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Donald the Dog Whistler

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

It’s not the fact that there are throwbacks like the people who marched in support of a Robert E. Lee statue in a park in Charlottesville, Virginia, yesterday that surprises me.  Saddens me, yes, but doesn’t surprise.  The only part about all that happened yesterday that did surprise was the response to it all from the president of the United States: I don’t know if he was excrutiatingly selective about his words, or just tone deaf, but he couldn’t find the words, or even the Tweets, to condemn white supremacists.

https://twitter.com/MerryRey/status/827416649582125056

https://twitter.com/RicoGagliano/status/896476997031014400

https://twitter.com/benjaminwittes/status/896489642266157057

He didn’t/wouldn’t take sides in a fight over basic human rights, or even pretend to take sides and be seen as part of the mainstream.

https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/896570074076766209

What he did do yesterday was dog-whistle a message to some of his supporters, the people who knew he was an ignorant, truth-impaired, narcissistic megalomaniac with the attention span of a two year old but voted for him anyway, because when he promised to “make America great again” they heard “take our country back.”  If we didn’t realize a long time ago what that means to those people, we know now:

The turmoil in Charlottesville began with a march Friday night by white nationalists on the campus of the University of Virginia and escalated Saturday morning as demonstrators from both sides gathered in and around the park. Waving Confederate flags, chanting Nazi-era slogans, wearing helmets and carrying shields, the white nationalists converged on the Lee statue inside the park and began chanting phrases like “You will not replace us” and “Jews will not replace us.”

(snip)

“We’re going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump” to “take our country back,” said Mr. [David] Duke, a former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Many of the white nationalist protesters carried campaign signs for Mr. Trump.

The White House is trying to cover his ass about it today, but what the president said yesterday—when it happened; when it mattered—was “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence.  On many sides; on many sides.”

Meaning what, exactly?

Yesterday in Slate, Josh Levin had a great answer to that question:

He then said those three words again—“On many sides”—as if to emphasize that this throwaway phrase was in fact the only bit of his short speech that he truly believed in. He did not talk about white supremacy, and he did not note the prevalence of racist chants. The troubles in Charlottesville, the president said, were everyone’s fault. Or, to put it another way, nobody in particular was more responsible than anyone else for what happened in Virginia this weekend. Not the president. Not the party that enabled him. Not even those who idolize Adolf Hitler.

Trump’s refusal to condemn white supremacist violence, coming on the heels of his silence in the aftermath of last week’s mosque bombing in Minnesota, is just the latest affirmation of his fundamental immorality. The president’s racist, anti-Semitic, Muslim-hating acolytes heard the words Trump didn’t say on Saturday. They know they have an ally in the White House, a man who will abet anyone who abets his own hold on power.

Don’t think that it’s only the liberal mainstream media that thinks Trump is favoring the white supremacists—the white supremacists noticed, and cheered, the fact that he did not attack them and their ideology!

Trump comments were good. He didn’t attack us. He just said the nation should come together. Nothing specific against us.

He said that we need to study why people are so angry, and implied that there was hate… on both sides!

So he implied the antifa are haters.

There was virtually no counter-signaling of us at all.

He said he loves us all.

Also refused to answer a question about White Nationalists supporting him.

No condemnation at all.

When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room.

Really, really good.

God bless him.

He’s had another 24 hours to think about it, to articulate his beliefs, to try to make clear to people how he feels on the subject.  As of post time, he has not.  [UPDATE 8/14: Here‘s what he had to say today; it does not seem to me that his heart was in it.] [ANOTHER UPDATE 8/15: Never mind, he took it back.]

https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/896406206901833729

Josh Levin:

On a day that called for the president to take a stand, he instead made a perverse call for unity. “I love the people of our country,” Trump said at the end of his Bedminster Address. “I love all of the people of our country. We’re going to make America great again. But we’re going to make it great for all of the people of the United States of America.”

