AN AMERICAN EXPAT'S TAKE ON WORLD POLITICS: PART 3 - TRUMP

When talk about politics among English-speaking expats here in the south of France turns to the USofA, two questions are inevitably asked.

1. How did Donald Trump manage to get himself elected President of the United States?
This is a technical question, asked by those who are aware that Clinton received 3,000,000 more votes than Trump.

2. How did Donald Trump manage to get himself elected President of the United States?
This is a philosophical question, asked by those who do not understand the current body politic in the United States or, for that matter, in much of the modern world.

Let's take these questions one at a time.

THE MECHANICS OF AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
A quick rehash of the fact that American Presidential elections are fought state by state is in order. The coastal American states are relatively few but with highly concentrated populations. The interior states are less populated but are more numerous. While Clinton racked up big wins on the two coasts, Trump nearly swept the interior. So, in simple terms, although Clinton won the popular vote, Trump won the vote in a majority of the states and therefore the Presidency.

BUT HOW DID IT HAPPEN? REALLY?
I've struggled mightily with this question. I have come to a simple, five-part answer:
Racism
Misogyny
Fear
Denial
Self-Deception

I have no explanation for the existence of racism, misogyny, or the fear that goes with them. I suspect that they are the result of manipulation by those seeking power in order that they may rule us by dividing us. I will not spend more time on that except to say that persons who exhibited those traits made up the core of Trump's base. Such seems to be the way with many Western populists.

Denial and self-deception are more interesting to me because they provide the basis for otherwise rational people to make irrational choices. And in the end, that's who elected Trump, otherwise rational people making an irrational choice. No, there were not enough racists to elect a President in the US, nor enough misogynists. But when you add those in denial, those blithely turning a blind eye, Trump becomes possible.

Denial and self-deception also explain why Trump is still revered by some. Take the budget recently passed by the American Congress. That budget includes both deep tax cuts and increased spending that combined will surely result in huge deficits. Republicans no longer even pretend differently. Yet political conservatives by and large welcome Trump with open arms. The only way that a conservative can approve of such financial brinkmanship is to jettison the policy cornerstones to which fiscal conservatives have adhered for decades. Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan must either be in denial that he ever held those principles in the first place or be deceiving himself into believing that they never mattered. I don't know Ryan. I can't say which explanation is true. But he's on record. He used to be a fiscal conservative. No other explanation for him applauding the current budget than denial and/or self-deception is possible.

Here's an example from a different but relevant conversation that has been raging online recently. How will we address gun violence in America? A picture of the black actor Samuel L. Jackson is circulating on social media accompanied by the following quote: "I grew up in the south with guns everywhere and we never shot anyone." (I've been on his site. It is apparently a valid quote.) A Southern black man who grew up during the civil rights struggle in the American South somehow fails to mention that, while he may never have shot anyone, or his friends may never have shot anyone, Emmitt Till is dead and Medgar Evers is dead and Michael Schwerner is dead and Andrew Goodman is dead and James Chaney is dead and Martin Luther King, Jr. is dead. And more. In the South. Through gun violence. The irony is stunning. The only way that a man like Jackson can own such a quote is to be so deep in denial as to be immune to reason.

Thus, Trump. There is no way to soften it. I cannot find a path to civility or, for that matter, forgiveness. I have listened closely to my American friends rationalize the circumstances that led to Trump's election. I understand the battle between Sanders and Clinton in the Democrat Party primaries took its toll. I understand that bots backed by big dollars and/or foreign governments messed with social media. But in the end, people voted. And the reason that they voted for Trump boils down to those five, simple reasons. Hard to swallow. Harder to deny.
Racism
Misogyny
Fear
Denial
Self-Deception

Read more of my political musings HERE. I'll wrap these musings up with a fourth in the series presently.

AN AMERICAN EXPAT'S TAKE ON WORLD POLITICS: PART 2 - BREXIT

I've chosen Brexit for PART 2 rather than THE UK or something similar because, as an English-speaking expat in a region whose English-speaking expats are primarily English, the UK's march out of the European Union dominates English-language political discourse...until Trump is mentioned. I'll get to Trump in Part 3.

For the uninitiated, a brief lexicon:
European Union (EU) - 500,000,000 Europeans in 28 countries in a political and economic union.
The Four Freedoms - The free movement of goods, capital, services, and labor within the EU. 
English - The language spoken in the UK coloured by the whimsical use of the letter u. 
Brexit - Shorthand for the United Kingdom's (UK's) withdrawal from the European Union.
Remainer - Those who advocated for the UK to remain in the EU.
Leaver - Those who advocated for the UK to leave the EU.
Boris - Euphemism for "I lost my hairbrush."

