Politically-inspired murder has spasmodically erupted throughout history, especially from the late 19th century to the present. Lately, it appears to be a more frequent guest to our political struggles. Intemperate discourse is all-too-common. Ramped up rhetoric, fueled by claims of vague and impersonal harms, has found expression in thuggishness, and even murder. Welcome to Charlottesville on August 12.
Let’s take a stroll down memory lane of the modern era. “The propaganda of the deed” (meaning: violent action as the catalyst for revolution) was all the fashion in anarcho-socialist circles at the turn of the 19th into 20th centuries. Assassinations, bombings, and robberies were the preferred means of activism of a violent element in Europe and the U.S. The mayhem was one of the prime motives for the restrictive immigration laws of the 1920’s.
The assassination of Pres. McKinley by anarchist Leon Czolgosz in New York, 1901. He would be executed in the electric chair later in the year.Luigi Galleani, anarcho-socialist shortly before his deportation in 1919. He was a loud and frequent exponent of the “propaganda of the deed”. Carlo Budda, brother of terrorist bombmaker Mario Budda, once said of Galleani, “You heard Galleani speak, and you were ready to shoot the first policeman you saw”.The Wall Street bombing of 1920, killing 30 people, was carried out by Galleani’s followers.
Individual and group violence has continued apace. Some of it spontaneous; some of it premeditated; and some of it less fatal, as in mere bullying and assault-and-battery. College campuses from Berkeley to Cambridge have become noted for the Antifa goons patrolling the corridors of higher learning.
More recently, taking it to new heights, was James Hodgkinson in his hunt for Republicans on June 14. On Saturday, August 12, James Alex Fields, Jr., plowed his car into crowd of counter-protesters killing one and injuring 19.
James Alex Fields, Jr., and his damaged car.
Are we approaching the Vietnam War era’s daily mortality counts? On the one side we have the wickedness of the tiki-torch carrying white thugs. Aggrieved by the alleged oppression of whites, they are on hair trigger for violence. On the other, we have the ready-made insta-mob of the consortium of Black Lives Matter, Antifa, et al. The scene is starting to resemble post-WWI Weimar Germany with its street battles of left and right gangs.
Berlin street fight scene between Nazis and communists in the early 1930’s.
It’s sad that both sides seem to be taking their cue from ISIS in Raqqa. The left had their Raqqa moment in June. The right’s imitation waited till August. The similarities are striking. Like ISIS defending their caliphate in northern Syria and Iraq, Hodgkinson preferred gunfire. Fields adopted the Nice and London method of political expression by simply smashing people with a vehicle.
It’s also sad that we have a president that can’t rise above any personal slight, no matter how slight, during these moments of sorrow. His combative nature muddies any attempt to have us rise to the “better angels of our nature”.
Mr. President, drop the twitter feed!
RogerG
Bibliography and sources:
“Recounting a day of rage, hate, violence and death: How a rally of white nationalists and supremacists at the University of Virginia turned into a ‘tragic, tragic weekend.'”, Joe Heim, Washington Post, 8/14/2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/local/charlottesville-timeline/?utm_term=.6ee9f78a1d31
The following is a response to an article by Charles Krauthammer, “The Cover-up in Search of a Crime”, in National Review Online, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/445005/flynn-phone-call-coverup-searching-crime
Vice President Mike Pence with National Security Adviser Mike Flynn
This story is much richer than the matter of a subordinate misleading the Vice President. Be careful, though, the deeper story may not follow the path to a collusion with Russia during the election. The scent may lead to Obama. Andrew McCarthy was astute to mention it.
Obama’s people got a FISA-approved wiretap on Russian operatives prior to the election and in the waning days of Obama’s term after DNC and Podesta’s emails became public. This has “politics” written all over it. Then, the always present partisan operatives, entrenched in the upper reaches of the agencies, still clinging to power during the transition, leaked the edited results to an Obama-pliant press.
