So terribly true. ..but perhaps, PERHAPS, we as a society, like a recovering alcoholic, may be hitting rock-bottom, as seemingly the horror show we’ve lived through the past year can’t get much worse; if we can societally realize our rock-bottom, then from this perhaps we can recover, and grow, out of the drunken-stupor myths that have deluded us, and which have kept from us the greatness that we thought we had. And we still can.
35
This piece exemplifies the fact that Donald Trump's political action claims during the course of his candidacy should not have outweighed his controversial actions in terms of the American people's vote. Millions of Americans turned a blind eye to many of Donald Trump's actions because they were simply in favor of some of his economic and foreign affairs policy, when in reality they should have been looking at the precedent he was going to set for this nation. As the President of the United States, all eyes are pointed in his direction, and his personal image is extremely vital and representative of the image of our nation internationally. Unfortunately, President Trump has not learned how to represent this nation properly, and continues to utter vulgar and even racist remarks on a weekly basis for the whole world to see. Those who were once in favor of his presidency due to his policy now even find themselves complaining about all of the comments he has made and scandal he has started or been involved in. Some are even wishing they could have taken their vote back. Hopefully the future of the American presidency will be different, and another individual similar to Trump will not wind up in the white house. His presidency is also a wake up call for many Americans, to the fact that to be the President of the United States of America, your policy not only has to be innovative and representative of the American people, but your attitude must set a positive image for the world.
13
There was the myth, yes, however this essay appears to generalize from the nasty parts of our history to the mindset of every current American. There are plenty of decent people who are itching for Trump to be called to account, to be asked ala Joseph McCarthy whether he has any decency, any shame. He has none but that's not my individual fault - I didn't help elect him. The tone of this essay is to suggest that there has been no progress overall towards better treatment of the old, the weak, the sick, the disabled, children and minorities and there has been. Not uniformly by any means - there are nastly corners aplenty in a country the size of the US - but as much or more social progress than in other countries of comparable size and heterogeneity.
Until Trump this was the country to which students flocked and to which emigrants hoped to come legally. There's no country of any size with clean hands. The Canadians and Australians did unspeakable things to native people until recently; the Aussies are currently abusing would-be immigrants whom they imprison on tiny islands. The French were vicious colonialists as were the Germans, the Belgians, the Spanish, the Portuguese. We don't have jails full of political prisoners nor government-sanctioned pogroms. It all went down the drain here when Trump was elected; our beacon went out. However I venture to state that the majority of Americans are somewhere between upset and horrified about the recent turn of political events.
25
So, given what a vile piece of work Trump is, and the similarly repellent characteristics of his enablers in congress and the senate, why aren't the Democrats invincible in any political race held outside of a rural county somewhere south of the mason dixon line?
What prevents the Democrats from forming a platform encompassing the center of the political spectrum, and rejecting the far right lunacy and bigotry that put Trump in office.
Are the Dems in fact so beholden to their corporate backers that they have no intention of offering anything other than token opposition to the corporate onslaught against the common citizen?
12
Jamil, your observation regarding DJT's appetite for destruction is spot on. I, like so many Americans, shared in our national delusion until the night DJT was elected. For anyone who bothered to pay attention, DJT has performed exactly as he did during the election, before the election, and throughout his life. It is no accident that the inheritance of the unresolved American Civil War was finally the election of an overtly racist, misogynistic, profoundly ignorant American President. I remember from my youth all those bumper stickers with confederate flags prophesying that the "South would rise again". To our national shame, it finally has.
36
Great article. Conservatives go on and on about freedom and liberty while working hard to limit those ideas to a worthy few. Liberals are equally hypocritical screaming for justice for illegal immigrants while excusing businesses who create the problem by hiring them in the first place. It’s easy to see without looking too far that our politics is not about our values. As a country, we value money. Period. A consumer’s paradise is what we’ve created, and the boob-way-zee are far more concentrated on their toys than on the government.
13
As the epitome of all that is wrong with predatory laissez-faire capitalism, Donald Trump has been just the medicine that Americans needed -- the emetic we needed to vomit up the rancid neoliberal stew we've been fed for 40 years -- ever since Reagan began to demolish the social democracy of FDR's New Deal. Trump's racism may be flagrant, but it's no more virulent than that of the Clintons -- who we must remember, ended Aid for Dependent Children ("welfare") and began the largest mass incarceration program in human history, targeting African-American, primarily, with catastrophic effects on communities across the US. Jamail Smith is correct: "what so many like to think of the good old days weren't actually so good." Trump is shoving this in our faces every day. Good!
8
This is the only opinion piece in the Times that I remember ever having read with which I couldn't say there was at least some part with which I didn't agree. Too complicated? I agree with every last word he wrote!
36
"We have met the enemy and he is us" - Pogo - earth day 1970
22
I'm really tired of this. A small shift in votes in a handful of states, not to mention direct election of the president rather than via the obsolete electoral college, and the psychopath sitting in the White House would no longer be part of the national conversation -- let alone the national obsession. He would be sitting stinking on the dung heap of history, where he's headed, rather than stinking up the presidency. Donald Trump has something important to teach us of the extent to which we no longer have a genuine democracy, and the urgent need to fix this, but nothing to teach us about who we are.
30
Really? So the support of a few thousand fewer voters would fundamentally change the character of the United States? The fact that 49%, or even 35%, of the population support this vile philosophy unfortunately tells us something that you would rather not hear.
So trump has woke people up to the meaner demons of our nature. Maybe...maybe, a groundswell of righteous indignation about ourselves will push republicans out of office. Then we can all go back to sleep.
8
The hypocrisy of the morality police electing a hedonistic malcontent like Trump is so delicious. How can evangelicals expect to be taken seriously?
26
I am of the opinion that Trump is sui generis - one of a kind. Yes, he showed us that many of us are not good at voting, and that scoundrels can get away with a lot. But Trump won't be president forever, thank god. And I think that after he is gone, if somebody tries to pull his shtick again, he (and it would have to be a he) will not get far. So many of us have been so sickened by his administration that I don't think that the majority, even with gerrymandering and the Electoral College, will let it happen again. Trump really took a moment in time when he could take advantage of the white anger in the country, and he was a reality-show star that everybody was familiar with. And he was so well-known as a vile and vulgar person that calling him a vile and vulgar person is redundant. You can't paint someone effectively if he is already painted. We just had a great many people who were able to tolerate a well-known TV star and his vulgarity and his racism.
Trump's time will come. So will that of the corrupt Republican congress. This era will be looked upon with shame and disgust by all historians except for the racist and nativist. I believe that we, the good people among us, will rise up and get rid of this monster and his henchmen, and he won't happen again until institutional memory fails, like the way people forgot about Vietnam.
29
Excellent column. With the Times's pageful of pro-Trump letters, the recent rise in his approval ratings, and now this column, I've finally moved from denial and anger to acceptance. It hurts, but it's important, and, in some bizarro way, it's a relief to have the myth of a post-racist and -misogynist nation punctured. It's exhausting to fret about pockets of so-called "deplorables" on a daily basis; better — or at least more productive in the long run — to recognize that a very large portion of our fellow citizens are indeed racist, misyogynistic, and of voting age. They're not outliers; they're American.
33
Donald Trump was elected as a disrupter. Why is everyone so appalled that there is disruption?
Most of us suspected it but at least Trump has now exposed the Evangelicals as the sanctimonious hypocrites they are and have always been. Any more "holier than thou" baloney from them should just elicit a huge cathartic horselaugh. They are no less a force to be reckoned with but merely as that. Even Jesus is relieved to be finally be freed of these people.
27
Finally, someone has been honest and validated the infamous quote attributed to Pogo... This may not be completly accurate but it goes.." We have seen the enemy and the enemy is us!"
We have allowed ourselves to be divided by manipulation and lies and our worst impulses have been promoted and allowed to flourish without consequences. It is killing us as a nation. This is the cancer that we have brought on ourselves. What suprises me is that the party of conservative and "moral" values are the purveyors, enablers and supporters of people who reflect and act with anything but those beliefs. The hypocrisy is indefensible.
16
Trump has stripped the veneer off the Republican Party’s politics. He has exposed their hypocrisy and mean spirited philosophy.
I could not agree with Mr. Smith more.
15
I recall reading about President Lincoln. After the battle of Gettysburg, when Lee's Army of Norther Virginia made it across the Potomac, back into Virginia.
In other words--they got away. I don't think the north much cared. Northern victories were pretty scarce in that war and they clung to the ones they got.
But Lincoln didn't see it that way. He paced up and down in anguish of soul. Exclaiming, "What will the nation say? What will the nation say?"
I don't think Mr. Trump experiences much anguish of soul. Unless he reads The New York Times. Or listens to CNN. I don't think Mr. Trump much troubles himself about "the nation." He is too busy pandering to his "base."
More's the pity.
It is good for a nation, Mr. Smith--it is good for an individual human being--to take a periodic long hard look in the mirror. We are ALWAYS trying--or we SHOULD be trying--to reach our finest moments, to leave our shabby squalid moments behind.
Mr. Smith, I say this in all honesty. The history of the United States is a history of horrors. Probably you know this better than me.
So, yes. Amen, brother! Let's TAKE--that long hard unsparing look in the mirror. And if Mr. Trump is the man holding up the mirror--so much the better. Perhaps in that scowling face of his we discern our own.
(Saevus ille vultus et rubor, said Tacitus of the Emperor Domitian. "That savage flushed face!")
And let's try and do better.
What else can we do?
11
Here's a Third Rail observation: yes, the internet age has ripped the veil and exposed the dirt underlying political pretensions. But the other side has its own dirt, if not equally bad. Hillary Clinton, for all her good qualities and policies, was a Wall Street sellout and an enabler of a sexual predator, and lost because she also lacked moral authority. The only way to fight against this situation is with candidates who are clean. It's possible. There are other Obamas out there.
6
The writer should be a little careful with "Evangelicals have cast their lot with a hedonist president". Evangelicals have actually cast their lot with their god, and some of them have decided that their two shepherds through this life are their ministers and Fox TV. It is really really important for the democrats and the left to make common cause with evangelicals in a search for a morality to guide this country. There may never be agreement about abortions, homosexuality, male dominance, etc., but the licentious greed of Trump and the republicans is abhorrent to Christ and to atheists in equal measure.
We all knew that racism never stopped being rampant, but the republican leaders blew their dog whistles and the bigots heard the call and decided they didn't need to learn to be ashamed after all. Shame on them both for their hate and for bringing us this small-minded liar for our president.
3
"to say nothing about harmful policies"....That's the total comment the writer has to offer about the actual work of the Trump administration. The rest is just another tired, predictable screed about what a despicable human being Trump is.
We all know that. Trump absolutely controls the news cycle, every day, with his outrageous comments. The left had better start thinking about what they are going to be FOR in 2018 because the Repubs are building momentum.
7
Well said, Mr. Smith--
Mr. Trump and his base and enablers are the living embodiment of America's lack of decency and shame.
Trump campaigned on indecency and shamelessness. His base voted for his indecency and shamelessness. House and Senate Republicans have enabled his indecency and shamelessness.
The list of their indecencies is miles long: sexual assault, pedophilia, racism, dishonesty, self-dealing, misogyny, etc. Their indecencies are out in the open, for all to see.
It is time to begin the long hard slog of excising the evil. The radical surgery of completely excising the revolting pustule.
7
This column spells out exactly where we are=there are no more pleasant fictions in America. Our racism, bigotry, cruelty, dishonesty and greed are all on display for all of us and the world to see. Our blatant hypocrisy smears its fingerprints on all of us. We have elected that proverbial devil on our shoulder to run the country and his assistants control Congress and more and more of the judiciary. Our media uses false equivalency and bogus journalism to skirt the truth way too often allowing obstruction and blatant dishonesty to stand as fact and truth. Now while our government is shut down through a mixture of dishonesty and right-wing radicalism might be a good time for all of us to take an honest look at where we are and just where we might be going. It will not be a positive picture. We have work to do--if we're up to the talk of saving ourselves and our country.
6
Of course, the Trumpians are going to accuse Mr. Smith and those who argue as he does of being traitors to their country. Even if there is much to hate in the USA, for the sake of the survival of the country, we need to find a way to rid ourselves of what is hateful, or at least marginalize it and move into the future with positive goals. Forty percent of the people apparently hated the myth and love the sordid truth, or minimize it as insignificant. They have no interest in fighting for equality for all but want some group -- European-Americans, maybe, or rich people -- to remain in a superior and dominant position forever. They are no longer on the margins. They are a second mainstream. We now have two nearly equally powerful and mutually exclusive mainstreams. This is not a matter of different solutions to problems, but different ways of viewing the purpose of our country, the meaning of success, the relationship of the individual to government and to other individuals. Hence, what seems like an exaggerated description from many of an existential crisis for our nation, may be not so exaggerated after all. No, I don't know what to do about it, but as Mr. Smith implies, we've been heading down this road for quite a while. There is no reason to believe that the road not taken will be a shortcut to some new blossoming of the ideals most thought we were pursuing. If we ever get on it, it will take a long while to get all of us to follow. This is a very insightful article.
9
It is astonishing how many commenters here seem not to have read or understood the article. Trump is a symptom. The problem is American history and contemporary society. That may not include every single one of us, but it sure does include the vast majority. People, this is a time when we really, really, REALLY need to learn to stop. Listen. THINK, for God's sake. And reflect. You may not in the end agree with the author, but if you aren't going to actually read it and think about it, why bother?
9
Yes. What ought to have been No. 1 deal breaker for any citizen of conscience or at least knowledge of history: Trump's demagoguery. That's the topping over all his other faults and sins. That first taste of it when he came down that escalator turned my stomach -- it should have turned the stomach of every person in this country, but the fact that it didn't, the fact that it wasn't a deal breaker for so many people and he ultimately became our "leader," proves that too many of us are vile, misguided and that is reflected in the vile, misguided, weak demagogue we chose.
3
One small thing. Ever since Reagan, Americans started justifying any of it's actions by lazily attributing it to a President and not the country. How many times have we heard that was done under the Clinton administration, the Bush administration, the Obama administration, never the United States of America. And now it comes down to a man who who has taken it to the extreme. And he has 35% rock solid support. Good luck.
4
This is a fine article. But Trump, like so many other things, has managed to make critical articles about his destructive nature obsolete. They give some comfort to like thinking people, but unfortunately offer little or no possibility of slowing or reversing his damage. Hopefully, as the writer suggests, Trump has at least made "it impossible for us to lie to ourselves." But will that make a difference? It hasn't so far.
3
I always wondered, who hung the portrait of Andrew Jackson in the oval office.
Was it someone who wanted to give Trump that, rugged American Presidential feeling, or perhaps as a warning to the rest of us, as to Trump's pompous attitude, towards those beneath him?
2
Read The Federalist Papers to find out what kind of president the founding fathers expected US to elect. Trump is far far off the mark.
5
An a non-American it appears that America lives on its own made up planet. It believes it is actually living as the hero of a movie, but the movie is one that is only playing inside America's mind. Immersed in its own movie world America is walking into a fall. Its friends like UK and Europe can see it but their calls do not alert this distracted nation full of its own greatness. Its foes also see it with satisfaction.
