Update (one of two, see below): Couldn't pass up passing along the concluding paragraph of Jelani Cobb's piece in the New Yorker about some of the topics in this post:
"Amid Trump’s nuclear brinksmanship and social-media provocation toward North Korea, amid the swollen gorges of water streaming through Puerto Rico, amid the craven and indefensible attempts to gut health care, amid the slower-moving crises of voting access, economic inequality, and climate change—amid all these things, Trump yet again found a novel way to diminish the nation he purportedly leads. He has authored danger in more ways than there are novel ways to denounce it. This is his singular genius. When this moment has elapsed, when some inevitably unsatisfactory punctuation has concluded the Trump era, we will be left with an infinitude of questions. But Trump, we will assuredly understand, is a small man with a fetish for the symbols of democracy and a bottomless hostility for the actual practice of it."
A weekend of taking sides is also a weekend of parsing meaning, a process of defining terms carefully and precisely in response to events and to the incumbent in the White House. Because of the dangers that lurk if we don't.
I begin with a quote from a perceptive essay by James Fallows at the Atlantic entitled "Donald Trump's Shocking Recklessness":
"Who Donald Trump was, and is, was absolutely clear by election day: ignorant, biased, narcissistic, dishonest." Fallows notes that Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates argues that "everyone who voted for him did so with ample evidence about the kind of person they considered the “better” choice, or even as a minimally acceptable choice for president." An argument I've made here since election day. Fallows point however is this:
"Almost nothing Trump has done since taking office should come as a surprise.
But numerous things Trump has done are objectively shocking, in the sense of further violating the norms of the office and the historic standards the previous 44 incumbents have observed. (Among the things the Trump era has taught us: the difference in nuance between shock and surprise. Donald Trump in office has delivered a nonstop series of shocks, no one of which can really be considered a surprise.)
Many of us out here understand this as our reaction, but it is a very useful distinction in judging other effects. Shocks by definition galvanize attention, and that's the game that our apprentice dictator has been playing, consciously and not, all along. In this case, it takes attention away from ongoing Russia investigation news, his new travel ban, collapse of the unhealthcare bill and especially the delicious revelation that Jared Kushner used private email to conduct White House business. All of it dropped lower or off the news pages thanks to this shocking behavior regarding professional sports figures.
NBA players responded in anger on the Internet, with LeBron James Tweet calling the a.d. a bum breaking a Twitter record for retweets. On Sunday, well over a hundred NFL players protested during the national anthem. As did others at these games--including two people who sang the national anthem. To make things perfectly clear, players protested during the US national anthem at a game played in London, England, but stood for "God Save the Queen."
Personally, I'll believe in the sincerity of NFL teams and their management when somebody actually hires Colin Kaepernick, a capable player who has been blacklisted because of his protest.
Still, the rebuke was interpreted as widespread, and there will be more. These are responses to provocation, which is what Fallows essay is about. Sure, the whole thing is beneath the office of the President, but so is the incumbent, what do you expect? It's a shock but not a surprise.
Fallows however links this tendency with the a.d.'s continuing to provoke the leader of North Korea, to the point where they have both promised to destroy the other, which would in practice mean that millions of others would die or suffer and the Earth further damaged, though those two would probably survive.
This is such unprecedented and above all irresponsible behavior that it is itself an impeachable offense, in my view. (These offenses can be general, with specific instances to confirm them.)
Which brings us to two other sets of definitions. The first is sanity, as yet another story--or book review-- on the subject finds a growing alarm among psychologists that the a.d. is addled in the head in a a dangerous way. Although according to one book reviewed, so is the entire country that elected him.
What does this mean in practical terms? That the man with the nuclear codes cannot control his behavior, that what he tells himself are reasons really arise from his unconscious, and he is convinced by them because there is something wrong with him akin to a disease. (Many of today's psychologists would put it more strongly--he is mentally ill, it is a disease. If only they could agree which ones.)
The concepts here are so new to the political system that the chance of this "mental derangement" triggering a constitutional process to remove him seems vanishingly small. However, the idea that he may be incapable of not acting irresponsibly could factor into a congressional process of impeachment. Although since by any prior standards the Republican party is itself acting irresponsibly (especially with their shameful unhealthcare bill) chances are not all that much better.
Finally, we've come to this pretty pass: many can easily agree that the a.d. is a functionally a racist and a racist demagogue, but is he a white supremacist? Jonathan Chiat posted a careful analysis of the term "white supremacist" as it has traditionally been used in political discourse, and argues that it does not apply, and further, that it might be dangerous and needlessly provocative to make this charge--as several responsible commentators he names recently have.
Update: Without naming Chiat, WPost columnist Eugene Robinson responded with a column titled "If Trump's not a white supremacist, he does a good impression." Michael Gerson uses the other term in his WPost column, "America has a racial demagogue for a president." The New Yorker published three articles under the general heading, "Trump's Racial Demagoguery" beginning with this one.
I am not sure where I come down in this specific debate, although I am usually in favor of precision, and in maintaining as many words with shades of meaning as possible. But I do want to comment on one of his other observations. He goes after those who in some sense equate the a.d. with Hitler. "The equation of Trump with Hitler is a way of using history that treats American democracy as a failed experiment. All its procedural niceties, like freedom of speech even for those with the most heinous beliefs, are suddenly unaffordable luxuries."
I certainly do not agree that in highlighting the warning signs that historically characterized the rise and reign of Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in Italy implies that "freedom of speech" is a "suddenly unaffordable" luxury. Nor do I condone so-called antifa violence.
Clearly a lot of things that conventional wisdom believed couldn't happen here have happened, and exhibit A is currently in the White House, or the White Tower as it should be called now. That does not imply that lawful and democratic means can't prevent the worst. Indeed, they must.
Chiat is notable for being a liberal who worries about intolerance from the left, as well he should. But in judging disruptive protests, I argue for more nuance. What are the basis for specific protests? The content of speech or the misuse of funds to pay the speaker? Here I'm dipping my foot in waters where I shouldn't, since I don't care to get involved in such debates. I've had my day, paid my dues. But I suggest the need for nuance hasn't been exhausted. Though in general I suppose we all have been. Some weekend.
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