It's Friday night, so of course there are several big news stories

It used to be that Friday could be counted on to be a slow news day -- unless of course someone in power had a story they had to release but hoped it could pass under the radar.    There are so  many of those, that now Friday has become a huge news day.   Here's some of what got reported late Friday.

1.  Of course, the hurricane bearing down on Texas is big news and not of any politician's doing.   It's been upgraded to a category 4, and people have been strongly advised to evacuate.   There is a bit of Trump connection, however. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is in charge of things like natural disaster assistance to communities, is without a Director.   It's one of the hundreds of appointed positions that Trump has not submitted any nomination for.

2. The Mueller investigation has passed into a new phase with the issuance of some subpoenas for Grand Jury testimony from some associates of Paul Manafort.   Documents have been subpoenaed previously, but not for testimony -- until now.

3.  Shake-up in the White House staff continued today with the resignation of national security aide to the president, Sebastian Gorka, the Hungarian-born, hard-right, anti-Islam, American-first, foreign policy advocate.   As usual, there's some question of whether he resigned or was pushed, but he has clearly felt that, with Gen. Kelly now in charge as Chief of Staff, Gorka would have little chance to influence policy.    Good riddance.   He was a toxic influence.   

4.  Any hopes that President Trump would just forget about his tweet banning transgender troops were dashed today, when he signed a formal directive.  He immediately bans any new recruits and gives the military some time to figure out what to do with those already serving.   This is not good.

5. And of course there is the Joe Arpaio pardon, which gets its own separate posting below.

Yep, this was a busy Friday news day.

Ralph

Trump pardons Sheriff Joe Arpaio

He hinted that he would, and now he has done it.   President Donald Trump has issued a presidential pardon to the 85 year old former Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona, who lost his bid for re-election last year.

That loss came on the heels of his conviction of criminal contempt of court for defying a court order, in which the judge ordered him to cease having his deputies  engage in stopping suspected undocumented immigrants -- for no reason other than that suspicion, with no other criminal activity -- and arresting them if they proved to lack proper immigration documents.

Let's be clear about this.   It was a huge case that dragged on.  Arpaio still has the court judgment being appealed;  but in the meantime the judge ordered him to stop this practice -- he refused to obey the order.

As a result, the judge held him in civil contempt;  when he still refused to obey, he was held in criminal contempt of court.  That's what Trump has pardoned him for.

Donald Trump finds sites like Breitbart News and Alex Jones' Infowars more believable than his own national intelligence briefings.   Jones' Infowars just this week ran a story claiming that Michelle Obama is really a man -- that's the quality of its work;  and that's where President Trump gets a lot of  what he chooses to believe -- even when it runs counter to what his security briefers tell him.

Are you surprised that Infowars has had a running campaign for some time now praising Arpaio as a hero and pushing very hard for an Arpaio pardon.

It's not just that, however.   Arpaio, of course, is a hero to Trump's support base because of his demagoguery on immigration.   He presented himself as "the toughest sheriff in America."   So of course Trump was going to pardon him.

But it is a sad day when a pardon is given to a lawman who promotes lawlessness by the men and women under his command in violating the civil rights of others -- and then further promotes lawlessness by criminally defying a judge's order to stop that practice.

As president, Trump is within his right to issue this pardon, even though he did not follow the usual procedure of going through the Justice Department for review and recommendation.   But he can just do it, and he did.

While legal, it so undermines the rule of law, that it could easily be considered as one more reason for impeachment, which is after all a political decision more than a criminal one.

Ralph

Confederate statues and memorials - II

Some more thoughts about statues, obelisks, plaques, and street names that memorialize the Old South's "heroes" -- the ones now being identified by some as "traitors" who took up arms against their country.

The argument for keeping them that appeals most to rational thinking is that "this is history and culture, and it should not be destroyed."

Yes, but . . .

