(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish / Arabic الترجمة العربية / Hebrew תרגום לעברית)

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) October 6, 2025; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating as I make my overdue comeback! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

SILVER SPRING—On paper, officially, “legally,” both the West Bank and the United States have clear ways that security forces are to bound to be applied from any central governing authority in particular areas, deferring to local forces and limiting the roles of those coming from outside. But as both Israel and the U.S. implode politically on the eve of the two-year anniversary of the October 7 Hamas terrorist pogrom against Israel and the beginning of the even larger mass-killing of Israel’s Gaza campaign, it is important to understand how far from reality this description actually ends up being under the current crises both nation nations face.

Wrecking Boundaries in the West Bank

But in the West Bank, Israeli leaders have long ignored many of these supposed restrictions at will, none more so from the top than extremist Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  The West Bank is by far the largest of the three Palestinian territories forming the State of Palestine and occupied during the Six Day-War in June 1967 by the Israel Defense Forces (or IDF, i.e., the Israeli army) and still illegally occupied after all these years (the other Palestinian areas being the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem).  For decades, Israel has illegally colonized these lands and transferred some of its Jewish population illegally to form illegal Jewish settler communities—often of religious fanatics—on Palestinian land, sometimes ethnically cleansing Palestinian communities in the process.   Netanyahu, a champion of the settler movement often nicknamed “Bibi,” has served more time as prime minister than any Israeli, including Israeli founding father David Ben-Gurion; indeed, Netanyahu seems willing to do just about anything to maintain power, including repeatedly prolonging the current horrific “war” (a term loosely applied) in Gaza.  Since the 1993 Oslo peace process began, a three-tiered system is supposed to govern whether Israelis or Palestinians hold civil or security authority in the West Bank: Area A (Palestinian security and civil), Area B (Israeli security, Palestinian civil), and Area C (Israeli security and civil).  In reality, Israel treats all areas as if it can do whatever it pleases whenever it pleases: new illegal Israeli settlements in the middle of Palestinian land, abrupt arrests of Palestinian officials trying to exercise their duties, or raids deep into the heart of the most populous Palestinian cities care not what lines on the map say, and the Israeli political and military leaders have also long since stopped caring (Netanyahu himself bragged repeatedly over the years up through the present about killing the Oslo process that even brought these three Areas about).

Your Posse Is Not Legal, Mr. President

In the United States, possible tensions between the civil and military spheres preoccupied the Founding Fathers so much so that there was no official permanent standing army established by the Constitution and George Washington himself was lionized as a hero in the mold of Cincinnatus for stepping down from supreme military power when his duty was done (and as much for that as anything else he ever did, which says a lot).  There was a bold, idealistic, prescient experiment in Reconstruction (1865-1877)—really the last phase of the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865) over slavery—to bring about multiracial democracy that achieved much relying on the deployment and backing of federal troops before succumbing to white supremacist terrorist insurrections throughout the recalcitrant South.  Some dynamics during Reconstruction in the South in key ways resembled the West Bank in that whites in the South eventually used lawless means to establish control over security forces and courts to create a separate-and-unequal system, violating Reconstruction-era constitutional amendments and laws to instead impose a pre-apartheid apartheid system on newly-freed people in the South that would come to be known as the Jim Crow “legal” system and would take most of a century to dismantle.

Simultaneously, while Reconstruction wound down as a failed experiment, Americans were uneasy about the fact that the newly mighty U.S. military after the Civil War had been used so much in civil affairs in formerly rebel southern states, so the Posse Comitatus Act was passed in 1878 to more clearly define the U.S. civil-military divide, already quite strong without it.  The law further codified that the federal military cannot be used for domestic civilian law enforcement purposes with a few exceptions for special, unique, and extreme circumstances often as laid out in very specific laws.  This law was passed in 1878 shortly after Reconstruction ended by both the House and Senate with comfortable margins and signed into law by then-President Rutherford B. Hayes.  The exceptions allow the president to work around or go over the Act in times of severe emergencies.

While there are some issues of “ambiguity” in the Posse Comitatus Act, the long tradition of taking great care with the use of military forces on U.S. soil in non-war settings is clear and Trump’s domestic military deployments in 2025 are not ambiguous in that his premises for deploying them to begin with were flat-out-false or grotesquely unproven, unsubstantiated assertions (“untethered to the facts,” in federal Judge Karin Immergut’s words from her ruling after an emergency hearing in Oregon late yesterday; for this, permanent caricature and White House Deputy Chief Staff Stephen Miller irresponsibly and dangerously called her actions a “legal insurrection” that aids “an organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers,” yet another proclamation of open season on the judiciary).  The Trump Administration’s wild claims are contrary to existing publicly available information, with no serious attempts made to counter such information with a proper presentation of demonstrably better or updated information as would be expected under a normal, functioning government.  And though he has far more authority to deploy troops to the District of Columbia, of which I live just outside (so yes, I have seen these illegally deployed forces many times and spoken with them), false premises were still articulated for the DC deployment, so it was still, therefore, illegal before any other considerations are raised (despite raising concerns about the statistics for crime in DC, Trump authorized deployments to the District outside of any federal process to review, challenge, or improve crime statistics reporting in Washington, a common problem many cities confront, and the U.S. Department of Justice only initiated an investigation after Trump’s deployment; any effort to demonstrate any sort of adherence to proper procedure would have seen the investigation happen and conclude far before any military deployment, prove the statistics are clearly false, and demonstrate that officials in Washington were bad-faith and not cooperating or responding to good-faith efforts to obtain cooperation or improve said statistics).

Plenty of scholars have also pointed out that both the intent and context of Posse Comitatus Act and its related laws at the times they were enacted and the spirits with which they have been enforced since are incompatible with Trump’s machinations, not just legally but also constitutionally.  And the main exceptions allowed for and invoked under the 1807 Insurrection Act are for situations totally different than the country finds itself in today: it and precursor legislation saw thirty events in U.S. history result in invocation since 1792, the most recent occurrence for the 1992 L.A. riots. This was notably at the request of California’s governor at the time, the opposite of Trump’s baseless, illegal and unconstitutional deployments there now in 2025.

West Banking America

But the point is, whether in the West Bank of the United States, there are clear restrictions on a.) military forces being deployed in normal circumstances and, even in extraordinary circumstances, b.) when, c.) where, and d.) how they can be deployed.

Yet as noted, for years, Israel and especially Netanyahu have ignored these restrictions whenever they have felt like it and, indeed, have increasingly attacked the idea that these restrictions have any validity whatsoever.  In short, the law is treated as whim, and everyone knows the dirty truth deep down that even some Israelis can admit: the West Bank is an apartheid system, based on religion and ethnicity: ethnic and religious Jews with Israeli citizenship in the West Bank are accorded full Israeli civil rights in the face of Israeli authority, while, in practice, Palestinians (be they Muslim or Christian) have no rights at all and are totally subject to whatever whims and depredations the military rule of the Israeli state and its supporters mete out, up to and including mass vandalism, rampant property destruction, prodigious assaults, orchestrated ethnic cleansing, rarely-punished murders (even of Palestinian-Americans), and indefinite child detention, whether from official government security forces or any number of Jewish settlers engaging increasingly in terrorism with the state’s backing, sometimes far more than tacit.  Even before October 7 in 2023, that year was still the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since the Second Intifada that ended in 2005, meaning the deliberate escalation in the West Bank by Israel has little to do with October 7, and settlers have even attacked positions of their own IDF in the West Bank when such settlers feel they are not being given enough impunity, showing their lawlessness knows no bounds.  Essentially, you have rights or not based on who Israeli authorities want to have rights there, and they award them to their side while denying them to the other.  Lines on maps, the law, human rights (for those they deemed unworthy) meant nothing, but rewarding their supporters and punishing their opponents is everything.

What has been the obvious “legal” reality for many years in the West Bank—only intensifying more and more over time both qualitatively and quantitatively and now exploding—is now something Trump wants to recreate for all America, turning the whole country into a Wild West Bank of Lawlessness.

But where for Israel, the divides are relatively simple and easy—Jewish vs. Palestinian—here it’s MAGA against everyone, even sometimes other MAGA (some Trump voters are now seeing friends, coworkers, and family members deported, detained, or arrested, even veterans).  If you are a U.S. citizen supporting what Trump is doing and your family and friends also match this description, you have little to worry about when it comes to this (for now…).  But if you are an immigrant who is undocumented/unauthorized who has no criminal record, a legal non-citizen resident—even one showing up for your own immigration hearing—or a U.S. citizen who is either ready to exercise your constitutional rights to ask questions, protest, and confront what is happening or is just at the wrong place at the wrong time, you are not necessarily protected by the law anymore.  Furthermore, by far the vast majority of the human beings being detained and deported are non-violent and non-criminal, whatever nonsense is claimed to the contrary by whomever in power.  And the masked, large, tattooed, angry individuals newly minted as ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents in paramilitary style and other federal fun folks are here to make sure you do not feel safe.  Are you an elected official, including a sitting U.S. Senator, simply asking questions of federal officials?  It does not matter, you can be handcuffed or bodyslammed with the least-protected among us.

Like Netanyahu and too many Israeli leaders in years before, Trump and his similarly extreme, similarly-minded counterparts are hell-bent on erasing, de facto or de jure, the lines the Posse Comitatus Act solidified in the sand on the limits of the use of federal military in a civilian setting, lines for principles clearly enshrined by U.S. Constitution and over two centuries of precedent, principles the Trump Administration is shredding not just in the streets of American cities but even partly also in the waters off the coast of Venezuela.

In seeking to erase legal rules binding the authorization, deployment, and use of federal military forces on U.S. soil in civilian settings (leaving similar jurisdictional mission creep in Venezuela aside), Trump and his MAGA minions with illegal occupation in America are trying to recreate key aspects of the fascist nightmare of the illegally occupied West Bank.  But here in the U.S., this is not based on two warring and competing nationalities and one of those nationalities’ democratically elected leaders pursuing total subjugation at best or actual genocide of the other nationality at worst, broadcast daily for all the world to see and fueled by insane colonialist, imperialist, expansionist fever-dreams based on ancient fantasies and ancient maps, no.  Here in the U.S., Trump is trying to divide Americans on ideological, political, identity, and legal-status lines, lines he will use to award and protect rights for some, deny them to others, still dangle to yet others as ways of obtaining “obeying in advance” or to even explicitly threaten, say, ABC and Disney over a certain late-night host named Kimmy Kimmel.  As JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois fighting back against Trump’s illegal military deployments to Chicago, noted during that drama: “Tyranny requires constant effort.  It breaks, it leaks.  Authority is brittle.  Oppression is the mask of fear.  Remember that,” quoting the amazing antifascist masterpiece that is the Star Wars show Andor.  Yet, we must also remember that, however much Trump and Netanyahu act out of fear of losing power, they are also clearly in the drivers’ seats, consolidating more and more power for themselves in ways the founder fathers of both the U.S. and Israel never intended.

And while there is hardly the level of violence between the sides as in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict even as political violence in the U.S. may be on the rise, dynamics are between the two have been converging somewhat for some time and make no mistake about it, the key principle is the same: longstanding, binding legal distinctions are melting away in the face of determined illegality, such that the law disappears and factional whim reigns supreme so one side can enforce its will upon the other, tyranny replacing law as the very system.  In short, Trump seeks to create a political apartheid here in the U.S., a West Bank of Left and Right, “evil” and “good,” veering Manichaean and not dissimilar in legal nihilism to the separate and unequal system of Jew and Palestinian (or “Arab,” so much less specific…) in the West Bank’s Nablus but bringing it to New York.

