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trendingnewsb · 6 years

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As Trumps Racism Pisses Off an Entire Continent, Oprah Winfrey Starts to Make More Sense

This week, America endured two new developments in the continuing chaos of our politics: Donald Trumps reprehensible slander against the 54 nations on the African continent and the people of Haiti; and the floating of Oprah Winfrey as the 46th American president. The two seem unrelated. I would suggest they are not.

Trumps inability to contain his racist tick once again exposed the crude xenophobia and fear of the future that his political movement represents, and the downward moral drift of the Republican Party. It also struck yet another Trumpian blow to Americas soft power.

Trump is reviled around the world, as is the U.S. under his leadership. The United Nations high commissioner on human rights denounced his vile remarks. Haitians rose in mass fury online. The African Union, which cooperates with us on anti-terrorism efforts that include some 6,000 U.S. soldiers deployed on the continent, demanded an apology. What country would welcome the American president to their capitol today? Surely none in Africa, where country after country issued withering condemnations of Trump on Friday and where China is already being welcomed in as the new global economic hegemon. Not Great Britain, whose Commonwealth includes several countries that would make Trump's "shithole" list and which had already so rebelled against a presidential visit that it finally frightened the American bully away. And not even Norway, Trumps go-to source for fresh, white immigrant recruits, whose citizens took to Twitter Friday to pour on the Trump loathing.

Trump cannot exert the moral authority normally commanded by the American president. His few international friends have their own fiendish reputations. Israel is led by a perennial cynic who when hes not stomping Palestinian hopes into the ground or being embarrassed by his ironically alt-right son, remains under a criminal corruption investigation. Tayyip Erdogan allegedly colluded with the disgraced former National Security Adviser of the United States to kidnap a Turkish migr and rendition him to Ankara to answer for a 2016 coup. Trump has humbled our country under the shadow of Chinas autocrat Xi Jinping. He pals around with the proud butcher Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines. And he continues to both emulate and worship the thuggish kleptocrat Vladimir Putin.

In the epic Netflix series The Crown, a young future Queen Elizabeth takes her studies, such as they are, and is instructed by her tutor that the British government operates best when there is harmony between its two parts: the efficient, which makes and executes the laws, and the dignified, which legitimizes the enterprise through the moral authority of the Crown. The American presidency combines elements of the efficient and the dignified. The president presides over governance not making legislation but proposing it, cajoling the co-equal federal legislature and then signing and executing the laws. But he and so far it has always been a he also gives the national government its face, its image and its global reputation. Donald Trump, perhaps because as Michael Wolff posits in his opus, Fire and Fury, is in the grip of mental decline, clearly cannot execute the efficient. He is like a child king being plied with chocolate cake and led around by a gaggle of self-serving regents including Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and the other congressional suck-ups who use their outward sycophancy to bend Trump to their legislative will. But it is his inability to fulfill the dignified that has been the most stressful, humiliating, and indeed dangerous for our democracy.

Which brings us to Oprah Winfrey.

Now, I will admit that I was merely having fun when I tweeted on Golden Globes night the now well-worn meme, nothing but love for my president, in reaction to her powerful speech upon accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award. I even threw in a little dig at the other seemingly absurdist 2020 presidential candidate Dwayne The Rock Johnson, whom I demoted to Bizarro World V.P. But apparently, people across this Trump-exhausted nation are taking the idea of a second consecutive celebrity POTUS seriously.

And while part of me ok most of me recoils at the idea of codifying the Trump presidential model with a famous follow-on, as the nations moral meltdown continues, I cannot discount the idea of President Oprah out of hand. Heres why.

America tells itself a lot of lies, but none so bald faced as the one that we are a high-minded people who choose our presidents based on a strict study of their qualifications and their history of exceptional governance.

On the contrary, Americans rarely know much about our candidates other than the log lines of their bios: that they are or were a governor, a Senator, or a military general (the three most frequent categories from which our presidents have come). Until the mid-1960s, popular will played no part in the choice of which candidates got the nominations of the two major parties. The decision was made in back rooms or by exclusive state conventions and caucuses, with a few beauty contest primaries thrown in for show. Thus, the candidates who competed every fourth November were the product of party and media personality marketing. (The media has never been particularly good at explaining the actual ideas at issue in campaigns.) Americans instinctively respond to a gut feeling about those candidates, to their own partisanship and political tribalism, and to intangible characteristics about the people on the ballot, not to the details of their resumes.