It is false -- or at best -- incomplete history.   It is white folks' history.  And it is certainly false in context, in that the vast majority of these memorials were put up during two historical periods, one some 40 years and the other 100 years after the Civil War.   One period was the early 20th century, when the Southern whites were emerging from the depths of Reconstruction misery and asserting their dominance again.   Jim Crow laws were being imposed and upheld by a Supreme Court ruling, often considered the worst decision ever made by SCOTUS.

The second period of erecting memorials to white heroes was the Civil Rights era of the 1960s-70s.   Both periods were reactions to assertion of rights by blacks that were being opposed by whites.    More than simple honoring of dead heroes who had fought against the "United States," they were assertions by a white-dominated culture and political system that had long-favored whites.

So here is my proposal -- let's have history -- but let's have honest history, complete with context and the full story. That can't be shown in a single statue.   It's going to take museums, honest theme parks.  Not just the whitewashed history that some white people have wanted to believe.

Stone Mountain Park outside Atlanta (see ShrinkRap, Monday, Aug 21 for description) is a perfect place to start. This large 500 acre park, with the Rushmore-like images of three Confederate leaders carved into one side of the stone outcropping, could be turned into a comprehensive "History of the South and the Civil War" educational park.   It's already half done in that it already glorifies the "Old White South."

Leave the carving in place, leave the antebellum home museum in place.   Add the story of slavery through statues, displays and educational videos.   Show the negative, horrific side of slavery:  slave markets where the buying and selling of human beings was carried out;   the tiny cabins they had to live in;  tell the story of forcibly separated families when some members were sold off;   show the beatings;  show the KKK, the night riders;  and, yes, even the lynchings.

And then also show the positive:    the black heroes and heroines.  Harriett Tubman, Frederick Douglas, George Washington Carver, Martin Luther King, Jr.    And tell the story of the white abolitionists who helped slaves escape to the North.  And, of course, Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama.

The truth is that the Atlanta History Center has already made a good start on doing just this.   The Cylorama, a gigantic depiction of a civil war battlefield scene, shown in painted background blended into three-dimension figures and scenery, has been moved to the History Center and refurbished.   It will be shown, not as before, but in its full historical context.   At least that is their announced plan.

This is also a good place to put in a plug for the new Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC.   It just opened this year, and it is a great, and long overdue, addition to our cultural history.

We don't need to get rid of statues.   We need more statues -- and other, comprehensive dramatizations of the full Story of the South and Its People.

Ralph

The whiplash-inducing President Trump

Zig . . . zag . . . then zig again.   Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.   The president's zig-zag sequence is enough to cause whiplash -- in the week after Charlottesville and again this week.

The zigs come when he reads from a teleprompter what's been written and forced upon him by his advisers -- and the zags erupt from the unleashed president, the Real Donald Trump.   Or, as the New York Times' Mark Landler put it:  "Mr. Trump has toggled between Teleprompter Trump and Unplugged Trump every day since the deadly clashes in Virginia, leaving Washington and the rest of the nation with a chronic case of rhetorical whiplash."

Monday, August 21:   A speech outlining the new strategy for Afghanistan.   It was read soberly from teleprompters, with hardly any Trumpian riffs of vitriol or nonsence.   Zig.

Tuesday, August 22:   A rally of the faithful in Phoenix.  The warm-up acts were:   Ben Carson, who promoted the virtue of unity;   Alveda King, MLK,Jr.'s niece who has gone over to the other side, led the crowd in a hymn, "How Great Thou Art."   (It's meant as praise to the Almighty God, but in this context, it's just too close to the One Who Thinks Only He Can Fix America and Make It Great Again.)

Then evangelist and prime homophobe Franklin Graham prayed for the divided nation and asked the Lord to shut the mouths of those "who want to divide, who want to preach hate."   Then our long-suffering homophobe VP Pence, who also will not dine alone with a woman other than his wife,  assured the crowd that "President Trump believes with all his heart . . . [that] love for America requires love for all its people."    Come on, Veep, did he really say that, or are you just making it up?

Then Donald Trump took the stage and for 72 minutes spread hate, divisiveness, vengeance -- ranging from hate-filled rant at the "fake media" to denunciation of the two Republican senators from Arizona -- in their own state.

