Trump Supporters and the Lost Art of Shunning

Trump family separation enforcer Kirstjen Nielsen run out of a restaurant.

As a follow up to the last post, former Republican Jennifer Rubin has a column in the Washington Post that also looks at Sarah Sanders being shown the door and other episodes where amoral Trump officials/supporters have received the treatment that applaud in being dished out to others.  Perhaps  I cannot fully escape my Catholic background, but I believe that complicity in evil must have negative consequences for the wrongdoer. Sanders and so many of today's hate-filled Republicans believe there are no consequences for their involvement with reprehensible policies and the intentional infliction of harm on others. As for convincing them of the error of their ways/beliefs, I view them as beyond convincing through normal means. Hence, shunning is all to appropriate. Perhaps becoming persona non grata with the vast majority of the citizenry might make a few of them rethink their positions.  Here are column highlights:

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders — whose lies are piling up at a furious rate and whose defense of the child-separation policy prompted a reporter to exclaim, “Come on, Sarah, you’re a parent” — was reportedly asked to leave a restaurant in Virginia on Friday because she works for President Trump. . . . . She then couldn’t help lying again: “I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so.” Anyone who has seen her sneer, insult and condescend to the press knows that’s not the case.

This episode follows one on Tuesday in which Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was heckled at a Mexican restaurant, a culinary choice as jarring as Melania Trump’s jacket given the administration’s deliberate cruelty exhibited toward Hispanic children and their families. The loud protesters who gathered prompted her to leave. In addition, anti-immigrant zealot Stephen Miller, who pushed as hard as anyone for snatching kids from their parents, was dining in a different Mexican restaurant last Sunday when, according to the New York Post,  a protester called out, “Hey look guys, whoever thought we’d be in a restaurant with a real-life fascist begging [for] money for new cages?” Unsurprisingly, the restaurant confrontations became a source of debate on cable television.

On CNN, Ana Navarro tartly observed, “You make choices in life. And there is a cost to being an accomplice to this cruel, deceitful administration.” So, are these reactions to Trump aides reassuring and appropriate acts of social ostracism that communicate to the cogs in a barbaric bureaucracy that they cannot escape the consequences of their actions? Alternatively, should we view these as a sign of our descent into incivility . . . . ?

It depends on how you view the child-separation policy . . . . If, however, you think the child-separation policy is in a different class — a human rights crime, an inhumane policy for which the public was primed by efforts to dehumanize a group of people (“animals,” “infest,” etc.) — then it is both natural and appropriate for decent human beings to shame and shun the practitioners of such a policy.

This exception to the rule of polite social action should be used sparingly (if for no other reason than we will never get through a restaurant meal without someone hollering at someone else).

I get it. The notion of shunning or excluding or heckling can devolve into philosophical hair-splitting as to whether someone has engaged in normal public service or whether they’ve strayed outside the bounds of decent behavior. Each to his own method of expressing disdain and fury, I suppose.

Nevertheless, it is not altogether a bad thing to show those who think they’re exempt from personal responsibility that their actions bring scorn, exclusion and rejection. If you don’t want to provoke wrath, don’t continue to work for someone whose cruel and inhumane treatment of others rivals the internment of U.S. citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent during World War II.

As a piece in The Daily Beast reports, more efforts to shame and shun Trump regime officials are likely to occur going forward:

One night after Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen conducted a press conference defending the forcible separation of immigrant childrenfrom their families, a member of Washington, D.C.’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter received a text from a friend.

“A member got a text saying ‘Kirstjen Nielsen is eating nachos like ten feet from me,’” Allison Hrabar, a spokesperson for the Metro DC DSA told The Daily Beast.

Less than 30 minutes later, about a dozen members of DSA were inside MXDC Cocina Mexicana, shouting at Nielsen while she tried to eat her Mexican dinner.

“How can you enjoy a Mexican dinner as you’re deporting and imprisoning tens of thousands of people who come here seeking asylum in the United States?” a DSA member called to Nielsen in a video the group released of the confrontation.

“While these children are not free, this administration can’t be allowed to enjoy a nice night out,” said Jesse Rabinowitz, a DSA member who attended the demonstration. “To me, the most powerful part was when we were able to use a speaker to play the audio of children being separated from their parents. What scared me the most was the lack of empathy or feeling that the secretary had. She just seemed cold.”

“Oppressed people have never been given their rights by asking politely,” Hrabar said. “Kirstjen Nielsen is not going to be convinced by us politely saying ‘could you maybe not separate children from their families? Could you maybe stop detaining and deporting migrants who have done nothing wrong?’”

On the way out, we got a lot of high fives from patrons and restaurant staff. I think the response in the restaurant was actually really heartening.”

