Tag Archives: Jimmy Carter

Point of View Columns

A Day in the Life of America

July 30, 2020

4,427,493 –150, 716 (number of confirmed COVID-19 cases – the number of dead Americans at the beginning of the day)

Sometime early this morning Trump decided to do yet one more thing that no president has ever seriously considered. Tweeting his concern about the fable of potential fraud in mail in voting in November, he mused that it might be useful to postpone the election. The fact that no president has even suggested that elections should be moved even during the Civil War or World War I or World War II should be reason enough to consider Trump to be uttering pure madness.

But that would be a mistake. Dismissing Trump as mad, an idiot, an ignorant Neanderthal. He may be all of these things, but he is clearly high functioning and tens of millions of MAGA hat wearing/bleach drinking/no mask wearing supporters will follow him lemming-like over the cliff toward authoritarianism. The message from his message – do not ignore or dismiss him, consider the danger and prepare to defend the system.

And of course, it may be that this particular mud ball was hurled in order to distract Americans from the worst economic news – the largest decline in the GDP of the United States in history. And we once again realize that Trumpadamus was looking into the future when, on January 20, 2017, Trump declared that when he looked at the United States he saw “American carnage”.

Of course there was no carnage then, but there is now. Fifty million Americans have lost their jobs, over 4 million Americans are infected with the COVID-19 pandemic and ov150,000 Americans have died and by Election Day the number is trending towards at least a quarter of a million. Discontent and protest is surging through the country in response to the systemic racism that Trump so eloquently represents and the status of this country abroad is at its lowest point since some time in the 19th century.

So yes – “American carnage” it is.

And then there was the sublime aspect of the day. The funeral of John Lewis at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the pastoral home of both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr. There could be no more fitting venue for the home going celebration of the life of a great man. Three former presidents were there – George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama – Jimmy Carter, who is 95, did not attend for obvious health concerns but he did send a message. It goes without saying that Trump did not attend.

If he had, it would have been as if a disheveled drunken uncle showed up at a wedding celebration. He would have been admitted, but he would not have been welcome.

To his credit, Trump’s prejudice and bigotry guided him to make the right choice and let the world know what he thought of John Lewis and the ideals which guided his life. Trump could have sent Vice President Pence, or Ben Carson, the only Black member of his cabinet, or at least a faux letter of condolences in the fashion of the inimitable Senator Marco Rubio who posted a photograph of Elijah Cummings when “mourning” the death of John Lewis on Twitter.

But true to his racist heart he did nothing – not even a passing mention at his press conference later in the day.

And, to say that Barack Obama’s eulogy was eloquent would be beyond understatement. In addition to honoring John Lewis he also reaffirmed the commitment to dignity and justice that has been obscured by the orange clouds emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And in honoring John Lewis he also honored the movement towards racial justice which existed before John Lewis was born and continues after his death.

Obama clearly enumerated the epic levels of injustice including police brutality and the suppression of Black votes. He pulled no rhetorical punches and his call to action was loud and clear. John Lewis would have been proud to know that his legacy, and that of so many others, would continue and prevail.

And last but not certainly not least, Obama reminded us of what a President looks like. He reminded us of what presidential leadership looks like. And he made America how far we have fallen during the Trump regime.

During his press conference Trump recited a series of statistics to make us ignore that although this country has 5% of the world’s population, we have 25% of the global COVID-19 cases. He spoke about PPE’s in the hundreds of thousands when that might be the requirement for a single major U.S. city in a single week.

Indeed, the more he spoke, disjointedly and scarily detached, the more concerned we should be that the ship of state is being steered by a captain who is totally incapable of getting the ship to safe harbor.

November 3rd. cannot come soon enough.

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Point of View Columns

Donald Trump and “Straight Talk”

One of the more interesting aspects of the Trump candidacy is how he is able to give voice to the major and minor prejudices and bias that infect the national bloodstream – doing so in a way that is supposed to be “straight talk”. His “straight talk” is appreciated by a significant part of the right wing of the right wing of the Teapublican Party. We will see how far “straight talk will take him”.

We have already heard Donald Trump attack, demean and demonize Mexican American immigrants, and by extension immigrants from just about anywhere in the world where white people are not the native population. He took a baby step backward by admitting that not all Mexican American immigrants are rapists, and that was very kind of him. But he still paints these immigrants as the lesser, as the other, as the unwanted in America.

And because this is supposed to be “straight talk”, not bigoted and hateful discourse, he has not disqualified himself to be President of the United States. Indeed, on August 6th, The Donald will be center stage at the first Teapublican presidential debate, playing the role of the leading candidate. Clearly, “straight talk” trumps the dog whistle rhetoric engaged in by the likes of Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, et. al.

It appears that under the heading of “straight talk”, Donald Trump can get away with saying anything. In his passionate crusade to denigrate President Obama at any and every opportunity, he has departed from his “birther cruise to nowhere” and now is intent on proving that the president is incompetent, weak and “the worst president in the history of this country”.