He spent 16 minutes defensively reading from the statements he had made in response to Charlottesville . . . ostensibly to prove that he had said all the right things, condemned all the ones he should have condemned:

"The KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold true as Americans. . . .  So they [media] are having a hard time with that one, because I said everything. . . [checking a list he had pulled from his pocket] . . . I got 'em with neo-Nazi.  I hit 'em with everything.  I got the white supremacists, the neo-Nazis.  I got them all in there.   Let's see:   KKK.  We have KKK.   I got 'em all. . . .  The words were perfect."

No.  No.  No.  The words were not perfect.   In quoting himself, he left out the key problematic phrase:  "from many sides."    Funny how that slipped his mind.   It's what made the Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday zig-zag on that week too.  Though two days late, his Monday, prepared speech was adequate.   Tuesday, he let loose at his press conference, blaming "both sides" for the violence and making no moral distinction between the neo-Nazis shouting Nazi slogans, as they brandished their swastika flags -- and those who came to protest them.  That's what set off the fire storm against Trump.  Then Wednesday, another retreat to a prepared script of nice words.

Back to the Tuesday rally of this week in Phoenix -- Trump then ranted on and on, airing one grievance after another.  Then he threw some more red meat to his supporters -- hinting once again that, although he wouldn't do it tonight, he might still pardon Sheriff Joe Arpaio -- and the crowd roared approval.   He even got in a dig at Hillary Clinton, which brought out a few rounds of "lock her up."   And topped it off by saying he might shut down the government if Congress fails to fund his border wall in the must-pass budget.

It was pretty standard Trump campaign fodder -- the most notable thing being his dishonesty in supposed quoting himself about Charlottesville but omitting the crucial three words that did him in.

Standard rally behavior.   But definitely a big ZAG.away from Monday night.

Wednesday, August 23:   Trump spoke to a group of veterans at an American Legion convention in Reno, Nevada the day after the Tuesday rally-rant in Phoenix.   He zigged  back to a prepared, teleprompter speech that was full of appreciation for our heroes and promising to make things better for them, especially the VA health care program.   No ugly rants.   No denunciation of his party's elected officials, no encitment of hatred of the media.

Even some noble sounding sentiments:  "It's time to heal the wounds that divide us. . . .  There is no division too deep for us to heal."    Is he talking about what he did the night before?    Probably not.   I'm sure this was written by a speech writer before Tuesday night happened.    But the effect of this was another Zig.

Another week, another Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday zig-zag-zig whiplash.

I wonder what the Tuesday night warm-up pious quartet of Ben Carson, Alveda King, Franklin Graham, and Mike Pence thought about how the juvenile Trump stomped and splashed all through the holy water they had prepared for him.

Ralph

Trump's new Afghanistan strategy

Monday night, President Trump addressed the nation to discuss his new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, about to enter its seventeenth year as the longest war the US has ever been engaged in.

I did not watch it live, but I did hear and read extensive discussion and analysis later by experts who know much more than I do.   Advance rumors had it that Trump would announce an increase of some 4,000 US troops on the ground.  Instead, he indicated that there would be some increase in troop levels but did not specify a number.  He said that both the number of troops and the ending of  US involvement would be determined by conditions, not by a timetable.  He also said that our mission will not be nation-building but rather eliminating Taliban terrorism and strengthening the self-government of the people.

This was a soberly delivered speech.   Its content clearly reflects the thinking of his group of advisers who have been engaged in discussions for months, and gathered last weekend at Camp David for a meeting with the president to define a new Afghanistan strategy.

Just prior to the weekend, and with Steve Bannon gone from the White House, the hair-brained scheme, being pushed by Bannon, to privatize the mission to Eric Prince's Blackwater army of mercenaries, was dropped from the agenda.  So the options came down to three, which were presented to the president:  (1) pull out;  (2) send in more troops;  or (3) shift to a CIA led covert, counterterrorism stategy.

