an individual, a business owner, trying to help other individuals in our community made it that much more startling. And I couldn’t let it sit.” Stewart has called on police chief Cassandra Deck-Brown to investigate the incident.

The country has a very real problem with a toxic segment of its police personnel.  The bigots and those too ready to use violence need to be removed and never allowed to wear a badge again. 

The Entire Republican Party is Complicit in the Assault on Lafayette Square

The prior post looked at the condemnation of Trump by Mike Mullen and James Mattis.  But as a column in the Washington Post by a former Republican, the condemnation  needs to be much broader in scope.  Indeed, the condemnation needs to extend to the entire Republican party - particularly congressional Republicans who threw away their chance to rid the nation of Trump - and, I would argue, also to those who out of deliberate ignorance and/or intentional refusal to listen legitimate (as opposed to Fox News, a/k/a Faux News) cling instead to right wing propaganda news outlets that continue to repeat the Trump/Pence lies.  At some point history will hopefully harshly indict these Trump enablers and sycophants. In the meanwhile, voters need to go to the polls and vote the scum out.  Here are column highlights:

I’m old enough to remember when complacent Republicans told themselves that, if elected, Donald Trump would spend most of his time on the golf course while Republican elders would run the government. Now, most of the supposed adults — from then-House Speaker Paul D. Ryan to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis — are long gone, and Trump is surrounded by the sycophants and enablers he always craved.

The latest result of this was the assault at Lafayette Square on Monday night. Security forces bludgeoned and tear-gassed peaceful protesters so that Trump could hold up a Bible as a talisman to rally his base. The meticulous New York Times reconstruction of this fiasco suggests that it was planned during an Oval Office meeting that included Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and presidential adviser Hope Hicks. . . . None of these people would be employed in any other administration, yet they are setting the highest-level policy in this one.

The bad lieutenant who gave the orders to take Lafayette Square was Attorney General William P. Barr. Barr has long acted as Trump’s enforcer rather than as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. He has been pursuing investigations of the investigators who probed Trump’s links to Russia, while all but abandoning investigations of unconstitutional policing tactics that have resulted in the abuse of so many minorities.

Barr was quick to conflate peaceful demonstrators with dangerous looters. Without citing any evidence, the attorney general claimed that “the violence is planned, organized and driven by anarchic and far left extremist groups using Antifa-like tactics.” This has now become Trump’s mantra . . . .

National security adviser Robert C. O’Brien — a.k.a. the Invisible Man — has been a lesser enabler, his role seemingly limited to opining, in defiance of all the evidence, that there is no “systemic racism” in law enforcement.

Much more important have been Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. . . . . Now, having reaped the whirlwind, Esper and Milley are trying desperately to distance themselves from [Trump] the president. . . . . This is a long overdue sign of independence from a defense secretary who — from shifting Pentagon funds to build a border wall to refusing to reinstate Navy Capt. Brett Crozier of the USS Theodore Roosevelt — has, until now, been a Trump enabler. Naturally, Esper’s hint that he has a backbone at all has placed his job in danger.

That is not a risk the Republican invertebrates in Congress are willing to run. When MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt asked GOP senators whether they had any comment on the disturbing events in Lafayette Square, almost all of them dodged the question. Two of the senators — Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Rob Portman of Ohio — used as their excuse that they were “late for lunch.” Out to lunch is more like it.

Only a few Republicans expressed even the mildest disagreement. . . . . It is also painful to watch so many Republicans who had the opportunity to impeach and remove Trump refuse to grapple with their own complicity — or to do anything, even now, to rectify their cravenness. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) effortlessly segued from expressing disappointment with events in Lafayette Square (it was “a bad night”) to launching Senate Judiciary Committee hearings into the deranged “Obamagate” conspiracy theory that Trump has been promulgating in his effort to win reelection.

It is impressive to see the speed with which Republicans metamorphose from critics of presidential tyranny into advocates of it. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), an Army veteran, advocated the deployment of “the 10th Mountain, 82nd Airborne, 1st Cav, 3rd Infantry — whatever it takes to restore order. No quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters.” This is how a leading light of the GOP wants to deal with anti-racism protests — by employing maximum force and taking no prisoners (which is what “no quarter” means). Trump said Cotton was “100% correct.”