The impromptu action was the latest in a series of anti-ICE demonstrations by leftist organizations in recent weeks.

Since Sunday, Portland, Oregon activists including members of the Portland DSA, the Direct Action Alliance, and the National Lawyers Guild have been set up camp outside a local ICE prison. The coalition blockaded the roads leading to the facility, preventing anyone from driving in or out. On Tuesday, after a standoff with protesters, every ICE employee except for one security guard left the building, Raw Story reported. The guard, told demonstrators that the facility was closing and that “it’s unknown when it will open.”

Hrabar said the DC DSA has been staging demonstrations outside the homes of prominent ICE and Trump administration officials for the past three months.

Kudos to the DSA.

Quote of the Day: Red State Stupid; Red State Mean

A number of my posts since November 8, 2016, have focused on the stupidity - no more Political correctness required according to Der Fuhrer - and meanness of Donald Trump's white working and middle class voters.  These people were only too willing to let their hatred towards others, bigotry and resentment of others lead them to vote for a man and a political party that will gleefully kick them to the curb and perhaps literally die in the case of those who lose healthcare coverage. These folks by their own actions are the definition of mean and stupid. They deserve zero respect and zero understanding.  Apparently, I am not the only person who feels this way.  A friend shared a blog post that perfectly sums up Trump voters who are now worried that Obamacare will be repealed. Here are the best quotes:  

I want to talk a little bit more about what I call, in our blissfully post-PC era, Red State Stupid. Red State Stupid is also really Red State Mean.  It’s shoot-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face mean. And I don’t think that we can separate the two

My friend J. says that you can identify, with 100% accuracy, Democrats vs. Republicans with one simple test.  Democrats, he says, don’t care if some “undeserving” folks cash in on, for example, a free lunch program, as long as not one child goes out to recess hungry.  While Republicans, according to J., don’t really care how many children starve as long as not one, single “undeserving” child gets a free meal.

I think J. is right.  It’s pretty clear where I come down.

And I’ve been coming back to his test over and over as I ponder this article that I cited earlier about a woman whose husband will die without Obamacare but who voted for Trump in spite of Trump’s and the Republican Party’s explicitly-avowed intent to destroy the very program keeping her husband alive. . . . .

 

Just to be crystal clear, we’re talking about a woman who voted for the candidate who promised to cut off the only thing that is keeping her husband alive because she’s just that pissed at some poor elementary-school kid who got an Xmas gift.  (Be sure to tell her “Merry Christmas” and not “Happy Holidays.”  She’s sent off more money than she can afford to some Elmer Gantry who got her all hepped up on the War on Xmas.  Jebuz is the reason for the season.   . . . . .  but some poor kid getting an Xmas present is JUST TOO GODDAMN MUCH FOR HER.)  That damn kid got an Xmas gift even though his parents received a few dollars of welfare and food stamps and she’s just NOT HAVING IT anymore.

 

Here’s a six-year old who got a Tonka truck and a stocking cap at Xmas and here’s her husband getting the health care that keeps him alive.  And she’s so damn mad at that six-year old that she’s willing to risk her husband.  Fuck the love of her life.  If he dies, so be it, but at least Trump won’t be handing out hand-knit scarves and tea sets to those undeserving brats. *

The post author goes on to address something else I advocate: turning the under 27% of registered voters who voted for Trump into shunned outcasts.  Here's the quote:

So let me say this loud and clear:  That woman is evil, and venal, and stupid and she’s not going to stop voting out of hate even if Democrats nominate another white man and even if he, what . . . ?  What is it that the Democrat is supposed to do to win her vote? 

I have two things to say:  (1)  Shunning, shaming, and blaming are actually effective tactics of social control.  See, e.g., Mothers v. Drunk Driving.  And pretending that stupid people are really just simple farmers, people of the land, the common clay of the new West who would suddenly vote in their own best interests if only a Democrat would finally go hunting, or ride a motorcycle, or get in a tank hasn’t worked for the last half century or so and I’m now ready to try shaming them and focusing on how they’re not the cool kids who are in with the in crowd; (2) If we’re not going to magically convince Ms. Red State Mean to vote in her her own self interest (and we’re almost certainly not), then we’re going to have to figure out how to get other voters to the polls with the needed ID.  And that effort needs to start now.  Waiting until a few weeks before the election to get them IDs is too late.

 The shaming, however, MUST include evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, 81% of whom voted for Der Fuhrer.  They are evil and embrace stupidity and ignorance.  I left the GOP right around the time the "godly Christians" began to heavily infiltrate the GOP and the meanness and ugliness of today's GOP directly reflects the "values" of these people.  Polite society and responsible political parties need to shun these people.