The top military advisers said that pulling out would leave Afghanistan at risk of becoming another terrorist haven for the Islamic State.   And CIA Director Mike Pompao was against taking on such a large scale operation for his agency,   So it left option 2, which the president reluctantly signed off on.

The next step was to clarify what our objectives are and what would be criteria for ending our involvement.   In his speech, Trump spoke about continuing to train Afghan troops and convince them to take more responsibility, as well as trying to combat the corruption in the Afghan government -- all with the ultimate aim of their taking control of their own country, so we can leave without creating the vacuum for the Taliban to take over again.  Details of all this were deliberately left vague.

In fact, there really is not much difference from the later Obama strategy.  Although Trump spoke of "winning," his plan sounds much more like containment than winning.   As one commentator said, there are really only two new elements:  (1) a much tougher stance toward Pakistan over their providing havens for the Taliban;  and (2) trying to bring India into closer alliance,  knowing that will also put pressure on Pakistan, given their long-standing rivalry.

My take-away is best summed up by comments from an NPR guest, whose name I did not get because I tuned in after the introduction.  He said that, given Trump's diametrically opposite campaign positions (insisting we should "get out now"), his observation was that the turn-around shows that Trump "is capable of listening to competent advisers" and changing his mind.   That in itself is encouraging.

However, a word of caution.   Trump has proved before that he can read a speech someone else wrote for him, and then within hours completely undermine and undo the good effect.

Let's see what happens at his controversial campaign-style rally in Phoenix. on  Tuesday night.  Will he does what he has hinted -- pardoning Joe Arpaio, the so-called "toughest sheriff in America," who has been convicted of contempt of court for defying a judge's order to stop profiling Hispanics for immigration status?

Even if he doesn't, there's little doubt he will further inflame the tensions between his core supporters and the growing anti-Trump counter-protesters.  That's why he holds these rallies.   And besides, he's just "given in" and done what he had to do about Afghanistan;  so he's going to have his overpowering urge to let loose and make up for it by acting out.   That's just who he is.

Phoenix's mayor, Greg Stanton, a Democrat, has urged him to delay his trip.  In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Stanton wrote:

"America is hurting . . . largely because Mr. Trump has doused racial tensions with gasoline.  With his planned visit to Phoenix on Tuesday, I fear the president may be looking to light a match."

The Phoenix police department is preparing.   Let's hope it turns out more like Boston than Charlottesville.

Ralph

ACLU modifies free speech defense limit

In the wake of violence at the Charlottesville's white supremacy rally, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has modified it's blanket endorsement for protection of the right to free-speech.

Founded in 1920, with Helen Keller as one of its founders, the ACLU is the guardian of the Constitution's guarantees of liberty, fighting in the courts and legislatures to, e.g. oppose Trump's Muslim ban, protect voting rights and LGBTQ rights;  but it has also engaged in the controversial defense of the rights of neo-Nazis to hold a protest march in Skokie, Illinois in the 1970s.  It's mission has always been to protect free speech, even when the content is repugnant.

Even First Amendment purists accept some exceptions, famously exemplified as not allowing one to shout "Fire" in a crowded theater.   It's a bit more complicated than that today, as explained by vox.com's Dara Lind.  Unlike the 1970s neo-Nazi rallies, today there is more divisiveness, more flashpoint anger, more guns, more readiness to use guns.  It's a much more explosive situation.

Nevertheless, the ACLU had sued the City of Charlottesville for the right of the "Unite the Right" organizers to hold their rally in the downtown area.  Now that it has resulted in such violence, the ACLU is rethinking it's position -- or at least the practical interpretation of its position.

Executive Director Anthony Romero has announced that the ACLU will no longer defend free speech rallies where participants plan to carry loaded firearms.  This is consistent with former ACLU director Nadine Strosser: "Government may not censor speech because of its viewpoint, but it may censor speech because of its effects."