I admit that the politics of Brexit had me stumped for quite a while. To some extent, it still does. Why did Remainer David Cameron call for the referendum in the first place? How did the ensuing closely-contested, nonbinding referendum become The Will of the People? And given that we now know that such claims of the Leavers as the claim that leaving would instantly and completely shore up UK's ailing and failing healthcare system are fraudulent, why is the UK still sailing headlong into financial purgatory with seemingly no one at the wheel?

To this American looking in from the outside, that last phrase holds the key. No one is at the wheel.

Why did Cameron call for the referendum? Apparently, because the Conservative Party that he led had made the referendum a plank in its platform during the Parliamentary elections of 2015. When the Conservatives won a relatively decisive and somewhat surprising victory, Cameron felt compelled. Why a politician should feel compelled to follow a party platform after an election is beyond my American comprehension. Platforms are put aside after elections in favor of the reality of governance. But for some reason, Cameron decided to put the Conservative platform ahead of his own best judgement and called the referendum. In other words, Cameron chose not to lead.

No one was at the wheel.

The natural ally of Remainer Cameron in the run up to the Brexit referendum should have been the Labour Party and its leader Jeremy Corbyn. But Corbyn was not a fan of the UK's entrance into the EU in the first place, opposed many aspects of membership, was at best a lukewarm Remainer, and went on vacation during the run up to the referendum. Even had Corbyn been more enthusiastic, he is neither a charismatic leader nor a dynamic speaker. With Cameron's own party advocating leaving the EU; without any committed, articulate, charismatic politician/public figure making the case to Remain in the EU; and with voter apathy brought on by polling that may have depressed Remainer turnout, the Leavers won by 52% to 48%. Cameron, having presided over the debacle, resigned. Theresa May took over as Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister.

After following Theresa May for several months, I think that I can safely say that I know Theresa May well enough to judge and I feel confident in saying that Theresa May is no Margaret Thatcher.

No one is at the wheel.

The EU has been very clear from the beginning of this process. In order for the UK to enjoy the benefits of the lucrative single market that 500,000,000 consumers in the EU represent, the UK must honor the Four Freedoms. The EU will not allow an outsider to benefit from the free movement of goods and capital without also allowing for the free movement of labor. If they did, other countries antithetic to free movement of labor - and other aspects of the Union - might peel off as well.

No free access to the single market? If such is the result, Brexit leads to disaster. The UK would have to negotiate with the EU, paying a stiff price for access, or else spend the next several years in uncertainty while negotiating 27 individual trade agreements with 27 individual European countries whose main interests lie within the EU. Major business sectors headquartered in the UK might find it necessary to move to the Continent in order to continue to benefit from the single market. Some have already announced such a move. A brain drain going out, or a failure to be able to attract the best and brightest coming in, might further depress the business climate in the UK.

There are those who insist that through Brexit, the UK can return to past economic glory. I don't see it. In a multi-polar economic world that includes such concentrations of population and wealth as the US, China, India, Russia, and yes, the EU, the UK becomes a minor player. Can the UK claim to have even the same economic prospects as Japan, with half of Japan's population and half its GDP? The entire UK auto industry manufactures one-third of the total number of cars that Honda alone sells annually.


So, in this American's estimation, Brexit has left the UK with a rudderless ship and bad hair. But given a liberal democracy that can hold elections at any time if Parliament expresses no confidence in its leadership, and with backbench members of both major parties expressing dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs, methinks that there are acts yet to unfold in the drama known as Brexit. It may well take a talent as bold as the Bard to complete the script.

Click HERE if you missed PART 1 - FRANCE.

WHO BELONGS IN MY POLITICAL PARTY?

My politically conservative friends are convinced that I'm a masked, rock-throwing Antifa at heart. 

Why?

I believe that the gun lobby has perverted common sense when it comes to the reasonable control of firearms in the same way that the fossil fuel industry is trying to pervert our understanding of climate change. And I believe that both lobbies will eventually be understood to have the same wanton disregard for human life as we now know that the tobacco lobby had.

I believe that what goes on of a sexual nature behind closed doors is nobody's business except for the intellectually capable, of age, freely consenting adults in the room. And I believe that if you choose to participate in commerce in the public marketplace, your opinion of that sexual activity is just as irrelevant to your business as is race, religion, or ethnicity.

I believe that men in blue suits, white shirts, and red ties in state capitals do not have the right to tell a woman, her doctor, and anyone else that she chooses to consult what to say and do concerning her healthcare. And I believe that a woman's healthcare includes her reproductive healthcare.