9
well if we are pulling out the stops. either class war or armed insurrection. what other results are the GOP and the oligarchs wanting? they cannot possibly expect obedience to their whims. as a proud white male in the start of retirement it truly sickens me to see others with my skin color gripe constantlly
as if life has passed them by. then they act like the world is too complicated for them to continue through the journey. that is what life is . a journey with many chances. do not cry if you are left in the mire just cause your tribe thinks it is so. raise yourself and your ambitions higher, and get along with all others. yes this is all old time hippy stuff. still relevant i believe for the modern world.
6
If Trump indeed reveals the underbelly of America -- its parasitic embrace of exploitation, racism, xenophobia, avarice, corruption, falsehoods -- it is only useful if we have mechanisms for change. Electing democrats is, at best, a partial solution. Let's not perpetuate the myths that they are immune from the same. We are entering a period of economic and political upheaval of unprecedented speed and scope. Values, character, and moral leadership -- of the bipartisan and shared variety -- will be needed to guide us through, and bring America into a new age.
6
This is the best editorial about the Trump Phenomenon that I've read, hands-down. Americans needs to stop obsessing about Donald Trump and start obsessing about themselves. NOW would be a good time.
6
A good article.
But many folks, usually on the Left, already knew what lived in the darkest, deepest heart of America. Only aspects of the "establishment"--- chiefly the media --- were surprised to see this underbelly of our Society...and forced to report on it.
This is weakness of an otherwise very good and accurate essay. Those of us who have been paying attention knew all about this hidden undercurrent now brought to the surface by Trump.
I already knew, and so did you, that the wealthy were unaccountably and manically greedy. Particularly these Russo-Republican donors. And the withered soul of Republicans was well established by Nixon and Reagan. I already knew that the heart of racism or misogyny or anti-immigrant xenophobia was rampant across the nation in general. All of us already knew how anti-science and knowledge much of America is.
The exposure of these negative traits, so shockingly profound, should be 0 surprise to anyone if you pay attention to the knowledgeable and experienced. This is a fine article, but chiefly written from a Media standpoint which again has to face essential realities America that the Left has always criticized for not being reported with correct gravity.
The Left has always known all this stuff, but no one listened astutely enough.
10
Germany came back from this and so will we, once we are vanquished--- but who will do that?
4
Hold on. We are too close to this political and social era to judge its long term significance.
The fundamental problem of our time is the Internet and right wing, often extremist, media have given voice to people whose views were once confined to the darkest of shadows. They were always here, but their voices were muted, not broadcast over thousands of AM radio stations across the land and picked from Twitter feeds and placed in major media outlets.
The right, realizing its rising media power, is trying to beat opposing views into submission, never to be heard from again. They want anyone who disagrees with them to first run, then hide.
As for police shooting innocent "suspects" who are not armed and not threatening immediate harm, there has always been a cohort of the public who believe we have to tolerate some excesses on the part of law enforcement to keep order. Yes, this can be racially inspired, but it is not new, it is just made more obvious and stark by the emergence of video of the killings.
The major media are unfortunately amplifying to voices of hatred and retrogression because they, themselves, are grappling with how to handle this new era and, as for the last 50 yrs., they try to run from the charge of bias against the right.
Do not fear, we will survive Trump (if he doesn't start a nuclear war) and we will thrive in the future as never before. We can only hope that by exposing these raw, ugly wounds of our present and our history that healing can begin.
1
It may very well be time to actually divide this country into two or even three separate countries. Certainly, those who support trump should live together and those who oppose him should live together as well...and I think a third country for those who just don't know and never did. The US was never a united country and to pursue union is at best foolhardy. Oh, and politcs in America have never been genteel. The only reaason the US is still together is because the wealty, the plutocrats, need it to maintain "the empire.' The empire is over.
2
What a powerful essay, a call to conscience for all of us.
45
the best I have read at the NYT - yet - as I always was afraid it is US - the American people?
24
Too many Americans simply don't care, and it may be too late even if more come to the realization of what the country has become. There is a good chance the country is lost.
36
Mr Trump has exposed the myth of American exceptionalism.
55
Great column. I believe that we are even worse than we used to be. With the rise of Rush Limbaugh in the 1990s and then FOX News, we have seen America fall into a hole of fearmongering and false information. The guilty deny and we believe because of conspiracy theories form the deep state. Ridiculous. We see it on Facebook and we....believe. Why? People are uneducated and refuse to do the work it takes to find evidence and truth.
36
Beyond our lack of shared values, Trump has illuminated another problem.
Our charter documents briefly sketch in the powers of the president and the limitations of some of those powers but the Constitution leaves them deliberately murky to allow for flexibility in the future.
The founders made the assumption that presidents delving into those gray areas would be decent men of character. Well, we now know they may not be.
The Constitution says nothing that would prevent Trump from mooning the audience at the State of the Union address, nor giving his speech in Urdu or in gibberish.
The assumptions about normal behavior have been shattered. We don't have rules governing decent comportment because we've never NEEDED them before. Trump -- in so many ways a pathfinder -- has shown us that we need to take a much closer look at curbing irrational behavior in the presidency.
33
I think the Constitution gives Congress great, in fact unlimited, power to decide what constitutes an impeachable offense ("high crimes and misdemeanors"). Surely public conduct that brings disgrace and shame to the nation and its posterity qualifies. Especially when habitually repeated daily.
As a footnote but not as a qualifier, note that a misdemeanor in the eighteenth century and later was literally no more than misbehavior.
3
The CONSPIRACY has been at work for many decades. The two political parties and their armies of lawyers have legalized what would otherwise be corruption. No other country on the face of this earth has been as imaginative, creative and thoughtful as our country to undermine democracy. The parties are complicit in this effort and as the judiciary becomes more politicized, it, too, when lose its ability to keep the politics out of its decisions. We are not special. We are no longer worthy of the respect we used to have. the past year has exposed the U.S. to the rest of the world.
20
There has always been an undercurrent of racism in our country and the world over , to deny so is delusional . It is not all kumbaya but it is possible to do better , discounting the insidious influence the present occupant in the White house who has made it possible and yes fashionable to behave like a boor or fascist , we can do better thru tolerance of each other. Think what is missing here , was the fact that private prejudices were well kept out of the public arena and are now in the open.
14
Here is what I have gotten from the first year of the Trump presidency:
1. We are no longer the United States, most likely never were, and never will be.
2. Our Democratic Republic is no longer viable. Too many of us are too intellectually lazy to effectively participate in it.
3. In an age where a tax bill put together by Republicans can deliberately punish Democrats, look for a tit-for-tat down the road. No more California tax dollars going to Kentucky, for example. Live on your own economy, Kentuckians, and like it.
4. We might as well break the country up. Liberals are hated by the right-wing, and we liberals are tired of paying your freight.
5. Culprit number one in our destruction as a country - Fox News. We were foolish to ever allow a de facto propaganda machine to exist. It has done irreparable damage.
87
So correct. When I was young, I worked a summer job in DC cleaning out a warehouse in Adams Morgan. At the end of the day, our foreman would buy a twelve pack of beer and we would sit on the loading dock and kick back for a half hour. I was the only white guy, but the black guys and I became brothers—we worked hard together. I got into big trouble at a family dinner by suggesting that if the young black men I worked with were seen drinking beer on a loading dock, they would be called lazy "n"s by white people like the supposedly liberal members of my family, and that if a bunch of white kids were seen doing the same thing, they would be seen as relaxing after work. As I said, I got in huge trouble for making that comment. Nothing has changed.
38
A large reason that the US (and the UK) have a disfunctional representative situation in Congress (Parliament) is single member districts that lead to an unrepresentative legislature. The system is broken and archaic. We need to change from a single member district system, both by states and at the federal level. Germany has a hybrid model that serves as an example of a much better system, that is representative of the people. In Germany, 50% of the seats are selected by single member districts in each state, and 50% of the seats are "backfilled" by proportional representation. A good system that end the issue of gerrymandering and other political nonsense. Some state should move forward with this approach to show that it can work at the state level as a model for a vast improvement in Congress.
11
I agree countries like Canada and the UK should find a more representative way to hold elections,, The US goes a step further in thwarting democracies as it allows political parties to draw the electoral lines resulting in the gerrymandering that was always bad but now does not even pretend to be fair. In Canada and the UK and the other smarter countes
l independent agencies draw the electoral map. The UK just passed a new law to improve how lines are drawn. The US is barely a democracy. Thank goodness you still have civil liberties, Big economy, big military no greatness otherwise.
10
For "The Donald," the buck always stops over there. Somewhere, Harry S. Truman must be weeping.
16
What Trump's election showed us finally is that we are not special.
Before Trump we thought we were special. Electing braggarts, dictators, seedy individuals - that only happened in other countries.
That type of thinking is over now. Forever.
We are not special. America is not special. The forces of authoritarianism, intolerance and stupidity are just as strong here as they are everywhere else.
It has just been unbelievable blind luck that a Trump hasn't happened before.
So the battle lines have to be redrawn. Thinking of ourselves as "Americans" is no longer useful.
The dividing line now is between those who support democracy, rationality, and tolerance, and those who do not - no matter what country we are in.
37
I disagree.
A majority of the populace is appalled and disgusted by the President's behavior.
That a significant minority is not similarly appalled is distressing, but not cause for an indictment of the American people as a whole.
11
You lose your argument in your comment. A significant minority are not appalled and share the same racist attitudes is a condemnation of the county. And the majority may be appealed but are complacent. The majority believe in strong gun laws but a significant minority rise up and t make noise whenever something like banning 5 year olds from owning assault rifles is brought up,Apathy that allowed the US to become what it is started before Trump was born. All the best
and good Luck
Sure it is, because "the American people as a whole" failed to prevent the election of our despicable President, and have so far failed to throw him out on his ear. That's an indictment of all of us.
2
that may be true....but a significant number of people and an entire caucus of
Republicans remain silent...turn away....and now there is no way for a person
with some degree of honesty to say they "missed the message"
Wake up folks.....we must live by founding principles...if we do not then we have no claim to America...born here or not...silence connotes assent.....Are we what he thinks we are?
It's getting late.
3
As he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, a lady asked Benjamin Franklin, "Well Doctor what have we got — a republic or a monarchy?"
"A republic," replied the Doctor, "If you can keep it.”
(From the notes of Dr. James McHenry, a Maryland delegate to the Convention, first published in "The American Historical Review," vol. 11, 1906.)
With every passing day since 8 November 2016, it has become increasingly clear that we could not — and we are now racing, at an ever-increasing speed, toward that point beyond which the answer to the question, "What do you think of the United States of America?" will be, "It was a nice idea."
And we have done this to ourselves.
Sic transit gloria mundi — at least that of the United States.
25
I believe that a nation that was born out of the genocide of Native Indian and the sweat and blood of African slaves can not be proud of its history and achievements.
35
Name me one country that has not done evil, that has not raped and pillaged.
2
Inter,
We in Canada grew out of a similar history. In 1776 we were part of the same North America British Colonies and the fifth intolerable act was one where our Catholics would have the same rights as your Protestants.
In 2018 we are acknowledging our failures and our story in 2017 was one of success for all our citizens and our economy.
We are slowly taking down our tributes to John A MacDonald and others whose virtues cannot withstand the light of truth.
When Jackson is still a hero to many I cannot imagine America surviving until the sad spectre of Ronald Wilson Reagan is confined to the dustbin with other ignoble Americans like MacArthur, J Edgar Hoover and McCarthy.
4
Perhaps, but we "Amurricans" are better than some at maintaining hypocritically self righteous denial as we perpetuate it.
4
While Trump may be tarnishing the image of America, liberal progressivism is poisoning its heart.
Progressivism, with its Marxist identity politics, divisive hatreds, illogical and mob-like approach to justice, and contempt for the West has done far more damage to our American way of life.
Its thinly-veiled contempt for religion, virtue, traditional education, and patriotism rips apart families, breaks up friendships, and sets communities against each other. It’s tainted education. It’s demolished decency. It’s breaking the spirit of our people.
It’s unfortunate that Trump may be personally incompetent, irreligious, un-virtuous, and uneducated. He is a buffoon, a bigot, a loudmouth, a braggart, and a swine.
But I’d easily rather have his floundering and often directionless populism than a resolute march down a progressive path that I find abhorrent and antithetical at its core to the American spirit.
4
If the core of the American spirit resides in the preservation of hereditary privilege, frozen small-town hierarchies, merit measured solely by accumulated monetary wealth and voting in lock-step according to the dictates of one's tribe - well, you can keep it.
That's not the American core I was raised in.
And that's definitely not the All People Are Created Equally progressivism I see today.
12
Dear L D,
Who told you that's what Progressivism is?
I label myself a progressive, and I don't recognize any of the qualities you attribute to the name.
It's as though I said that "conservatism" is racism, sexism, bigotry, authoritarianism, anti-science, homophobic, etc. - all of which is un-American and destroying families as well as this country.
Perhaps you would say that's an inaccurate description of what conservatism is.
In the end, I find all these labels unhelpful. They allow us to dismiss one another as "un-American".
I would urge you not to do that. Next time you meet someone who calls themselves a progressive, ask them what policies they support and why.
Sure there are some nutters out there. But there are nutters on the right too, no?
8
If you're interested in virtue and logic, I'd suggest studying ethics.
2
This is not about “us” as Americans. This is about Republicans.
39
The Republican Party is now the Trump Party, the party of racism, misogyny and greed. There are no good republicans anymore, just Trumpish co conspirators.
38
Melania has disappointed me. I started out hoping that she was made of better stuff.
7
If she married Donald Trump, she was and is willing to sell her soul for some money. Some arrangements are exactly what they appear to be.
3
She married Donald Trump--how could anyone expect her to exhibit character or decency?
1
The only comfort in this highly accurate description of us today is that the white supremacist "conservative" agenda is not popular and perhaps in the next few elections, the America we believe in will come out back on top and the deplorables can go back to their angry outrage on the outside looking in again.
18
The Times seems to prefer a liberal echo chamber in the comments section, but we’ll try again to explain why “flyover” country is so susceptible to Trump’s message.
Trump continuously shines the light on how political power is gained by claiming “victimhood” status.
Everyone - except white males - now proudly proclaim the need to attack and disempower the dreaded white male.
White men who grow up in poverty - rightly or wrongly - are disgusted when told others are entitled to preferential treatment based on skin color.
White men who are good sons and fathers, and who have always treated women with respect are disgusted when - rightly or wrongly - they are called rapists, too ignorant to understand their crimes.
White men who have worked tirelessly, sacrificed and invested in themselves and their families, are disgusted when told their success resulted magically as a result of their skin color.
This racist, sexist, hate-based attack against white men, conducted by those who enjoy special protections and privileges, forces white males who disagree with many of his policies to support him nonetheless.
Here’s a thought, treat people as individuals, not as members of “special” classes, “victims” or “perpetrators”, and you’ll be far more successful convincing them your not racist, sexist, or politically evil.
7
"Here’s a thought, treat people as individuals, not as members of “special” classes, “victims” or “perpetrators”
Good advice.
You should take it.