Adding New Meaning to “Executing” the Law

To execute their plans, both Trump and Netanyahu have hosts of extremists willing to unquestioningly nakedly embrace the partisanship of their missions, from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, from U.S. Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth to Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (all of whom have had their own past issues with illegality or criminal probes well-before 2025: Ben-Gvir and Smotrich being convicted and arrested terrorists, respectively; Bondi in the center of a criminal bribery and obstruction scandal with Trump; and the brotastic Pete Hegseth, well, being brotastic Pete Hegseth…), just to name a few, with far, far too many others alongside.  And these allies have made it clear, sometimes as senior law enforcement officials: if we don’t like you, the law cannot protect you from us and we are coming for you, even for your children.  While in Israel, broadening this behavior to include Israeli Jewish citizens has been far milder than what has been done to Palestinians—even those in Israel with Israeli citizenship but especially those without Israeli citizenship outside of Israel in the actual territories of actual Palestine—Trump and his lawless allies are rapidly casting a far wider dragnet, or at least attempting to do so, advancing on several fronts even as I write this.

Yes, you are witnessing the MAGA Trump Administration’s attempts at illegal jurisdictional jumps dehumanizingly intending to target both directly and indirectly various large swaths of the population in America, illegal deployment by illegal deployment, related measure by related measure, until Trump has created a de facto national federalized police state he can use to prosecute and intimidate his opposition and others deemed undesirable, jurisdictional issues and the law be damned.  They have lost the program when it comes morality, cartoonishly celebrating their roles as oppressors (of certain people) and projecting so publicly for all to see.

Maybe a lot of this should not be surprising, since both men have no problem breaking the law: Trump is an insurrectionist and convicted felon and Netanyahu is currently on trial in three cases in Israel for damning corruption crimes (with Trump, unsurprisingly in true birds-of-a-feather mode, even very publicly pressuring Israel to stop Netanyahu’s trial) in addition to having the International Criminal Court issue a warrant for his arrest in 2024 for war crimes.  Both men are fascists remaking their countries in a fascist image of their former democracies, the actions mentioned herein just some of the examples (I do not use the term “fascist” lightly, but carefully and specifically and with history in mind).

At this point, one really has to wonder if either the U.S. or Israel can still be fairly termed “democracies,” because in key ways, the rule of law is damaged, dying, or dead as both Israel and the U.S.—Bibi and Donnie—continue to feed, rather than restrain, each other’s worst tendencies.

But it is both too easy and too simple to blame just such leaders: voters in both countries could have easily set their countries on different paths—ones that respected the rule of law—and voters in both countries rejected, even if narrowly, the rule of law in favor of Trump, Netanyahu, and the fascism they represent, whether they realize it or not.  And perhaps nothing screams fascist more than violently taking away legal protections for the most vulnerable and defenseless and, in turn, their allies in order to expose the chosen to ever more deprivation and violence at the hands of the same people taking away their rights and protections.

In the current state of Israel’s short history, this could simply mean the end of Israeli democracy.  In the U.S. context, this would be like the success of white supremacist terrorists during Reconstruction in brutally taking away Freedmen’s rights throughout the south, except that Trump is engaging in this massive ripping away of rights not in one region but in the whole country.  2025 may yet be known a watershed year for America, Israel, and Palestine, but only for the most horrific, sad, pathetic, and—perhaps most importantly—most preventable of ways.

See all of Brian’s work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict here.

© 2025 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish) By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) August 20, 2025; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating as I make my overdue comeback! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

SILVER SPRING—A small yet extraordinary series of events happened after a regional U.S. Border Patrol office posted a video on its official social media of a clip from a Star Wars movie (spoilers for Star Wars in general and specifically about Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader, the film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and its precursor masterpiece of a series, Andor).

The Force…Is Not with This Video

In the video posted by the regional U.S. Border Patrol office for California’s “Premier Sector,” a.k.a. “El Centro Sector,” the Premier Sector agents are portrayed as Sith Lord Darth Vader in his final scene in Rogue One, in which he is shown mercilessly cutting through Rebel soldiers trying to hand off the Death Star plans to those escaping on Princess Leia’s ship.  In the movie, the plans were obtained by the Rebels because of tremendous suffering, horrific sacrifice, and the heroic efforts of Cassian Andor, Jyn Erso, Saw Gerrera, and many others rebels.  Some of the Rebels here in the Border Patrol video facing Vader are labeled as “Fentanyl,” “Sanctuary Cities,” “Cocaine,” and “Fake News.”  Vader has already disabled and boarded the Rebel command cruiser (their biggest space ship at the battle) and is trying to intercept the plans—transmitted only through bloody fighting by the rebel leaders on the planet Scarif below—before the rebels can get them to Leia’s ship, docked with the cruiser.  As Vader chases deflects with his red Sithlightsaber the Rebels blaster bolts as they are standing their ground against him, we can see other Rebels labeled “meth,” “human smugglers,” “the swamp,” “cartel terrorists,” and “gang member” as Vader makes his way down the docking hallway.  Some he kills by deflecting their own blaster bolts at them, others he cuts through with his lightsaber like a scythe into wheat, still others (the “fake news,” “cartel terrorists”), he uses the Force to toss around or pull their weapons from them before slicing them to death or choking them while suspended in the air by Vader’s Force powers.  In the movie, the Rebels are mostly massacred by Vader but just manage to get the plans abord Leia’s ship, which undocks and escapes with Vader looking on.  His further pursuit is captured in the very opening scene of the very first original Star Wars movie, Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope.  It is these plans that enable Luke Skywalker to know how to blow up the Death Star at the end of the movie and to save the day, but not before it is used to partially destroy one planet and totally destroy another, killing billions of innocents.  Darth Vader was trying to stop the rebels from stopping this genocidal Death Star.

Yet Vader is with whom these Border Patrol agents, in one of the most important and prolific sectors in the country, wanted to publicly identify.  Not Luke blowing up the Death Star, but Vader killing those who would ensure Luke and the Rebel planners were able to make use of the Death Star’s weakness to destroy it.

Just think on that.

The Border Patrol regional account has since either deactivated or turned on privacy settings, not allowing the account or video to be seen by the general public if it hasn’t been deleted (at least there is some self-awareness as to the problematic nature of this post) but it was still posted on an official federal government account and indicates the views of the people in that office. And it is still proudly up on Twitter!

The Response: Fascist Icing on a Fascist Cake

But this is only the beginning.  Appropriately, the team of the indispensable John Oliver, who discussed this all last week on his Last Week Tonight show on HBO, reached out to the government for a response.  He pointed out that rather than the labels on the Rebels in the absurd Star Wars video, most being snatched by these draconian raids are not violent criminals.  Rather than slaying “fake news,” the government was spreading it.

The government—specifically, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), under the authority of which the Border Patrol operates—did actually reply. While ignoring most specific questions posed by Oliver’s team, the government communications staff did write: “Not to spoil the plot, but as any Star Wars fan knows, Darth Vader is also Anakin Skywalker,” continuing that “I don’t think DHS needs to regale the American public on the heroism of Skywalker, they know.”  They really seem to think that this was a serious clapback, not mortifying self-own.

John Oliver characterized this as “an incredible, deeply shitty response.”  He then went on to satirically laud Thanos, form the Avengers series, as a similar “hero,” since, at one point, he was a baby.

Oliver is spot-on and actually understands Star Wars.  Because any serious Star Wars fan knows that the hero Anakin Skywalker succumbed to evil to become Darth Vader, that both Obi-Wan Kenobi and Vader himself viewed Anakin’s new persona of Vader as having killed the man who was known as Anakin Skywalker.  (Obi-Wan series spoilers)Years before Rogue One, in a climactic duel captured in the problematic Obi-Wan Kenobi series, Vader even tells Obi-Wan “Anakin is gone.  I am what remains.”  Obi-Wan apologizes for how things turned out, to which Vader replies “I am not your failure, Obi-Wan.  You didn’t kill Anakin Skywalker,” now smiling, “I did” (End Obi-Wan series spoilers).  Even without this more recently-produced scene and series, in the words of Obi-Wan to Luke Skywalker three movies chronologically after Rogue One, “Your father… was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force.  He ceased to be Anakin Skywalker and became Darth Vader.  When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed.”  Later in the film when Luke references Anakin Skywalker to Vader, Vader’s response is to say “That name no longer has any meaning for me.”  And that was the case for nearly Vader’s entire life as Vader, from the end of Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith—when Anakin became the Sith Lord known as Darth Vader—to the last moments of Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, just before he finally abandons Vader to die as regretful Anakin in the arms of his son.

Thus, both Obi-Wan’s and Vader’s own statements, while not completely true—deep, deep down, Anakin was still in there as Luke, his son, felt, only coming back out in extreme circumstances just before Vader’s death to try to save his son Luke—were the measure of the man in the scene the Border Patrol office posted in that video, which took place in the timeline years before Vader’s redemption.  In this scene a Border Patrol account posted from Rogue One, Vader was solidly the Emperor’s right-hand man, a full Lord of the Sith, evil and acting as an enforcer for an evil, illegal, genocidal, tyrannical, expansionist, fascist regime.  The Rebels Vader casually murders are fighting to stop all this, to destroy the Empire and restore the democratic Republic the Empire overthrew.

But given Trump’s own fascist, dictatorial tendencies, should we be surprised his cultists in and out of government openly identify with the bad guys?  With fascism?  While all this on certain levels is funny, it is also revealing and terrifying:  the fascists are not hiding their fascism and are openly identifying with an evil, murderous Sith Lord.  They did not show Anakin fighting as a hero or Luke blowing up the Death Star, they showed Vader—clearly at that point a fallen hero, not a hero, fighting against heroes as a clear villain.

From the White House to DHS and Border Patrol, our republic has fallen to control of Empire and fascist fanboys, embracing the Dark Side, not the Light Side.  The mainstream press continues to miss the gravity of the situation, toning things down, using euphemisms, or missing the plot entirely.  We must shed light on all this so people understand what is truly at stake.  It may not be a whole galaxy or a whole planet under threat, and Trump and his MAGA minions may be far less interesting than the Imperial bad guys, but with no Luke Skwalker or Cassian Andor coming to rescue us, it’s time to wake up and save ourselves (and as I hope to discuss in a future piece, community-consciousness-building is one of the main themes of the Show Andor…).

© 2025 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

(Russian/Русский перевод coming soon; Если вы состоите в российской армии и хотите сдаться Украине, звоните по этим номерам: +38 066 580 34 98 или +38 093 119 29 84; инструкции по сдаче здесь)

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook) January 1, 2023; see related articles from February 17, 2017: Welcome to the Era of Rising Democratic Fascism Part I: Defining Democracy, Fascism, and Democratic Fascism Usefully, and Spin vs. Lies and Trump, the Global Democratic Fascist Movement, Putin’s War on the West, and a Choice for Liberals: Welcome to the Era of Rising Democratic Fascism Part II

SILVER SPRING—Not even a full month after Trump’s inauguration, I published a massive two-part essay discussing what I called the rise of “democratic fascism,” with Trump’s victory and being sworn into office one of largest developments on this front.

This is not a democratic fascism as in the Democratic Party of the U.S., but in terms of fascists nonviolently and legally winning elections, using their resulting power to chip away enough at what I have called the four main pillars of democracy—1.) popular elections, 2.) a law enforcement and highly-independent judicial system that is applied relatively equally and not used as a political tool for aggrandizement or persecution (“rule of law”), 3.) a free press that can hold all parties accountable and provide an accurate picture of reality to the public, and 4.) a public free to express itself and not stupid enough to be manipulated too much by propaganda and demagogues, that can make at least somewhat informed decisions based on reality—to twist the system into unfairly favoring themselves and keeping themselves in power as they continue to enact illiberal policies that only further stack the political and societal deck in their favor.