Andrew Jackson, Trumps inspiration and the genocidal maniac behind the trail of tears, became president on the strength of his national fame as a military man during the war of 1812.

Likewise, Dwight Eisenhower, a decent, honorable man who had never even voted, was offered the Democratic nomination by Harry Truman in 1948 and turned it down before being offered the Republican nomination by the back room boys four years later. Why did he accept in 1952, and why did he win? Because the five star general and supreme allied commander of NATO was the most famous and popular figure to emerge from World War II.

Popularity has always been the key currency in choosing a president. Lincoln, who had only a state senate career plus one two-year term in congress from 1847-1849 to recommend him, boosted his fame via a series of entertaining and nationally-publicized debates with Illinois Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas in 1858. Lincoln lost the seat, which at the time was chosen by the state legislature, but his Republican Party won the popular vote, and the Lincoln for President buzz inside the Republican Party began.

Franklin Roosevelt was the governor of New York when he ran for president in 1932, but its much more likely that his famous surname and association with his fifth cousin, swashbuckling former president Teddy Roosevelt did the trick. (FDRs wife Eleanor was T.R.s niece, to make matters even more fun.) And it was his personal charisma that transformed FDR from what political opinion-shaper of the time Walter Lippmann described as, a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be president, to a man many Americans quite literally made president for life.

John F. Kennedy was a Senate back-bencher whose lead qualities were his war heroism, his telegenic face and family, and the Hollywood glamour and flush of youth the Kennedys offered the nation. Id wager few Americans could recite a single thing Kennedy had done in Congress, though his opponents made sure everybody knew he was Catholic, forcing JFK to give a speech reassuring the country that that his religious affiliation wasnt dangerous.

Likewise, who could recite Ronald Reagans gubernatorial record when Americans overwhelmingly chose the glitz of celebrity over the drone of moral rectitude that had catapulted Jimmy Carter to office in 1976, when America needed to wash away the stain of preeminently qualified and governmentally experienced, yet thoroughly crooked Richard Nixon.

Every president since Reagans third term otherwise known as George Herbert Walker Bush has followed suit.

The country felt rejuvenated by young Bill Clinton, who laid on the swagger on MTV and by blowing into his saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show. America wanted to have a beer with George W. Bush, the weak governor of Texas whose surname imparted familiarity and comfort versus the stiff, unrelatable Al Gore and the far more qualified but thoroughly uncool John Kerry. And lets face it: Barack Obama, with his youth, charisma, boundless (and brilliantly marketed) hopefulness and come together charm brought home in the 2004 convention speech that launched his presidential buzz plus his phalanx of celebrity endorsers including Will.I.Am, Jay Z, Beyonce, and yes, Oprah, was not just a better candidate; he was much cooler than John McCain.

And then theres Donald Trump, whose crass commercial appeal resonated in what the media lovingly calls middle America, better known as the vast swath of the country that spends more time watching ESPN, home improvement shows and The Apprentice than political cable news. Sure he lost the popular vote to the studious, completely qualified but poorly marketed would-be First Woman President, Hillary Clinton, but its where he won that mattered: in the sparsely populated, anti-intellectual parts of the country favored by the Electoral College.

Democrats might not want to face this truth, but it is reality. Trump exposed America for what it is: a country that responds to celebrity and simple messages that appeal to the gut rather than the mind, and which often mistakes riches for intelligence, and fame for capability.

Trump was the absurdist end stage of this creeping self-revelation. Some 63 million Americans responded to his crude calls for a 1950s Christo-racial revival and his solution to the Archie Bunker riddle about the "unfairness of equality," namely: "what's the point of a man working hard all his life if all he's gonna wind up is equal?"

Given that reality, why would Democrats continue to pretend that what Americans want is a two-term governor or Senator with a lengthy legislative record when what they really want is a national show? And if there must be a show, why not cast it with a woman as gifted, charismatic and emotionally intelligent as Oprah Winfrey?