Yes, this whole affair may be a cover-up in search of a crime. It may also be an intense version of the long twilight struggle that is politics in modern America.
Betsy DeVos has run into a particularly energized buzzsaw. Why? Of all the possible flash-points, the Education Department isn’t considered one of the plumb appointments in a president’s cabinet. Could Roxanne Bland’s witticism be the answer? Could be, but wisecracks may be more wit than wisdom. Yet, in the case of DeVos, it’s a starting point.
DeVos, Trump, Pence
Yesterday, 2/1/2017, it was announced that two Republican senators would oppose the DeVos nomination – Maine’s Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
Susan CollinsLisa Murkowski
What accounts for the defection into the arms of all 11 Democrats on the Senate’s Heath, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee? These two Republicans have an unusually cozy relationship with the two monolithic teacher unions in the country, the NEA and AFT.
To begin with, the DeVos resume’ isn’t one to warm the heart of the NEA’s Lily Garcia or Randi Weingarten of the AFT. These unions represent government employees – government employed teachers – not students, their parents, or education in general. The word “choice” is sacrosanct in regards to abortion in these precincts, but watch the needle fly off the chart when it’s connected to “school”.
Lily GarciaRandi Weingarten
The hive flies into action with the mere mention of “school choice”.
DeVos’s claim to fame is vouchers and charter schools, the things that’ll give options to mom and dad but panic attacks to the union leadership. In 1993, along with her husband, she gave contributions to Michigan lawmakers to pass the state’s charter school law. In 2000, they pushed the Michigan Voucher Initiative but failed. Smarting from the loss, they were instrumental in forming the American Federation for Children, a PAC to support school choice candidates. It’s success is admirable with a 121-60 winning record.
But then Trump nominated her to head the Education Department – considered by the unions as part of their fiefdom – and they went into spasms.
Randi Weingarten announced, “The president-elect, in his selection of Betsy DeVos, has chosen the most ideological, anti-public education nominee put forward since President Carter created a Cabinet-level Department of Education.”
Protests were engineered in the usual haunts, like this one in Oakland.
Protesters applaud at a noon rally at the The Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2017. Nearly 1,000 people denounced the appointment of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education after a Senate committee advanced her nomination. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
The union reaction wasn’t limited to ginning up the membership. They have allies in the Senate, on both sides of the aisle. We expect the Democrats to be in lock step for the obvious reasons. The stinky money trail, though, becomes more conspicuous when we follow it into the Republican caucus.
It turns out that both Collins and Murkowski have been on the “take” with the unions for at least the last few elections cycles. In 2002 and ’08, Collins received contributions from the NEA along with a “straight A” grade. The same for Murkowski, only more. She got $23,500 in ’02 and ’08; in 2016, an additional $10,000. Surprise, surprise, they both were blessed with endorsement for 2010 and 2016.
At first, the public hears of two Republicans breaking ranks. A person might be forgiven for thinking it to be a matter of principle over blind loyalty. Think again.
I wonder what the voters of red-state Alaska will think once they learn that one of their Senators is in the corral of one of the worst partisans of “blue” America.
“Bay Area teachers band together to oppose DeVos, Trump’s ed secretary nominee”, East bay Times, 1/31/17, http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/01/31/bay-area-teachers-band-together-to-oppose-devos-trumps-ed-secretary-nominee/
The Constitution deposits all “executive” authority in the president – not “legislative”, nor “judicial”, just “executive”. Sally, “execute” means to carry out and enforce the law. You, as an appointee, are an agent of the president. Your job is to assist the president, not be the president.
The man that put you in your position is no longer president. He’s a private citizen with a golf bag. Join him on the links.
Sally, your “conscience” is really a bunch of opinions. The guy with your opinions isn’t around. Another guy with different opinions was elected. For peace of mind, please, go join the howler monkeys in the lefty firmament. You’ll be happier … and so will the rest of us.