The first part of the two-parter focused on definitions of important terms like “democracy,” “fascism,” and my conception of what I called “democratic fascism.”  In particular, the term “fascism” is highly overused and often poorly understood or defined, a lot like the word “terrorism,” an issue I have previously discussed in detail: as I argued some time ago, “terrorism” must mean more than simply violence or threats of violence from people and organizations we personally dislike, and, similarly, fascism must mean more than the politics of someone or something we personally dislike.  The first part also discussed the difference between political spin and outright lies and how fascism embraces outright lies, as fascism is, among its other horrendous characteristics, a war on truth and reality itself.

In the second part, I looked specifically at why Trump very much fit the definition of “democratic fascist” as I had defined it.  As the word fascist is so strongly associated with Nazis, the Holocaust, and mass arrests and mass executions, I felt separating the traditional conception of fascism from the current wave that was, at least for the time being then, eschewing violent means to achieve and maintain power was useful back in 2017.  But in the roughly five years since Trump’s democratic fascist movement emerged to take over the Republican Party—one of America’s two major parties—and transformed it into a cult of Trump, the leader himself and bulk of that Trumpist movement have clearly transitioned already to accepting and embracing violence and overthrowing the rule of law illegally in their quest to achieve and maintain power, as most notably demonstrated in the culmination of the Trump Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021.  That coup attempt did not stop with its failure on that day, but has since continued through the present. 

Once their embrace of violence and their failure to repudiate Trump’s insurrection became clear, I have felt “fascist” became more appropriate label for them, as the Trumpists are now trying to use undemocratic and/or violent means to achieve power, the latest being MAGA Republican Kari Lake trying to use false lawsuits to overturn her clear defeat in the Arizona governor’s race (I think she is a favorite to be Trump’s vice presidential-nominee in what I think will be his highly successful quest to rewin the Republican Party’s nomination for president).

The rest of my second part detailed how Russia’s Vladimir Putin was leading a global fascist movement as part of his war on Western democracy and how all who opposed such fascism needed to put pettier differences aside to defeat it (a spirit recent political victories in France, the United States, and Brazil embody).

As fascism has very much become an important theme in global politics today—from the Trumpist movement to Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil, from multiple political parties in Europe to Putin’s Russia and its war on Ukrainian democracy, from Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel to the Narendra Modi’s India, from the Taliban’s Afghanistan to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, I think it is important to revisit the definition of “fascism.”  In this spirit, I am reposting parts of part one of the two-part piece discussed above because I think they are deeply relevant to our current circumstances. Not all fascism will be as obvious and violent as Putin’s Russian fascism, so a common definition is essential to fight fascism in all its forms (and on a side note, please do see the 10/10 spectacular Andor television series for a beautiful meditation on the nature of fascism and of resisting it).

Excerpt begins:

Fascism comes in many forms; if Hitler and genocide can be one end of the spectrum, there’s plenty of room for fascism that falls far short of that standard, eschewing pogroms and other forms of mass violence, forms of fascism that include what we are seeing now: a democratic fascism (small “d” referring to democracy in general, as opposed to a capital “D” associated with America’s Democratic Party) empowered by populations, media, and elections that rewards and empowers those willing to feed off division and fear as it overwhelms norms, dissenting minorities, and even the law. As this democratic fascism rises, the losers are the liberal democratic governments that have been dominant since the end of WWII; in effect, it is no longer a question of if, as I posed nearly a year ago, but how fast we will see the unraveling of the post-WWII U.S.-led international order. What we do now will define the West and the world for decades to come, but the growing far left must grow up quickly and act within the clear choices of present reality if we are to have a good chance of stopping democratic fascism from destroying our societies, the West, and the international order as we know it.

“American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information, and those who stand for the K.K.K. type of demagoguery.”— Henry A. Wallace, 1944, Vice President of the United States 1941-1945

One can easily go back to the domestic tyranny of Athens’ democracy in ancient Greece, of the will of the demos often trampling over minority rights, to begin a long history of systems that were democratic in that a majority had power and chose leaders or voted on legislation, but with that being the extent of the democracy. In fact, as happens all too often, people—especially when consumed by fear and hate—will choose someone who merely reflects the base instincts of their majority, will use democracy to create a political culture of persecution, intolerance, and even brutalization of those who are not in the majority, will create a system designed to favor and perpetuate the rule of this majority, and will actively suppress those speaking, acting, and organizing against it. 

This is a Tocquevillian tyranny of the majority on steroids, a system where only the people in power and those who support them can even approach having the feeling they live in a democracy or that their opinions count in the public square, while everyone who feels differently is made to understand that even expressing their counternarrative, their dissent, their dissatisfaction will carry consequences for their level of freedom, or even their health, up to and including the lethal variety. Such “democracies” exist to empower the majority or the plurality of those supporting the current leader/government/system and only them; the rest of the population is made to feel that they are tolerated at best by the good graces of those in charge and to embrace their second-or-third-class status meekly and enthusiastically, to be deferential to their oppressors’ views and whims, or else…

Such a system uses democracy to destroy it. Such a system embraces limited (and the most salient) forms of democracy, mainly elections and the right of those winning the elections to rule (and in this case, rule uncontested)…

…the following quote illustrates, if in a slightly oversimplified way, some of the dynamics behind this as far as people and mentalities are concerned:

The following joke circulated in Italy in the 1920s. According to Mussolini, the ideal citizen is intelligent, honest, and Fascist. Unfortunately, no one is perfect, which explains why everyone you meet is either intelligent and Fascist but not honest, honest and Fascist but not intelligent, or honest and intelligent but not Fascist.—Maurice Herlihy and Nir Shavit, The Art of Multiprocessor Programming

Yes, as before, a cadre intelligent people willing to be extremely dishonest are leading a new move towards fascism that wins the hearts and minds of the unintelligent who are honest with their backwards beliefs, leaving a cadre of intelligent, honest, non-fascists to be in the unenviable positions of selling less attractive trusts juxtaposed to often more attractive fascist lies. Sure, there are rich exceptions, but you could do far worse as far as accuracy than categorize most people in politics these days into one of these three categories.

No, it’s not the 1930s, but today, the democracies of the world are collectively facing a cancer of populist, and, yes, democratic fascism that threatens to erase democratic norms, destroy liberal democratic values, and that seeks to remake many of the world’s leading democracies in the image of Vladimir Putin’s Russia and its “democracy” that relies on an intolerant majority that understands democracy simply as the gratification of their emotional desires, with dissenters, minorities, and others who don’t agree with them be damned, their complaints of abuse at the hands of the state dismissed and ignored.

Yet terms like democracy and fascism are thrown about quite casually, and not necessarily in a way that is accurate; in fact, I earlier engaged in an exercise in defining the word “terrorism” usefully that amply demonstrates how important it is for a reasonable and universal definition of certain commonly-used-in-our-political-discourse terms to be sounded out so that the terms are spared from being bandied about in a way that virtually anyone can use to make any point, rendering them meaningless and their use pointless.

In his seminal 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell expressed his understanding of how slippery the uses of both “democracy” and “fascism” not only could be, but were when he wrote that

The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable”. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.

Such tendencies that flourished in Orwell’s time still, sadly, flourish today, over 70 years both after Orwell penned those thoughts and after the defeat of fascism in Europe. We shall do our best to avoid such traps in the discussion below by discussing the definition…of…“fascism.”…

Defining Fascism

Which brings us to a discussion of what we should understand fascism to be…

“Fascism” as a word in English comes into English in the 1920s from the Italian fascismo, describing the movements (maybe gangs is a better word) that would eventually put Mussolini in power in Italy but a word also alluding to the ancient Roman symbol of authority, the fasces. The English definition of “fascism,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is mainly twofold: “An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization” and a subdefinition: “(in general use) extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or intolerant views or practices;” both are useful, and, especially, the subdefinition is applicable here, but a further, less vague, and more detailed definition is needed for our discussion.

Like “terrorism” and “democracy,” “fascism” as a term can easily become overly and poorly used. Writing in 1944, Orwell noted how “there is almost no set of people — certainly no political party or organized body of any kind — which has not been denounced as Fascist.” Still, even noting the sharp disagreements of the people of his day over who or what was fascist, he noted that “[b]y ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’.”

The enthusiastic admirer of Orwell and recently (and very sadly) late Christopher Hitchens, unsurprisingly, echoes some of what his hero had to say, but goes farther; for Hitchens, “[h]istorically, fascism laid great emphasis on glorifying the nation-state and the corporate structure,” is “based on a cult of murderous violence that exalts death and destruction and despises the life of the mind…[and is] hostile to modernity (except when it comes to the pursuit of weapons).” He also describes fascism as “bitterly nostalgic for past empires and lost glories,” as “obsessed with real and imagined ‘humiliations’ and thirsty for revenge,” as “chronically infected with the toxin of anti-Jewish paranoia (interestingly, also, with its milder cousin, anti-Freemason paranoia),” as “inclined to leader worship,” and as a “threat…to civilization and civilized values;” perhaps Hitchens’ most pithy description is as follows: “[t]he historic essence of Fascism is the most retrograde people using the most revolutionary rhetoric.”

For Rebecca West, writing in 1935, “Fascism…is a headlong flight into fantasy from the necessity for political thought…persons supporting Fascism behave as if man were already in possession of principles which would enable him to deal with all our problems, and as if it were only a question of appointing a dictator to apply them.”

In his preface to the Third Edition of his The Mass Psychology of Fascism, written in 1942, Wilhelm Reich notes that:

In its pure form, fascism is the sum total of all irrational reactions of the average human character. To the narrow-minded sociologist who lacks the courage to recognize the enormous role played by the irrational in human history, the fascist race theory appears as nothing but an imperialistic interest or even a mere “prejudice.” The violence and the ubiquity of these “race prejudices” show their origin from the irrational part of the human character. The race theory is not a creation of fascism. No: fascism is a creation of race hatred and its politically organized expression.

For U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), one of the handful of men who can be said to have been a primary architect of the successful plan to defeat fascism in the 1940s, he felt that “the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself,” and what stood out for him was that “[t]hat, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.” In other words, when one ruler/party/faction/group considers that it owns the state and that the state’s machinery, power, and largesse exist as personal tools for those in power, when that controlling entity does not feel it needs to share the state, and its machinery, power, and largesse with others different from themselves, we have fascism.

Henry A. Wallace, FDR’s Vice President before Truman, told The New York Times in 1944 that

A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends. The supreme god of a fascist, to which his ends are directed, may be money or power; may be a race or a class; may be a military, clique or an economic group; or may be a culture, religion, or a political party.

Wallace notes how American fascism is different from Nazi German fascists in a way that is quite relevant today when we are attempting to discuss democratic fascism:

The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.