8
It was also white men, primarily, who suffered and died in wars to defend this country against real oppressors.
1
An excellent piece. A minor correction for the word pedophile is, however, in order. Pedophilia refers to attraction for or sex with pre-pubescent children. For girls today this usually means before age 12. For both boys and girls the clinical definition ends for 13 year olds even if puberty has not occurred. In popular conversation pedophilia is sometimes used to refer to older children, but only older boys. Moore went after pubescent children, all over 13, and as far as we know all girls. The proper description for the candidate Republicans nominated and overwhelmingly voted for is "serial child abuser". There are too many accusers and unlike Moore they are too believable to not credit their claims (and there is strong corroborative evidence).
8
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed —
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
-- Langston Hughes
10
I will respond with what every Black or Native American has been told by white Americans and many immigrants when they complain about racism.... "Get Over It".
Remember all that blather about a post racial America and how Black and Native Americans were just living in the past? Even those with black skin who immigrated from other countries would put down Black Americans who complained that the struggle wasn't over.
Welcome to America.
11
Recalling Stephen Kinzer's "A Century of Regime Change", I was inclined to say chickens coming home. But I'd say, Take heart, Mr. Smith. This too shall pass. We the people possess the instrument of change, the Constitution.
We will put these dark times behind, perhaps as soon as next November, about 295 more days. All the signs point in that direction.
Take it from this immigrant, ex-Peace Corps volunteer, the Hispanics, the blacks, the Jews and many foreign-born Americans will need only 15 or 20 percent of the right-thinking people to turn the tide in our favor. Yes, the orange monster may have done the country a favor by exposing our weakness. But we are a self-correcting society, when the times are good. Global competition is something we invented and perfected for a time. No longer.
5
Trump is the last vestige of patriarchal, White power that entrenched itself to hang on as long as it could after a black man was enthusiastically elected POTUS in 2008.
The GOP conducted "autopsies" of how they lost to President Obama, and they determined that they needed a kinder, more inclusive tent to have success in an increasingly diverse America.
But, as often happens with large organizations, the inability of the wealthiest and most powerful to sacrifice anything in the face of reform left the GOP with this corrupt and corrupting clown.
Trump is not the norm.
Trump is not our future.
He's not emblematic of who this nation is or ever truly was.
In fact, Trump simply represents the worst that we've been trying to stamp out for over a century.
We shall continue to overcome.
15
The "progressive" definition of racist:
rac·ist
ˈrāsəst/Submit
noun
One who believes in enforcing immigration laws.
Under Trump the black unemployment rate has fallen to 6.8% the lowest in 45 years. The spread between black and white unemployment is 3.1% - the lowest on record. Trump's policies have helped the black community more in the last year that Obama did during his entire 8 years.
And which policies are those? The fact that the employment trajectory that was started and sustained by Obama has continued into the 1st year of this presidency does not validate anything this man has done. How exactly has he brought black unemployment rate closer in line with white? What are those policies? The tax cut that will ultimately widen the already yawning gap between the rich and the non-rich? The attempt to make healthcare a privilege available to the wealthy? Just not sure what he's done that actually helps people.
6
Our, America's, original sin was not slavery. It is what came before slavery. It is genocide, the complete and utter destruction of the original inhabitants of this land, and that is what paved the way for there to be land that was in need of slaves to make it productive. President Andrew Jackson ordered all the people who owned land in the south, the Cherokee and allied tribes, removed from their land. Deported if you will, to the then uninhabitable west, Oklahoma. The Supreme Court declared his order to be unconstitutional. Jackson, a popular General, told the army to go ahead and do it. Let the Justices come down here and stop me he said with defiance and, thus began the Trail of Tears. It was like the death march on Bataan, and the close of WW2 when the Nazis marched hollow Jews till they dropped. If you sat down you were shot. Southern citizens were thrilled that Jackson put "Americans first'" This is the Presidential portrait that Trump has put where he can see it when he sits at his desk. Slavery is a most high crime enshrined in our history but it is the 2nd.
All people believe they live in "modern" times and they do. Modern is not a code word for enlightened, but we think of it that way. It separates us from what we really are. We have no moral high ground to gain or lose. Trump could do nothing on his own. Our cancer is the GOP, and their supporters. We elect whomever has the most commercials. We get what we pay for. VOTE!
10
Insidious and perfidious, shameless Trump. If you have no morals, or ethics, or empathy for others or a conscience then you can have no shame for your crimes or deeds or lies and nasty false accusations made against others. A president falsely accusing a news anchor of murder has now graduated to placing a political ad against Democrats about their complicity in any murders committed by illegal immigrants, according to CNN. Putin is so proud of what he has accomplished here in America.
This ad is a reflection of Trump's anger and fear about the Mueller investigation that has one foot in the doorway of the WH. This is about his causing the federal shutdown by not caring about the lives of others at all, aka the DACA dreamers who came here as children and are now Americans in spirit. They love America more than Trump does as he hates our democracy. He wants his wall, and I say he should pay for it perhaps with the personal billions made using his presidency. This is about distraction.
Trump supports the haters of the world, especially those in his base, but he has also made most of us aware that we do not condone hate or racism or corruption. We are all more aware of just how much we each love America, its diversity of people, and its democracy. Thank you Trump.
4
We've always held the view that we are great, we are powerful, we are always the good guy, always honest, always principled fighting for a just cause, fighting for the under-dog, a neutral broker of peace, a world Leader of morality, charitable without any expectation. But honestly we were anything but all of the above - to fellow Americans and abroad. The World recognized us earlier than we did and called us the 'Ugly American'. What was surreptitious is now in the open.....thanks to Trump. He has forced us to take off the blindfold while looking in the mirror.
8
I question the use of the pronoun "we". It is incorrect to say that we have come to the point of excusing racism, predatory misogyny, intentional dishonesty, graft, and treason. The overwhelming majority of Americans still find these behaviors inexcusable and chafe at the apparent ability of Trump & Co. to flaunt them. So where's the problem?
The problem is that a quirk of our electoral process has brought a resentful minority to power in Congress, and the Republican party would much rather hold on to power than honestly confront the moral failings of the President. They justify their moral plasticity through a convenient narrative of oppression by Coastal Elites.
If the majority of Americans are guilty of anything, it is a complacency and disengagement which allowed these people to come to power. We must set aside our daily work, and focus on taking back the levers of power by participating in primaries, running for office, and making sure we get to the voting booth at every opportunity.
If we do not actively participate in the democratic process, then responsibility for the moral degeneracy of Trump and his apologists will transfer to us because we have not taken steps to correct it.
10
People don't believe what they see.
They see what they believe.
Once you learn, and take this heart, you can begin to understand people.
9
We've survived some vile creatures before, but never with such complicit support on the part of one party. I don't see how this nation can survive when we attack fundamental values. Where is the nation purportedly built on tolerance and freedom to practice one's religion? Where is the nation that called for your tired, poor, those who needed to escape religious persecution, those who simply wanted a better opportunity? Where is the nation that believes in three branches of government so that no one branch could wield too much power? Where is the nation that was by the people and for the people? Where is the nation that believes in free speech and valued a free press? Where is the nation that believes in the separation of church and state? It sure looks like we have front row seats to the destruction of this country as it was founded.
10
"A year or two ago, we might have said: “An accused pedophile couldn’t be a serious candidate. We’re better than that.” This year, we can’t, at least about Republicans."
Took a while for this author to state the obvious. Yes, there are Democratic politicians who've crossed serious ethical lines, but they have almost invariably been forced to walk the plank when found out. Republicans? Not so much. Behaving atrociously has become a badge of honor for the Republican Party. They've become a tribe of willful depravity, unmoored even from a façade of decency. They are not just noxious political opponents, but a genuine menace to both democracy and the Earth itself, as most loudly evidenced by the immoral reprobate heading the party in the White House.
10
In another Op-Ed on the Opinion Page right now, which discusses our worst presidents - with Trump as the cherry on top of that sundae, it seemed to me that the common thread for what makes a worst president is the issue of race. If a president makes racial divides wider or deeper, that presidency has been doomed.
Trump fits neatly into the racist, race-baiting, race denigrating, race-dividing category. Things are bad and they’re getting worse under Trump, with race only one way he’s dividing us.
We should feel ashamed. Ashamed that our history is rife with atrocities like slavery, abuse of Native Americans, imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II, animosity toward Hispanics and other immigrant groups.
We need to take a fearless look at our history, our institutions and our political parties - even our form of government.
No nation is perfect. No form of government lasts forever unchanged.
We can do better. We must do better! It will involve change. Facing shame.
10
Pres. Trump may not inspire admiration among his domestic opponents, leftists and Democratic Party liberals, but Americans have no choice when one compares him to most of the foreign leaders with whom he must negotiate our national interests—— from Canada to China, North Korea to South Africa, Britain to Bahrain, Mexico to Argentina. Ask yourself, would any self-respecting American Patriot trade a Trump for the foreign leader with whom he must bargain the better of two deals—— in our national interest?
I'd take Justin Trudeau any day. Or Angela Merkle.
4
He was elected. What does this say about the United States?
6
Failed builder, whose only seeming success has been prostituting his name for money.
He has successfully mined the ugly seam within American pop culture -- a brand with all its superficiality can outweigh substance. At the moment, too many Americans seem satisfied with bread & circus.
It is with hope that I say the pendulum will swing back and in doing so I think Mr. Smith is correct (I just hope he is) that the scars of a Trump presidency may for several generations expunge the soullessness represented by Trump.
There are indications of overreaction and perhaps more of a soupcon of self righteous on the left which does not help, but the Faustian bargains of many republicans especially among those considered fundamentalists could result in their future ostracism.
An end to a strident culture war. Acceptance of sexuality as a truly private matter that has nothing to do with merit and ability to contribute to a vibrant society. Color blindness. These all could be accelerated outcomes of a Trump presidency.
If these benefits last a few generations (roughly 60 years) before fading into old textbooks no longer taught, there may be an inability to unring the bell even if unremembered. This does not mean that absence of future divisive issues, just different divisive issues.
4
This article is another way of stating Lincoln's great saying: You can Fool some of the people all of the time, and you can Fool all of the People some of the time. And in the immortal words of George W. Bush and The Who: Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, won't get fooled again. Trump sure fooled all the pepole once, but I can't believe he can do it again. Come November, Trump and all of his GOP apologists will be SWEPT away in one of the biggest electoral Tidal waves this country has ever seen. The only way it can be prevented is for Trump and the GOP to delcare martial law and shut the polls. Otherwise he is THROUGH.
2
Hear, hear! Sadly, for some decades now the most exceptional thing about the United States has been the breadth and depth of its self-delusions.
6
We’ll lie to,ourselves. We’ve been doing it for centuries and aren’t about to stop now. Every wounded claim by Trumpists that it’s unfair and inaccurate to call them racist is a secret plea:
“Lie to me. Tell me that slavery wasn’t so bad, that the lynched were guilty of something, that the police wouldn’t have shot these people if they hadn’t done something. Lie to me. Lie to me and I’ll believe it. I have to.”
4
You neglected to mention the myth of American exceptionalism. Whereas Trump is certainly the outward manifestation of that lie the problem rests on the shoulders of we, the people as we've finally revealed to the world who we really are. Just as the idealism of our founding fathers was betrayed by their forbearance of slavery, so our fear, ignorance and gullibility has brought us to the brink of our own undoing. Congratulations, America!
2
This is EXACTLY why I think Trump was the much, much better choice for America. This article nails it!!!
2
To paraphrase Faulkner, The Civil War isn't dead. It's not even past.
6
After one year in office, Mr. Trump’s poll numbers still hovers at about 40%.
The reality is and has been that the real cancer in our country-racism, white supremacy and xenophobia is with us as a people and not with who was elected. Yes, without the electoral college and gerrymandering, Mr. Trump would have lost. But the cancer, while hidden, would have remained.
In spite of the fact we elected a black president for two terms doesn’t change that reality. What do we do about it? How and when can we change things?
Do we really want to?
1
So I take you're on board with a fresher, newer more 21st Century form of
racism?
Do we really want to?.....you bring tears to my eyes......
We really are lost
1
Trump may have helped remind us that Americans tend to get fuzzy-minded about our operational ethos, but he's done it in the worst way possible, by eradicating our best ideas of ourselves. We already knew these terrible truths about public misbehavior, political hypocrisy and hollow values, we just don't want to have permanent reminders constantly pelted at us like rice at a wedding. So that deflates the theory that Trump has taught us something we never new and we should silently thank him for it. If we don't hold on to our ideals, we'll stop striving to reach them. What Trump offers is just poison, because it's poison.
3
The USA and its people have been GREAT at times, and HORRIBLE at times. Noting EXCEPTIONAL about that. Disabuse ourselves of our EXCEPTIONALISM!
4
The writer of this article is sad and mournful about the American condition. It is a treason to glorify our enemies' flag on government buildings, our schools and other places of public honor. Why do we allow it anywhere in our country? Why do we display statues of those, who have committed treason against us in places of honor, like public squares and around some of our courthouses?
In most countries there is an ethical code against promoting the disruptive ideas of our enemies. This is especially true after we have defeated these enemies in a war against these ideas.
The south will rise again is an utterance worthy of arrest and trial for treason. Yet, we smile and pass the utterance off as a joke.
If we don't take our beliefs seriously, no wonder there is racial unrest in the country we love.
James lewis
Springboro, Ohio
8
When I was very young, say about 18, are started to understand politics, for the life of me, I did not understand how we Americans went around calling ourselves the greatest nation in the world. From my uninformed, innocent mind all I could see was meanness, ugliness and hatred. I saw how in Europe everyone got 6 weeks vacation, all medical was covered, they worked 36 hour weeks, on and on and on. I was so amazed when I compared them to us and all I knew was - I want to live like them. I want my tax dollar to go to healthcare for all, paid family leave (in Europe the father gets 1 yr paid leave to take care of his newborn as well as the mother), a vacation time that allows you to spend time with your family and take them to other countries on a relaxed schedule (as most Europeans do), I wanted my tax dollar going towards a better society that I lived in rather than building bombs that destroyed all other peoples societies. I honestly did not understand our collective thinking. Do Americans really want to work 60/70 hr. weeks, have no social safety nets, make the rich get richer through tax reform, never take vacations, not take care of new mothers and fathers, all so they can claim they are "The Greatest Nation in the World"?
I did not understand then and I do not understand now. All I see is America has no clothes.
28
On the national level our country needs the governance of the city council of Coldwater, Michigan. No political labels attach to the name of a candidate for a council seat. There are no lobbyists attempting to influence the formation, debate, and passage of ordinances. No member of the city council has a paid staff. No member of the city council receives a salary or stipend. A mayor presides at ceremony but an accountable city manager serves as chief executive. People choose to pursue a seat on the city council motivated only a desire to better the community and to participate actively in its governance. Finally, the snow is plowed, the garbage is removed weekly from its curbside containers on schedule, the grass is mowed regularly in the public parks, and the annual budget is balanced, expenditures covered by revenues. Political parties in America serve only the self-interests of their careerists.