I believe that the right to protest peacefully is a sacred American right. And I believe that carrying a flag onto a playing field for profit in a manner that is specifically forbidden by the US Flag Code is more fundamentally anti-American than taking a knee to protest racial injustice while that flag is being improperly displayed.

I do not believe that corporations are people or that money equals speech. I just don't. 

My politically progressive friends are convinced that I'm a corporatist stooge, a Reagan Republican in disguise

Why?

I believe that a flat tax can be both fair and progressive. And I believe that because I've done the math and can demonstrate that it is so.

I believe that BlackLivesMatter was doomed from the beginning to being labeled exclusive and racist. And I believe that if you have to take time from the struggle to explain to your allies why Black is inclusive of Brown, Red, and Yellow, you've obviously misnamed your movement.

I believe that MeToo has become a witch hunt that has abandoned the principles of due process and the presumption of innocence. And I believe that, although men are undeniably pigs, a witch hunt is morally repugnant regardless of the righteous intentions of the hunters.

I believe that only the privileged have the luxury to talk about privilege. And I believe that, if you took the time to ask, you would learn that White Privilege does not automatically extend to overweight, poor white women with bad teeth and a Southern accent. With props to Lenny Bruce, if Albert Einstein had a Southern accent, they would never have built The Bomb.

I don't believe that if you are White, you are by definition racist. I just don't.

Who belongs in my political party?

You belong in my political party if you believe that two plus two equal four and not some number approximating four. In other words, you belong in my political party if you believe in math and science.

You belong in my political party if you can talk to people with opposing political views without raising your voice or calling names. In other words, you belong in my political party if you have the ability to participate in civil discourse on topics that you hold dear with persons who don't believe as you believe.

You belong in my political party if you understand that the perfect is the enemy of the good. In other words, you belong in my political party if you know that perfection only exists in the mind of God and that you ain't God. 

Eugene Wesley Roddenberry is God.

DEFEATING THE RIGHT - A EUROPEAN LESSON

Third parties have not had much success in the United States lately. Perot threw enough money at the Presidency to make things interesting in 1992. And Nader proved that a cranky gadfly could attract enough votes to be troublesome in 2000, maybe even influencing the result. But in a year when the nominees of both major American political parties were as popular as Aedes mosquitoes, the performance of the Bobbsey Twins (Green Stein and Libertarian Johnson) may have set third party politics back for years to come. They were terrible spokespeople for their causes.

Europeans, on the other hand, are quite familiar with multi-party elections leading to multi-party governments. In Iceland, the party that came in third in the national elections has been asked to form a government because the two parties that received more votes couldn't get it done. And I can't wait to see how Iceland's Pirate Party governs. (You can't make this stuff up.) But when I talk about a lesson that the American Left can learn from the Europeans, shouting Aaaaarh and raising the Skull & Crossbones is not what I had in mind. I had in mind the manner in which the French kept Marine Le Pen's far right National Front out of major regional offices recently.

CAVEAT: Be aware that I'm relatively new to the study of French politics, I'm therefore by no means an ultimate authority, and that I get most of my information from English language sites.

How was the party of the Far Right in France thwarted? The opposition Left quite openly decided to make sacrifices for the sake of the country. Novel concept.

France periodically holds elections that determine the legislative and executive bodies in its thirteen regions. Initial balloting determines which parties reach a threshold that makes them eligible to participate in a runoff. There were three main parties jockeying for power after the first round of voting in the most recent regionals - the Left (Socialist), the Center-Right (Republican), and the Far Right (National Front). In that first round, Marine Le Pen's National Front was a big winner. To be clear, they only received 28% of the total vote, but that was a record for the party and in two regions in particular they were almost certain to win in a three-party race for control.

What did the Socialists do? They decided not to run candidates in the two regions that threatened a National Front victory.

What was the outcome? The Republicans won both regions, the only two regions in which the National Front polled more than 40% of the vote in the runoff, enough to have won if the Socialists had participated.

In other words, the Socialists blocked the Far Right from taking regional power by ceding those regions without a fight to the Republicans, regions in which they would have lost anyway. So instead of five Socialist regions, six Republican regions, and two National Front regions, France now has five Socialist and eight Republican regions. Hardly a big win for the Socialists but an important denial of a power base to the National Front if your politics are left of center.

How does such a strategy convert to the American two party system? Oddly enough, we have a model - the Tea Party and the Republicans. For all of the huffing and puffing and primary challenges pitting the Tea Party against Establishment Republicans, in the vast number of cases once the primaries are over, the Republicans unite. They decide that their internecine squabbles pale beside a possible victory by the Left. On the other hand, it is clear that when Democrats suffer divisive primaries, the losers tend to vote for third parties or stay home. How do we know this? Look at the numbers.