For Umberto Eco, whose own childhood took place in Mussolini’s fascist Italy, fascism was something that could be any combination of a number of key elements. Writing in 1995 in an incredibly prescient and far-too-underappreciated essay on what he termed “Ur-Fascism”—that eternal and incoherent fascist current within humanity—the Italian master saw fascism as something that espouses a “cult of tradition” in a way that was “syncretistic” and produced little if anything original (in this, Eco’s fascism resembles the evil forces in Tolkien’s Middle Earth, which is described here in The Lord of the Rings in a discussion of the nature of Sauron’s orc minions: “The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own. I don’t think it gave life to Orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them.”). He also saw it as a “rejection of modernism” and, in turn, an embodiment of “irrationalism.” For Eco, fascism values “action for action’s sake” in a sense that despised deliberation and intellectual discourse and the intellectual world in general; building upon this, he also noted how fascism is unable to “withstand analytical criticism” to such a degree that “disagreement is treason.” As a natural follow-up to this, he notes fascism’s hatred of diversity and its “exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference,” that (nascent) fascism’s “first appeal…is an appeal against intruders,” making fascism “racist by definition;” it feeds on “individual or social frustration” in a way that is an “appeal to a frustrated middle class” that is “frightened by the pressure of lower social groups;” Eco feared that “the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.” The psychology of fascism is obsessed with identity, particularly appealing to those lost and confused in a changing and challenging world, and offers them a crude way out based on nationalism (for Orwell, “power-hunger tempered by self-deception”), a nationalism defined by exclusion of “enemies” of the nation; this psychology is based on “the obsession with a plot” against them, domestically and internationally. Those subscribing to such a fascist movement “must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies” but also “be convinced that they can overwhelm” them (leaving them “constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.”) With such movements, “pacifism is trafficking with the enemy” and “life is permanent warfare” such that even in victory, there is still a pervasive sense of insecurity, unspoken inferiority, and anxiety. Eco’s fascism is also embodied by a “contempt for the weak” that is crucial for its “popular elitism:” the leaders of the movement convince their mass followers that they are the true elite, even as they thrive by exploiting the weaknesses of their captains and both, in turn, exploit the weaknesses of their mass followers, who feel superior to those not in the movement in a dynamic of trickle-down elitism (“Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on,” as Sinclair Lewis writes in his 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, in which a man remarkably like Donald Trump becomes president running a campaign remarkably like Trump’s and ends up transforming America into a fascist dictatorship). Here, Eco continues, “everybody is educated to become a hero” in a sense that engenders a constant hero martyr-complex (often literally reached by death or sending “other people to death”). In fascism, Eco also finds a misogynistic, homophobic machismo that addresses its sexual inadequacy through the “ersatz phallic exercise” of “play[ing] with weapons.” He also finds fascism to be based on a “selective populism” that is “qualitative” not “quantitative” in nature; “the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction,” and “[t]here is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.” Fascism, then, is “against ‘rotten’ parliamentary [i.e.., democratic] governments,” and “[w]herever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism.”

Pondering the reality of a fictional German Nazi and Imperial Japanese-occupied America in the 1960s in Philip K. Dick’s novel The Man in the High Castle, a Nazi defector to Japan’s Pacific States of America defines the fascist system of insanity and its adherents as one explained by:

…something they do, something they are. It is their unconsciousness. Their lack of knowledge about others. Their not being aware of what they do to others, the destruction they have caused and are causing. No, he thought. That isn’t it. I don’t know; I sense it, I intuit it. But—they are purposelessly cruel… is that it? No, God, he thought. I can’t find it, make it clear. Do they ignore parts of reality? Yes. But it is more. It is their plans. Yes, their plans…Something frenzied and demented…

Their view; it is cosmic. Not a man here, a child there, but an abstraction: race, land. Volk. Land. Blut. Ehre. Not of honourable men but of Ehre itself, honor; the abstract is real, the actual is invisible to them. Die Güte, but not good men, this good man. It is their sense of space and time…

…They want to be the agents, not the victims, of history.

For long-time New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik,

What all forms of fascism have in common is the glorification of the nation, and the exaggeration of its humiliations, with violence promised to its enemies, at home and abroad; the worship of power wherever it appears and whoever holds it; contempt for the rule of law and for reason; unashamed employment of repeated lies as a rhetorical strategy; and a promise of vengeance for those who feel themselves disempowered by history. It promises to turn back time and take no prisoners. That it can appeal to those who do not understand its consequences is doubtless true.

*****

From these writers, thinkers, and leaders, then, like democracy, we can approach a definition of fascism that avoids the pitfall of being too specific but is still meaningful past use as a simple pejorative, thus avoiding Orwell’s trap as well.

For a brief, poetic, and literary understanding of what we may now say about fascism, allow me to satirize Paul’s lovely passage on love from First Corinthians (by far “Saint” Paul’s best work when compared to the rest of his generally contemptible legacy):

Fascism is impatient, fascism is cruel. It is jealous, is pompous, it is inflated,it is rude, it seeks its own interests, it is quick-tempered, it broods over injury, it rejoices over wrongdoing but does not rejoice with the truth. It bears only itself, believes only itself, hopes only itself, endures only itself. Fascism always fails.

Furthermore, fascism is hateful, irrational, fearful, childishly boastful; it thrives and survives on misinformation and disinformation, lies and deceit; it brooks no criticism and is an eternal enemy of intellectual discourse, debate, diversity, inclusion, and being part of the wider world, relies on racism, bigotry, ignorance, misogyny, and brute bullying in all manners of ways, loves cultish leader-worship, lusts after a false imagined past and “tradition,” is corporatist, nationalistic, incoherent, and contradictory, and is all of these things not mildly but intensely; it takes more typical, offensive, intolerant, and reactionary right-wing politics to a far more elevated level, so that even liberals will wistfully miss their old right-wing nemeses with the advent of the new fascism. There may not be a clear line where it is absolutely obvious where one has passed the realm of the more banal, typical right-wing politics into the realm of the far more dreadful (but still banal) and less manageable fascism (democratic or otherwise), but when one is well past that ill-defined line there can be a sickening clarity, a retroactive realization of one’s fetid new surroundings and a sheer terror that there may not be any going back anytime soon…

Henry A. Wallace…was onto the same truth that Orwell would most masterfully present to the world in his masterpiece 1984 with its concept of Newspeak, a formal language of propaganda, deception, and control: “The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of [the regime], but to make all other modes of thought impossible.” In his earlier-cited essay, Eco also identified Orwell’s Newspeak as the final enumerated element of fascism, noting how it makes “use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning. But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show.” Eco also echoed Wallace when he noted that

Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier, for us, if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, “I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Black Shirts to parade again in the Italian squares.” Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances—every day, in every part of the world.

End excerpt

It is my earnest hope that, with the above discussion perhaps shared widely and profusely, we can more easily combat fascism by agreeing on what fascism is, and I do believe that herein I have presented a useable and workable definition by citing minds far greater than my own. From our elections at home to the battlefields of Ukraine, nothing is more urgent than defeating this fascism and calling it out by name and agreeing on what that name means is a crucial step to defeating it.

See related articles from February 17, 2017: Welcome to the Era of Rising Democratic Fascism Part I: Defining Democracy, Fascism, and Democratic Fascism Usefully, and Spin vs. Lies and Trump, the Global Democratic Fascist Movement, Putin’s War on the West, and a Choice for Liberals: Welcome to the Era of Rising Democratic Fascism Part II and see all Brian’s Ukraine coverage here

Brian’s Ukraine journalism has been praised by: Mykhailo Podolyak, a top advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; Scott Shane, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist formerly of The New York Times & Baltimore Sun (and featured in HBO’s The Wire, playing himself); Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), one of the only Republicans to stand up to Trump and member of the January 6th Committee; and Orwell Prize-winning journalist Jenni Russell, among others.

© 2023 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

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By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981)  June 13, 2020

SILVER SPRING—“I am going to take a break from my normal approach to writing and, instead, be more free-form here.  I have documented the true horrors of racism in the U.S. (and beyond) for years, in particular the persistent, living legacy of slavery and its detestable offspring embedded throughout our system confronting African-Americans in America today, the evidence for the existence of which is not only supremely compelling but overwhelmingly incontrovertible.  Each of my past pieces just linked to are base camps in which I provide many links by far more knowledgeable and accomplished people than myself for you to explore, should you want to learn more or, absurdly, if you doubt the premise itself (and then I beseech you even more to explore those sources).

Like any horror, whether terrorism, murder, sexual assault, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, genocide, etc., not all racism and not all racists are equal.  There is a spectrum, then, and the more we familiarize ourselves with it, the more we can deal with these elements in a divide-and-conquer strategy for success, whether smashing their grip on political and legal power wherever they hold any of it or peeling off some of the less nefarious on the lower-end of the spectrum into the arms of the enlightened (or “woke,” if you must).”

I categorized ten distinct stages as the best representation of the range of white racism in America, but there is certainly room for sub-categories that can exist in between and I view this as a 1.0, with future revisions a possibility.  Elements from lower tiers can be in upper tiers (e.g., I’m sure 6 applies to most in 1-5).  Also, to be clear for those who would derail this based on semantics, we are using the commonly-understood definition in which the term racism also includes discriminating against ethnicities, not just “races” (yes, sadly, I’ve heard racists tell me that that bigotry against Latinos, Arabs, Indians, Jews, etc. does not count as being “racist” because those groups aren’t races…).

So, without further ado, here are the ten main types of white racists in America, starting with the most racist:

1.) You wear a hood/swastika, burn crosses, march with tiki torches, openly say screw X group of people based on skin color/race/ethnicity, or wish you could do these things even if you’re not open about it.  Preserving the racial purity and racial hierarchy of the United States by excluding or kicking out non-whites and fighting against assertive minority-rights movements is of the utmost importance to you.  Under such thinking, whites can be viewed as “superior,” or “supremacist,” relative to most or all other races/non-white ethnicities.  You subscribe to a mini-renaissance of junk pseudoscience about how Africans and others are actually genetically inferior in terms of intelligence, and your subscription to these ideas without spending the necessary energy finding the plenty of evidence showing how this is quite easily debunked is as much proof of your racism as the other stuff.

2.) You do not openly express hate for X groups or profess fidelity to a white “superiority” over X groups, but as a white person, you express “white pride” and feel whites need to unite to stand up for each other: this makes you a “white nationalist.”  A lot of “all lives matter” people fall into this category, seeing assertion of black and other identities as a threat to them personally and to “their” fellow whites.  Politics for you is often about preserving the political power of “your” group and preserving “American culture,” by which you mean “white culture.”  You consciously believe in blocking access to power akin to your group’s own for these other groups and freely admit, at least to yourself, that you want to see whites’ privileged position in the American societal hierarchy preserved.  While not subscribing to ideas of white genetic, innate superiority, you likely subscribe to ideas of white cultural superiority and want to fight to preserve “white culture.”

(HISTORY LESSON: There’s no “black” ethnic group in Africa.  American slavers took people mostly from West Africa—a region consisting of numerous ethnic groups with distinct languages, histories, cultures, and traditions—and bred them like horses and livestock for centuries, forming them into one group that became African-American, mixing all kinds of African ethnicities into a new one that could not be distinguished by separate African ethnicities or points of origin easily and became a new, man-made ethnicity, kind of a form of a “genteel” Southern antebellum forced genetic engineering…  So African-American as a label, though artificially created by the slave trade, is still like Italian-American, Irish-American, Salvadoran-American, or Chinese-American as opposed to being analogous to white Americans.  “White-American” as an ethnicity is not actually thing, it’s a broader category; comparing it to African-American is comparing apples and oranges, like comparing Canada to Asia.  If you’re not identifying yourself in this sense mainly as your “ancestors’ countries of origins-American” but are self-selecting white as your identity, that’s not an ethnic group and it’s absurd, and if you feel the need to do that in response to African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Indian-Americans, and others asserting their identities, you’re revealing a racist mentality.  It’s like the “Confederate” rebel monuments that were put up not in the 1860s and 1870s but mainly from 1890-1940 to assert Jim Crow inequality, in response to anti-lynching efforts, and as a slap in the face of the budding Civil Rights movement.  White pride is, thusly, basically a racist way to push back against people of color asserting their rights/identities but without explicitly aligning with the terrorist Ku Klux Klan or other explicitly Nazi or fascist hate groups.)

3.) You keep your moderately racist misgivings to yourself and do not feel yourself a “white pride” person, perhaps even feel guilty about some of your views/status, but more quietly support, with a wink and a nod, structures and politicians that will keep white privilege alive.  You know you are doing this and it’s a conscious choice because you feel it’s “your country” or whatever, that “your people” built this country, not “those people.”  Rather than consciously feeling a general unified “white culture” chauvinism, you see certain black and brown cultures as inferior and ascribe African-Americans to such an inferior category.