4
Mr Smith could not have been more on point regarding the so-called Trump effect -- if it has done anything, it has taken the "emperor has no clothes" sheen off of the US presidency and for that matter, the entire government. I would argue that this process started much more longer ago than the Trump election (the election of Tea Party candidates? The Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal? Nixon and Watergate?) and that in fact, Trump is the logical conclusion of the farce which our government has become. Despite his erudite column, Smith fails to mention the importance of money in this process -- both the reality and perception of government as a gravy train for all parties, meaning elected politicians, lobbyists, consultants, government sponsored industries, even members of the press -- who go to government with the sole goal of profiting off of the backs of American taxpayers and those of us in need.
Our democratic form of government will die and indeed will become totalitarian (look at Venezuela) if we dont take steps now to insure that the people we elect to it above all go to serve the country and its and make this multi-chambered government work and not played by lobbyists, consultants, and politicians themselves. If we dont learn the lessons of the Trump election, then we only have have ourselves to blame.
10
I do not believe that there has ever been a genteel American politics. Just read the reports of the first few presidential campaigns. But the country has been more decent in past eras and even worse in past eras than it is today. How is it that LBJ from 1963 to 1969 got the people and the Congress to support and pass the civil rights act, the voting rights act, the anti-discrimination immigration laws, Medicare, Medicaid, etc? The US has also demonstrated great hostility to immigrants and foreigners beginning with the Alien and Sedition Acts shortly after the formation of the Nation. Individuals are capable of going through many phases in one life time. Nations which have lived longer than one life time can be expected to have phases. Hopefully, in my view, the current phase will end soon.
3
Well said. Trumps presidency - as well as politics in general the past years - have cleared many of my delusions about this country. That Trump could actually be elected, that so much racism still exists in this country, that politicians are more venal than I thought, that American democracy allows for over have the population to have no control of congress AND the presidency, has left me depressingly deflated about the greatness of our country.
5
It is at our own peril that we "enlightened progressives" refuse see ourselves reflected in the faces of Trump and his supporters and enablers. The so called progressive worldview is as broken as its conservative counterpart. Both seek totalitarian control over America's future, both see the other as vile and unworthy partners in compromise, both are driven by the dreams and desires of defending and extending American empire even over its own citizens. Capitalism has foreclosed on the promise of Enlightenment political liberalism and there is no going back now. Like the age of Enlightenment itself, the promise of the future will only come at the cost of severe dislocations to the status quo and perhaps even the undoing of America as it has ever understood itself to be. We should make all the friends we can now for we will certainly need them in the tumultuous future.
3
This is true as far as it goes. But not only has the curtain been pulled back on the myths of decency, character and merit as national cultural values. The election also stripped away our illusion that the US is somehow a force for good in the world. We, our government and our US based multi-national corporations and neo-liberal economics are destructive where ever we decide to intervene. No good comes from us anymore. It's time for the American empire to trim our sales, come home and get our house in order.
2
All of this is true. Nevertheless, out here on the prairie Trump remains popular. Mired in confirmation bias and magical thinking, Midwesterners still think that he will lead us to the promised land.
4
It's a shame. He has betrayed their trust at every turn and is disgracing the entire country in the process.
2
Another myth in operation among the Democratic establishment and more comfortable Dem voters was that their policies were serving the Rust Belt.
3
Although this op-ed is right, it misses the aspect of historical development. The downward slide in our expectations about politicians and sense of shared beliefs has been progressive and now spirals to the bottom. There have certainly been periods in the last 80 years when our belief in national values was far stronger but politicians gaming the system have now fanned divisions to a breaking point. What worries me much more is how to get out of this. Trump will be gone. By 2020 a lot of us will be dying for any kind of dignity and statesmanship in our national leadership. But it will take a Churchillian figure to move the country in a restorative direction. The destructive genie doesn't easily go back into the bottle.
2
Excellent op ed. At least Trump’s vileness is bringing forth explicit opposition, uncovering trends that had been more hidden, and so we can see our country’s problems more realistically.
A book that’s apt for today’s political fighting and alienation is “Exceptional America: What Divides Americans from the World and from Each Other”, by Mugambi Jouet, a Stanford Law Prof from an African and French background, who brings an international perspective.
Says “US exceptionalism, once was a source of strength, may now spell decline, as unique features of U.S. history, politics, law, culture, religion, and race relations lead to extreme polarization.”
Says US “anti-intellectualism, conspiracy-mongering, visceral suspicion of government, and Christian fundamentalism are far more common in America than the rest of the Western world.”
We are more divided than other democracies, and lag behind other industrialized nations in health care, wealth inequality, criminal justice and human rights, and access to college.
America can no longer claim superiority if we’re held back by these weaknesses. Since we don’t compare so well with the 1st world, Trump, the illusionist , tries to make us feel superior with extremist comparisons to 3rd world nations which for centuries were EU colonies and are now trying to develop their democracies and economies.
What's the excuse of the world's richest nation, so proud of its centuries-old Constitution and Bill of Rights?
5
Meredith New York. Great reference to help us understand Good of you type this all out in your examples of what the book says.
1
Don't expect change. The powerful always look down on the less powerful, minorities and women, and make all efforts to keep themselves superior. They'll just remember not to be so open about it.
This all comes from the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine of the FCC, brought to you by Union-busting, empty-headed Ronald Reagan. Buffoonish behavior from unfit presidents will fade, but their disastrous policies linger to entrench economic inequality for generations.
2
Oh Nixon was a character alright. The man who proclaims on what he has, usually lacks it. Any person who actually has something substantial usually does not go around boasting they have it.
Excellent analysis. I believe that Mr. Smith is correct that biases, prejudices, and self-contradictory values have resided under the surface in Republican politics. Trump exploited them by placing them clearly in open view. His perspectivism is almost Nietzschian in scope and efficacy. We stand at that rare historical crossroad where our choices for our future direction have rarely been clearer.
3
Let's look at the founding of this country, too, founded on the backs of slaves. Jefferson was a genius and his writings about freedom idealized our country; but Jefferson himself was the "owner" of more than 600 human beings during his lifetime on his southern plantation. Even our first president Washington was also a slave-holding plantation owner on a large scale. So, when we ask ourselves why the chickens are coming home to roost, we should take the blindfolds off our eyes, and really try to understand our history - its beginnings and its results.
6
While I agree with your editorial, I must disagree with a point that I hear over and over again. Speaking of tallies by the Washington Post, they conduct thorough studies of police shootings, and in fact, in 2015, less than 4 percent of police shootings were of unarmed African American men. They also found that some of those shootings were in fact justified. When Colin Kaepernick erroneously states that police are "mowing down African Americans right and left," he is spreading false anti-police hysteria. I wholeheartedly support his right to protest, but as the mom of an ex cop, he lost me with the pig socks. I have come to believe that the radical left and alt right are pretty much the same.
1
What about the fiction that less than 47 flavors of toothpaste cannot possibly satisfy the needs of the public...but 2 political parties can?
Trump is the best leader the system could provide. If you want someone better, change the system. Alas, it is difficult to change the system if people believe that it is the best political system in the history of the universe.
9
I am among the first of the Baby Boomers and grew up in an America when one might well believe that America was special, that we were different (in the sense of more 'culturally and socially advanced') than the people in Japan, where I started grade school, and that we were different than the people of Europe, whose national prejudices and overreaching politicians were responsible for WWII. I went to high school in the suburbs of Paris and thoroughly enjoyed the art, the culture, the French, the Germans, the British, virtually everyone I encountered, and I was also mighty proud to be an American.
In November 1962, together with a group of American teenagers, I met Willy Brandt in Berlin, and he told us that the future of the world, the old and the new, depended upon our continued leadership. We blew it.
Sadly, Jamil Smith's essay has captured the truth.
32
While Trump was clearly the worst of them, we forget how thin the options of decency and forthrightness were among the 16 Rep candidates. The vast majority were destructionists.
I can understand even far right conservative thought. Hard to understand vile hatred for huge swaths of your fellow man, women, and even children (once born).
The sad thing is that such emotions are beginning to stir in me toward Trump’s unabashed political supporters.
77
I do not think America will continue, or should continue, to exist as "one" nation. The cancer of slavery, racism, bigotry and violence will never be fully cured, and the liberal progressive states must break away before they are overwhelmed. Sometimes you must sacrifice a limb to save a life.
90
Gotta call you out on this one, bro. Our nation is one. Too many have sacrificed their lives defending it to make what you say even worth considering.
1
"The cancer of slavery, racism, bigotry and violence will never be fully cured, and the liberal progressive states must break away before they are overwhelmed."
Who says liberal states are "overwhelmed?" The majority of America holds progressive views, and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by millions. The problem isn't that there are too many racists- there aren't.
Progressives need to focus on taking a stand for America as a whole, not on entertaining themselves with fantasies of secession.
2
Unfortunately for your theory, all states are mixed in terms of political/social ideology. Perhaps what we need is more parties, so we can vote for candidates that truly represent our positions. &then those elected have to compromise in order to get things done. A polisci group could create a handbook about how this is done in more successful countries - I.e. those that better serve their people.
1
I believe all people should be allowed to see and hear the same things to determine for themselves, as opposed to being told what they must think of those things by those who would call them bad for seeing it any other way but theirs. But that’s just my opinion, feel free to tell me otherwise.
3
Listen to the Republicans and the clubbing class. They do not feel it is impossible to lie to themselves. They see nothing wrong with being a racist or hypocrite. After all, if you are rich or white, you cannot be wrong.
64
Can this country be anymore sick? As NYT reports, the commander in chief, so called leader of the free world, spent yesterday watching tv clips of his campaign rallys all the while doing nothing to resolve the government shutdown.
Where is the leadership? Where is the fantastic deal making?
Sigh.....the late, once great, United States of America. Thanks it was awesome.
77
We need to dispense with a few other "myths", too. We need to dispense with the "myth" that voting for Trump was "a cry for help" by Americans who felt left behind. This trope has continued far too long.
We need to dispense with the "myth" that Trump voters are any different from Trump. They aren't. They voted for him, because he is a perfect reflection of themselves.
He is an avowed racist, and they love him for it.
He is a willfully ignorant man who lies incessantly. They mirror his ignorance and they parrot his lies. He is a xenophobe who delights in targeting ethnic and religious minorities -- to the point that he says that the KKK and neo-Nazis are some very fine people. His supporters scream "Jews will not replace us."
Finally, we need to dispense with the "myth" that if Democrats improved on their "message", they would win over Trump voters. Democrats should stop trying to kowtow to the most racist, bigoted, and willfully ignorant among us. Trump voters will never change.
The answer isn't to continue to buy into the "myth" that somehow Trump voters can be reached. They cannot. They're as beyond redemption as is their Dear Leader.
229
America: Ignorant. Greedy. Immoral. Self-Righteous. Hubris has destroyed many a man, and many a civilization - America is next.
71
"It was easier to believe our own pleasant fictions about the way things work in America before our president made a mockery of them."
There were no fictions about how things worked. People always knew there were racists, hypocrites,liars and cheats populating the political arena.
People see what Trump is and saw it well before he even decided to run for office.
This idea that somehow because Trump can invoke some level of immunity from the consequences of his deplorable nature and actions due to the power and station of his office in no way lessens or negates the intensity and pervasiveness of the revulsion to his debasement of the public space and the vulgarization of the institutions we hold sacred to our democracy.
We know, we remember and we will act.There is a righteous building up of an intense desire to act in retaliation to Trump's senseless trashing of our republic.
All through our history, this great nation has witnessed the expurgation of the cancers that threaten its existence and there have always been vast numbers in the population who have maintained the eternal vigilance required as the price of liberty.
For those thinking that the populous has somehow sunk into some hypnotic state where the depredations are beyond notice, to paraphrase regarding the next congressional and presidential elections:
"Hell hath no fury like a nation shamed...."
31
Donald Trump and the Republicans are relying upon that third of the American electorate that are cheerfully credulous -- willing to believe things that are simply not true. The big question is WHY? For each person the specifics may vary , but greed and racism are often the root. These shallow-minded, unctuous citizens may glean short term satisfaction, but the ship they are riding in will be weakened for their progeny if not for them in the short term. Character and all that character embodies be damned, but there will be a price to pay.
23
I agree, remembering how Rome fell.
2
America was born and bred denying the enslaved property humanity as persons and the equality of black Africans in America. While the white male Founding Fathers who owned property mythically claimed to have created a land of the free and home of the brave where all persons were divinely naturally created equal with certain unalienable rights.
See "The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism" Edward Baptist; "Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II" Douglas Blackmon; "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness" Michelle Alexander; "Dog-Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Re-invented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class" Ian Haney Lopez
32
He is a political sociopath. Sociopaths have no empathy for their victims. Tom Cotton and Stephen Miller, the white House advisor who is behind the shutdown, are political sociopaths too. An apt adjective for Stephen Bannon who called for the deconstruction of the administrative state was and still is a political termite. So is Newt Gingrich.
81
Really, Trump has done us all a favor by bringing racism, complacency, bigotry, inequality all front and center- he didnt invent these characteristics. its kind of like the difference between how white liberals reacted to his election- shocked beyond belief- and someone , say, like Dave Chapelle... not really surprised! Wake up!
13
One one problem that emerges is the subjectivness many apply to supposed ‘factual matter’ at the heart of any issue. For example, in Ferguson Mo., police critics maintain the victim of a police shooting was ‘a gentle giant, on his knee’s with his hands up’ shouting ‘don’t shoot’ before being shot in the back by a racist cop’.
Of course we now know that the so-called victim’s finger tip and blood was found inside the patrol car with his blood discovered on the cops gun as well. Further, in the struggle for the gun two shots were fired inside the car and independent witnesses testified that said ‘victim’ was set to charge at the officer again when shot. ‘Videos of prone black men being shot by cops’? This incident became a template for movements like BLM, despite what many know as a lie and thereby also helped usher in a Trump presidency.
4
The beliefs of this man in the White House can NOT BE made a subject of
Debate.He is “in the position of LEADER our Democracy”.He cannot make
White supremacy(racism) and equality subjects of debate.Racist,fascist,
Beliefs or behaviors are not up for examination as if to be equally approached
In value.Trump,lies,accuses the press of lies,invites people to head offices
In our government who have no understanding of the constitution,or the bill of
Rights,but enjoy taking our freedoms away,and substituting their greed
And lack of accountability as supported by our current Congress.
I agree with this opinion as written.Trump has ripped the bandaids off all our wounds and exposed them to his poison.He has done a good job of it.
Now we need to return to those concepts given to us in the constitution and
The bill of rights,and the faster we return this destroyer to the public sector and end any leadership he’s stolen the better.
7
And still o one acknowledges that hiss supporters don’t since he does indeed blow things up as they hoped.
This article repeats self-serving and soothing myths that liberals have eagerly fed themselves regarding Trump.
Trump wasn’t elected because he is vulgar or lies frequently, but despite these issue.
He receives (grudging) support because he is the only politician who dared speak truths forbidden by the Serious People; that mass illegal immigration isn’t an alloyed benefit, that the racial disparity isn’t only due to malicious discrimination and so on.
Over the past few decades, the USA has turned into the USSR, with the blank slate theory replacing communism as the state ideology which everyone knows is fake but is compelled to pay obeisance to.
