More Conservatives Need to Refuse to be Complicit in Misogyny

The embodiment of moral bankruptcy

To date, only three Republican Senators have had the moral integrity to begin calling out Donald Trump for what he is in fact: dangerous, unfit, and a bullying demagogue.  The rest prefer to remain silent as Trump trashes America's reputation on the international arena and dangerously escalates the possibility of war with North Korea and/or Iran.  And even despite their growing unhappiness within the GOP Senatorial ranks, legislation and policy changes have moved forward that will harm many Americans ranging from rolling back Obama era regulations that would have allowed consumers to sue big banks to Betsy DeVos' moves to protect scamming private colleges and universities and dismantle special education policies and programs. Among the conservative pundit class and intelligentsia - assuming anything of the sort still remains - the trend is to quietly normalize the abhorrent and "go along to get along."  Meanwhile, civil society and America's future are damaged, perhaps irreversibly,   The question is whether more self-styled conservatives will say "enough" and stop being complicit in the misogyny that is the hall mark of the Trump/Pence regime and today's Republican Party.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the disturbing situation.  He are highlights: 

In his speech on Tuesday announcing that he won’t seek reelection to the Senate, Jeff Flake denounced the “reckless, outrageous and undignified” behavior coming from “the top of our government.” Earlier the same day, Bob Corker—also retiring—said Donald Trump “debases the country.” In the days to come, George Will will likely say something similar on MSNBC. Charlie Sykes may do so on public radio. Bret Stephens may pen an anti-Trump column in The New York Times.

Notice a pattern? Plenty of high-profile conservatives still passionately denounce Donald Trump. But few still rely on conservative voters, conservative readers or conservative listeners for their livelihood. Anti-Trump conservatism has become a brain without a body. Intellectually, it remains alive; politically, it’s almost dead.

Eight months ago, I suggested that on the subject of Trump, you could divide conservative commentators into three categories. Category one were the Trump loyalists: Breitbart, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter.  Their base is talk radio. They pride themselves on speaking for those plainspoken, dirt-under-the-fingernails conservatives who loathe not only Hillary Clinton, but Paul Ryan. Their chief enemies are globalism and multiculturalism, which they believe infect both parties, and are destroying America from without and within. Their ideological forefathers are Joseph McCarthy, George Wallace and Pat Buchanan, . . .

Category number two were Never Trump intellectuals who worked for non-conservative publications: David Frum, David Brooks, Ross Douthat, Jennifer Rubin.  For them, conservatism is about prudence, inherited wisdom, and a government that first does no harm; they see none of those virtues in Trump.

“In between,” I suggested, “are the conservatives who will tip the balance. Unlike Breitbart and company, they generally opposed Trump during the campaign. Unlike Brooks and company, they serve a conservative audience that now overwhelmingly backs him.” We now know what has happened to this third group. It has all but disappeared.  The conservative commentators who could not stomach Trump have largely left conservative media. . . . . Now ensconced in liberal institutions, these commentators are free to condemn Trump with little fear of retribution.

If Flake, Corker, Will, Stephens, Kelly, and Sykes have chosen their principles over their constituents, a different set of conservatives have done the opposite. Take Ted Cruz. At last year’s Republican convention, he famously failed to endorse Trump. Now he’s so tight with the Trumpians that Steve Bannon has declared him the only GOP senator he won’t try to challenge in 2018. Paul Ryan has largely stopped criticizing Trump, too. The House speaker, who last June accused Trump of “textbook” racism for attacking Judge Gonzalo Curiel, on Tuesday told reporters to “forget about” Corker’s attacks on Trump. According to Ryan, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman accusing the president of leading America “towards World War III” isn’t worth discussing.

Cruz and Ryan may be cowardly, but they aren’t dumb. They know that 80 percent of Republicans approve of Trump while less than 40 percent approve of Republican leaders in Congress. Which means that continuing their previous criticism of Trump would likely to cost them their jobs.

Many journalists and media personalities appear to have followed their constituents as well. Since the election, they’ve toned down their criticism of Trump. Last October, radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt called on Trump to exit the presidential race. But last month, Hewitt rendered a dramatically different verdict: “All in all, Trump has had a pretty good eight months.”