4.) You deny racism against African-Americans and others is a thing and claim that there are no institutional barriers or systemic racism for blacks or other non-whites in America, that these issues are “made up” by Democrats to artificially “divide” people, (as if the realities of racism don’t do this already).  You may even believe the insanity that racism against whites is as bad as or worse than racism against blacks.  All this takes an insane amount of willful ignorance, ignoring mountains of data and history and a refusal to understand how history affects the present to the relative benefit of white Americans compared with African-Americans.

5.) You actually acknowledge racism is a real thing, but subscribe to the cultural inferiority/superiority chauvinism against blacks and others described earlier.  You justify racism as not only natural, but acceptable because you think those other groups face challenges primarily because they make poor decisions as a group and that they are often deservedly targeted by police as a group (though maybe sometimes unfairly as individuals) as a result, and are discriminated against, mainly because of this.  Thus, in your view, housing discrimination is just a way for better, harder-working Americans to keep their neighborhoods safe and nice and discrimination in education and employment exists because “certain” groups of people just don’t have the same motivation and work ethic as white in general do (these people will often also point to the high standardized test scores of some Asian groups to “prove” this assertion).  Police and criminal justice issues disproportionately affect blacks, you feel, because “they commit most of the crime.”  You make these arguments while willfully ignoring other factors for no good reason and mistaking symptoms for the disease.  When there is an individual case of a questionable or even clearly wrong police killing, you (nearly) always defend the police and blame the victim.

(Not at all coincidentally, many of these people are also quite within the realm of being racist against Jews [here being considered as the ethnic-group, bound by blood and genes, as opposed to the religion which could include recent converts and older convert communities].  Much in the same way these whites view blacks as inherently inferior based on junk pseudo-science or culturally inferior based on junk cultural understandings, the same whites often subscribe to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and stereotypes about Jews and their nefarious “plots” to do whatever, including, most recently, that Jewish billionaire philanthropist George Soros is behind the black lives matter protests and the rioting and vandalism they incorrectly see as one and the same.  And let’s remember the that those tiki-torch-bearing little Nazi marchers in Charlottesville in 2017 were chanting “Jews will not replace us.”  The overlap with anti-black and anti-immigrant sentiment is real, with anti-Semitism in the modern sense often definitely a form of racism.)

6.) You don’t feel the need to assert whiteness, deny racism exists, or subscribe to ideas of cultural inferiority/superiority, but you did and will proudly vote Trump and claim little or nothing Trump does is racist or has anything to do with racism (most of the above categories would claim this, too, but alongside one or more of the other ideas you do not embrace).  You feel that most or all accusations of Trump’s racism are just liberal or media smears.  This takes a stunning amount of willful ignorance or deliberate not caring enough about the concerns of so many Americans that would you even try to learn about the terrible racism of Trump and Trumpism or the serious threat that he and it present to people different from yourself and the damage this does at home and even abroad.

7.) You admit that there is systemic racism but go out of your way to minimize or at least lessen its effects (again, a lot of willful ignorance is required) and feel that African-Americans in particular need to just “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” like other immigrant groups.  You deny the important legacy of slavery or minimize or lessen it since “that was a long time” ago. 

You fail to ask why African-Americans (that is, slave-descent) struggle far more than actual voluntary immigrants from Africa or black immigrants from other regions, again conspicuously avoiding the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation.

8.) You say you support equal rights and fighting racism and, though you normally vote Republican, did not because Trump’s racism and other things about him bothered you so much, but have still voted Republican most of the time and may still after Trump, willfully ignorant and blinding yourself to the way the Republican Party has, for decades, been the party of racists and racism (though not in recent decades as explicitly as in the Trump era), all this in spite of clear, easily available evidence to the contrary.  You may have milder versions of the views held by the previous type (7), and feel that Trump is mainly the problem and that the Republican Party is mainly “fine” on racial issues without Trump.  It takes the blatant racism of Trump to partly open your eyes, but they are not nearly open enough.  A lesser version of this person (say, an 8.5) might be a swing “independent” voter who goes back and forth and votes Democratic sometimes but does not see or mostly misses the damage the Republicans have done on race in a very similar way to an 8.0).

9.) You consider yourself a solid liberal and normally vote for Democrats as part of what you feel is an obligation to fight racism, yet you regularly exhibit racist behavior or views (beyond “microaggressions”) without realizing it, though in mostly mild and subtle ways, not in more extreme ways except perhaps very rarely.  You likely have a few close friends of color and simply are not aware of how your views, comments, or behavior—often subconscious, a result or your upbringing, or simply a result of not having been exposed to the views of people of color in an intense way—are legitimately offensive and should be adjusted.  Though you occasionally do catch yourself or realize some of what you say, do, and feel is not appropriate (maybe realizing it’s racism or maybe not), you generally miss the patterns that at least make you fairly consistently a milder racist. No, voting for Obama once or even twice does no mean you are immune to being somewhat racist.

10.) You’re at least partly down with the causes of fighting racism and inequality and all but engage in some legitimately offensive “microaggressive” acts or statements unintentionally (mostly out of unfamiliarity) or have certain views or gut reactions to people who different.  You subscribe to misinformation about these groups without really bothering to look into them; you find yourself prejudging or avoiding certain people from certain racial/ethnic background without giving them a good individual shake (but let’s be honest, most people of most races and ethnicities everywhere around the world and certainly most Americans fall under this very human category).

*****

We should separate here people who fall on this spectrum and those who do not but may occasionally engage in acts that can be defined as racist, if out of ignorance, fear, convenience, or to play for some advantage.  They do not harbor racist views in general but once in a while consciously seek to practice or benefit from what has often been termed “white privilege” (though, considering the large numbers of poor whites in this country and how the best thing would be for poor whites and poor blacks to unite, during a conversation with a friend I came to the conclusion that the term “white advantage” might be a better term and might rub the literally dirt-poor whites of Appalachia a bit less offensively), undoubtedly a very real and pervasive concept regardless of how it is labeled.  Just as overall good people can do bad things and overall bad people can still do good things (Hitler really loved his dog, or whatever), so I believe that non-racists can commit some racist acts, though once they become something less than rare, we’re veering into a pattern and thus onto the above-discussed spectrum.  Discussing how generally non-racist people can still commit racist acts could be a whole conversation and exploration on its own, which we will not delve into here.

A whole further discussion still could be had on the silence and non-activism of non-racist whites being a huge part of the problem, and Dr. King has the ultimate word on that, from thoughts composed in a Birmingham, Alabama, jail cell in 1963:

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality.

All members of the majority have a duty to stick up for the abused minority, and I have yet to see a better expression of this sentiment than that given in a speech given by Abraham Lincoln in 1858:

Now, sirs, for the purpose of squaring things with this idea of “don’t care if slavery is voted up or voted down,” for sustaining the Dred Scott decision [A voice—“Hit him again”], for holding that the Declaration of Independence did not mean anything at all, we have Judge Douglas giving his exposition of what the Declaration of Independence means, and we have him saying that the people of America are equal to the people of England. According to his construction, you Germans are not connected with it. Now I ask you in all soberness, if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if confirmed and endorsed, if taught to our children, and repeated to them, do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to transform this Government into a government of some other form. Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their condition will allow. What are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent, and I hold if that course of argumentation that is made for the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should not care about this, should be granted, it does not stop with the negro. I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it where will it stop. If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man? If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it and tear it out!

For now, I will leave Lincoln with the last word on that.  I will keep my focus in this piece to the above spectrum I devised that involves how people think, feel, and believe in ways that subscribe in the mind and heart to racism, including a willful, irrational denial or exclusion of information that would force them to reckon with their beliefs and acknowledge other factors as the primary drivers of racial inequality instead of the ones they incorrectly choose to inflate.  Understanding the different ways and different degrees people think in terms of and subscribe to racism in their minds and hearts, their consciousnesses and worldviews, is crucial, and I feel confident in the above spectrum as a way to be able to do this and its rough accuracy.

One would hope that, over time, more and more of the people in the lowest rungs of this racism spectrum can be pulled out of it and into the light (I prefer “enlightened” as a term, harkening back to the Enlightenment—the grand intellectual revolutionary movement that helped birth our nation—over the Millennialspeak “woke”), and, indeed, such gradual realignment and enlightenment over time has been the story of slow—sometimes excruciatingly slow—progress for our nation on race from even our colonial era.  And this story has, though sometimes suffering setbacks, reverses, and a few dark ages, been one overall a gradually improving arc rising towards justice and equality.

Yet unquestioningly, our present Trumpian era is undoubtedly one of those moments when the upward arc is being pulled down, and there is never a guarantee that that curve (not to be confused with the coronavirus curve) will eventually resume an upward trajectory.  The most immediate question for now is “How much lower will the arc curve down and when will we (or even will we) see the arc move back up?”

There are reasons to be cautiously hopeful that the current “black lives matter” moment after the killing of George Floyd by police—a moment that seems to have exploded into a fierce global movement—may really be something special, may really bring about change.  We are already seeing a spate of much needed local-level reforms enacted that is quite encouraging, but only time will tell if the systemic change we need in this country—not just in some localities and states, nor only in structures, laws, and institutions, but in our hearts and minds—is really upon us or, if, as in so many other similar situations before, public outrage and demands for change will be thwarted by the system itself, with public attention and efforts eventually waning and moving onto some other new or old distraction.

In the end, far fuller justice and a forceful, rapid upward shift in the arc will only materialize with serious movement of people down and off the spectrum I delineated above.  We should think of racism, then, not as a black-and-white thing or a box checked as a “yes” or a “no,” but as my wide spectrum that invites differing approaches and solutions for individuals depending on where they are on it in order to make those deeply necessary spectrum-shifts far more likely, far more soon, and far more powerful.

© 2020 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

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By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981) June 25, 2019

Photo: Twitter/@erinmcunningham

“The world has visited many terrible things on the Palestinian people, none more shameful than robbing them of their basic humanity. People are not statistics. That is all we attempted to show.” –Anthony Bourdain, accepting the Muslim Public Affairs Council’s Voices of Courage and Conscience award

WASHINGTON — When it comes to the the tragic death of a bad-boy celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, I am filled with many emotions and many thoughts.  He was one of the few public figures to which I have accorded my highest respect, an everyman who made it big, never forgot his roots, and never stopped caring for those who struggled in this world on a day-to-day basis, regardless of where they were from, their skin color, their creed.  Taking the time to acknowledge who Anthony Bourdain was, what he stood for, and how he lived his life is one of the most necessary things at this time in history where we seem to be losing our humanity.

Bourdain traveled all around the world for many years, including in the Middle East, sharing food ostensibly, but truly sharing hearts and souls everywhere he went, making deeper connections with random people than most travelers can ever imagine.

As the above quote about the Palestinian people shows, Tony was not only a veritable poet, he was a voice for those who often have little or no voice, and he was a friend to many in the Middle East, in particular the Arab people.  From Gaza to Libya, from Beirut to Tangiers, people in the Middle East and all over the world expressed their deep sadness at the news of Bourdain’s passing but also their deep appreciation of who he was, and his experiences in the Middle East had a profound effect on him.

In just recent years, he took his latest show—CNN’s Parts Unknown—to feature in detail and depth Tangiers in Morocco, Libya, Palestine and Israel, Beirut in Lebanon, and Oman, among many other non-Arab places.  Usually over a meal, Tony brought not only the food, but the people, history, culture, and even politics of these Arab regions to many millions all over the world in ways that nobody else could and, in a television format, that nobody else has, reaching millions of viewers who have never been to these places and may never be able to visit them.  In this way, he was a cultural ambassador for Arabs on a global level that few people have ever been, allowing individuals in all of these places to share Arab cuisine, Arab stories, Arab hopes and fears, Arab loves and losses.