Essentially, what this compromise points up is the difficulty of resolving a conflict between two guaranteed rights.  Here it's the right to free speech vs the right to bear arms, as that right has been interpreted (incorrectly, in my opinion) by a divided Supreme Court.  (Forgive a moment of levity, put perhaps we could say there was a misspelling in the Second Amendment.   The founders really meant "the right to bare arms.")

But what if a group applying for a rally permit objects and insists that they be allowed to carry arms.   Romero has a ready answer for that:   "Well, we don't have to represent them.   They can find somebody else."   In other words, the ACLU is not the police;  they're just lawyers.

But very powerful lawyers, who have successfully argued cases before the Supreme Court, as well as every-day kinds of defense of liberty and rights.  It's a worthy cause to support.

Ralph

What should be done about the Confederate monuments?

Mostly in the Old South, but literally all over the country (Brooklyn, Boston, San Diego) there are monuments and plaques to generals and other leaders of the secessionist Confederate States of America.

The movement to take them down gained momentum after the 2015 massacre in a Charleston church by an avowed white supremacist intent on killing African-Americans.   South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, now President Trump's Ambassador to the United Nations, ordered the removal of the Confederate flag that flew on the state capitol grounds;   and that was accomplished with support from the state legislature amid little protest.

But now the radical right groups have taken up the cause. Last weekend a "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia planned by white supremacists, was ostensibly to protest the planned removal of the statue of Robert E. Lee from Emancipation Park.   It turned violent and resulted in three deaths.

Now the question of what to do about the hundreds of monuments has become urgent, as the protest fervor increases and is fueled by comments from President Trump.   North Carolina passed a law last year forbidding their removal, but a group of defiant protesters pulled down a statue in Durham.   Some of those protesters are now demanding to be arrested -- they did break the law -- to further dramatize their act of civil disobedience.

President Trump says we should not destroy "our history and culture."   Tina Fey had a quick answer:   Donald Trump wouldn't hesitate one minute to tear down a historical statue if he could build condominiums on the plot.  He already proved that when he defied the "historic preservation" designation of a renowned Art Deco building in New York to build some fancy new condominiums.

Aside from comic quips, though, what is the serious answer -- especially now that a Democratic minority leader in the Georgia state legislature and a leading candidate for governor, Rep. Stacie Abrams, is calling for removal of the biggest Confederate monument of all:   the Rushmore-like, monumental carving on the side of Stone Mountain?

Stone Mountain Park is now a 3200 acre park surrounding the largest granite outcropping in the world, with lakes, hiking trails, and camping sites.   It is a major outdoor recreational venue, site of concerts, fireworks displays, as well as family outings.   The mountain base has a circumference of five miles.  On one side, a carving depicts three Confederate leaders on horseback, President Jefferson Davis and generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

This presents a far bigger controversy than a single statue occupying a few square feet of ground in an often forgotten site.   In addition to being the central focus of an outdoor recreation park and a veneration of the Old South, Stone Mountain was the site in 1915 of the revival of the Ku Klux Klan as an organization.   The land owners, at the time, granted the Klan the perpetual right to hold celebrations there, although that right was abrogated when the State of Georgia bought the property in 1960.

The carving itself was begun by the sculptor who later worked on Mount Rushmore.   The Stone Mountain project began in 1916, was abandoned for some 30 years, then restarted after the state bought it; and it was finally completed in 1972.

Please don't misunderstand.   Those are merely historical and logistical challenges that make this particular monument more difficult to remove.  It does not change the basic moral question.

So let's begin to tackle that basic question.   These monuments do have historical significance.   But some have asked:   Who puts up statues to those who start wars and lose them?   Are these men heroes?   Or are they traitors?    After all, they attacked and fought against our nation, albeit a divided nation from which their states had seceded, dividing the young United State.

They were on the wrong side of history.   Not just because they lost but because the core of their argument -- states' rights -- was based on the preserving the institution and economic power of slavery,  which we now consider antithetical to democracy and our national values.

There is no moral argument for slavery. 

It is one of the immutable wrongs in a civilized world.