The neo-Nazis in Charlottesville heard that call, and so did the posters on the Daily Stormer. “On many sides,” Trump said. These are not anodyne words. They are dangerous ones. On Saturday, the president had the chance to tell the nation what it is he does and doesn’t believe in. That’s exactly what he did.

https://twitter.com/Mike_Eagle/status/896514685201035264

You could also check out this fine Twitter thread from yesterday, if you want to have a think about the gist of the protest from the white supremacists:

https://twitter.com/JuliusGoat/status/896326301832925184

How do you like America?

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Three weeks in; time to take a breath and assess the new administration in Washington, D.C.

Donald Trump asked Americans to trust him to do what’s right for America; 46% of those who bothered to vote (roughly 27% of Americans who were eligible to vote) took him up on his offer, and that was enough to give him the ticket to the Oval Office.  But so far he’s made it plain that he doesn’t respect this country and what it stands for; the only thing he’s interested in is what financially benefits Donald Trump.  This is a partial list of some of the fun so far, just off the top of my pointy head:

  • the new president tries to make good on a campaign promise to keep Muslims from coming into the country, stabbing at the heart of the great American belief in freedom of religion while playing on the irrational fears of many of the people who elected him…
  • and after losing in court, for a second time, his retort is—of course—see you in court
  • he succeeded in placing a racist in charge of enforcing civil rights laws…
  • an effort highlighted by the Senate voting to silence one of its members when she tried to image001read into the record a letter that’s already a public document…
  • before then allowing at least two other members to go unsanctioned for reading that same document into the record
  • a top administration official glibly violates the law but gets just a rap on the knuckles…
  • although that shouldn’t be a surprise since the president is happily making a mockery of government ethics by retaining his business interests and turning a profit…
  • while the First Lady goes to court seeking damages for not being able to monetize her new position
  • the president is still massaging his insatiable ego by repeating the unfounded allegation of a voter fraud that, if true, is so massive as to be unbelievable…
  • and making a promise to have his government investigate said claim, a promise that lays dormant (to put in charitably)
  • he made good on a promise to nominate a Supreme Court justice from his pre-election list of approved candidates…
  • and then by not keeping his Twitter thumb quiet and insulting a judge who had the temerity to disagree with him, Trump forced his high court nominee to blandly chastise his benefactor

Jack Shafer thinks the president of the United States is a child throwing a temper tantrum because he doesn’t get everything he wants; Josh Marshall offers a short list of reminders to help us figure out motivations in the Oval Office; Bill Moyers tries to look past the policies and realize that the chaos which Trump (and President Steve Bannon) are creating is an intentional part of a plan, and Eliot Cohen argues that Trump is behaving exactly as many people (many people) predicted.

Any good news?  Yes, there is:

  • the judicial system is proving it is not afraid of the new president (unlike damn near every Republican in the House and Senate) and is living up to its responsibility of interpreting the law and acting as a check on the executive (and legislative) branches…
  • if new subscription rates are any indication, Americans are being reminded of the value of a free press serving as watchdog and are making their individual contributions to support the effort…
  • we have even been able to take a little joy from watching the president’s childish reaction to being criticized.  0qBLuKbpAny president, or anyone who’s ever performed public service at any level, would know to expect disagreement, but this president has apparently lived in a bubble where people do not criticize him, and he doesn’t get it that the world at large doesn’t accept his every utterance as gospel just because he said it.  He has no sense of humor about himself, it seems, takes the unimportant stuff way too seriously, and can’t seem to stop himself from feebly trying to parry each thrust from outside the bubble—thank you, Twitter.  I giggled when I read that Trump took it out on press secretary Sean Spicer because a woman comedian satirized his briefings on “Saturday Night Live,” so I’m eager to see out how he reacts if it should come to pass that his long-time nemesis Rosie O’Donnell gets a chance to take the role of President Bannon.

