A month ago the Inquirer published a letter I wrote to the editor in response to a political cartoon from a Georgia newspaper that portrayed pro-impeachment Democrats as cross-eyed, dizzy donkeys suffering from anti-vaxxer-ish conspiracy-theory hysteria. My letter rebutted the message of the cartoon with, um, facts and stuff like that.
One thing about being published that I (mostly) enjoy is the responses I get from readers -- I always include my email address with my letters. While I enjoy the back-pats, I also enjoy (and sometimes cringe at) receiving and responding to the ones who write to disagree, because I rarely have a chance to interact with pro-rump people. After this last letter, one of the nay-sayers wrote to call me "stupid". I replied to him that, among those who wrote to disagree with me, he was the only one who'd opted for the "jerk route". Which elicited from him a breezy response that he and I "would get along famously". Ya never know.
So another response I got was from DL, whose email is here below. I share it to illustrate what we Democrats are up against, the kind of "thinking" that passes for thinking among rump acolytes. For example, though Mr. L implies that he's read the Mueller report, he asks, "If Mueller documented any attempt to obstruct justice, why didn't he indict him and let the courts once and for all decide if a president can be indicted?" If he had read the report, or just watched any coverage other than Fox News, Mr. L would know that: A) Mueller did document ten attempts to obstruct justice, so there's no "if", and B) Mueller explicitly wrote that he wouldn't charge the "president" because the DOJ's OLC ban on indicting same meant that he wouldn't be able to defend himself in court. DL would also know that Mueller said that he could not exonerate rump, and he named two remedies to the constraints on his prosecutorial discretion. One was to have states pursue charges after the end of the suspect's term in the White House, and the other was to have Congress take up the findings per its Constitutional powers and responsibilities.
The serious assertion by a non-comatose adult that rump has drained the swamp is a monument to Big-Lie propaganda itself. This administration would have no department staff at all if not for former lobbyists, executives and advocates for industries their departments are charged to oversee. Zinke, Pruitt, Price, Shanahan, gone but not forgotten -- except apparently forgotten by DL and the 36 percent who thrive on lies.
So the email shows the shield of arrogant ignorance a rump supporter can live behind as long as he recharges it by plugging in early and often to the right sources. But at the same time it shows the writer's commonality of temperament with the BPOE, in that he goes on the offensive when he's wrong, telling me how I get "so much wrong".
Below that is a letter that was published in the Sunday Inquirer. The writer doesn't state her allegiance to rump, but like Mr. L's self-satisfied conclusion that people like me are not so bright and he is, she is another deep thinker who goes on the offensive when she feels on the defensive. She says the real bigotry is generalizing about the advantages of being a suburban white kid and the disadvantages of being an inner-city minority kid. The letter-writer says she "is tired of being made to feel guilty for that". She wants fervently to cleanse her conscience by trying so hard to believe that these typically disparate educational outcomes are attributable strictly to their own efforts and their family's respective moral strengths and deficiencies. She didn't add the part about welfare queens in Cadillacs.
The irony is that she thinks she's proving her unspoken but clearly implied argument that race has nothing to do with these differential outcomes when she cites the example of a Nigerian couple, both college-educated in Nigeria, who emigrated to America and were able to bring their kids up in the suburbs. See, black people can do it. So there's no deep structural societal problem that we might all work together to solve, it's just a coincidence that the inner-city kids going to underfunded, deteriorating schools with overcrowded classrooms tend to belong to minority groups and that those kids have a much greater challenge to reach graduation and move on to further education and training. It did not occur to this woman that the Nigerian couple did not grow up in these conditions or that they might be exceptional to have the wherewithal to make it to America in the first place, all making them useless as counterexamples to prove her assertion of a purely merit-based, color-blind society with equal opportunity for all.
Why would she feel "guilty" absent the awareness just below consciousness of her own racism that often takes the form of looking down on the people to whom she feels so superior?