Until the progressivist religion can take at least some cognizance of the facts, Trump will continue to find an audience.
tarkmarg.blogspot.com
3
I went to your blog. I see we are, indeed, doomed.
1
Soft money, dark money and Citizens United have brought out the worst in our politics. Decency, the common good and equality got sold down the river to the sharks and snakes inhabiting our corporations and Wall Street. People living in fear make bad choices. We can only hope that they make better choices in this November Election but until we overturn Citizens United and get the money changers out of Congress what we once stood for will continue into fascism.
21
DJT is a man of many faults, so I've read. He has morals on par with Bernie Madoff and some of the more well known members of the priesthood. If the Klan did not exist, DJT would have invented it. But, it would have been a bigger, better, more wonderful klan. A world class klan.
Uuuhh. And, he got elected. I guess that is a mark against his voters. The bitter clinging, deplorable, Make America Great Again voters.
So what does that say about the competition? With all of his faults, he bested 15 Republican pols. And, I don’t know who he is going to brag to, about beating Hillary. Remember, she was the one that had to be heaved into a get-a-way van on a lovely September day. Who does he brag to about that?
Now, election day 2018, is less than 10 months away. DJT’s not on the ballot, but, it will mark first day of tryouts for the Democrat team. Players and their strategies will be on display. To be fair, anyone that has not publicly withdrawn from the competition has to be considered in the competition.
Playing at the national venue will be JoeHillaryBernieLizCoreyKamala(one of the Castro boys) and 6 yet to be named.
But, the important plays are all local. Getting the home town to jump back on the BHO bus will be harder. If the message is corporations must pay more and the jobs leave again, well, not good for the national team. Remember, Democrats are playing against the worst of the worst. It’s an easy win. Right?
1
You are free to approve of Donald Trump and think he's the "best of the best". You're also free to approve of the job he's doing. And you're free to vote for him again.
But the destruction of the EPA, the State Department, and our international standing will be on you, then. Meanwhile, the enrichment of the very richest and the despoliation of our country both seem to be accelerating under President Trump, despite his campaign promises. Thank you, Mike.
3
The present shutdown will be lengthened as long as possible by the President for one glorious reason: It's not about Russia.
8
And still, as an atheist I couldn’t be elected dog catcher. Some myths live on.
10
Donald the Destroyer. No more, no less. That's his Superpower.
9
Wow, just as I think I'm the first to make this observation, somebody said the same thing yesterday. Thanks for making me feel not so alone in my viewpoints!
5
For the rest of you, who have not been lying to yourselves, thanks for your relentless opposition to the forces of conventional, materialistic, oppressive, comfortable complacency. And thanks for voting.
6
I think it is Trump’s open racism that offends me the most among his innumerable vile qualities. I thought as a nation we were getting past that, but I see now that I was wrong, Mea Culpa.
7
This is so depressing.
3
Would DT have come to power before the existence of television, cell phones, internet and social media? This is a serious question that demands an answer on so many levels (including the influence of mega donors, Citizens United, SCOTUS and many foreigners). American society is creating a reality that would be an interesting TV show, full of daily cliffhangers. We live a National Soap Opera and accept it because it is more familiar than boring reality. Our group think remembers "The Manchurian Candidate", "South Park" and scores of others, creating the same interesting chaos that is seen in a 30 minutes show. Isn't Fox News more like a TV drama than reality? DT is a great actor but he is really playing a part cast by someone else. Note how often we hear that he was "elected fairly". Really? He did not have the majority vote. So why does the media allow the script to change and suggest otherwise? We expose our great vulnerability as Democracy Dies (and may blow ourselves up, too like those nuclear holocaust movies). Real politicians (Dems and moral Republicans like Kasich and Romney) are branded because they are not "TV like". It is the TV myth of the President that we voted for. Note how Oprah, a TV star, is being tapped to lead. Really? Note how the "shutdown" is being blamed on someone else. Really? Myth making or TV lies? And so the question is asked: Can we shut off the National TV Brain and hold these frauds accountable?
98
"He did not have the majority vote". Wrong.
Trump received 304 votes. The next candidate received 227 votes. Then, 3,1,1,1,1. 304 votes was a clear majority.
Oh, you say, you meant that he didn't receive a majority of the "popular" vote, which is irrelevant in our Constitutional system. Well, no presidential candidate received a majority of the "popular" vote in 2016. So, give the specious "majority" vote narrative a rest. This is the US.
1. No, he could not have been elected without the megaphone of social media, but that does not diminish the culpability of a large swath of the general population.
2. Arguably the people prefer celebrity and drama to general competence. What will we say if Oprah becomes the democratic nominee in 2020?
3. The guy in the White House is a popular actor, a TV creation--he is not a great actor, although some will equate popularity with greatness.
4. He did not have the majority vote. It is twist of fate that his win came via the Electoral College, an institution that gave extra power to slave states: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/12/13598316/donald-trump... . Some people deny this explanation, insisting that the institution was built to create some balance for small states and foster a notion of federalism. Hence the myth of the EC's value persists in some quarters. The South would lose almost every national election were we governed by majority vote of our citizenry.
5. It is too simple blame TV, social media, etc. They are tools. We must convince people evaluate evidence from sources with better standards of evidence. Given the polarization of the media--most certainly made worse by modern electronic communications (with our president being a prime example, given his reliance on Twitter as his personal newspaper)--it is not easy to see how this can be done.
2
I still remember George W. Bush campaigning against Al Gore, promising to "return honesty and decency to the White House". Good times.
Democrats in 2020 will have a lot to run on, and must craft a positive, progressive agenda, starting with Medicare for All. Running against Trump qua Trump only motivates his base, as we saw in 2016. But many Trump voters are uncomfortable with his prevarications and ugly rants. They might favor returning honesty and decency to the White House.
5
While Trump's base probably agrees with his greed and racism, there is something else going on. Trump is a TV celebrity whom people like(d) on The Apprentice. I still don't understand why people worship celebrities but they do. Hence, Trump is right: he probably could shoot someone and get away with it. Sad.
2
I had hoped, in my own naïveté, that this country had reached a point where outward racism, would be roundly condemned. Shortly after the election of our first black president, I was cured of that utopian ideal. The election of our current president proves that we have not only, not reached that goal, but might heading in the opposite direction.
We as a society, have allowed this to happen. We should have condemned McConnell when he vowed to make Obama a one term president. We should have laughed Trump from the stage when he questioned the legitimacy of Obama's citizenship, or the labeling of Mexicans as rapists. Instead we listened, and some of us nodded in agreement. If Trumps election can finally demonstrate that, we can and must be better, we should reject and condemn this ugliness, then maybe some good can come from such darkness.
8
Donald Trump built his fortune...the part that he didn't inherit from daddy...by being a builder. He's chosen to define his presidency, on the other hand, by being a destroyer, even if you consider the wall. These labels, however, as is the case with most labels, oversimplify reality, even as they cater to Trump's self-created myths.
I've watched Trump for decades, from a New York vantage point, and on a few occasions, at close range, in the same room where his financial defaults were being addressed. What should concern us is not the myths about what he claims to be, which by definition are false, or they wouldn't be myths.
What matters are the myths Trump creates and reinforces about others, starting with his claims of "fake news," and quickly moving on to his offensive claims about various ethnic, racial, religious and, even, hate groups. Trump's wholesale fabrications a la minute are of consequence in an entirely different and decidedly destructive way.
In fact, Trump is governing not so much by being a mythbuster, but through the wholesale creation of myths about others, which he freely uses as justification for his aberrant policies.
What we have here, folks, is a chronologically aging but emotionally immature president who has a total disregard for the truth. And that's no myth.
215
Your assessment of creating myths and using them for justification, reminds of how Fox News presents it's arguments. They make up a story, then blame the offender (usually a liberal or Democrat) for creating the made up mess.
Now that I think about it, That's what is going on with the Republicans in Congress right now.
2
We fool ourselves by looking at how bad/racist/vile the worst are because we learn to overlook everyday corruption. The most influential lobbyists don't claim to represent large blocks of voters; they promise to bring large bags of money. The "good" cops routinely yell, "stop reaching for a weapon," as a habitual coverup in case they decide to shoot, and we ignore this when nobody actually gets shot. We push out the guy who sends pornographic selfies but ignore the multiply-divorced "family values" representative. We keep reading newspapers that refuse to call a predator a predator until a year too late.
6
this is a vey sad column and hopefully not accurate. One can only hope that progress is occurring, albeit in fits and starts, two steps forward, one back. As Tony Kushner put it, 'the world only spins forward' - hopefully that isn't just unfounded optimisim. Martin Luther King said something similar about the arc of justice being slow but always bending in the right direction. And the old Latin proverb Temporis filiia veritas (truth is the daughter of time)..Let's hope they are right..
1
And the New York Times now uses the word "lie" to replace previous euphemisms about falsehoods spoken by politicians, especially trump, in public statements. What progress we've made!
3
trump is a free radical formed by the splitting of a Pub oxygen atom. He is destructive to the body politic, smashing the conception of the unity of society and smashing world Diplomacy. All this makes him dangerous to our future. Now if we could only find the correct balance of antioxidants to neutralize him.
3
I am just as appalled today as I was the first time I became aware of this buffoon nearly 35 years ago.
What a shame that everyone doesn't do a turn in Corporate America. They would recognize in Donald Trump the leader who promises them the sun, the moon and the stars at the beginning of every fiscal year but conveniently disappears to his own private island (or golf club) when it comes time to reward his loyal sycophants for their support above and beyond the call.
As if it isn't offensive enough we must deal with these sociopaths in the workplace now we have one sitting in the Oval Office. If I could spit the taste from my mouth, I would.
11
Although the editorial says that Trump has made zero genuine apologies, he actually has one on record. This was the apology he gave for the Access Hollywood tape in a statement on Oct. 7, 2016. Granted that he was unclear as to exactly what the apology was for, he did say "I apologize" and "I was wrong." That may have been the first time ever he uttered those words as far as I could tell through my research, and I have never heard them since. Nevertheless, he has apologized at least that once and yet has refused to do so ever again for any of the horrendous things he has done subsequently. This to me reveals his true character because it says that he knows what is right to do and refuses to do it. This casts him in a different light than that of a person who does not understand why an apology must be uttered, and is thus incapable of offering one.
6
Agreed that the moral bankruptcy of this administration is sadly reflected in a declining civility of our society. However, I wish the media would stop being led down scandalous alleys and stay focused on the policy issues that this administration is sneaking in while our attention is diverted. This administration does not care what we think of its "character," such as it is. The end justifies the means, and it will do anything to get to the end it wants.
4
This point of benefit has reached very few at this time. Witness the recent awkward rationalization postures of leaders Rev. Graham, Mike Pence and GOP congressional members writ large.
1
Barrack Obama is better than me. So is Jimmy Carter. LBJ rose above his faults to help create great domestic policy while persuing a disastrous foreign policy. I could go down a list of American presidents and for each, it would be complicated. Except for the current one, who is better than absolutely no one.
Why we vote the way that we do is complicated, but recent science tells us that conservatives greatest motivating factor is fear. The Republicans have exploited this moral weakness very successfully for a very long time. Has anyone ever used fear tactics more cynically than the sociopath in chief?
It is one of the chief jobs of the president no matter what their personal limitations to inspire us, to make us wish to be more than we are, both as country and as individuals. Trump's selfish inability to see beyond his own existence makes it impossible for him to do so.
I suspect that it is this that will eventually end his presidency, along with the legitimate fear that is engendered by his own incompetent behavior outstripping the false fear that he has sown.
6
How terribly sad that we had to have a president who has no normal sense of morality to learn how little this country really cares about the things it has always claimed it cared for. And even sadder are the people who still slobber over him and will vote for him again.
5
There is a flaw in this argument. If we are to evaluate Trump in moral terms, or as the distillation of "defining deviancy down" to use the late Senator Moynahan's phrase, we will remain trapped in a tautological maze. No amount of degradation will satisfy this argument, but only reinforce it.
If Trump were somehow replaced tomorrow with a person professing different moral standards—say Hillary or Oprah—the outrage machine would still infect our political myths. Political truths would still be up for grabs depending on where one tunes in to reinforce a world view that is pretty deeply rooted by now.
No, it is a fundamental error to see Trump's power in moral terms. As the author makes clear, the groundwork has long been laid for people of moral standing to set aside their scruples if it means the other side might win. Trump's particular skill is his ability to trivialize everything he touches. Immigration, police brutality, sexual assault, NFL protests, global treaties, the failing New York Times—it's a all the same, reducible to a few tweets worth of condemnation.
No level of collective delusion means that we deserve to be painted as a people with the stains of Trump's incoherence. We may be culpable for turning away from some ugly truths, like the causes for the world's refugee crises. But the Republican assault on environmental and voting rights progress, for example, makes it clear that they are increasingly willing to inflict their delusions on everyone.
92
I agree. What we have learned the past year is to face the fundamental, unchanging, basics of paleo politics that lie beneath our elaborate cultural fantasies of political sophistication. Simply, two thirds of the population must always vote in order to counter the votes of the one third of the population that, on a biological basis beyond their control, sincerely yearns to embrace an authoritarian political system. We live in this modern world playing a behavioral hand that was dealt to us about 75,000 years ago. Political behavior in humans is fundamental and has little to do with the actual circumstances of daily events that we like to imagine we are reacting to with our finely developed modern systems of rationality.
16
so, how come we are doing so badly compared to our fellow humans in other parts of the world?
no, our faults are not in our stars, but in ourselves.
4
There is a rabbinic saying: "The face of a generation is like the face of a dog", which basically means, you get what you deserve.
Donald Trump did not descend to the presidency from the heavens. He was elected.
"Before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, it was easy to believe, if you were inclined to do so, that the people who represented us generally had to be better than us."
If anybody really believed that, then you truly got what you deserved.
30
Your quote is applicable both in Israel and here.
3
From Sean Wilentz column in today's NYT:
As George Washington observed at the outset of his presidency in 1789, the president cannot in any way “demean himself in his public character” and must act “in such a manner as to maintain the dignity of office.”
14
[Evangelicals have cast their lot with a hedonistic president who seems to merely give the Bible lip service at public functions.]
His declaration "I love money!" inspired them to fall to their knees and swear eternal devotion.
His alleging a flawless record of infallibility exactly matching his number of apologies issued and in arrears, extending well to his infancy, despite having broadcasted via any media willing to amplify his boasting of his adulterous escapades (however imaginary) and publicly humiliating 2 (of 2) of his partners in holy matrimony/mothers of/his children, his exhibition of what is unquestionably a literally infinite and utterly flawless absence of capacity for embarrassment to include his Lord and Savior before whom he spoke then desecrated his vows of marriage as among those to whom he owed no apologies, convincing US Christians that willfully forever branding themselves with Stench of Trump ensured celebrity status among the inheritors of the Earth and in the eyes of the Lord.
The funny thing about Republicans is, exposure to the Constitution or Bible renders them functionally illiterate and inspires speaking in a tongue indiscernible from English, but of alternative definitions of words with broad tendency to be directly contrary to those whose business is defining English words.
Truly, He works in mysterious ways.