By contrast, when gun-waving white extremists terrorized the Michigan Legislature last month to protest public health decrees, Trump advocated a policy of appeasement. . . . . Now, Trump is stoking the fires of racial discord as out-to-lunch Republicans pretend not to notice.

Anne Applebaum is right in her brilliant, clear-eyed Atlantic essay: “History will judge the complicit.” But we don’t have to wait for the judgment of history. Voters can and should deliver their own judgment on Nov. 3: Vote out Trump’s collaborators. Every single one.

The False Christians Who Loved Trump’s Photo Op Stunt

A photo shopped image that confirms Trump is
mutually exclusive of true Christian values.

As a piece in Mother Jones notes, few Congressional Republicans could bring themselves to condemn Donald Trump's tear gassing of peaceful protesters and the roughing up of an Episcopal priest (who was also tear gassed) as Trump used St. John's Episcopal Church for a photo op yielding a photo of Trump holding a bible in front of the historic church.  As the piece notes, only Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) called the stunt for what it was: “I’m against clearing out a peaceful protest for a photo op that treats the Word of God as a political prop”  Even more sickening than Republican political whores has been the reaction of so-called Christians - some of whom seem to have had lobotomies given their inability to see Trump for what he is - who have applauded Trump's crass and brutal stunt.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at Trump's disturbing reality TV like stunt and the modern day Pharisees who continue to rally to his banner.  Trump's supporters care nothing about true Christianity.  Rather their focus is on power, white privilege and special rights for far right Christians, a segment of society that hates almost everyone else.  Here are article highlights:

He wielded the Bible like a foreign object, awkwardly adjusting his grip as though trying to get comfortable. He examined its cover. He held it up over his right shoulder like a crossing guard presenting a stop sign. He did not open it.

Even by the standards of Donald Trump’s religious photo ops, the dissonance was striking. Moments earlier, he had stood in the Rose Garden and threatened to unleash the military on unruly protesters. He used terms such as anarchy and domestic terror, and vowed to “dominate the streets.” To clear the way for his planned post-speech trip to St. John’s Church, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators.

A few hours after the dystopian spectacle, I spoke on the phone with Robert Jeffress, a Dallas megachurch pastor and indefatigable Trump ally. He sounded almost gleeful.

“I thought it was completely appropriate for the president to stand in front of that church,” Jeffress told me. “And by holding up the Bible, he was showing us that it teaches that, yes, God hates racism, it’s despicable—but God also hates lawlessness.”  “So,” he added, “I’m happy.”

In many ways, the president’s stunt last night—with its mix of shallow credal signaling and brutish force—was emblematic of his appeal to the religious right. . . . . .most white conservative Christians don’t want piety from this president; they want power. In Trump, they see a champion who will restore them to their [in their minds] rightful place at the center of American life, while using his terrible swift sword to punish their enemies.

This dynamic was on vivid display throughout the night. Even as cities across the country once again spiraled into chaos, prominent conservative evangelicals cheered Trump’s performance on Twitter.

“I don’t know about you but I’ll take a president with a Bible in his hand in front of a church over far left violent radicals setting a church on fire any day of the week,” wrote David Brody, a news anchor at the Christian Broadcasting Network. . . . .

Ralph Reed, the chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, heaped praise on Trump for his visit: “His presence sent the twin message that our streets and cities do not belong to rioters and domestic terrorists, and that the ultimate answer to what ails our country can be found in the repentance, redemption, and forgiveness of the Christian faith.”

Andrew Whitehead, a sociologist at Clemson University, has argued that Trump’s religious base can best be understood through the lens of Christian nationalism. In his research, Whitehead has found that white Protestants who believe most strongly that Christianity should hold a privileged place in America’s public square are more likely than others to agree with statements such as “We must crack down on troublemakers to save our moral standards and keep law and order” and “Police officers shoot blacks more often because they are more violent than whites.”

Whitehead told me in an interview that Christian nationalism is often not really about theology (and thus can’t be ascribed to all conservative churchgoers): “It’s about identity, enforcing hierarchy, and order.”