Understanding the 2016 election requires something more involved than a 140-character tweet or an abbreviated Facebook post. Much has been written about the white working class in the lead up and aftermath to the Trump victory. The video is an AEI panel discussion with J.D. Vance and Charles Murray on the topic from October of 2016. First, watch the conversation and then read the essay below it.
Our politics seems increasingly disjointed as many see the electorate as disparate victims’ groups. Some call it “identity politics”. A semi-official status as “victim” normally follows an intense period of political activism. The process was evident for unionized workers, all sorts of hyphenated Americans, and gays (now to be added to the “hyphenated” category). Did the 2016 election cycle insert the “white working class” to the list? Can it claim addition to the growing list of the “oppressed”?
Indeed, something significant has been happening to the white working class; something ignored by the culturally powerful. It’s a story of the isolation and ignorance of the culturally influential from the everyday lives of average working Americans. It’s a story of the negative impacts of an insular elite’s popular causes on people outside the elite redoubts, in a place I call “middle-America”.
Middle-America is an entity culturally, economically, and geographically defined. Culturally, middle-Americans are least likely to experience haute couture and an Ivy League setting. Dining preferences ranges from a good steakhouse to a bar/grill to fast-food. Economically, they occupy the rungs hovering around the poverty line to blue collar, wage-earning incomes. Geographically, they reside in areas conducive to their livelihoods. They increasingly have been weeded out of the now expensive coastal enclaves and gentrified, trendy inner-city neighborhoods. More and more they are identified with the vast stretch between the Appalachians and the West’s Coast and Cascade Ranges.
Middle America is a swath of the country in distress. Socially, many middle-Americans are mirroring the experience of the African-American underclass. Marriage rates are down; illegitimacy is up. Church attendance is down; social pathologies like drug use and crime are up. Unstable families more and more characterize life for many children. Educational attainment is stunted. Workforce participation by males is in decline. The upshot is an evisceration of human capital that will be handed down to the next generation. (1) (2)
Factors like the decline of private-sector unions aren’t the cause as some claim. The decay of these unions is a symptom, like all the rest, of a broader blue collar malaise.
These conditions are far removed from the cultural and economic elect. They congregate in particular aesthetically pleasing nodes on the west coast and in places like Vail, Co. They dominate financial and media centers and the surrounding neighborhoods, and college-centered communities. Their children predominantly experience stable, intact families. While church attendance is increasingly rare, values of hard work associated with formal education are stressed. The backstop of strong families gives them a leg up in a world they’ll increasingly dominate.
Today, the two slices of America rarely intersect. In the past, as recounted in the works of Charles Murray and Robert Putnam, they did. It was common for the wealthy to rub elbows with workers and the poor. Residential districts weren’t far apart and frequently shared the same schools, stores, and churches.
“Deindustrialization” has shattered this unity. Some factories, the mainstay of some communities, have closed as economic weight gravitated to centers of financial services, technology, and higher education. An outlook, distinct and secluded, has developed within each group. (2) (4)
Beliefs, as a consequence of isolation, begin to take hold among the two slices of the population. Of particular note are the ideological obsessions and prejudices of the emerging upper class. J.D. Vance makes reference to the slights of “hillbillies” and “rednecks” as acceptable language in conversation among so-called sophisticates.
Environmentalism has come to replace Christianity as a focus of near worship among cultural and upper class elites. (5) It may be speculation but the attraction of the ideology probably has much to do with aesthetic cleanliness and neatness, just taking the form of environmental purity – thus the love affair with recycling, climate change, almost anything labeled “sustainable”, biodiversity, the preservation ethic for public lands, etc.
Furthermore, a formally educated elite has a predilection for the rule of “experts”, a foundational tenet of progressivism. Environmentalism’s prescriptions lend themselves to the rule of “experts”. Of course, the “experts” tend to be themselves.