I'm not just sharing these things to pillory right-wing white people, although I have no compunction about doing that. To me it's valuable to know and understand as best we can the mind-set of people who find rump fit to be president. Ms. Breen of Lansdale didn't wave the MAGA flag in her letter, but I'd bet she's a romper because she shares the requisite white-supremacist world-view that the Others' problems and suffering are artifacts of their own characterological deficiencies and inherent criminal tendencies. Rump appeals to such people by validating their choice to take no responsibility for creating a better society for all the people.
So two key components of rump's appeal are his tweets and rally speeches that reinforce militant ignorance with lies that often resonate with Fox News lies -- not coincidentally, since many of his lies merely parrot what Fox and Friends said that morning -- and his infantile rebellion against decency that validates the moral dissociation of people like the Lansdale lady'splainer. These malign influences work through repeated exposure, and the point of the third and final piece of writing below is the media's responsibility not to repeat the whorish debasement of journalism that they perpetrated in 2015-16.
Progress means democratic decision-making based on factual evidence, the rule of law and collective communal acceptance of responsibility for creating a humane society for everyone. You don't turn your back on your brothers and sisters. People in the suburbs don't need to feel guilty for their relative comfort and opportunity, but neither are they without guilt when they justify their cold, angry indifference to the suffering of their fellow human beings.
To: HD
Subject: your letter
Date: Jun 3, 2019 10:34 AM
It is amazing that an intelligent one can get so much wrong regards the politics of our day.
First off. with most all our press claiming Trump lied about Mueller's report it is surprising that only 60% believe it. The report is open for all to read - why does anyone care what anyone says about it - why not read it yourself?
If Mueller documented any attempt to obstruct justice, why didn't he indict him and let the courts once and for all decide if a president can be indicted?
Most of the public doesn't understand that Trump has upset the entire DC swamp, which includes Mueller, his close friend Comey, the DC press corps, all dems, many reps, and Obama appointed fed judges. DC politics has become a multi-millionaire making factory (Clintons the best example of rags to riches) and they will do all they can to see it continues. They love it as is and big mouth, braggart billionaire Trump, does not fit into any of it. He's gotta go??
DL
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The state of our school funding
Is it not bigoted to generalize that white kids live in the suburbs and have wealth, and black kids live in “Poor District High?” as in a recent cartoon? But if that is true, why are white kids and families doing better than black kids and families? Could it be because the family unit is in peril in the “Poor District”? I had neighbors who emigrated here from Nigeria. Both had bachelor’s degrees and one had a master’s degree. They had excellent jobs and were hands-on parents. Their kids did not go to school in the “Poor District,” so why are so many other black kids having to do that? Everyone is quick to blame the mayor or the governor, but they never blame the people responsible for creating a safe environment for their own kids — for encouraging them to get a good education and, therefore, a good job. My children attended that Suburban High in your cartoon. I am tired of being made to feel guilty for that. We put in a lot of effort that made that possible. Is every parent in the city doing the same? Why is it always the government that needs to improve and never the responsibility is placed with the families? It seems to be a self-perpetuating cycle. Getting an education and then a job usually solves the problems created by poverty. I do not mean to minimize situations that really do occur and the sometimes difficult lives some people live but is every person living in poverty doing the best they can to have a better life?
|Sharon Breen, Lansdale
Will the Media Help Re-Elect Trump?
By Alexander Heffner, The Daily Beast
30 June 19
In 2016, all that free air time, and not calling a lie a lie, tilted the scales. Are we looking at a repeat performance?
Instead, the candidates expounded on reality—American economic immobility, the continued health care crisis, and the climate emergency. If journalists ask questions based on the truth, it will also expose the president’s exploitation of bigotry instead of helping to spread his lies.
This doesn’t come naturally to the media. Instead, they re-normalize a habitually deceitful president in return for the perception of access.