That Trump’s religious posturing has little to do with religion has long been a matter of conventional wisdom (see: Corinthians, Two); fewer have grasped the extent to which that’s true of Trump’s “religious” base as well.

After the president’s unannounced visit to St. John’s, Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C., gave an outraged interview to The Washington Post. “Everything he has said and done is to inflame violence … he’s done everything to divide us, and has just used one of the most sacred symbols of the Judeo-Christian tradition,” she said.

But, of course, sacredness has never been a concern of Trump’s. He didn’t open the Bible he was brandishing for the cameras, because he had no use for its text. He didn’t go inside the church he was using as a backdrop, because he had no interest in a sermon.

To Trump, the Bible and the church are not symbols of faith; they are weapons of culture war. And to many of his Christian supporters watching at home, the pandering wasn’t an act of inauthenticity; it was a sign of allegiance—and shared dominance.

Just as Trump is a disgusting, immoral individual, so too are the falsely pious "Christians" who continue to blindly support him. They are NOT decent, moral people no matter how much they parade around wearing false piety and talking about god and prayers. 

When Does “Morality and Decency Kick In” for Trump Voters?

This post follows up on the theme of my post yesterday entitled The Trump Voter Paradox. If one listens to the bloviating of many, if not the majority, on the political right, the talk ad nausea about "Christian values" and "family values" as they support a Republican Party war long formulated by the likes of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell against families, the sick, the poor, and sexual and racial minorities.  Now, Der Trumpenführer is taking the bigotry and hatred to new heights both through his manufactured hysteria about minority NFL players exercising their constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression to his, in my view, deliberate delay in expediting life saving aid to Puerto Rico. And despite all of this, his supporters - like true modern Day Pharisees - cheer him on. People are literally dying, yet Trump supporters are still whining about standing for the national anthem.  For the record, I support the players' refusal to stand.  Anyone not afford the Constitution's promise of equal protection under the law (which includes the LGBT community) has every reason to protest.  A piece in Salon looks at what I believe to be the moral bankruptcy and blatant racism of Trump supporters.  Here are excerpts:

On Monday, head coach of the San Antonio Spurs Gregg Popovich articulated his support of the ongoing national-anthem protests taking place across the sports world. In declaring his support of any players who should decide to participate, he — as he has before — drew a sharp line under the racial issues surrounding the remarks by Trump and the way people of color are treated in this country.

“Obviously, race is the elephant in the room, and we all understand that. Unless it is talked about constantly, it's not going to get better. . . . 'Oh, that again. They pulled the race card again. Why do we have to talk about that?' Well, because it's uncomfortable,” he said "They have our full support and no matter what they might want to do or not do is important to them, respected by us," Popovich said in support of protesters. "And there’s no recrimination no matter what might take place, unless it’s ridiculous egregious."

Popovich also commented on the response by the president more specifically and asked when Trump supporters would wake up. “I wonder what the people think about who voted for him, where their line is, how much they can take, where does the morality and decency kick in?”

Popovich is not the only one to take aim at Trump's remarks; in fact, the floodgates have opened for pro sports teams to take a stand (or knee) against him. Tony Dungy, former NFL player and coach, commented on the protests on "The Today Show" Sunday, specifically about the backlash and the shift in the tides.

“Up until yesterday, the players would want people to know, this was not about the flag, this was not about patriotism. In their opinion, it was about social change,” Dungy said. “But yesterday this was a group of our family got attacked and called names and said they were unpatriotic and should be fired for, what we feel, is demonstrating our first amendment right. We’re gonna [ . . . ] band together as a family and they reacted."

Sportscaster Dale Hansen used his position as a Vietnam Veteran to defend the protests, in opposition to those against the protests who claim that the action is disrespectful to veterans.“The young, black athletes are not disrespecting America or the military by taking a knee during the anthem,” Hanson said. “They are respecting the best thing about America. It’s a dog whistle to the racists among us to say otherwise." He condemned those who don’t believe in white privilege as well. “They, and all of us, should protest how black Americans are treated in this country. And if you don’t think white privilege is a fact, you don’t understand America.”