The consequences of these views being translated into policy for those outside the elite enclaves is profound. Yet, these effects aren’t maturely appreciated by this class of self-anointed “betters”. For the elites, the forests are in essence parks that are to be treated as recreational preserves for the REI-crowd. For a blue collar worker, the woods represent jobs and the stuff that fills a Home Depot. Different perceptions, but it’s the REI-crowd who has magnified influence beyond their numbers.
The whole gamut of environmentalism’s causes has deleterious effects on working people and their communities. Their safety-net is threatened as tax revenues decline. Jobs disappear, only to be replaced by unemployment checks and part-time work. Communities watch the housing stock deteriorate and store fronts board up.
Why? One possible answer can be directed at the policy prescriptions whose origins lie in the perceptions of a particular, insular cultural elite.
The elite’s response to anyone harmed is a galling condescension and social engineering. Opposition is ridiculed. People experiencing the negative fallout will be directed into the “proper” behaviors and “proper” occupations. Their children will be directed into the “proper” thoughts. The near totalitarian dimensions of the outlook is obvious.
The political dimensions are equally obvious. The blue along the coasts, and in the urban and college islands, corresponds with the cultural elite (map above). The red is everyone else. The Trump movement was a revolt, a revolt of middle-America against the condescension and effrontery of a cultural claque residing in “blue” America.
It will be interesting as the Democrats try to reshuffle their ideological deck to make it more appealing to blue collars. I’m reminded, though, of the adage about lipstick on a pig.
RogerG
Sources:
(1) Losing Ground, Charles Murray
(2) Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, Charles Murray
(3) Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, J.D. Vance
(4) Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, Robert D. Putnam
(5) “Diversity in Environmental Organizations”, Sierra Club, 9/9/14, http://www.sierraclub.org/planet/2014/09/diversity-environmental-organizations
I support Trump with reservations. I opposed him in the primaries but voted for him, with reluctance, in the general. I retain my doubts. My observations aren’t those of a Trump zealot nor those of the rabid left. Clearly put, his election was a gathering of middle-America in opposition to the growing ascendancy of an insular, self-anointed elite.
By “middle-America”, I mean those people not graced with membership in one of the fashionable victims’ groups. It’s “middle” also geographically. As a glance at the election map indicates, Trump’s success was founded on a citizenry not privileged with residence on the trendy coasts, nor in a densely-packed urban agglomerate, nor a college cocoon.
If America is divided, the growing gulf lies between the insular places of swank values and their pet issues and the aspiring social middle scattered in “flyover country”.
Those outside the bubbles aren’t enamored by the chic but smothering outlook of the “beautiful people”. Inside the bubbles, lefty progressivism is the catechism.
The “Lefty” part of the reigning dogma in the blue archipelagos is a single-minded belief in the Marxist dictum of material conditions being all-determining in human relations. Thus the lefty fixation on equalizing material conditions, and almost everything else. Surprise, that requires mammoth government.
The alliance of the left with government is a natural one. The left needs power to transform people and society. They need a cadre of enforcers and self-proclaimed “experts” to meddle into lives and shape a new society. It’s what Obama and the Democrats tried to do while constrained by the limits of republican government.
Those of the left are totally oblivious of the Orwellian trap depicted in Animal Farm. Painted on the side of the barn is the pigs’ new maxim, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” In the Soviet Union it was called the “nomenklatura”. In America, today, it’s called the administrative state. It’s a metastasizing power base increasingly shielded from democratic accountability.
The “progressive” element is the conviction that government is the most important agency for the achievement of a person’s highest potential. For progressives, power is ensconced in a self-anointed class of elites – those so-called “experts”. In reality, their grasp on wisdom is highly suspect. Many are corrupted by progressive ideology and excessive self-confidence. It’s the reason that “climate change” fits so neatly into their platform.
Furthermore, “potential” is left nebulous – tailor-made for the accretion of power into the state. The state becomes isolated, unaccountable, and far removed from the vast middle of the country, where we find the sort of people who pay and receive little benefit.