Unquestionably the issue was slavery, however much later revisionists want to claim that it was a question of states' rights.   But I submit that the question of self-determination for states was not sufficient to fight a war over -- except as the issue that they wanted to self-determine was the right to continue to own slaves.  That was the "states' right" that they fought a war over.

So, here's Point 1:  These monuments commemorate the men who led the South in losing a civil war, based on a universal wrong.  Yes, I know the tired arguments that it was about valor and honor and sacrifice of ancestors that were fighting for what they wanted to preserve -- their way of life.    But, while true for them, it is no longer credible as a rationalization for the horrors of slavery.

Point 2:  The statues were not erected in the aftermath of that Civil War but much later -- during two periods when the racial struggle was being fought once again.  Those two time periods of Confederate monument building were:  (1) The early years of the 20th century, when the Jim Crow laws were being enacted and white people wanted to reassert their dominance after the economic devastation of the war and the Reconstruction that followed.   (2) the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s-70s over the rights of African-Americans to have the same civil and humane rights as white Americans.

These were both periods of black people asserting their equality and white people resisting.   That's when they put up statues to their dead heroes and the Lost Cause.   The statues represent the wish to return to the past, to white privilege and white supremacy.

That is, that's what they represent for white people:  privilege and supremacy.

But think for a moment what they represent for our black citizens.  Oppression, slavery, cruelty, dehumanization, forceful separation of families, night riders terrorizing black communities, lynchings -- and no education, no voting rights, nothing but what the white owner allowed you to have.

Now, think about that for a while.    Is that what we want to honor and celebrate?

Ralph

Winning protest signs

Of the tens of thousands of counter-protesters at the right-wing "Free Speech" rally that fizzled in Boston, there were thousands of home-made signs.   Here are my favorites of the ones I saw in pictures of the crowd:

"Justice, Not Just Us"

"You know things are bad when
a straight white guy makes a sign."

"Will trade racists for refugees"

Ralph

Boston does it right. Sheer number of counter-protesters overwhelms rally

Boston's response to the planned "Free Speech" rally benefited from Charlottesville's experience.   As Shakespeare has Hamlet say:  "The readiness is all."

Boston had a week to prepare, following the debacle in Virginia -- and they did.   Police had fenced off two separate areas of the Boston Common and had deployed as many as 500 police officers to keep the rally-goers and the counter-protesters separated.    Good will, as well as Bostonians' city pride, made for determined get-out-the-crowd efforts.

The group planning the rally insisted that they were not affiliated with the white supremacist, racist, or neoNazi groups that sponsored the Charlottesville rally.  However, the advance list of planned rally speakers left no doubt which side their "Free Speech" movement sympathized with -- the ones who claimed that marching with Nazi regalia and racist signs and carrying bats and shields was simply their free speech expression;  and that, if only the counter-protesters hadn't showed up, there would have been no violence.   Nice try.

In the end, the sheer numbers of good Boston people overwhelmed the paltry crowd on the other side -- 15,000 peaceful protesters were marching through the streets toward the park by noon, with thousands more arriving in the next hour.  The whole event just fizzled.

USA Today reported that "only a handful" of rally-goers, wearing red "Make America Great Again" hats were trying to make their way to their area of the park, which was made difficult just by the huge numbers of people on the streets leading to the park.    Other sources estimated that maybe two dozen rally-goers actually showed up in their designated area.

By 1:30, roughly 90 minutes after the "Free Speech" rally was supposed to begin, the Boston Police Department tweeted out a formal notice that the rally was "officially over," and the demonstrators had left the Commons.

It's not clear how much the paltry number who made it to the rally area was due to people staying away or due to simply being unable to get through the massive crowds surrounding the Commons.   There were a few reports of counter-protesters surrounding a lone rally-goer to prevent him from getting through.

There were a few skirmishes and some bad behavior.    But none of the violent fist-fighting and beatings seen at Charlottesville.

What a difference a week makes!    As discouraged and pained as last weekend left us feeling, there is sheer joy this weekend in feeling that goodness has triumphed over evil.    Oh, how we've been needing that in this fraught Trump world.

Ralph