Unlike Trump, Oprahs story is true Americana. She rose from dire poverty and abuse to become a real billionaire, not a theoretical one who inherited his racist daddys money like Trump (before he started grubbing for emoluments via the presidency). Unlike Trump, who boasts he is, like, a very smart person, Oprah has clear intellectual gifts, plus the ability to leaven those gifts with mass appeal and empathy. Unlike Trump, she is a phenomenal businesswoman, not someone who played one on TV. Presumably, unlike Trump, Oprah, who counts among her friends Barack and Michelle Obama, would likely surround herself with the keenest political, economic and scientific minds as president. She would study, unlike Trump. She would care about policy, unlike Trump. And she would perform the efficient functions of government with the alacrity of a woman who built herself into a one-word empire, while pulling off the dignified with the aplomb of a professional communicator.

And because Oprah is as famous as she is, she could campaign in a way no other candidate for president could: without the grimy mud-slinging and desperation to please donors and become known.

None of this is to say that Oprah should do it. By running for president she would risk opening herself up to the kind of shredding, partisan attacks that destroy lives. She has already attracted scrutiny of her background and businesses choices, just by being mentioned. (Remember The Secret? Her critics do, although Id wager most average Americans would shrug off the criticism and probably still buy the book today.) Winning the presidency has become a miserable gauntlet that few people can withstand. And having gotten a taste of the maelstrom, from white women who were outraged that she chose Obama over Hillary Clinton in 2008 and fans who thought her insufficiently outraged by Trumps victory to those on the left who are already tagging her as an evil, rich neoliberal, she might not want to bother. After all, havent black women been asked to clean up enough messes we didnt create?

In the end, quite frankly, the White House might be too small for a woman of Oprahs queenly stature. Its a constricting glass box that Winfrey, who one of my work colleagues calls the freest black woman in America might not want to shrink herself into. Unlike in the GOP, where brute charisma is everything (see: Palin, Sarah and Trump, Donald), to win over the determined sophisticates in the Democratic donor and media class, Oprah would need to show the kind of detailed policy acumen that Obama and Bill Clinton brought with them to the table. Though again, I dont think any of that matters to the general electorate.

But whether or not she should run for president, or would even want to, lets not kid ourselves. If she ran, Oprah could win. She could win because despite being black and a woman, who would likely still lose a majority of white womens votes to whatever Republican ran against her, including Donald Trump, those very qualities would help her turn out the 200,000 additional votes in Milwaukee, Detroit and Philadelphia that cost Hillary Clinton the Electoral College. And she could win because Oprah is more than the sum of her demographic parts. She is a rich celebrity with universal name recognition who is generally beloved among a cross-section of Americans across the political divide at least, until the attack ads begin.

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/as-trumps-racism-pisses-off-an-entire-continent-oprah-winfrey-starts-to-make-more-sense

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viralhottopics · 7 years

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Burst your bubble: conservatives on Trump, opioids and the religious right

Disillusionment on the right continues, as conservatives question Trumps role in the establishment and consider Reagans link to todays drug crisis

Once again this week, we have seen titanic conservative disillusionment with Trumpism, and not just from the usual suspects. Some social issues, such as opioid addiction, have become too pressing even for conservatives to ignore.

American carnage

Publication: First Things

Author: Christopher Caldwell is a senior writer at the neocon flagship the Weekly Standard, and a regular contributor to the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, where he is a contributing editor.

Why you should read it: Progressives may not agree with Caldwells take on Americas opioid epidemic, but it would be hard to deny that he takes it seriously.

Reporters including Chris McGreal at the Guardian have brought the opioid epidemic to broader public attention. Here, Caldwell wonders what is to be done. He acknowledges that it is intertwined with the alienation that comes from social and economic breakdown. He even concedes that Reaganism wound up enlisting the American middle class in the project of its own dispossession. But he denies that treating it as a health problem, as progressives generally recommend, is a solution.

Wherever you stand on big pharma, the war on drugs, or addiction, you need to pay attention to the conservatives who are formulating new responses to Americas plague of addiction. This terrible issue isnt going anywhere fast, and we need to understand how the right is trying to frame it.

Extract: Todays opioid epidemic is, in part, an unintended consequence of the Reagan era. America in the 1980s and 1990s was guided by a coalition of profit-seeking corporations and concerned traditional communities, both of which had felt oppressed by a high-handed government. But whereas Reaganism gave real power to corporations, it gave only rhetorical power to communities. Eventually, when the interests of corporations and communities clashed, the former were in a position to wipe the latter out. The politics of the 1980s wound up enlisting the American middle class in the project of its own dispossession.