Tony was a missionary for the belief that we as humans had more in common than that which divides us, always showing people and cultures respect and deep, genuine desires to listen and to learn, breaking bread with them even if he was coming from a totally different perspective

But he was also passionate about human rights and justice for the marginalized, especially migrants/immigrants and women who have suffered from sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV).  His girlfriend at the time of his death was Asia Argento, herself a direct victim of the outrages of Harvey Weinstein; Bourdain was an early and fearless advocate for her and others suffering from sexual violence, calling those responsible out more quickly and stridently than most and fiercely supporting the #metoo movement.

Lastly, Tony’s battle that he ultimately lost with depression reminds us all of the crucial need people from all walks of life have for psychosocial support, and reminds us even more how at-risk communities, especially refugees, migrants, and women, have even less opportunity and access to such vital services.

Respecting each other despite our differences, coming to understand those different from ourselves, standing up for migrants, immigrants, and women was who Anthony was.  The world is worse off for the loss of someone who was so much more than just a celebrity chef: we have all lost a passionate poet on the merits of respect and understanding, one who undertook more effort to understand and engage Arabs and people all around the world on their terms, and to bring their stories and concerns to a global audience, than almost anyone else.  He was a warrior for the marginalized, especially migrants, immigrants, and women who were all too often the subject of abuse.

On his birthday, let us make sure that his memory can inspire all of us to do better and be forces of advocacy for the abused and marginalized, to remind us that we all share a common humanity with them, that they are really us in the end.  Tony may have done this his whole life as a celebrity, but it is up to us to make sure that his spirit continues long after his death by using his example in our own lives to make simple, everyday acts of understanding, kindness, and respect central to our own lives and actions.

© 2019 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer, academic, and consultant from the New York City area currently based in Amman, Jordan. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here

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By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981), February 6, 2019

Pool/Getty Images

AMMAN—If you’re looking for a State of the Union summary, or a play-by-play, you can find many of these elsewhere.  What I am going to get into here today is the overall meaning of what happened last night, or, rather, the lack thereof.

Aside from the many (and diverse) Democratic women proudly attired in white to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the national success of the suffragette movement getting women the right to vote in America, what stood out to me as a highlight was not anything President Donald Trump said or did, it was Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s so-called “sarcastic point clapback.”  To appreciate this moment, we must understand that this State of the Union speech transcended “normal” such speeches (which in recent years have already become increasingly pointless, even with a master orator like President Barack Obama at the helm) into the realm of the theater of the absurd.  I say this because Trump made a call for civility and bipartisanship when he has been, more than anyone else in Washington, the destroyer of bipartisanship and civility, even in ways we cannot have conceived of until he went there. 

Trump issuing a call on these issues would be like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman giving a joint speech on press freedom or Syrian President Bashar al-Assad delivering a formal address on limiting civilian casualties in war. 

Sure, we can all say “I would never be able to sit through such an absurdity,” but what if you had to?  What if a sacred office you held required you to be there? 

We don’t have to think about this in the abstract, but can just consider the case of Speaker Pelosi instead.

Throughout the speech, Pelosi showed a level of respect and decorum Trump has more often than not chosen to not show her or her office—with Trump routinely calling the Speaker of the House just “Nancy” in public, absent her title, while she refers to him more respectfully, generally with the word “president” in the mix—and at the slightest hint members of her caucus might have reacted more vocally than is the norm, she batted her hand at them to simmer down and they did.  One can recall the wholly unjustified example of Rep. Joe Wilson (R), SC, shouting and interrupting President Barack Obama in a 2009 joint-session of Congress with a scream of “You lie!” (Obama did not lie) and consider that, during Trump’s State of the Union last night, Democrats would have been justified on a factual basis of screaming all throughout his speech the very same at him, even if not on a basis of decorum.  I have written before that I am worried the left is allowing itself to be dragged down into the muck of Trumpism and extremism (most notably Bernie Sanders and his Sandernistas), but last night, I can thankfully say that that was not the case with the Democratic Party.  And to this warm feeling, we all owe a debt to Speaker Pelosi, who knew some of the more interesting personalities in her caucus would relish a Joe Wilson-type moment and thusly made decorum a central theme for the event for her Democrats.

And yet, here she was, standing right behind Trump as he called for civility and bipartisanship when he has been the largest obstacle to both.  On the one level, of course we should all embrace such a call. On another, the messenger does actually matter.  So Pelosi clapped in support of the statement, but in such a way that she let it be known that the gross irony of the moment did not escape her.  It was the perfect combination of class of subtle snark, one that allowed Pelosi to not be co-opted into the theatrical absurdity but even allowed her to fight it without disruption.

And yes, that is the highlight for me.  I could write about Donald Trump’s uninspiring, tired words, and uninspiring, tired delivery.  I could write about some of the most obvious lies and deceptions, including the total fantasy about illegal immigration on the southern border, how Trump tried to claim credit for Obama’s energy policy that made the U.S. the world’s number-one producer of both oil and gas before Trump was even elected, or Trump’s ridiculous claim that his election is the only reason we are not at war with North Korea.  Yet these topics are well covered by countless copycat articles published in the past hours.  Perhaps besides these lies, anyone who was there, who saw or heard him barely manage to deliver a laundry list of overall lies, would have been struck most of all by the unmemorable quality of the whole address, save for moments of absurdity that were not intended effects on the part of speaker.  I have expressed privately many a time before the cost of such a lack of great, or even decent, rhetoric coming from Trump as president, an office that more often than not has been essential in transmitting memory and history to new generations of Americans.  Sadly, today we live in an era where people are reading less and less, and especially less actual literature.  Our critical thinking skills are also sorely lacking and declining, and most Americans don’t even know their nation’s history (and truly, what better way for such a huge portion of Americans to show utter contempt for the societal value of language, thinking, reality, and history—together some of the hallmarks of fascism, I might add—than voting for Trump, a man who makes George W. Bush seem eloquent and intellectually curious in relative retrospect?).  Regrettably, for far too many Americans, one of the only times they will hear any of the words or stories of our Founding Fathers, past presidents, and other great American historical figures is when a current presidents quotes them or tells their tales.  Trump did none of this in his State of the Union speech: not once in his entire long speech did he quote one of the great Americans of the past, and apart from brief mentions of WWII, he did not discuss history.

Obviously, Trump’s damage is hardly confined to the rhetorical presidency and historical memory.  I have long been quite upfront about the threat Trump is to Western democracy in general and democracy at home in the U.S., so on the one level, there is nothing surprising in this speech being yet another step on the downward-spiraling staircase that is our current era (even if I can certainly imagine worse States of the Union from him in the future).  But we must not become immune to these moments and acts of decline, and I write that as much for me as for the audience.  But that fact of the matter is that this is no small task, for Trump’s relentless war of attrition on decency and reality wearies the souls of those of us who have souls left and creates a numbing effect that is a common biological survival mechanism for engaging in deadly combat, and make no mistake: we are in deadly combat for the survival of the West, for democracy, for America.  As Freedom House just starkly noted the same day of Trump’s big speech, “the current president’s ongoing attacks on the rule of law, fact-based journalism, and other principles and norms of democracy threaten further decline.” 

In the end, as much as I am a fan of the oft-ill-covered Nancy Pelosi, I cannot claim the night belongs to her.  No, the night was still Trump’s, his meaningless words put together in meaningless sentences in a meaningless speech.  The speech—as bad and badly delivered as it was—did not inherently carry the quality of meaninglessness, no; that quality was entirely a result of the man who gave it and the Administration that helped craft it.  It was not even the lies that defined this speech.  No, more than anything else, the speech carried with it the searing awareness that we are listening to words come from the mouth of a man who keeps few promises or oaths, lies constantly both compulsively and in a deeply premeditated fashion, capriciously changes his mind on any given issue repeatedly in both the short and long-term, reneges on deals even to the point of causing multiple government shutdowns, and that, ultimately, this is all a farce.

As the late and singular Christopher Hitchens noted, “there is some relationship between the hunger for truth and the search for the right words. This struggle may be ultimately indefinable and even undecidable, but one damn well knows it when one sees it.” The problem with Trump is that we can damn well know he is not even engaging in this struggle.

In other words, this speech matters very little because more words from the mouth of that man will come that will surely contradict what was said last night (which contradicted who knows how many previous statements), and still more after that, to a point where we truly get to explore the word meaningless.  When the president’s words and actions change so rapidly that one must truly exert effort to keep track of, or define, a “position,” let alone a policy—on everything from the border “wall” to Syria—we really are in Game of Thrones’s Jon Snow trap, when Jon lamented: “When enough people make false promises, words stop meaning anything. Then there are no more answers, only better and better lies, and lies won’t help us in this fight” (video but big spoilers!).  We should lament, too, and, like Nancy Pelosi, solider on as gracefully as possible in dealing with that man, his words, and his actions, the meaning of which at times it seems no one, not even Trump himself, is capable of understanding.

© 2019 Brian E. Frydenborg, all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcomeI

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer and consultant from the New York City area who has been based in Amman, Jordan, since early 2014. He holds an M.S. in Peace Operations and specializes in a wide range of interrelated topics, including international and U.S. policy/politics, security/conflict/(counter)terrorism, humanitarianism, development, social justice, and history. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

*****

Though I originally published this article in the fall of 2013 during America’s last government shutdown, it is a sad measure of how little progress has been made that I can repost this piece today to explain relatively unchanged dynamics leading to such a debacle. We can just substitute Trump, Tom Cotton, and the Tea Party’s offspring, the Freedom Caucus, for the likes of Ted Cruz and the Tea Party and substitute the issues of DACA children migrants and immigration for the debt ceiling and budget cuts. Even if a shutdown is averted, the dynamics of partisan brinksmanship are alive and well and threaten America’s republic just as they threatened (and destroyed) the Roman Republic.

Published on LinkedIn Pulse January 19, 2018

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981) January 19th, 2018; originally published October 3rd, 2013, with the title “In Government Shutdown, Ted Cruz and Tea Party Are Lucky We’re Not Living in Ancient Rome” by then-PolicyMic, now Mic.

UPDATE 12:04 AM Jan 20th, 2018, the one-year anniversary of Trump’s inauguration: the government is now in a shutdown.

HBO. Rome’s forum—the equivalent of Washington, DC’s national mall—dirty and largely empty, closed for business during one of its many government shutdowns before the fall of the Roman Republic’s democracy.

AMMAN — As someone who’s written about ancient Roman history, I find these repeated Tea-Party-initiated shutdown and default crises amusing when, knowing that American troops might very well have their pay and benefits threatened, I think of how Roman legionaries would have reacted in similar situations and smile a bit thinking of Ted Cruz running through the streets of Washington with Roman troops in hot pursuit.

Contrary to popular belief, our Founding Fathers did not base our Constitution on the British constitutional monarchy, but on the Roman Republic. There were many historical and cultural similarities: from 509-49 BCE, the Roman republic functioned with a government based on popular sovereignty, with a deliberative legislative body called the Senate, with the people voting both for major office holders annually and yes-or-no on legislation coming from the Senate. Rome’s system was one of checks and balances, divided power, and compromise. The Republic needed its parts to cooperate, and the support of the people, to do much of anything.

Sound familiar?

And because of this superior system (so argued the ancient Greek historian Polybius), Rome came to dominate the Mediterranean world with it citizen-soldiers. But with amazing success came obscene corruption and partisanship, and from 133 BCE, after the first political violence in Rome since the early days of the Republic, Rome experienced internal conflict that would eventually destroy its republic.