Perhaps the most scathing rebuke was from former tight end Shannon Sharpe on Undisputed, where he commented on the solidarity of the NFL and the hypocrisy of the people in power in the league. “This wasn’t a protest. This was unity. So, what are we showing solidarity against?” He continued. “We’re showing solidarity because President Trump challenged the very men. Wealthy, wealthy men, billionaires, and he told them, what you should do if someone protests, you should fire them. They don’t like being told what to do.”

 These self-styled "godly Christians" care more about a piece of cloth than travesties done to living, breathing  - at least until they are gunned down by police - individuals.  Indeed, these people are the antithesis of Christ's message.

Donald Trump and the Last Gasp of White Privilege

I apologize in advance for yet another post about Der  Trumpenführer, but the man makes it hard to focus on other things, especially since he embodies the worst aspects of American society and the latent racism that continues to plague so much of white, Christian, heterosexual America.  In the case of Trump, he was born to wealth and raised in what would seem to have been a racist household given his father's involvement with the KKK many decades ago.  Yet, despite his wealth, like so many of his supporters, he is brain dead when it comes to the grasping the privilege he inherited simply by virtue of the color of his skin.  Worse yet, like his supporters, he sees race relations as a zero sum gain.  If blacks and Hispanics secure equal rights under the law, under this warped view, it is taken to mean that somehow whites have lost something.  The concept of all doing better and the country doing better is a concept beyond their grasp.  In the wake of the controversy Trump has generated in his effort to stiffle the freedom of expression rights of minority players in the NFL,  San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich provided what might be be the best take on the legitimacy of the NFL/police brutality protests.  Here are highlights via Joe Jervis' blog:

Race is the elephant in the room and we all understand that. Unless it is talked about constantly, it’s not going to get better. ‘Oh, they’re talking about that again. They pulled the race card again. Why do we have to talk about that?’

Well, because it’s uncomfortable. There has to be an uncomfortable element in the discourse for anything to change, whether it’s the LGBT movement, or women’s suffrage, race, it doesn’t matter.

People have to be made to feel uncomfortable, and especially white people, because we’re comfortable. We still have no clue what being born white means. And if you read some of the recent literature, you realize there really is no such thing as whiteness. We kind of made it up. That’s not my original thought, but it’s true.

It’s hard to sit down and decide that, yes, it’s like you’re at the 50-meter mark in a 100-meter dash. You’ve got that kind of a lead, yes, because you were born white. You have advantage that are systemically, culturally, psychologically rare. And they’ve been built up and cemented for hundreds of years.

But many people can’t look at it that way, because it’s too difficult. It can’t be something that’s on their plate on a daily basis. People want to hold their position, people want their status quo, people don’t want to give that up. Until it’s given up, it’s not going to be fixed.

I may be white, but being gay in a state that historically has been virulently anti-gay, has provided with a first hand knowledge that America's supposed promise of "liberty and justice for all" is a myth. Gays are lees than equal and often do not receive justice from bigoted legislators and judges.  If one is black, things are far, far worse. Yet if one complains, one is labeled as a whiner, a single issue voter, or according to Der  Trumpenführer, unpatriotic.  A piece in Sports Illustrated looks at why these NFL protests are not only appropriate but also an affirmation of the values that white Americans claim to support: free speech and the right to engage in peaceful protests.  Here are excerpts:

On Sept. 16, 1960, before a home game against the Athletics, Cleveland pitcher James (Mudcat) Grant was standing in the bullpen singing along with the national anthem. Grant decided to do a little barbering of the lyrics. He adjusted the last line to "This land is not so free/I can't go to Mississippi." This was some topical humor of a very high order: opposition to the civil rights movement was growing more violent, and, as had been the case since the Civil War, Mississippi was the cone of the volcano. 