When does Trump become the establishment?

Publication: Conservative Review

Author: When he found himself on the wrong side of Breitbarts primary-era civil war, the writer Ben Shapiro flounced. Now he shops his wares all over the #nevertrump parts of the conservative mediasphere. I would never advise that you make a habit of reading Shapiro, but he discloses something interesting here.

Why you should read it: Shapiro may not be the worlds best analyst, but the piece offers a good insight into the reptilian mindset of a certain subset of conservatives as they gleefully watch the Trump presidency derail.

A couple of years back, Jackie Calmes published research for Harvards Kennedy School about the ways in which conservative medias maniacal anti-establishment orientation made it impossible for conservatives to govern. That research suddenly looks more relevant than ever. Trumps presidential campaign was the apotheosis of anti-establishment animus. But ever since his Trumpcare failure, hes looking more and more like he might end up on the wrong end of Republican anti-elitism. If you listen carefully, you can hear them sharpening their knives.

Extract: President Trump is anti-establishment when it comes to persona, of course he thinks that every governmental Gordian knot can be cut, that he can simply bulldoze his opposition, that deals are for sissies and that tough guys finish first. But the deals he wants to cut look a lot more like former President George W Bushs compassionate conservatism than they do like the Tea Party agenda.

The crisis of Trumpism

Publication: Politico

Author: Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review, and regularly bobs up on Fox News and Politico. However many bad calls hes made, or windmills hes tilted at, his office means that people tend to give weight to what he says. This goes double for the occasions upon which he deigns to talk sense.

Why you should read it: For now, its hard to argue with the basic thrust of this piece which is probably why it was trending on Twitter last night. Whatever Trump appeared to promise, and whatever he may yowl into Twitters great maw, he doesnt appear to have anyone around him who is able to translate his instincts into something that may one day resemble a legislative program. In two years, if the administration has righted itself, it may seem as a premature and self-serving article. This week, its compelling.

Extract: Trumpism is in crisis. This isnt a function of poll numbers, or the Russia controversy, or any other melodrama of the past three months, but something more fundamental: no officeholder in Washington seems to understand President Donald Trumps populism or have a cogent theory of how to effect it in practice, including the president himself.

Does the religious rights decline help the alt-right?

Publication: The American Conservative

Author: George Hawley wrote last years best, and most prescient, book on the conservative crack-up that led us to Trump.

Why you should read it: Hawley responds to Peter Beinarts article in the Atlantic, which urged progressives not to dance on the grave of the Christian right, since its decline has empowered the alt-right. Hawley looks at the data and finds that in fact, theres not a straightforward relationship between religious observance and feelings of white identity. For better or worse, if the Christian right is declining, its hard to tell what, if any, effect this is having on the re-emergence of explicit white nationalism in American politics.

Extract: It is probably not a coincidence that explicit rightwing racial politics began to rise as the religious right declined. But it would be a mistake to assume that Christianity is necessarily a boon or a detriment to white identity politics. Although a post-religious right may be more dangerous to liberal values than the religious right ever was, we should not exaggerate the degree to which Christianity serves as an ideological constraint. Christians have felt perfectly comfortable with many kinds of governments promoting many kinds of policies, and that will likely remain the case for the foreseeable future.

House Republicans revoke Obama internet privacy rules

Publication: Breitbart

Author: Sean Moran is a Breitbart drone who previously did a couple of internships in the conservative end of the Washington swamp.

Forget him, youre here for the comment thread.

Why you should read it: On Tuesday, Congress voted to revoke the FCCs internet privacy rules, opening the way for internet service providers to mine, use and monetize data scooped up from their customers. Trump supports them in this. But in doing so hes made some of the angry nerds who supported him angrier still. In the comment threads, watch them try to reconcile themselves with the fact that Trump doesnt give a hoot about them.

Extract: Wow, amazing that some Trump-bots are ok with this, because Republicans signed off on it and you have Trump as POTUS.

If these privacy rules, the EXACT SAME RULES, were to be revoked in a Democrat controlled Congress and a Dem in the White House, the Trump-bots would be screaming bloody murder!

If you are only morally outraged when the other party does something but ok with it when your party does that exact same thing, youre a partisan hypocrite.

Kudos to the Trump supporters who are calling out this BS for what it is.