Trump’s constituency is the real forgotten man and woman not so privileged by the adoring gaze of lefty progressives and their shock troops of “experts”. The real forgotten American is only a target for social engineering.
Funny thing about this isolated elite: they don’t know themselves to be so parochial. They’re completely unaware. Self-reflection isn’t one of their strengths. They were blinkered by an ideology – leftist progressivism – that was ever-present in their environs, and few other places. In the end, they were blindsided by an election.
Let me get this out of the way: I voted for Trump, probably for the same reason as many other voters. The election was a choice between a Republican and another Democrat promising to continue the leftward lurch of the country. My vote for Trump was a stopgap vote.
Yet, it is undeniable that Trump has twisted some on the right, especially at Fox News, into knots. Trump appears to have a conservative core, with a whole lot of inconsistencies and contradictions attached. At times, he is incoherent. At other times, he is a petulant boor … and incoherent. Still, the Trump adulation has turned some on the right into sycophantic apologists for everythingTrump. They have become what Trump is, seemingly unaware of the contradictions, hypocrisies, and buffoonery.
My favorite example is Sean Hannity. For years, before the rise of Trump, he proudly proclaimed, “I am a conservative, not a Republican”. He was a booster for everything Reagan. Today, he’s a mouthpiece for everything Trump.
In 1988, in the VP debate, Bentsen said to Quayle, “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” Well, Hannity, I knew Reagan. Trump is no Reagan!
Reagan was a free trader but had to make compromises in the reality of governing. Nothing new here. Reagan’s characteristic free trade bonafides were clear when he said in 1986, “Our trade policy rests firmly on the foundation of free and open markets. I recognize . . . the inescapable conclusion that all of history has taught: The freer the flow of world trade, the stronger the tides of human progress and peace among nations.” His protectionism in autos and electronics were adjustments to political realities.
Where’s Trump vis-a-vis Reagan and trade? In debate he said, “Because I did disagree with Ronald Reagan very strongly on trade. I disagreed with him. We should have been much tougher on trade even then. I’ve been waiting for years. Nobody does it right.” Trump’s egotism is boundless. Only he can do trade right.
And to do it right means “protectionism” – undoubtedly – even if Trump can’t bring himself to use the word. Neither can Hannity. As Trump goes, theTrumpkins mindlessly go. People like Hannity just kicked Reagan overboard to be replaced by their new infatuation – Trump.
Anything and any person not glowing in their praise of Trump will set off derision. Does anybody doubt Hannity’s many interviews of Trump to be softball? Megyn Kelly had the temerity to mention it alongside Clinton’s puff interviews. Hannity went ballistic on Megyn on Twitter, “@megynkelly u should be mad at @HillaryClinton Clearly you support her.” The love of Trump trumps network comradery.
Let’s leave aside Hannity and turn to Tucker Carlson. Trump mouths the AFL-CIO line on trade and jobs; Carlson pushes a question that would make any government-loving liberal economist beam in envy: “Will driverless cars soon put Americans out of work?” I know, I know. It’s just a question. But the line of questioning is Luddite. When did automation become the bete noire? I suspect the simple-minded influence of Trump. Take a look.
Trump thinks that free trade sacrifices jobs. It’s not a huge leap to think that automation does as well. The new economic catechism seems to demand government power to determine what to produce, how to produce, and who to sell it to. Socialism anyone? The Trump knot has become Gordian.
Lost in the Trump-love is the Reaganite fusion of free market economics, social traditionalism, and a masculine foreign policy. Prior to Trump, people on the right were aware that automation doesn’t produce a net loss of jobs any more than the invention of the automobile in the 30-40 years from the internal combustion engine to Henry Ford’s Model T. Smoot-Hawley left its own foul taste. Trump gives us the chance to repeat the lunacies, and the lemmings follow in his wake.