Obstructionist (mostly) self-interested conservative elites — optimates — took on a group of (often) self-interested populist reformers — populares — for most of the next century. After decades of optimates stubbornly fighting all reform, when a conservative elitist general named Sulla and a populares former general named Marius (Caesar’s uncle!) had a major political falling out, Sulla marched his troops into the city of Rome in 88 — the first time Roman troops had ever marched on Rome — the streets flowed with blood, and there were years of civil war. Sulla later had himself appointed Rome’s first dictator since 202 (at the height of the Second Punic War), but gave those powers up a few years later after scrapping many hard-won populares‘ reforms.

Roman veterans were often left to languish in poverty or limbo by the conservative optimate-dominated Senate, fueling support for a major rebellion in 62-63. Even the most famous general of the day, Pompey “Magnus,” was rebuffed when he advocated for his own veterans. Julius Caesar, himself one of the moderate populares, was elected a consul for 59 but also found only obstructionism from the optimates, led now by Cato (namesake of today’s pro-Tea-Party, libertarian Cato Institute). One of Caesar’s major pieces of legislation also aimed to settle Pompey’s veterans, but Cato, who even admitted the bill was good, filibustered and obstructed every time he could to prevent its passage. Only some mild violence meted out by Caesar’s supporters, including Pompey’s veterans, against the obstructionist optimates and Cato during the assembly that voted overwhelmingly for its approval kept the law from being blocked on a ridiculous religious technicality.

An extreme member of the populares faction, Clodius, succeeded in terrorizing the city with increasing mob violence throughout the 50s, repeatedly causing major government shutdowns. Elections were long-delayed, important offices remained vacant, major scandals erupted, senior officials were attacked in public, and when Clodius was killed in 52, his supporters burned down the Senate with his funeral pyre. The Senate reluctantly authorized Pompey rarely-granted emergency powers to restore order, and soldiers were brought into the city under arms for the first time since Sulla.

Yet legionaries lining courts and public areas in Rome under a sole consul was not at all the way the Republic was supposed run. Cato and the optimates still hated Caesar so much that over the next few years they made clear to him that they would never let him rest and would do everything they could to drive him to ruin, including prosecution and exile. It was easy for Caesar to convince his soldiers that the Senate did not have the interests of them or the people of Rome in mind, that a mad faction had hijacked the Roman state and needed to be swept aside. 

After Caesar crossed the Rubicon in January 49, a new civil war erupted in which many senators were killed, and true republican government would never return to ancient Rome.

So when you say, “That couldn’t happen to America today!” realize that mass political violence, Roman armies marching on Rome, and government shutdowns had all either never happened or hadn’t in centuries, and were all unthinkable to Romans living before they actually happened; escalation begets escalation. That is what is so disturbing about the Tea Party today: its members’ willingness to do anything legal, even if unprecedented and previously unthinkable, to accomplish their goals against the will of the people sets dangerous precedents and deeply undermines the credibility of the government. And as we’ve seen with Rome, credibility that takes centuries to build can only take a generation to destroy. 

Learn your history, Tea Party.

© 2018 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, no republication without permission, attributed quotations welcome

Check out my related book chapter:

The Roman Republic in Greece: Lessons for Modern Peace/Stability Operations (Chapter 10 in Global Leadership Initiatives for Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding)

See related articles:

Redistricting at Heart of DC Dysfunction: Gerrymandering Making Politics More Partisan

Trump, the Specter of Political Violence, & Lessons From the Roman Republic (Or, We Have a Problem America!)

Caesar & the Politics of the Fall of the Roman Republic: Lessons for USA Today

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Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse April 8, 2017

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981) April 8th, 2017

Mohamed Al-Bakour/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

AMMAN — I had originally titled this piece “Time to Put Up or Shut Up, Donald.” As I continued to write, though, reports that Trump was considering military strikes against Assad’s government for his horrific recent chemical weapons attack on civilians designed to terrorize his own people surfaced on Tuesday, April 4th; that ensuing Thursday, April 6th, it was time for your author here to (finally) have some fun and go to a party, and by the time I got home, when I had already thought the odds of Trump eventually hitting Assad were greater than those of him not hitting him, the strikes had already been launched, necessitating something of a reworking of my article.

There is a lot to digest here.

*****

Can Trump Succeed Where Obama Failed?

Full disclosure: I voted for Obama twice and enthusiastically but I would say the biggest mistake of his presidency was backing away from his “red line” on the use of chemical weapons after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used them to barbaric effect against his own people back in the fall of 2013. At that time, Assad and his forces were reeling and U.S. military action targeting his forces, especially the Syrian Arab Air Force, would have been decisive in changing the trajectory of the Syrian Civil War, especially since a robust Western entry and enforcement of no-fly zones would have prevented Russia’s subsequent robust entry in the fall of 2015.

Now, in the spring of 2017, the situation is quite different: Assad has obliterated many of the rebel strongholds, most notably (and most tragically) Aleppo, and ISIS, too, has been severely weakened, facing its final days in Mosul, Iraq, one of its two last major strongholds, and in the process of being encircled in its other stronghold in Raqqa, Syria, its “capital;” furthermore, not only does Assad’s government have the active of support of the Shiite Lebanese militia Hezbollah and of Iran’s military on the ground (among other Shiite militias), but it also enjoys the robust military support of Russia and its vaunted air force. And even though Assad’s military has been whittled to down a shell of its former self(even his Syrian Arab Air Force is running low on parts and serviceable craft and can ill afford aircraft losses), with his allies, he is in far stronger position now than he was when Obama backed away from striking Syrian forces in 2013, even if heavily dependent on these allies.

And still, the most powerful military force on the planet—that of the United States, which in 2015 spent more on its military than Russia and the other six largest military spenders in the world combined—can easily make a huge impact, and let those who employ the use of chemical weapons against civilians, or support those who do, know that there will be a costfor such actions. And it seems a warning shot has now been fired to that effect.

Before backing away from striking Assad, Obama spoke in the Rose Garden  on August 31st, 2013, asking a question:

Here’s my question for every member of Congress and every member of the global community: What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price? What’s the purpose of the international system that we’ve built if a prohibition on the use of chemical weapons that has been agreed to by the governments of 98 percent of the world’s people and approved overwhelmingly by the Congress of the United States is not enforced?

Make no mistake — this has implications beyond chemical warfare. If we won’t enforce accountability in the face of this heinous act, what does it say about our resolve to stand up to others who flout fundamental international rules? To governments who would choose to build nuclear arms? To terrorist who would spread biological weapons? To armies who carry out genocide?

We cannot raise our children in a world where we will not follow through on the things we say, the accords we sign, the values that define us.

His words ring just as true today.

Obama sadly, and rather pathetically, did not put serious action behind his eloquent words about why we needed to support an international system where the use of such weapons of mass destruction as well as mass killing were not tolerated. The Republicans later skewered Obama for backing away—even as most of them hypocritically criticized his proposed military action at the time (many even signing a formal letter stating he needed authorization from Congress to act) before he backed away from it, a decision Obama made in part because they would not support him; Trump himself tweeted at Obama not to attack Syrian forces back then.

Since then, Republicans proceeded to criticize Obama for having a weak strategy even while offering precious few specifics that differed from Obama’s strategy, as did Trump, who, just as hypocritically as the others in his newly adopted Republican Party, also repeatedly asserted Obama’s weakness was responsible for the horrors in Syria up through his recent April 4th press conference with King Abdullah of Jordan that took place just hours after the recent Syrian government chemical attack in the Idlib area of Syria.

I figured that Trump, ever the narcissist, values his public perception as much as anything, and after beating up on Obama’s weakness for years, and given a chance to show himself to be the more “decisive” and “macho” “man” in a situation that had no choice but to be compared to Obama’s waffling in the fall of 2013 , would most certainly at least be tempted to reverse his pro-Russia and somewhat pro-Assad policy and to act to punish Assad where Obama declined to do so. As I watched him speak on the issue over the past few days, Trump even seemed genuinely moved by the horrific images of dying babies and other civilians coming out of Idlib.

And putting aside these considerations of personality here, there are very good reasons for Trump to have done what he did.

*****

Why Trump Was Right

Before Trump fired cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield, Assad and his Russian backers were clearly feeling they could do anything they want and get away with it and feared no U.S. intervention; impunity would be their modus operandi, there would be no political settlements, no “peace negotiations;” no, Assad and his backers were going to continue to systematically exterminate any whiff of opposition, city by city, town by town, corpse by corpse. Concessions? To rebels? To terrorists? To “terrorists?” One must simply ask: why would he need to comply with the demands of the international community? What pressures existed that would actually constrain Assad or extract any concessions, especially when Russia—one of the most powerful nations in the world and with the most centralized power structure at the top of any major world power—would just lie and claim “terrorists,” not at the Syrian military, were to blame for whatever atrocity Assad (or Russia) had perpetrated, or that the atrocity in question had not happened at all, as it has for years? Does anyone think rhetorical flourishes from the West, Turkey, and Arab League members would change anything? When Russia has vetoed seven different United Nations Security Council resolutions against the Assad regime, with Russia’s ground, naval, and air forces (along with Iran and Hezbollah and other Shiite militias) inside Syria energetically empowering Assad to operate knowing there would be no substantive consequences no matter what atrocity he committed—even if he killed hundreds of thousands of people with indiscriminate attacks and the deliberate targeting of civilians, even if used outlawed chemical weapons to kill his own people—what on earth is left to compel Assad to even feel the need to negotiate, let alone stop his mass slaughter of civilians?

The sad answer in our real world as it exists today is clear: one thing, and one thing only…

Military force exerted by the United States of America. 

Especially with Russia operating in Syria supporting Assad, only the United States could lead any kind of military force to challenge the above status quo. Nothing else could give Assad pause or cause him to consider restraint. But the United States showed Assad that even with the Russian military there, his forces were not safe if President Trump, the U.S. Military’s Commander in Chief, decided to strike at him, which he did. And for all of Russia’s tough talk, its military and air force are far inferior in quality and numbers to their American counterparts, so the idea that Russia would risk a serious military confrontation with the United States over Syria is ludicrous because it would only result in devastating defeat at the hands of the United States with no chance of saving face and only a high cost as a result, much worse than any cost that could be inflicted on the U.S. After all, Putin is not stupid enough to engage in a nuclear war that would destroy both nations and likely the world over the likes of Bashar al-Assad. Thus, what was also demonstrated for the world to see how little Russian protection actually meant for Assad in the face of U.S. military might.

In this situation, there were two options: do nothing serious and allow a regime that has no interest, inclination, or reason in its mind to negotiate or concede anything to continue to kill anyone it pleases and destroy anything it wants anytime it pleases while facing no consequences, or the United States can hit back, send a message, and force Assad to bend to the will of the world by behaving less barbarically towards his own people or face serious consequences, from warning punitive strikes to major degradation of his armed forces to exile and/or the fall of his government.

And contrary to what you might hear, this can be good for mitigating the conflict overall. After all, as I wrote three years ago, the current dynamics are clear: with Assad and ISIS both waging war on the people of Syria, nothing will stop the flow of refugees that risk destabilizing Syria’s neighbors that include multiple major U.S. allies—a flow that has helped spur an explosion of right-wing insanity in both Europe (where Russia is “weaponizing” the refugee crisis to damage the EU) and America, a right wing insanity that feeds the rise of radical Islamic extremism even as the war in Syria does the same—unless the war stops and/or safe zones are established, as nothing will convince the more than five million Syrians who have fled Syria (and that number only counts those registered by the UN: Jordan alone is estimated to have around 800,000 unregistered Syrians, compared with only 633,000 registered ones; this doesn’t even get to the more than 6.3 million internally displaced people, or IDPs, inside Syria) to return home as long as an impudent Bashar al-Assad feels he can kill at whim and will while the world makes noise but ultimately shrugs its shoulders. These dynamics also feed the growth in violent Islamic extremism in a vicious feedback loop.