34
Character is not the most important quality in choosing a leader. The most important thing is ability to think clearly and to act for the betterment and the protection of the nation.
Mr Trump laid out the issues he thought as important. The nation knew about his personal less than pristine reputation. They chose to elect him because they agreed with those issues.
The writer is wrong to accuse the police of targeting and killing black men In each of those cases those men resisted arrest.
The writer is wrongly accusing the president of prejudice against Haitians. He said bad things about their country not them.
It is not Trump who is prejudiced but the writer
2
Resisting arrest is not a capital crime. The right to wield deadly force does not extend to using it for convenience.
Don't bring a knife to a gunfight, they say. A few years ago in Union Square a deranged man wielded a knife surrounded by four newly graduated police cadets. Did four policemen disarm him and arrest him? No, they shot him dead. The story caused nary a shrug in the news. Standard operating procedure.
Many of the men you're referring to weren't resisting arrest at all. One was shot in his car, next to his girlfriend, retrieving his wallet. One was running away, hands in the air, shot in the back after a traffic stop. Stupid? Maybe. But why deadly? Couldn't the police have tracked him down? They had his car!
Then there was the 10 year old boy, shot on the playground wielding a toy gun. Brave policeman, that one.
I beg you to remember no majority elected Trump. Quite possibly the election was tilted by Russia. Trump holds power, but no mandate, as can be seen by the lack of legislation passed and historically low poll numbers. You may agree with him, but those disagreeing aren't simply bellyaching. We have countless concerns about his finances, motivations, and simple comprehension of the world outside his skull. He likes doing things because he can, see Jerusalem and DACA. He's not so good at doing things he should do for the country, see the budget and DACA.
1
Tell me madam, how does one 'resist' arrest when they are handcuffed and laying on the floor? How did the man shot in SC who was asked for his registration and was shot for complying resist arrest? I will tell you how those officers were afraid of black men. If they are that fearful, they don't belong in that uniform.
3
Nope. Not gonna let you get away with that. He specifically said "why do we have to get all these people from these sh*thole countries? Why can't we get people from places like Norway?"
He didn't want the PEOPLE from these countries, having the racist belief that because their country is floundering, the people must be the reason. And they are the reason because they are brown or black skinned. Stop giving the man cover.
Does anything even matter anymore? Now is a good time to enact "The Purge" into reality, because we have fallen so far already, might as well have a night when we kill people for fun. THAT is what electing someone like Trump does to a people.
We are no good. And by we, I mean everyone who voted for or supports this president. They have no moral core, and can no longer claim one.
4
Excellent. If anything you were way too gentle on the lying sociopath and the army he conned into believing he was presidential material. When everyone saw trump at his immigration meeting whipsawed from one extreme to the opposite and back, trump’s army only fell more in love. And when trump “negotiated” an agreement with Senator Schumer only to contradict himself shortly thereafter, the army say leadership. God help us all.
21
We're still the country that elected Barack Obama president twice. I continue to take solace in that fact.
119
yeah, and we used to have separate drinking fountains and a 90% top marginal tax rate.
stop looking back: our future is not behind us but ahead.
4
The good guys rule, when they show up.
1
How many years did it take for Senator Joseph McCarthy to be stopped in his tracks? Please let's stop Trump way sooner. Neither of these men have/had any decency!
70
well, McCarthy had Roy Cohn alive, and Trump is asking now, where's my Roy Cohn?
looks like we'll suffer wih Trump until those who control the nation's pursestrings are dissatisfied, Trump dies, or he brings about a premature end of the world.
your guess is as good as mine as to which is least unlikely.
3
Gosh Jamil, did you really believe the politicians, bureaucrats and generals appointed to act in our name have ever been “better” than the average American? I don’t believe you. Unless you just completed your first semester of kindergarten.
America offers a lot of benefits compared to some—even many—other countries, but we have never been especially good except when viewed in contrast to other countries behaving very badly at particular times in history. What high school and college did you go to, Lollipop High and Gingerbread University?
Do you think we have the highest GDP and the largest and most fearsome military because we are nice?
I have a bridge I could sell you at a reasonable price, truly.
19
You are right, we have never really been a "good" country. Which is what conservatives usually don't like to accept about us, instead wanting to believe the mythology that we comfort ourselves with.
But by them electing Trump, they never, EVER again get to claim that we are the "good guys".
4
The continuing lack of consequence is the part that alarms me. Trump's enablers are almost more sickening than Trump the man. How can Mike Pence kneel subservient before a man having affairs with porn stars and still act religiously righteous? But there he is, righteous as ever, kneeling before our very eyes. He's only the first hypocrite on the list too.
I don't believe anyone in Washington is naive enough to misunderstand Trump is a monumental degradation to our nation. You don't even have to like Democrats in order to despise Trump. You just have to pay attention for five minutes. The enablers go along anyway though. You really have to wonder about their motivation.
What does John Kelly have to tell himself in order to sleep at night? I don't even want to know what's going on upstairs with Sarah Huckabee Sanders. How can you stand at a podium everyday and endlessly defend the indefensible? I almost feel sorry for her children. Almost.
No. Trump has to go along with anyone tainted by his presence. Anyone that argues that point can follow the crowd out the door. You're not wanted.
85
Trump’s astonishingly vile behaviour notwithstanding, I was wondering how and what Sanders teaches her children about lying. Ditto Ivanka. Not a good example to set by these working mothers.
3
Last year I couldn’t wait for the Woman’s March. I proudly march/stood for 14 hours to voice my dissent of our national election. This year, all I could muster is watching it on Twitter.
I can not feel solidarity with people who refuse to see or don’t care about racism and sexism that a lot of working class minorities experience while they hashtag #metoo.
I should dump this very newspaper that consistently ignores the 94% demographic that voted for Hillary Clinton but every month has to send out want ads to talk to Trump Voters.
5
“The president has forced us to finally look in the mirror. ”
The vindictiveness with which the Democrats have opposed and harassed a duly elected President is extraordinary. Just because they lost.
The childish impulses of the Democrats have inadvertently exposed their own shocking corruption.
The extent to which Democrats are willing to go to cheat, including corrupting the FBI, DOJ and spying on political opponents, has no place in a decent society.
Whether you are willing to face what you see in the mirror will tell us whether or not the Democrats even have a future.
Clinton and the cheating Democrats, by the next election, will have been thoroughly exposed.
Perhaps the Democrats can use the shame to initiate a house cleaning exercise and get rid of the dead wood leading their party. It literally will be the only way they can survive.
4
Wait. Vindictiveness? By the party not in power? Or by the party that refused its constitutional duty to hold hearings for the duly elected president's duly named Supreme Court nominee?
It's vindictive not to vote to repeal your own landmark legislation? It's vindictive to expect congress and the FBI to investigate corroborated evidence of Russian interference with the election?
Please explain how Democrats became so powerful that they corrupted the FBI, and in only a matter of weeks. After all, many think James Comey influenced the election, and not exactly the way Democrats would have chosen. I'll wait.
6
Ken - I would appreciate your thoughts on how the Republicans treated President Obama. The democrats have gloves on in comparison to how President Obama was treated from day one - from my perspective.
5
The attacks son the president are based on his words and actions.
5
This is what is known as "moving the bar."
Normalizing wholesale, uninterrupted deception and fact-free, knowledge-free
governance.
Replacing a Constitutional Democracy with the Potemkin Village of Autocracy.
Don't do it.
Resist and maintain the norms and values of this Democratic Republic--with all that you have to give.
14
Trump's elevation to the Presidency, and his continued support by so many, demonstrates that we humans are not the rational beings we like to think we are. Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist, won the Noble Prize in Economics for demonstrating how irrational our decision making really is. It seems we're 90% Howdy Doody and 10% Mr. Spock. Time to stop deluding ourselves about our "wonderfulness" and start allowing more rational processes, like science, to play a larger role in our judgment.
15
Please do not smear Howdy Doody, one of my earliest heroes. As I recall Howdy was a nice boy, cheerful, with some smarts, and far from bigoted ( he was in love with an Indian princess). He was almost human, perhaps silly and fun-loving but without any meanness. He was the beginnings of a grownup, with good impulses. We need our Mr. Spock’s but not at the expense of the Howdys in our world.
I stand corrected, childish innocence and exuberance are good qualities, except when the innocence becomes ignorance and exuberance become tweeting meanness in an adult who becomes President.
THE TRUMP VACCINE
Let's hope he stimulates antibodies in the body politic that will attack the infection he brings.
We need to get rid of local control of education, as it permits backwaters of science-denying, bigotry-supporting school boards to flourish, and fails miserably to teach children to separate fact from fiction and propaganda.
But who is there to lead the fight for a return to American (i.e., liberal) values?
Until a leader emerges to unite the vast majority of the American population who are fed up with our dysfunctional politics, we will just get tired just wringing our hands.
9
My husband and I have read and talked about American literature for a long long time. Hawthorne, Melville, Wharton, James, Cather, Hemingway, Toni Morrison and company. Also, I’ve written two nonfiction books based on interviews with people far outside our circle. State policemen, trial judges, defense lawyers, women who fought to defend their Second Amendment rights, rattlesnake hunters, deer and turkey hunters, African-American women in Camden NJ whose sons had been shot, and a surgeon who had operated on gunshot victims. After listening to each one for a while, and later transcribing those conversations, I came to understand that each person had her or his own place, angle, job, family and friends, opinions, justifications.
But I can’t comprehend how anyone could listen to Donald Trump’s vile campaign rants, his repetitive insults, empty boasts, childish lies, calls to violence, and think “Now THAT man would make a very good president of the United States.”
This experience has taught me that I don’t understand this country and it’s history at all. These days when I look at a map of the continent, I don’t imagine pioneers and the Grand Canyon, the prairies, rafts on the Mississippi. I imagine an awful and noisy mess, and it makes me ashamed ... ashamed that this man has been chosen to represent us, and ashamed that I’ve been such a fool.
170
I think that Mr Smith is right, but only to a point. It is true only for Republicans. The real problem is that the GOP pays no lasting price for its misdeeds.
The careers of Spitzer and Wiener were over when their scandals broke, but Vitter served out his full Senate term, and later ran for governor of Louisiana. He lost, but it was a candidacy that would have been impossible for a Democrat. Today Vitter lives in that promised land that all corrupt politicians aspire to, that of the lobbyist. I doubt that Weiner or Spitzer can get anyone to take their phone calls now.
The double standard is not new, either. Nixon committed crimes that would have exiled his party for decades had he been a Democrat, but Ford pardoned him and the GOP held the white house for only four years of the 24 between 1969 and 1993. Dubya brought us incompetence, a disastrous war, and financial ruin. What lesson did they learn? The encore? Enter The Donald, a man who makes Bush look like Lincoln in comparison. Imagine a black Democratic president, twice divorced, with five children from three women, who had paid hush money to a porn star over an affair when his youngest child was an infant. You can't. It's an impossibility.
I think about this phenomenon often, and I wonder what it will take to break the cycle. I fear it's going to take a catastrophe to get people to see the light. The collapse of 2009 was not grave enough to do it. I wonder how bad it would have to get?
469
Excellent question. Well, looking into history and UNDERSTANDING that this character came about as the end result of a societal spiraling down thru democratic elections, chech these two examples for reference:
- The degradation caused by an outrageous elite, the Czars, brought the Communist revolution.
- Nazism also came about thru a desintegrative process that escalated into well known tragedies.
Chech the cost not just to those nations but the world that were the end result.
The USA electorate as a whole was and I suspect still is fed up with a rotten political system. No wonder what is happening, and you have legitimate reasons to worry about how bad will have to go before improving .... maybe too late. I suspect we are half way down.
2
you don't want to know.
willful ignorance is a more powerful drug than opioids and there seems no way to bring its victims back from overdose.
3
the collapse was in 2008.
5
Could we perhaps recognize that the United States is not uptopia, that human beings and the societies they create are necessarily flawed and imperfect, and that all nations have plenty of skeletons in their closets? For all its flaws America has given a great many people of all descriptions a very good life, and, while we certainly should continue to criticize and seek to improve, at least once in a while we might try to place our flaws in a little perspective.
we might acknowledge this
2
Ok, we have flaws in our US gummint system. Doesn't take a genius to figure that out......
Now, what have you got to say about fixing them and making this a better place for all of us?
I'm listening......
The cold current of racism runs swift and turbulent, under a warm surface layer of political correctness. That is a part of American history since the Civil War and it has formed our collective, American character. From time to time the current of racism breaks through the surface layer. Its speed and turbulence are soon dissipated but it's chill lingers in the surface layer until the hot sun of truth warms the surface. Jamil Smith is right to point that out.
The current of racism burst through the surface on November 8, 2016. During the first year of the Trump Administration its chill has taken hold. Its turbulence has shutdown our government and we are right to worry when we put our boats into the waters.
5
“Evangelicals have cast their lot with a hedonistic president who seems to merely give the Bible lip service at public functions.“
Can we just stop for a moment and ponder the immense and horrific irony of our current moment?
Wasn’t it the basic Judeo-Christian values, supposedly widely held, that set the standards that Nixon referred to? And wasn’t it the “Moral Majority “ that stared the swing towards involving Evangelicals in political action? And wasn’t the hallmark of that involvement a belief that, absent a national (read codified into law) commitment to Christian values, our country was destined to decay and crumble? And doesn’t it seem like we are witnessing in this moment, that decay and crumble?
The support of these same people for Donald Trump makes the case that we really do need, on an individual and national level, a commitment to the values exhibited by Christ— namely integrity, love, compassion, inclusivity, humility, and courage. Everything Trump is not. Our country, lacking a demand for those attributes, is indeed crumbling before our eyes.
I find it astonishing that anyone who considers him or herself a moral and thinking being can hold these contradictions and not have their head explode. Evangelicals, I’m looking at you. But maybe it’s just the moral compass that explodes, making it possible to carry on.
25
An other documentation about HIM. His violating unnecessary words and deeds.Which each of US, in our unique mindful, or perhaps mindless ways, enable within our WE-THEM culture, national life style and protected, as well as vulnerable life spaces. Enabling behaviors which doesn't seem to attract OP-EDs being written about. A daily empowering of Trump, a person, by ordinary folk. as a Presidency is dis-empowered by ordinary folk. Daily. I wonder, as I read this article, Sunday, in Jerusalem, walking distance from where Jesus walked, talked, taught, was mis-tried, mis-judged, violated, by God's creations, and was documented THEN, for the Here and Now, as well::Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. And they divided up his clothes by casting lots, whether he would have forgiven Trump and his converts? As they, ordinary folk, divide up. Down. Sideways.At so many levels.
Mr. Smith makes a compelling case that American mythology has not served us well. The ancient oil portraits of our founders and the faded parchment of our Constitution lull us into a false sense of their wisdom and justice. The reality is that these men committed crimes against humanity either directly by holding other human beings in bondage or formally approving that system by agreeing that those enslaved were three-fifths human.
Those ugly realities need to be faced, but the fuller story is that they, and we, are capable of sharing the vision of equality of rights and individual dignity. The story, was, is, and will be one of struggling to find our clarity of vision and courage. Some have served the cause of justice by being an irritant. John Quincy Adams served his country best after leaving the presidency. In the House, he introduced petition after petition to abolish human slavery, resulting in a gag rule to silence his scolding about our nation’s original sin.