In recent contested Presidential elections - I don't consider Bush v Kerry contested in any real sense - Democrats won by a popular vote margin of from 500,000 to 9,000,000 votes.  The lower winning margins, Gore and Hillary, came in elections during which the Democrats experienced considerable pushback from the Progressive wing of their party - Nader and Sanders. And Gore and Hillary lost in the Electoral College. The circumstances were different but the result was the same. On election day, the bitter battles over policy purity had taken their toll. The Democratic Party did not unite. George W. became President and Trump will become President. And any Democrat who thinks that those results were reasonable and proper for America is a nihilist, not a Democrat.

But winning the popular vote means nothing if you don't win the electoral vote, you say? OK. Take five of the major Rust Belt states, where this year's Presidential election might indeed have been lost by the Democrats. It is true that Republicans gained a few hundred thousand votes over 2012. But it is also true that Democrats lost nearly 1,500,000 votes in those states. Something over 1,000,000 voters who had voted Democratic in 2012 either stayed home or voted third party in just those five states.

Were either Gore or Hillary perfect candidates. Of course not. But might Gore have listened to his intelligence briefings and prevented 9/11? Had 9/11 happened, would Gore have broken the Middle East by taking his eye off Bin Laden and going after Saddam's nonexistent WMDs? Is Trump the President we need to replace Scalia and 100 federal judges, putting any number of our freedoms at risk, the freedoms that those folks who stayed home on election day probably cherish even more than those who voted?

Although both the Socialists and the Republicans will continue to struggle for the hearts and minds of the French electorate, both parties also had the ultimate welfare of their people at heart at election time. Why don't we Democrats?

Can't we all just get along?

RANDOM THOUGHTS #4 - B.B. KING, WYOMING/FIRST AMENDMENT, FAST TRACK/PROGRESSIVES

B.B. KING
Rest In Peace.

I'm not capable of adding significantly to what will be written about B.B. in the coming weeks and months. But here's a tip. If you're not into guitar-driven blues, and I understand that not everyone is, give a listen to Let the Good Times Roll: The Music of Louis Jordan. It's mostly swing and jive. It's upbeat and fun. And the players are top notch. You won't hear overmuch of B.B.'s guitar but you'll get a good feel for the man's joyous feel for music.


WYOMING/FIRST AMENDMENT
Slate reports that the Wyoming legislature has just passed a law making it illegal on open lands to gather data intended for use to report, among other things, environmental crimes to the state or federal government. The report suggests that taking a photograph of a criminal environmental act in Wyoming (illegal dumping in a watercourse on federal land, for instance) would result in a jail term for the photographer.

Folks out West are fond of saying that the federal government has overreached its authority, that it's time for citizens to take back their government. Instead of government telling us what to do, so the rationale goes, we should be telling the government what to do. Well, how do you take back your government if your government criminalizes that act of exposing lawlessness? How do you tell your government that your neighbor has polluted your water if your government doesn't allow you to provide the proof?

Libertarians should be up in arms. My Libertarian friends have justified defunding the EPA to me by insisting that citizens have the right to sue polluters who befoul their air and water. That should be enough, they say. But how do citizens sue polluters if citizens are prevented from gathering evidence against them? How can the First Amendment be twisted sufficiently to ban photography on open lands, notwithstanding the First Amendment right to petition the government?

Shame on Wyoming, whose legislature is over 80% Republican. I wonder. Do they call themselves Conservatives?

FAST TRACK/PROGRESSIVES
There's nothing more disappointing to an old-school Liberal than being presented with proof that Progressives are just as intellectually dishonest as Conservatives.

Senate Democrats continue to oppose Obama's request for 'fast track' trade pact authority. Understand, the Senate is not considering a treaty. The Senate is considering fast tracking the treaty, whether or not to hold an up-or-down, simple majority, no amendments, no filibuster vote on whatever treaty Obama eventually negotiates and sends to the Senate. It seems like just yesterday that Senate Democrats were excoriating their Republican counterparts for interfering with Obama's ability to negotiate with a foreign power (Iran), interfering before the terms of the deal were known. In the recent past, Senate Democrats have also spoken forcefully for up-and-down, no filibuster, simple majority votes on any number of issues.

Shame on Senate Democrats. Shame on Progressives. They have acted with no more philosophical consistency than their Conservative counterparts.

WHITE PRIVILEGE - ONE PERSON'S TAKE

My Progressive friends call me a neo-liberal or a corporatist or worse. My Conservative friends say that I'm clearly a Progressive. One or two of my friends say, "Gee. I've got the same problem. What's wrong with us?" Maybe, after reading my take on White Privilege on my Political Page, you'll decide that there's a lot wrong with me. Or not. We'll see...