During the campaign, Glenn Beck compared Trump to Hitler and called him an “extinction-level event” for American democracy. Now Beck’s criticisms of Trump are fewer and milder.

National Review has softened its criticisms, too. Yes, the magazine publishes condemnations of Trump, some of them incisive and eloquent. But its editors have shied away from some of the toughest accusations they made during the campaign. In its January 2016 editorial urging conservatives to oppose Trump, the magazine’s editors warned that his brand of populism contained “strong-man overtones.” But on Sunday, its editor Rich Lowry declared that the Trump presidency has brought “no budding authoritarianism.”

Flake and Corker’s attacks on Trump as they prepare to depart the Senate are part of a larger transformation. Trumpism has taken over the Republican Party and the conservative media, making them less intellectual, more nationalistic, and more bigoted. And that takeover has sparked an exodus of more intellectual, less nationalistic, and less bigoted conservatives into the liberal political and journalistic mainstream. How they remake that mainstream—and are remade by it—will shape American public life in the years to come.

Far to many "conservatives" are placing remaining in power or assuaging their prejudices over decency and morality.   Leading the way, of course, are evangelical Christians who, in my view, are the most morally bankrupt of the lot. 

Why the Right Doesn't Want to Call Charleston an Act of Terrorism

Had the murders in Charleston the night before last been committed by a Muslim, Fox News and other right wing outlets would have been screaming about terrorist attacks to the high heavens.  However, since the apparent shooter was white, there is either silence from these mouth pieces or attempts to dissemble and avoid calling Dylann Storm Roof what he is - a domestic terrorist.  Be he mentally imbalanced or not, his actions were certainly no more insane than that of Islamic suicide bombers.  The real issue is that the right doesn't want to admit that their ideology encourages extremist to commit acts of violence and fans hatred.  A piece in the New York Times looks at this hesitancy to admit that acts of terrorism are committed by right wing Americans.  Another looks at Roof's growing adherence to white supremacy views.   Here are highlights from the former:

The massacre of nine African-Americans in Charleston has been classified as a possible hate crime, apparently carried out by a 21-year-old white man who once wore an apartheid badge and other symbols of white supremacy. But many civil rights advocates are asking why the attack has not officially been called terrorism.

Against the backdrop of rising worries about violent Muslim extremism in the United States, advocates see hypocrisy in the way the attack and the man under arrest in the shooting have been described by law enforcement officials and the news media.

Assaults like the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 and the attack on an anti-Islamic gathering in Garland, Tex., last month have been widely portrayed as acts of terrorism carried out by Islamic extremists. Critics say, however, that assaults against African-Americans and Muslim Americans are rarely if ever called terrorism.

Moreover, they argue, assailants who are white are far less likely to be described by the authorities as terrorists.

“We have been conditioned to accept that if the violence is committed by a Muslim, then it is terrorism,” Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights advocacy group in Washington, said Thursday in a telephone interview.

“If the same violence is committed by a white supremacist or apartheid sympathizer and is not a Muslim, we start to look for excuses — he might be insane, maybe he was pushed too hard,” Mr. Awad said.

“We have a man who intentionally went to a black church, had animus toward black people and assassinated an elected official and eight other people,” he said. “It seems he was motivated by a desire to terrorize and kill black people.”

Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines terrorism as “the use of force or threats to demoralize, intimidate and subjugate, especially such use as a political weapon or policy.”

Civil rights advocates said the Charleston attack not only fit the dictionary definition of terrorism but reflected a history of attempts by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups to terrorize African-Americans.

“The first antiterrorism law in U.S. history was the Klan Control Act, so really, this has been the definition of terrorism,” William Jelani Cobb, a writer and director of the Africana Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut, said in a Twitter post.

Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, a venerable civil rights group, said the Charleston massacre looked like terrorism to him.

“While the terrorist label is often applied to attacks, plots and conspiracies carried out on behalf of designated terrorist organizations such as ISIS and Al Qaeda, politically motivated violence is not the sole domain of supporters of designated terrorist groups,” Mr. Foxman said in a statement.

Expect more dissembling from the right as it tries to dodge the consequences of its own rhetoric.