What’d I miss?  Oh yeah: a New York congressman has “filed a ‘resolution of inquiry’ that amounts to the first legislative step toward impeachment.”  And there’s much more.  As Crash Davis said to his coach when the coach came to the mound during a game to inquire as to the cause of the delay, “We’re dealing with a lot of shit.”  And as my dad would say from time to time, to reinforce that you really didn’t think about what you were doing or saying just then, “How do you like America?”

Conductor’s call for boarding: next train to crazytown

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

The bad news is, more candidates are announcing for the 2016 presidential race in both major parties, which makes it harder and harder from day to day to ignore the pointless noise.  The good news is…OK, there isn’t any good news there.  But I did find a few reminders of the deplorable state of relations between our current president and the radical conservative opposition that we should keep in mind when we get serious about the next election…sometime next year, I hope.

Barack Obama is in the fourth quarter of his presidency but the tone of the attacks against him is as detached from reality as ever: remember, the conservative extremists proudly announced on inauguration day 2009 that their goal in life was to deny him any victories, just because he’s him.  Give them credit for perseverance, I suppose, even as we roll our eyes at their performance.

When the president announced an immigration plan late last year the conservative reaction that he was acting outside his authority thundered down as if an enormous dog whistle had ordered the uttering of talking points.  Never mind that the scripted response was, shall we say charitably, inaccurate; former solicitor general Walter Dellinger wrote in Slate:

Even though the action is breathtaking in scope, there is nothing legally remarkable about what the administration is doing, or the legal analysis supporting it. The announced “deferred action” provides temporary administrative relief from deportation for aliens who are the parents of citizens, or the parents of lawful permanent residents. “Deferred action” is an exercise of discretion in which officials may temporarily defer the removal of an alien. The grant of deferred action in this case will remain in place for three years, is subject to renewal, and can be terminated at any time at the discretion of the Department of Homeland Security. As Eric Posner, who served in the Office of Legal Counsel under the first President Bush, notes, the president “is just doing what countless Congresses have wanted him to do”—setting priorities for deportation enforcement.

That’s not even the most egregious example of the mindless opposition; how about, earlier this year, when Republicans in the Senate took it upon themselves to re-assure Iran—yes, Iran!—not to take the American president too seriously in nuclear arms negotiations.

Perhaps the most outrageous example of the attack on the president’s legitimacy was a letter signed by 47 Republican senators to the leadership of Iran saying Mr. Obama had no authority to conclude negotiations over Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Try to imagine the outrage from Republicans if a similar group of Democrats had written to the Kremlin in 1986 telling Mikhail Gorbachev that President Ronald Reagan did not have the authority to negotiate a nuclear arms deal at the Reykjavik summit meeting that winter.

There is no functional difference between that example and the Iran talks, except that the congressional Republican caucus does not like Mr. Obama and wants to deny him any policy victory.

It’d all be funny if it wasn’t so sad.  Wait, it is funny:

db150524

Thanks, Doonesbury and GoComics.com

Truthiness

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Today Stephen Colbert retires “Stephen Colbert.” Since October 2005 Colbert the comedian and satirist has launched “Colbert” the character on a mission to entertain us by shining a light on the hypocrisy and evil intentions of people who profit from pandering to a fear and ignorance in American society that refuses to wilt in the face of truth. In fact, he told us as much on the very first episode (click the pic):

ColbertTruthinessEver thought about what it must take for Colbert to stay in character, and to do it for so many years? This morning I ran across a nice little article that links to a Slate podcast in which Colbert explains—very interesting.

#FairyTaleEnding

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Derek Jeter played his last game in Yankee Stadium last night, and the final play of the game tried like hell to live up to the unbelievable hype that his year-long retirement tour generated.  Click below and see for yourself (thanks, Josh Levin and Slate for directing me to this).

jeterscreen grab from MLB.com

First pitch, single the other way–game over; legends on deck…a last look around the old office…heading for the door…all too poetic to be true.

And yet it was.  I think I’ll go tell the story to my dad, who grew up a Yankee fan going back to the 30s.  Tomorrow’s his birthday and that’s when I usually visit…he would have loved this.