The Indians' bullpen coach, a Texan named Ted Wilks, took exception to Grant's improvised lyrics and, according to Grant's account, called the pitcher a "black so and so." In reply, Grant told Wilks that Texas was worse than Russia. Grant then got dressed and left the park. The next day, Cleveland manager Jimmie Dykes suspended him for the season without pay. Wilks apologized but Grant refused to accept it. He would no longer accept that this racist invective was part of the cost of doing business as an African-American athlete in the U.S. I mention all this in support of one of several things to which you must stipulate if you're going to talk sensibly about the controversy that blew up over the weekend, and the ongoing controversy regarding displaced quarterback Colin Kaepernick, whose protest against police brutality is at the heart of what went on in stadiums all over the world:

1) The inclusion of a national anthem—any national anthem—in a sporting event necessarily politicizes that event. Historically, this is best demonstrated by protests at the Olympic Games. Everyone remembers Tommie Smith and John Carlos in Mexico City in 1968. But few remember Czechoslovakian gymnast Vera Caslavska, who bowed her head and looked away from the Soviet flag while sharing the top spot on the medal podium with the U.S.S.R.'s Larisa Petrik at the same Games, only two months after Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring revolt of 1968. When Caslavska got home, she was investigated by the new government and forbidden to travel or compete for several years.

2) The protests of today are not about the anthem or the flag or the troops, or even about Donald Trump. The protestors are high-profile African-American athletes raising awareness of how lower-profile African-Americans are often mistreated by police officers. 3) All effective protest is inconvenient and, in its own way, uncivil. The Boston Tea Party was an act of vandalism. Critics' appeal to "find a better way to protest" is really a call for self-sabotage, and it's a dodge that dates back to the Olive Branch Petition of 1775.

4) The wealthy athletes protesting worked much harder for their money than the president in question ever has for his.

In short, if you're going to perform national anthems, you're going to have politics. And if you have politics, you're going to have political statements and, this being the United States of America, those statements are not always going to make everyone comfortable. And once military-related promotions reached a level that made even John McCain uncomfortable, those statements had to get louder, if only to be heard over the fighter jets, and more garish, if only to be seen beyond the giant midfield flags.

The way to avoid this, of course, is to de-emphasize the anthem ritual, and return to the days before 2009 when it was common practice for teams to remain in the locker room while the anthem was played. . . . Unfortunately, today, it would take courage beyond that possessed by most owners and league commissioners to take this simple step.

This is why, over the weekend, we had so many owners framing the issue as a matter of standing behind their employees' free-speech rights. . . . Those same owners, along with commissioner Roger Goodell, don't want any part of the issue of why African-Americans end up dead on the pavement after traffic stops and other encounters with police officers. But ultimately the owners and commissioners may not have a choice: The real issue behind the protests has been out there all along.

David Frum: Trump is Fueling Democrat Turnout

In past presidential elections, most of the conservative pundit class and conservative thinkers - to the extent that term isn't an oxymoron - rallied to the support of the Republican Party nominee, despite disagreement on many issues.  This year has been remarkable because of the number of conservatives either outright attacking Donald Trump or announcing that they will be voting for Hillary Clinton (the former head of General Motors and a life-long Republican has an op-ed in today's Washington Post).  What is driving this and the likely surge in Democrat turn out?  Conservative columnist David Frum sums it up in one word/name: Trump.  Here are highlights from a piece in The Atlantic:

Donald Trump today just solved Hillary Clinton’s biggest strategic problem: how to ensure that minority voters show up for her in 2016 as they showed up for Barack Obama in 2012.

Post-Obama Democrats face a quandary: Their coalition is bigger than the Republican coalition, but also less committed to political participation. When voter turnout drops, as it does in off-year elections like 2010 and 2014, Democrats lose.

In 2012, Democrats mobilized a truly heroic turnout effort to re-elect President Obama. Black voter turnout in particular excelled: For the first time in American history, it surpassed white turnout. The extraordinary organizing effort of the Obama re-election team certainly deserves much of the credit. But organization can only ever do so much. Black voters turned out in huge numbers, exceeding even 2008 turnout, because they believed they had an important personal stake in the vote.

Earlier in the cycle, many wondered whether Hillary Clinton could generate anything like that kind of response from the Democratic base. “Will Black Folks Deliver for Hillary Clinton?” asked The Root in the spring of 2015. Charles D. Ellison, a keen student of African American voting, deployed an impressive mass of statistics and history to answer, in effect: “We’ll see.”

Instead—as with so much else this cycle—the black vote, like the women’s vote, like the Latino vote, like the divisions in the Republican Party, is being decided by Donald Trump.