Trump serves as an inverse and spectacular irritant, revealing the hypocrisy and cupidity that remains a core set of practices in our political life. At least, these civic evils are revealed for the hateful and unjust things that they are. While we will try hard to deny them and hope to leave them in our dust, they are real and difficult to end.
The first step to redemption is to admit you have a problem. Perversely, Trump and his GOP supporters have revealed our shared ugliness.
4
Trump has no political experience, no social graces, is racist, misogynistic and mean, and is clearly in over his head and doesn’t know anything about how to govern.
But as horrific as he is, like Harvey Weinstein and other abusers, Trump’s enablers in the Republican Party are far worse than he is for failing to criticize him and for backing him so often.
They should know better and bear a great deal of responsibility for the mess he has created, and he is by no means alone in the sad state of affairs that have marked his presidency.
Hopefully after all of the passion seen yesterday in the women’s marches, voters will show up to take Trump’s minions to task so they are accountable for their complicity in his actions and tossed out so sanity can finally reign.
22
We like to think that we choose based on ethics, reason and judgement; that our choices are for the best. That they can be defended.
But we have a government that is acting on Machiavellian principles and not too many who have voted for them seem to care. If McConnell twisted advise and consent into a pretzel to get Gorsuch, well, we got Gorsuch, is all is good.
If the rule of law states that we have to deport people even if their children are citizens, even if they have been here since they were 3 or were invited to come after a disaster, well then, ciao guys. Take off. If we have to hold children's health s a hostage to get our own interests furthered, well it furthers our agenda, so it is all good.
If Trump kills the ACA or lowers my taxes, or makes abortion harder or helps protect ever expanding rights to sell a gun to anyone and everyone, well, then everything else he does is just noise. He is doing a great job. That is Machiavellian.
I don't have a defense - I would have voted for Clinton even if all of the garbage hurled at her were true (and as proof of concept I don't believe the garbage) - just to keep the GOP Machiavellis at bay.
My brother tells me the government is transactional. I say it is machiavellian. Trump makes it look like both of us are right.
7
The biggest myth exposed by Trump's election is American exceptionalism. We are exceptionally bigoted. We have exceptional moral apathy. We exceptionally cling to the belief all ends justify any means. Our government is exceptionally corrupt. We are exceptionally attached to guns. We are exceptional at ignoring Trump's cascade of lies. Trump has pulled the curtain back to expose the exceptionalism of hypocritical Americans. It is not a pretty sight.
160
Reagan was admired and loved because he abetted Americans' self-serving feeling of exceptionalism. Reagan's feel-good pandering made sure that Americans never had a chance to face the truth about their Vietnam misadventure and their neglected need to be responsible Earth citizens. Reagan, H.W. and W, now Donald flatter and promote the worse thoughts and behavior of Americans. These presidents and their supporters have set the stage for a massive US downfall.
The group precipitating US downfall includes the so-called evangelicals, who have forgotten what Jesus is alleged to have said about the mote and beam in the eyes of the self-righteous. Include also the self-satisfied PC-ers who couldn't be bothered to confront anti-social behavior. Add the military, which just wants more expensive war toys, as well as ribbons, stars and bars to decorate their chests.
What a pity and what hurt to have witnessed this debacle during my 74 years.
3
Mr. Smith reminds us of a truth that the framers of the Constitution knew all too well. Human beings are flawed creatures, capable of committing acts of unspeakable evil as well as sacrificing themselves for the welfare of others. These imperfections characterize elected officials as much as anyone else. Indeed, the logic behind a democratic political system assumes we will select as our representatives people like ourselves, not some superior beings from another realm.
That said, Smith's method of cherrypicking evidence from different historical eras, devoid of any context, confuses more than it enlightens. Both jdnewyork and drdeanster provide persuasive counter examples of progress in our struggle against the worst angels of our nature
Smith implies that human beings lack any capacity to grow, to improve their attitudes and behavior. But we did manage to abolish slavery, and eventually we guaranteed most of the civil and political rights of the descendants of the bondsmen. Women now occupy a very different position in society than they did even a half century ago, and they have acquired a political voice that men now ignore at their cost, as Roy Moore recently discovered. The lgbt community, moreover, has achieved much greater public acceptance in an astonishingly short period of time.
Trump represents a reaction against all these trends, but he and his followers lack any compelling alternative vision for our future. Pure reactionaries rarely achieve much.
1
Thank you! This column is on target. Especially the last line, "That may be the only way in which he has been useful". It has been useful to me to fully see the extent of racism always present underneath the surface in American politics and culture.
I thought we would have changed by now too. We toss aside Coretta Scott King as if she never existed and promote Sessions and the real secessionist John Kelly.
It's out in the open, perhaps that's better. We know what we are up against and we can fight it.
4
As far as American introspection goes, tRump may be the best thing that ever happened to us, IF we come to terms with who we are, what we've done, what we want for our future, and then stand up solidly for all of it.
7
"...a reminder that, in politics, even what so many like to think of as the good old days weren’t actually that good."
Well, of course, our presidents, like our citizenry, represented the blights of our history. Slavery, violence against Native Americans, warring, misogyny, racism, religious discrimination, hate crimes and other pathologies are woven into our national fabric. There has always been a push and pull between forces of regression and progress. What Trump calls "great" is far more nuanced than a society most of us would reconstruct. The backwards-looking platform of the Trump administration is going to double the resolve of the majority of citizens opposed to him - and we are still the majority - to move the country forward and away from his agenda.
The arc of history is long but bends toward justice.
3
Trump is what he is. He consistently represents the "values" of the people who put him in the White House. He exploited anger, fear and ignorance to dupe his way into the presidency. I don't like him but I don't blame him for getting as far as he did. I blame the 35% of the country who elected him and I blame the "Bernie or nobody" non-voters and others who helped Trump win. This is a self inflicted wound and it didn't have to be this way.
22
Goldwater was not a "civil rights opponent". He opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1965 because he thought it an unreasonable and dangerous expansion of government power. In fact, he personally opposed racial discrimination and never engaged in it.
Was he justified? It is impossible to say what would have happened without it, but the country was rapidly moving to a consensus that racial discrimination was wrong. Without the Act, a few deep-South holdouts would have held out longer, but that would have been a narrow minority position. It probably would not have made much difference, and we would be without the hypocrisy of a "diversity" movement that pretends to be against racial discrimination while demanding it in favor of its friends.
1
Our nation has been sliding to this point in fits-and stars for a long time.
I fear that this president, as bad as it is, is not necessarily the bottom, however terrible it is to imagine something worse.
1
For one thing, Trump lost the election by nearly 3 million votes so most Americans rejected everything he stands for. The protests before he even took office were in every state and on every continent. One year later we're still protesting and he has the lowest rating in a strong economy because he disgusts us.
Yes we have a lot of work to do as a nation. Minority rights are better than they were during the civil rights movement but there's still too much prejudice against those who are different. Frankly the election of Trump has shown us that we still have a lot of work to do because racism might have gone underground but it's still stronger than it should be and now people realize this fact.
We can't change the past. Only 1/3 of the country supports this president. The rest of us are thinking about what we need to do to fix our broken country. I suspect that 20 years from now we will be stronger, more unified, and much more tolerant because of this presidency.
2
While the GOP touts its deal on the table, remember this fantastic deal funds the government for only 4 weeks!!
Never a more disfunctional political party in charge of the Senate, House, and White House and still can’t get it done. McConnell even admitted he doesn’t know what to do.
3
Recipe for making true false (and vice versa).
Randomly mix consequential and inconsequential lies.
Add more…even more, and then more still.
Stir until, like beauty, truth is in the eye of the beholder.
Then serve only to those to whom you’re beholden, your base.
Privately love ‘em or hate ‘em, just don’t publicly ignore the 35% or so who believe circles can be squared.
And don't forget that Andrew Jackson was the only President to pay off the national debt, in 1835, which was followed by the Panic of 1837. That ushered in our longest and perhaps worst depression. Trump will have to work hard to trump that, but he can do it if anyone can.
4
A very true commentary on America 18 years into the new millennium, which many of us had hoped would usher in a more enlightened era. Clearly, this is not to be just yet.
Racism and its less specific cousin, bigotry, are alive and well and live and work and raise families among us. They seem to be inherent characteristics of a certain percentage of all populations around the world, so there must be some primordial reason still exerting its influence through the psychology and instincts inherited down through the generations because bigotry sometimes seems as if it arrives fully intact in some people with little need for cultural conditioning, but I suspect that most cases only reach their full ugly potential with repeated and prolonged familial and community "teaching".
As much as my hopeful liberal brain rebels against the idea, I think that these flaws in human character will always be with us in our societies. I think they can be minimized and shamed partially into submission by encouraging and maintaining school systems that are diverse and mandating workplace hiring practices and operational standards that ensure diversity, but even then, some bigots will never change.
You can see that this is true by observing that 50 years after the Civil Rights Act, some communities and school systems and neighborhoods are even more worse off through self-segregation than 30 or 40 years ago.
The rest of us fight this through the examples of our behavior and our voting patterns.
3
An excellent article. Trump is a necessary virus that will either revive the Body America or kill it outright.
A healthy Body American will produce enough anti-bodies to fight off this severe infection, after a long painful battle against hallucinative "tweets", brain malfunction ("jello") and loss of emotional control.
We have sat on our laurels for too long. Too many of us assumed that our ascension to world leadership post-WWII would flourish on auto-pilot. That our democratic process is unbreakable and no longer needs any maintenance. We numb our minds by immersing our attention into self-serving greeds.
Trump is a necessary evil. We will either wake up and start working again, or we will keep sleeping, become even more complacent and destroy our own republic.
2
I don't like to defend this absurd society of ours but I have lived in several European and Asian countries and I would challenge this writer to find a society that wasn't at least our equal in infamy. If you are unaware of that it is because you weren't paying attention. In fact, perfection is not what we should seek but rather progress and striving for a better world. If anything one should be highly suspicious of any group claiming perfection. We do have an occupant of the oval office who is a perfect cause for the deepest despair but we should not cease to strive for better. To fall into the negativity and despair of this author is to essentially give up and to concede our country to its least honorable actors.
2
One year into the Trump horror and what have we got? A President totally unfit for office. Paralysis in government. Americans now more suspicious and angry at each other than ever before. Race and class animosities at a fever pitch.
A looming threat of nuclear war. A bogus tax plan favoring the rich intentionally designed to vastly increase the deficit.
What’s not to like and give him credit for?
Everything.
5
Trump has, at long last, put to final, welcomed rest that national fiction and popular delusion of American Exceptionalism. Through his elevation to our highest public office he has unequivocally confirmed that "anyone" in this country could become the President. Yes, including an amoral, misogynist, lying, ignorant, racist, dangerous, narcissistic incompetent.
Perhaps, post-Trump, that obnoxious, egotistical expression of a false superiority will be supplanted by an honest, realistic assessment: American Ordinariness. And may we take a certain pride in waking up to such truth.
5
The difference between Trump and (pick one) Spitzer, Weiner, or Vitter? Trump is the only one who isn't a hypocrite. His many flaws and deficiencies are right out there for all to see. He can't even lie convincingly.
1
which makes him a lot LESS dangerous than Hillary for example, who probably would have dragged this country into another war.
Americans are the least conscious of their history of any modern nation. Most high school grads are never taught about the recent forced desegregation of the south, and how it immediately transformed the nature of our two important political parties, as angry Democrats in the south fled to the GOP and turned the south a solid red. Our political history has been defined by our racism and it's road map continues to be written by it.
That the cynical GOP use of racist dog whistles would explode into a Trumpian symphony immediately following 8 years of our first black presidency is not a coincidence- white nationalist outrage may affect a minority of his voters, but without their fevered devotion, it is certain he would not have accomplished his electoral college upset.
Racism is just another tool to manipulate regular working people to vote against their economic interests and has been since our countries founding. Most southerners who marched to their deaths in the Civil War were impoverished by slavery's affect of keeping their wages low.
The vast majority of Americans are not essentially racist (beyond normal tribal instinct), even those in the Republican party. However those Americans who are, vote consistently Republican. A few percentage points at the polls is the difference between success and failure for either party.
25
President George W. Bush took us to war with a country that did not pose a threat to us. The result was hundreds of thousands dead. President Obama continued the war making with increased troop levels in Afganistan and attacked Libya another country that did not pose a threat to us. The result was the decapitation of their odious government replacing it with chaos.
The more recent presidents signed on to having our industrial base stripped out of our heartland. They've engaged in their imperial games costing billions while our infrastructure rots and our national debt starts to redline. We engage in constant military conflict but never achieve absolute victory.
Trump is a horror but I'm done ways he continues the tradition.
Yep, time to have the facts. Trump is a role model for over 60 million Americans. He is how the world sees America - not just since he got elected, but for over 75 years. Brash, loud, ignorant, bullying. So the question is, do we have the will to change that perception? The track record is pathetic.
3
Seems you have too have fallen for the trap white America has set: Focus on a phantom Russia investigation (for which we still have to see one scintilla of evidence) while we ignore serious, vital issues like police abuse and sickening brutality, mass surveillance, torture, imprisonment without trial, the sorry state of health care, immigration, poverty, education, income and wealth inequality...the list goes on. All that did not start with the Trump era.
4
I didn't vote for Trump. None of my family voted for Trump. 65 millions didn't vote for him.
The article is written as though we "all" were complicit in this, shall we say, adventure into the black hole.
Nope, not by a long shot.
2
There were enough Americans that WERE complicit in this. Smith is addressing THOSE people. He uses words like "we" and "us" to UNITE people. As in overcoming differences, as in RACISM for example.
1
For generations in America, rampant racism under the ascendancy of a bad sort of white people has erratically alternated with racism biding its time under the ascendancy of a better sort.
Progress has been slow. Even when it seemed to have brought us to a "post-racial" society, that state proved volatile. But now, demographic shift may be coming to the rescue. The very white-nationalist paroxysm that has been occurring since 2016 could be the surest sign that you and I (two people not necessarily of the same race who want the same kind of society) can at last believe in real change to come.
That shift will proceed by itself, but the Democratic Party has the opportunity to do itself and America good by carrying out "constituency reform": making its own shift from trying to recover the votes of wayward whites to repaying its long-standing debt to African-Americans and addressing the economic interests of the many and diverse Americans who work in service occupations.
Democrats operating in a White First America have contributed to change, in fits and starts. Now they can make their greatest contribution to an America in transition.
http://thefamilyproperty.blogspot.jp/2018/01/the-voyage-to-restoration.html
1
The good old days weren't actually that good...if you weren't white (as they happened to be defining it during whatever era you're examining) or Christian (preferably Protestant) or male.
There have been recent intermittent periods when that wasn't supposedly as true as before but I guess we're back to a more modern version of the "bad old days."
It's also proof that a reality TV Star with no political experience and moneyed friends can get elected. Not that impressive, folks...