Never one to let the truth get in the way, Trump conveniently omits President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize, his leading the country out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, saving the auto industry, saving the banking industry, instituting a national healthcare system and establishing a financial services regulatory system that most probably would have saved this country from the aforementioned economic crisis had it been in effect in 2007.

Trump is so concerned about being a “winner”, despite the multiple bankruptcies of companies with the Trump name and his own flirtations with personal financial disaster. But being such a “winner”, one would think that Trump would appreciate the fact that Barack Obama won the presidency with more than 50% of the popular vote – twice. President Obama is the only person to do that since President Eisenhower over a half a century ago. That should make him a “winner” by the Trump standard. But then, Donald Trump has never let facts get in the way of a good diatribe.

And so, as he continues his rant about the failures and deficiencies of Barack Obama, Trump engages in “straight talk”, saying that President Obama will make it impossible for another African American to be elected president “for generations”. Such language and thinking is precisely the source of the racist virus that has afflicted this country from its very inception.

Even if one wishes to accept Donald Trump’s outlandish assessment of President Obama’s record, even if he were as bad as George W. Bush – he of the stolen election and lie-based wars – why would that keep another African American from being elected president? Jimmy Carter was not considered to have a particularly outstanding one term presidency, but that did not prevent another white Southerner, Bill Clinton, from being elected twelve years later.

The racist tone and logic of Donald Trump’s statements regarding the election prospects of future African Americans, in the name of “straight talk”, is actually an illustration of dog whistle politics without the dog whistle. He is only saying what too many white Americans still believe. The shame of Donald Trump’s rhetoric is that too many Americans are listening and liking it.

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Point of View Columns

Land of the Rising South

Like a bad smell that just won’t go away, the myth of the glorious South refuses to die. Incredibly and unfortunately, that myth has enjoyed a recurring renaissance since the founding of this country. And now that myth has morphed into a nihilistic political philosophy that is far from quaint and very close to dangerous.

While racism and slavery were very much a part of the way of life in all thirteen of the original colonies, as much as gravity and oxygen in the air, slavery drove down its deepest sociopolitical roots in the primarily agrarian Southern colonies. The incredible wealth fueled by cheap human labor satisfied the monetary needs of a few and slaked the thirst for superiority of the many. This combination of monetary and psychic satisfaction was so potent that the Southern colonies, once they became states, were willing to fight to the death to preserve this peculiarly horrific institution called white supremacist slavery.

History tells us that the division between North and South played a pivotal role in the drafting of the Constitution which shamefully labeled black slaves 3/5 of a human being and established a bicameral legislature which insured that states with smaller populations (the Southern states at the time) would be on a par with states with larger populations. The structure of this new government also locked in provisions which allowed a minority to obstruct, delay and sometimes destroy initiatives that represented the will of the majority.

A brief stroll down the memory lane of American history reveals that two of the first three presidents were Southern slave owners (Washington and Jefferson). However the last Southern slave owning president was Andrew Jackson and since then very few Southerners have become president.

Woodrow Wilson was the first Southern elected in the modern era and he brought his racist roots with him into the White House with the infamous premiere viewing of “Birth of a Nation”. The next Southerner elected president was Lyndon Johnson and since then only Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were born Southerners elected to the White House (the two Bushes were born in Connecticut).

Despite being denied the presidency, the South has wielded inordinate power, first in foiling the civil rights movement for the first half of the twentieth century and now in seeking to dismantle the federal government in the first two decades of the twenty first century. Utilizing the leverage built into the legislative process by Washington, Jefferson and the other slave owning Founding Fathers, the Southern way has impacted this country, particularly on matters of race, all out of proportion to the moral, economic or demographic weight of the region.

Now the Southern strategy has morphed into a political philosophy that, if adopted by the country as a whole, is virtually suicidal. The federal governmental infrastructure is a key reason why this country, even with all of its flaws, has been successful in establishing a standard of living and a way of life that is historically remarkable. The idea that “government is the enemy”, a Southern lie promulgated by Ronald Reagan in a faux Southern moment, comes from the fact that in the South the federal government has indeed been the enemy of the Southern way of life.

It was the federal government that outlawed slavery and essentially burned the South to ground in the process. It has been less than two centuries since this bit of business was concluded and that is a blink of the eye in historical – and cultural – terms.

It was the federal government that dismantled the apparatus of Jim Crow and legalized segregation, using federal soldiers, federal judges and federal prosecutors to enforce this process. That took place less than fifty years ago, a mere heartbeat in historical terms.

In the Southern narrative, government as “the enemy” fits very nicely with those who would wish to dismantle government so as to reduce taxes to an afterthought as they amass untold wealth. Government as “the enemy” also fits in nicely with neoconservative thought that would reduce government regulations in industry and financing letting the market forces prevail (another term would be letting market forces run wild).

It would seem that this would be a good time to connect the dots before this country follows the stars and bars over the cliff.

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