Reportedly frustrated by Paul Manafort’s attempts to impose message discipline upon him—apparently determined to win or lose speaking his own thoughts in his own words—Donald Trump has done two astonishing things in the past 24 hours. The first was to replace his former campaign CEO with the head of the provocative Breitbart website, Steve Bannon. The second was to travel to West Bend, Wisconsin, a city almost 95 percent white and 40 miles from Milwaukee, to “reach out” to black America by defending the police of Milwaukee against their critics.

Trump is surrounded by people who think it’s 1968 all over again, with white Americans ready to respond to a message of firm suppression of nonwhite disorder. But even after the crime uptick since 2014, the United States remains a very safe society—with crime a distant worry for the voters a normal Republican presidential candidate should now be seeking. The police-violence issue, however, does matter overwhelmingly to the black Americans whose turnout Hillary Clinton so desperately needs. Trump just cranked up the volume of the issue that helps her most—and his new team is made up of people likelier to crank it up louder still.

The defense of violent police force within and against troubled black communities looks likely to be elevated by the Breitbartized Trump campaign to the top of its agenda. Hillary Clinton could not wish for more. Down ballot Republicans could not fear worse.

White Delusions on Race

In the wake of the Dallas shooting of police officers and the murder of black males that seemingly precipitated the Dallas tragedy, America is once again discussing the issue of racism in America and, as has been the historical precedent, far too many whites are pretending that no problem exists. It's akin to Virginia Republicans who claim the LGBT Virginians don't face discrimination in the state even as we continue to be fired from jobs solely because of our sexual orientation - and Republican refusal to support non-discrimination protections. Statistics show that blacks are disproportionately arrested and targeted by police.  Likewise, go to any majority black public school and the odds are the school will be inferior to those in majority white neighborhoods.  Pretending that these realities don't exist is delusional - and self-centered, a trait especially notable in the white Christian "godly folk" crowd who care nothing for anyone other than themselves.  A column in the New York Times looks at the history of white delusion and self-deception.  Here are excerpts:

In 1962, 85 percent of white Americans told Gallup that black children had as good a chance as white kids of getting a good education. The next year, in another Gallup survey, almost half of whites said that blacks had just as good a chance as whites of getting a job.

In retrospect, we can see that these white beliefs were delusional, and in other survey questions whites blithely acknowledged racist attitudes. In 1963, 45 percent said that they would object if a family member invited a black person home to dinner.

This complacency among us white Americans has been a historical constant. Even in the last decade, almost two-thirds of white Americans have said that blacks are treated fairly by the police, and four out of five whites have said that black children have the same chance as white kids of getting a good education. In short, the history of white Americans’ attitudes toward race has always been one of self-deception.

As it happens, the trauma surgeon running the Dallas emergency room last Thursday when seven police officers were brought in with gunshot wounds is a black man, Brian Williams. He fought to save the lives of those officers and wept for those he couldn’t help. But in other contexts he dreads the police: He told The Associated Press that after one traffic stop he was stretched out spread-eagle on the hood of a police car.

Williams shows his admiration for police officers by sometimes picking up their tabs at restaurants, but he also expressed his feelings for the police this way to The Washington Post: “I support you. I defend you. I will care for you. That doesn’t mean I will not fear you.”

That’s a narrative that many white Americans are oblivious to. Half of white Americans today say that discrimination against whites is as big a problem as discrimination against blacks. Really? That contradicts overwhelming research showing that blacks are more likely to be suspended from preschool, to be prosecuted for drug use, to receive longer sentences, to be discriminated against in housing, to be denied job interviews, to be rejected by doctors’ offices, to suffer bias in almost every measurable sector of daily life.

In my mind, an even bigger civil rights outrage in America than abuses by some police officers may be an education system that routinely sends the neediest black students to underfunded, third-rate schools, while directing bountiful resources to affluent white schools.

“If America is to be America, we have to engage in a larger conversation than just the criminal justice system,” notes Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation. “If you were to examine most of the institutions that underpin our democracy — higher education, K-12 education, the housing system, the transportation system, the criminal justice system — you will find systemic racism embedded in those systems.”

A starting point is for us whites to wake from our ongoing mass delusions, to recognize that in practice black lives have not mattered as much as white lives, and that this is an affront to values that we all profess to believe in.