2
I continue to be perplexed by what I would consider fairly level-headed friends of my mine---professionals/businessmen and women---who look past the character of this man. How in one breath can you say to me, "yes, I would never let this guy date by daughter," and in the next breath say Trump is what this country needed. You don't trust this guy with your daughter, but trust him with the nuclear codes ---REALLY.
3
Translation: By saying "I would never let this guy date my daughter" they are saying their daughters would never date him. Personally, I would not want to date him either. But I do trust him with nuclear codes. I am not sure what one thing has got to do with the other. I did not want to date my teachers ...?!
One year into the Trump horror and what have we got? A President totally unfit for office. Chaos and paralysis in government. Americans now more suspicious and angry at each other than ever before. Race and class animosities at a fever pitch. A looming threat of nuclear war. A bogus tax plan favoring the rich intentionally designed to vastly increase the deficit.
What’s not to like and give him credit for?
Everything.
5
Mr. Smith is right. But his essay raises two bigger questions:
What is "success" and what price are we willing to pay for it?
After one year here is a fair assessment of Trump's actual "accomplishments" (if you wish to call them that):
--the tax reform law
--unemployment has continued moving downward (started during Obama)
--the stock market has continued moving upward (also started during Obama)
--the EPA, SEC and other government agencies have begun rolling back regulations
--one Supreme Court justice and a several more conservative lower court judges appointed
--Trump abandoned the TPP and the Paris Accord, has threatened to stop funding the UN, leave NATO and terminate NAFTA
To achieve these Trump goals, here is what we had to pay:
--major increases to the federal deficit
--worsening wealth inequity
--reduced protection for the human health and environment
--Erosion of of trust, diplomacy and many, if not most, of our longstanding international relationships, including with key defense allies and trading partners
--a president only governs for the benefit of his supporters--not the rest of the country
--continued coarsening of our public discourse
--a general acceptance of lying, unethical behavior and immorality from our president
--utter and complete breakdown of bipartisanship
--autocratic rule and damage to gov't institutions
--undermining our free press
--racism and hatred encouraged by the president
Was the "success" worth the price? I would suggest not.
9
The article merely scratches the surface of the true history of this country. There have been great ethical and moral steps forward for America but we use a small percentage of our potential to be a Democracy, a land of civil rights and a succesful economy. If ones simply goes back to what Eisenhower warns us about, 'the Military-Industrial Complex', and study the wars we have waged since WW II, it is not hard to see that all of them were merely about more Money for the M.I.C. We waste billions on the Defense Department that could be used to improve our dreadful infrastructure, our Health Care System, our schools. The list is long. Pray for sanity at the election in 2018.
115
Donald Trump prides himself on self-aggrandizement, not on destruction.
But, then, that’s okay – so did LBJ. LBJ’s strategy for eclipsing his mentor, FDR, and becoming immortal, was to create the conditions by which large underclasses in America, traditionally despised and kept down for simple prejudice and economic fear, could contend for limited resources on a more equal playing-field. But he was mightily conflicted by the targets of this strategy, precisely those suppressed underclasses – there are as many, even more, documented instances of his using the “N” word than for any other president. If it hadn’t been for Vietnam and a complete lack of talent in conducting foreign affairs generally and war specifically – or even in understanding anyone not American – he might have succeeded, and in any case what grasp he has on legacy remains that strategy, which was largely successful.
Trump, of course, has his own strategy to place a claim on immortality. He’s determined (or been convinced) that what largely suppresses the U.S. economy from strutting is excessive, stultifying regulation and excessive and globally uncompetitive taxes. He’s now participated in doing a lot about that, and, guess what? America’s economy is starting to strut again. As a consequence, Apple is bringing home the billions it has tanked offshore, to be taxed billions here, and to be invested in U.S. job-creation. Other behemoths are considering doing the same.
1
Jobs are up sharply, blue-collar wages are up organically and not artificially as companies compete for skills and bodies in an expanding economy -- offering the promise of flattening the income inequality that a DEMOCRATIC president could do nothing about; and long about November Republicans are going to have one heck of a story to tell Americans about how they’ve improved the typical American life.
That’s not “destruction”: it’s productive transformation.
Fifty years ago and more, we put up with LBJ’s self-aggrandizing antics to get a more even playing-field for our minorities. We’ll put up with Trump’s to get full-employment and an economy that benefits everyone, improving the arc of millions of lives and giving us more time to figure out how to sustainably address the obsolescence of labor through automation.
Mr. Smith’s myopic view of the ideal president conveniently ignores the fact that we had an eminently respectable president for eight years and he delivered NOTHING meaningful for an America that saw its prosperity and competitiveness relative to the rest of the world deteriorate alarmingly. We have a less respectable president today, but a heckuva more encouraging prospective future.
As Americans regain a generalized prosperity, whose view is likely to be adopted by more of them – Mr. Smith’s … or mine?
Man does not live by bread alone.
And I certainly do not need two comments to state that you are delusional: about the economy, for sure.
And I can only shake my head and laugh at your claim that Obama achieved nothing in his 8 years in office.
A decade ago, the economy was cratering.
Which political party was in power then?
Finally: stop distorting history to achieve some absurd ideological victory.
Most readers here do not suffer from willful amnesia.
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Yes, the magic of Reagan and Bush tax cuts and trickle down economics. While it's complicated, there is actual data to assess how success these approaches were. Let's see if the magic of this approach stands the test of time. It's still too early to tell. Why are the happiest countries those that follow a different strategy?
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What the election of His Unhinged Unraveling Unfitness shows is that in 2016 America tribalism trumps all - if you orient your campaign to appeal to the 18th century anachronism of the Electoral College, that the original intent of the Electoral College has been perverted by the political parties, and that if political parties don't do the basic job of keeping unfit candidates from getting on the ballot, an inept Jabberwock can wind up with the nuke codes and unchecked ability to blow up our little snow globe.
It's a very serious responsibility for the political parties to weed out opportunist candidates who have never held any political office anywhere before, never keeping a single campaign promise, thus never being vetted and never demonstrating the aptitude, personality or character for public service.
De minimis candidate standards are too low a bar, and insult the electorate.
Also brought into high relief by the last election is "the struggle continues", and each generation will be called upon anew to slay dragons of the past; which is why it's important Americans know their history, and vote that history so advancement can occur.
Otherwise, schoolyard bullies get into our leadership positions and unenlightened tribalism can take over America the same way we see tin-pot despots ruling elsewhere in the world.
It can happen here.
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It will. Count on it.
6
It's happening here. Right now. The Electoral College was put in place to persuade the Southern, slave-owning Senators to join the United States of America. Since slaves couldn't vote, and were considered to represent 3/5th of a person, the Electoral College "made up" for the fact that if it wasn't in place, the larger voting populations of Northern States would always win the vote. It was it's only purpose. It has no reason to exist anymore now that we have universal suffrage (well, nearly, given vote suppression, gerrymandering, voting interference bu foreign powers, and Cambridge Analytica).
10
For nearly my whole life (my "pre-existing condition" began when I was 5), the fact that the USA is virtually the only nation without a national healthcare system to cover all citizens has indicated to me that Americans are less compassionate and more greedy than the people of other countries. Even though the national systems are far less expensive than our profit-driven structure, American voters rebel at paying higher taxes, regardless of how much less most of us would be spending on medical care. And every time the Republicans get a chance, they want to cut back on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security--using the accurate term "entitlements" as if it were a curse to be lifted. The really frightening thing about Trump is that his ignorant mean streak runs through so much of our population, and is very appealing to many.
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Social Security is not an entitlement.
When Republicans go after Social Security, they are stealing from all of us.
This is a fully institutionalized "Get government off my welfare" moment, and it reveals the depths of depravity and cynicism prevalent on the Right.
It reveals the willful stupidity and the willingness, nearly Evangelical in scope, to countenance any ugly, immoral, sacrilegious behavior as long as it gets them what they want.
11
American voters rebel against higher taxes because that money would go to war instead of schools or medicare. I doubt Americans are less compassionate or more greedy. People are people anywhere. The difference? LAWS. Many European countries have laws in place that control political campaign funding. Change that and you're good to go USA!
Well said. We as flawed, mortal human beings, are all born with "pre-existing conditions" and/or the probability of future pre-existing conditions.
This "American mean streak" is the glaring truth that I have observed throughout my life as a single vulnerable (often shunned) female. I discovered to my horror as a divorced woman in a profession without union protection (clerical) how fragile survival was and often through working life had no healthcare access depending upon being "between jobs" or working temp jobs or for jobs without insurance or after escape from violent domestic abuser.
It is glaringly unconscionable and morally outrageous that the U.S. concurrently has the highest rate of private firearms possession of first world countries , the largest (globally invasive) military, the largest and most lucrative corporations, and the least available healthcare, and that the victims of firearms injury must rely on GoFundMe to pay for all or part of their necessary healthcare and medical equipment and that considerable "Christian" citizens disapprove of the ACA, i.e. healthcare for their neighbors and friends and family and compatriots, as long as they themselves are protected.
The U.S. demonstrates a lethal, toxic form of immature selfishness, which should be eliminated via parental and cultural training in an evolved first world society by the age of 10.
4
If the fundamental decency of our politics were "a collective fiction" as the author asserts, Donald Trump wouldn't have the lowest approval rating in the history of the American presidency. He wouldn't have been the raison d'etre of the biggest marches in American history, and GOP complicity wouldn't have generated projections of a blue wave in the coming election.
I won't speculate on the reason why the political left and its people of color constantly write articles or go on tv to make these kind of arguments and, obviously, Trump's scapegoating helped elect him president. But to say that this disproves our fundamental decency is to ignore the obvious and distort reality ... kinda but not quite like you know who.
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People voted for Trump because he is authentic. He truly is. Some pundits have postulated that his popularity is rooted in him talking like a regular person, not in the measured tones of a politician. He truly does.
Trump is an authentic, bigoted, racist, white nationalist. He accurately speaks for about one third of the nation. He is openly saying what they have been wanting to openly say for decades. Trump has normalized that which used to be only spoken behind closed doors. He made such talk an everyday occurrence from the biggest bully pulpit in the world.
What does that say about our nation? Plenty. It says that much of the discrimination we have legislated against since WWII is alive and well. It just fell out of fashion. Now with Trump, it has become fashionable to be a bigoted, racist white nationalist.
But no matter. The rich got their tax cut. The big corporations had their profits doubled overnight by cutting their taxes nearly in half. The DOW is hitting new highs almost daily. All of these gains of which 80% go to the upper 1% are worth turning America into a bigoted, racist, white nationalist nation to the Republicans. Keep telling yourselves that Republicans. Don't worry about looking yourselves in the mirror and feeling guilty. Vampires have no reflection.
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Don't forget misogyny. That's why the evangelicals love him.
5
Your point about corporate profits doubling overnight is exaggerated. It weakens your argument.
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Oh my, if this op-ed isn't an authentic mirror for us to contemplate our collective character, nothing is. The troubling thing is that we take our now-forced look in this mirror and we still sleep at night. The real test of ourselves as a nation state will be revealed in what we do for the coming elections, now that the consequences of our choice in 2016 is irrefutable.
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When are we going to talk about campaign finance by the richest donors to dominate politics to their advantage and our loss? At least mention it in all these impassioned op eds. How we pay for elections is blocking needed reforms. The citizen majority in the US has no voice in lawmaking to represent its interests.
Using more public funding to dilute dominance of the super rich would have far reaching effects.
It would bring new candidates with public spirit and a duty to citizens, who wouldn't have to be approved and subsidized by the top corporate mega donors.
It would restore the influence on lawmakers of the voters who put them in office.
It is a basis for all the other reforms badly needed---in health care, jobs, education,etc, to help rebalance our inequality. The US Gini Index score on economic equality is far below that of other 1st world countries, as CNN's Fareed Zakaria discussed with a new report in Dec.
The exploitation of the average citizen in the US is what worsens the racism that does exist-- as Americans are forced to compete for the economic crumbs left over by the 1 percent who dominate our elections.
Our economic policies and political system, unresponsive to citizen needs and rights. enflames racism, instead of reducing it.
3
A fine column, and a needed reminder. But I think the author is a bit stark and harsh.
Things are better than they were twenty years ago, not to mention half a century ago, or a hundred years ago. There are more interracial marriages and relationships than ever. Just as with gays, familiarity and exposure allows one to see the common humanity and decency in what was once vilified as the subhuman other. Polls reflect this, especially among the younger generation. When Storm Thurmond and Jesse Helms got their careers going, college and professional sports were still segregated and many businesses refused to provide service to African-Americans.
We've made progress, significant progress. Of course much more needs to be done in many walks of American life. The misogyny, the xenophobia, the racism, the treatment of the indigenous native Americans, the homophobia- all persist yet and need addressing. Not the least the inequality, as MLK Jr. was as concerned with economic equality as he was with civil rights per se. And when inequality worsens and a larger percentage of the populace is worried about paying the next utility bills, the old hatreds manifest and redouble in their vigor.
We've made lots of progress, what's going on is a significant chunk of the populace is doubling down on the hatreds that were passed down to them. Absent that chunk, the rest of the American pie is more tolerant than ever.
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drdeanster: I tend to agree with you, and do not lightly give in to despair right now with this obviously suppressed bigotry and fear among our citizens. It was so much worse in even the very recent past. These expressions of anger are, I believe, more expressions of fear. They are the "last gasps" of many in our population who have been afraid and unable to cope with the stunning changes in our lives in the last 25 years. The rate of change is much too fast for them. (However, I am one of the "older ones" who recognizes the inevitability of it all. Relax.) We will get through this phase, as our world citizens have, over and over, and push through to a more settled state.
However ... it would be refreshing, admirable, courageous (fill in the blank) if our leaders modeled reason and optimism, showing us the way we can all adapt, compromise and get along.
We need more faith in our leaders, but few are stepping forward here, in the political realm anyway.
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But we’re no “absent that chunk”. The racists haters are in control of the government and thus the lives of us all. I can’t find much solace in the progress of the past when Trump, the Republicans and their band of bullies are trying, and succeeding, in destroying that progress.
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@drdeanster: You state: "Things are better than they were twenty years ago, not to mention half a century ago, or a hundred years ago."
I guess, if that is your measure, you may as well throw in the fact "things" today are better than they were in AD 64 (Rome burned). You then point out all of the "things" that are still in a hideous state of 21st Century America. From by binoculars; the here-and-now is just a different type of awful.
Mythbuster indeed!
Outweeted, outwumped,
The debt limit stumped
Where is the Dealer of Deals?
Hotel Party missed,
Truculently insist
To his bitter base still appeals.
Confused, not contrite,
Yet not very bright,
"Shut down is what this Nation needs”
Impatient, not gay,
No golf game today,
“Bankruptcy is how one succeeds."
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Well, sometimes you really need to take something down before you can rebuild. Hillary would have only prolonged the process. As an outsider, a European who has worked in the US for the last 20 years I say this article is very spot on. I've been amazed by the arrogant attitude of people laughing at the idea of DJT being president. Trump really IS holding a mirror up to many, many Americans. Notice WHO exactly is all upset about what ... THOSE are the people with the issues. And what might help to remember ... Trump has only been kicking up dust that has been collecting for many, many years already.
1