On last Sunday’s Meet the Press interview of President Trump, the first of his presidency, Chuck Todd replicated the approach of ABC’s 30 Hoursspecial, enabling Trump to volley back and forth disinformation, like “votes cast that I don’t believe,” and personal grievances—without any merit or real public policy discussion. “EXCLUSIVE: President Donald Trump tells @chucktodd that impeachment is ‘a very unfair thing,'” retweeted MSNBC. Erm... that’s not an exclusive.
In a climate in which he has bashed senselessly their hosts, ABC and NBC chose to invite Trump back to the mainstream and legitimize his hateful rhetoric. They seem intent on giving a platform to the only president to call journalists the enemy of the people (which alone makes Trump the most un-American, anti-constitutionalist president in U.S. history).
In Trump’s recent Time magazine cover interview, there was a revealing postscript: “There’s no question Trump has significant advantages as he looks ahead to the re-election fight, beginning with time and money and the biggest megaphone on the planet.” Yes, but the media makes the megaphone so. And it must not.
Some broadcasters are exhibiting more discretion, and the public shows signs of tuning Trump out. According to ratings, Celebrity Family Feudbested the recent ABC News interview special. But that won’t stop some programmers from trying to revive the circus of 2016 for new ratings heights, and Trump will continue to profit if the press amplifies rather than diminishes his pollution of the public square.
In seeking to reach beyond his base, Trump wants to expand anew his lies to a non-loyalist audience, entrap the press in false equivalencies, and replicate his incestuous mainstream coverage from 2016. As Lawrence O’Donnell commented recently about Trump surrogates on television, “I’ve never understood the value of putting someone on television to lie, knowing that they’re going to lie ahead of time, knowing that that is their deal: to lie ahead of time. That is their deal.”
Some in the press are easily sucked back into what we might call the presidential restraint narrative — the misguided idea that “Trump is coming to his senses.” First it was his decision to pause military engagement with Iran. Next, his decision to stop ICE raids to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.
The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman tweeted about Trump’s empowerment: “A source told me 30 minutes ago that [he] was pleased with his own performance last night, loved being in command by ordering the strikes and by then ordering the stand-down.” The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender added: “After 29 mos. in office, Trump repeatedly has shown that — contrary to his reputation in domestic politics — he’s much more cautious on military matters.”
“My message to the media: Be partisans for the truth.”
No, he confirmed his recklessness by making a public spectacle out a life-or-death decision. If this feels like déjà vu, it’s because it is. It wasn’t Fox News that was the sole Trump propaganda network in 2016 fueling inflammatory anti-immigrant bigotry. It was the chorus of news coverage, from network broadcasts to major newspapers, which parroted every faux Trump claim or outrage.
Yet again, the nation’s political journalists are gravitating to the stenography of Trump showmanship. The immediate headlines from the Florida re-election announcement mirrored this image: “POLITICO: Trump stages his greatest show yet: The president’s elaborate re-election rally in Florida featured thousands of adoring supporters. AP: Trump, in 2020 campaign mode, calls Democrats ‘radical.’"
Trump Suspends ICE Raids, Demands Swift Legislative Action
Now tell me how these headline chronicles differ from Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro’s takes: “This kind of enthusiasm has never been matched in American history... there is a chord that this man strikes in the American heart."
Political scientists observe how Trump “takes credit for resolving the crises he creates.” As University College London professor Brian Klass notes, it’s the case of “The Arsonist & the Firefighter. Step 1: Create a crisis. Step 2: ‘Solve’ it, by reverting to the status quo. Step 3: Claim victory. Step 4: Fox News & deluded sycophants claim he’s the greatest dealmaker ever.” Except it’s not just Fox News.
Even as Trump and his family bash them, some journalists will revert to a 2016 mentality of balancing lies and truth. My message to them: Don’t let Trump and his extremism drive your airwaves and molest us. Be partisans for the truth.
This isn’t a show; it’s our country. We must inform and protect it.
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