I hear and read too many “experts” present a false Sophie’s choice: either we let Assad win or ISIS wins/the war doesn’t end. Well, in case you’re missing it, ISIS is on the verge of having its “caliphate” destroyed—thanks to a slow but steady strategy of Obama’s that was clearly coming to penultimate fruition even before Trump was sworn in (a fact that won’t stop Trump from taking credit for it)—and history shows that non-intervention in brutal wars involving mass killings (e.g., Cambodia and Rwanda) can allow killing to continue unabated for a long time and can lead to genocide, while well-executed intervention (e.g., WWII, Bosnia, and Kosovo) stops or at least partially halts mass killing. 

Now, of course, there is a possibility that the intervention will fail or make things worse—a possibility exaggerated by the recent memory of Iraq, more of an aberration of Western intervention in its relative mass incompetence than the post-Cold War norm—but any attempt to solve any problem in life risks making that problem worse, so that possibility is, by itself, an illogical reason to not intervene, a total cop-out, and a path to inhuman nihilism.

As one man—Kassem Eid—who survived the 2013 Ghouta chemical attack that nearly prompted Obama to attack Assad noted yesterday:

If you really care about refugees, if you really care about helping us, please, help us stay in our country… we don’t want to become refugees, we want to stay in our country, help us establish safe zones…please take out Assad’s air forces so they won’t be able to commit more atrocities.

The United States and its allies are more than capable of doing just that, and if Trump’s action is not a one-off—and let’s be honest, this ego-driven narcissist with authoritarian, even fascistic tendencies has had his first real exercise of power and he will love it, not in the least because he has earned global praise for it (and only it), so it very likely will not be a one-off—the likelihood is more than not that this is all going to be mainly handled by professionals in the U.S. military, and Secretary of Defense James Mattis is no Donald Rumsfeld. As detestable and anti-refugee as Trump is, because of his decision, there is now a greater chance than at any time since 2013 for the much-needed establishment of safe-zones protected by the international community.

It will also teach Russia that its recent run giving the West the finger has not empowered it as much as it thinks actually and makes Russia even weaker, with Russia unable to prevent American intervention in Syria even with its military there and seeing its investment in expanding its power there destroyed, exposing its troops to risk while supporting a WMD-using thug and making it even more so one of the most hated countries in the world and especially hated by a Sunni Muslim population (most of Alawite/Shiite Assad’s victims are Sunni Muslims) with a tiny fringe more susceptible to violent radicalization than any other group at present, keeping in mind that Russia has an oppressed Sunni Muslim population that has produced a notable number of anti-Russian terrorists and terrorist incidents since Russia’s conflicts in the Russian republic of Chechnya, the Caucasus overall, and the country of Afghanistan before that). As I wrote before, Russia intervened from a position of desperation and weakness, and Russia’s weak hand has only improved marginally for all its efforts but has also saddled it with more responsibility.

Trump’s strike will certainly make Iran question the cost of its support of Assad along with helping to limit the expansion of Hezbollah’s power.

Also, as was I pointed out also back in 2013, there is still little risk to the U.S. and a high-probability of success in striking Assad’s air power, military bases, or heavy weapons, which are difficult or impossible to hide. Hezbollah, Assad, and ISIS have enough on their hands to devote much to any “response” to the U.S.

Finally—and again, I will repeat I thought Obama’s inaction (and the Republican-led Congress’s vocal lack of support) were a mistake in 2013—there is an important difference between now and 2013. Back then, as I noted above, Assad’s forces were being pushed back and U.S. intervention may have led to the toppling of his government, and this not long after the disillusionment of the experience of Libya’s post-NATO-intervention problems (although I still would say that the intervention was successful in saving many lives preventing a civil war from being prolonged, but more on that another time); no other major power had intervened in Syria and thus owned the conflict, to speak, and that was another solid argument Obama could have put out on the side of non-intervention, even if non-intervention was still the weaker overall argument. Today, Russia is heavily involved in Syria, far more than the U.S., and it is hard to imagine Putin simply pulling out and letting the situation devolve into chaos, a result that would be blamed in large part on Russia and that would hurt Putin’s prestige and his own credibility when it comes to Russia intervening anywhere. With another great power invested besides America, unlike in 2013, the idea that the toppling of Assad would result in anarchy and a terrorist safe haven is less of a likelihood, since now two great powers will be heavily invested in the outcome if the U.S. becomes more heavily involved and actions lead to Assad’s ouster or weakening.

If you let your justifiable hatred of Trump get in the way of your support of even someone like him doing more than anyone has yet to help the long-term situation of Syrian refugees—if you refuse to understand that these strikes may be the first step in creating paths for Syrians to safely return to Syrian soil—you care more about your personal feelings and personal politics than actually helping refugees at worse, or are incredibly myopic at best.

*****

Causes For Concern

Don’t get me wrong: there are things about this that worry me. 

I respect the U.S. military and Mattis and have faith in both of them, and it’s virtually impossible for a president to micromanage a major U.S. military operation without massive influence from his secretary of defense, and as awful as Trump is, at least in a situation like Syria today, I’d be more worried about a Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld combination than a Trump-Pence-Mattis combination (though unquestionably Bush is better individually than Trump), and I think Mattis will impress Trump with his competence as any operations unfold and will gain more influence in this way. 

Having said that, I’m also scared about a Trump that gets a taste of military success, and am especially terrified with a North Korea now acting up when military aggression as a U.S. response on the Korean Peninsula would initiate a bloodbath that would make Bush’s Iraq invasion look mild in comparison, and especially so if Trump feels military adventurism is a preferred course when he is having a miserable time in domestic politics, which could lead to who knows what down the road.

I also worry that Trump being seen as the savior of Syrian refugees would make people forget about how awful his refugee and immigration policies are. I’m further worried that this will make people lose interest in his Russian scandals and make the Republican Party feel it will have cover again to obstruct and distract from the investigation after such actions (see the drama of Devin Nunes) had cost them. And I’m worried that this action may partly legitimize Trump and his dangerous program when, apart from this action, he and his program are not worthy of legitimization, only opposition and resistance.

So I will continue to vigorously oppose Trump and his agenda overall. But because I care passionately about human rights, stopping mass killing and genocide, and seeking a long-term situation for refugees and the Syrian Civil War, I will support his efforts to to go against Assad.

Political Considerations

But the move made a tremendous amount of sense for Trump and his administration for political reasons, and the chance Assad gave him to act was also something of a political gift from heaven.

For one thing, Trump has had a miserable first few months on the domestic front, without a single major accomplishment he could take credit for thus far and nearing the end of his 100 days, with self-inflicted wound after self-inflicted wound resulting in likely the worst first 100 days of any president.

In other words, Trump might be looking at no chance of a major accomplishment whatsoever during his first 100 days; a domestic accomplishment still seems a remote possibility, leaving only the realm of something dramatic in foreign policy, which before Assad’s chemical attack, and during a week in which his team had signaled acceptance of Assad’s rule over Syria, there had seemed few openings of this type either. Acting against Assad would credibly give Trump a big “win” at a time he desperately needs one and might even be his only chance for one.

Speaking of desperate, Trump’s approval-rating average had dipped below 40%, a historic low for so early in a presidency; this opportunity was one of the only ways on the horizon for Trump to be able to bring his poll numbers up anytime soon.

He was also about to host Chinese President Xi Jinping at a time when his administration was a disgrace and after months of bashing China; Trump’s strike immediately allowed him to move from a position of humiliation to one where he could project power while hosting Xi, who expressed private empathy for Trump ordering the strikes even as China did not offer public support. It will be interesting to consider what effect if any this will have on North Korea and on America’s efforts to enlist Chinese aid in dealing with North Korea.

And, of course, the elephant in the room for the entirety of Trump’s presidency so far has been the Trump Campaign and Trump Administration’s deeply disturbing ties to Russia, Putin, Russian money, and Russian organized crime, including Russia’s obvious efforts to help Trump defeat Clinton in the (First) Russo-American Cyberwar. Striking the Assad regime, Russia’s only true in-power ally outside of the states of the former Soviet Union, while Russia’s forces are actively engaged in supporting Assad has provided Trump with an excellent opportunity to take some of the heat off of him and his people as well as to demonstrate he is not beholden to or being controlled by the Russians amid hardly-purely-speculative accusations and suspicions be might be. In other words, Trump could go on offense in his weakest area, deflecting attention away from his biggest scandal—and possibly the biggest scandal in American history—and acting in a way that could reassure some of his less strident critics and give his supporters some much needed-assistance and cover to be able to, in turn, provide cover for him (though, substantively, nothing he has done here does anything to address the possible realities of past issues with ties to Russia, but perception is very powerful in politics and this move certainly affects perception in Trump’s favor).

In other worse, Trump personally had so much to gain and so little to lose with competently executed, limited strikes at this stage. 

In addition, at least some of Trump’s people must realize that the Democratic Party is still far less extreme that the Republican Party; unlike the Democrats, who said no to a takeover by the Bernie Sanders wing, the Republican Party has been hijacked by extremists for years, and, as I have noted, Democrats have been far more bi-partisan in their support of presidential foreign policy and national security than Republicans, so there was a good chance many Democrats would support this move in addition to Republicans and it seems that this is the case thus far.

Thus, politically, it was the best move Trump could have made with no other good options in sight. In some ways, it could even be called a no-brainer. If I were one of Trump’s political advisors, I would definitely have recommended this action.

*****

Apart from the political considerations, the far more important considerations involve the actual policy and substantive non-domestic-political considerations and the human lives affected by this strike. And as someone who truly hates Trump and sees him as the threat to democracy and the world order that he is, it is here that as a student of policy and a person who cares about saving lives and preserving international norms that it is easy for me to support this action enthusiastically, despite my misgivings for the man calling the shots behind it.

© 2017 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, no republication without permission, attributed quotations welcome

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981). If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse October 16, 2016 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) October 16th, 2016

Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

AMMAN — As much as the horror show of the second Clinton-Trump debate should bother us, on some levels the Pence-Kaine vice-presidential debate is more worrisome. I say this because that one has been acknowledged to be the more “normal” debate, and should remind us all of how dysfunctional our system is even without Trump and his candidacy. But, because of that, it is also one of the more instructive moments of this campaign season, even though the debate happened almost two weeks ago; in fact, its lessons’ importance do not dim with the passage of time, but only increase, and will be relevant for the foreseeable future.

See, the thing about the now-generally-spineless Republican Party elected officials is that we can see the next episode, should Trump lose, with breathtaking clarity: “WE REPUBLICANS LOST BECAUSE OF TRUMP. BLAME HIM. WE ACCEPT NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT HAPPENED BECAUSE WE ARE 100% FREE FROM ALL BLAME AND 100% OF THE BLAME IS ON TRUMP,” they will spout piously. But the largely uninspiring Pence-Kaine debate easily disproves that; it shows what is wrong with the Republican Party, it shows much of what’s wrong with our political system in general, and it even reminds us how thin the Democratic Party’s bench is.

What the VP Debate Told Us About Democrats

Now, a brief note on the issues with the Democrats before getting into the meatier awfulness of the other two topics. 

First, don’t get me wrong: I like Tim Kaine, and though I was at first disheartened by the pick of another white male, I knew Elizabeth Warren would have been a disaster in repelling centrist voters and in making it an all-female ticket (nothing wrong with that for me but America is still a backwards country), and I was really hot for Julián Castro and would also have been excited by Corey Booker, but after I watched Kaine speak once he was picked and learned more about him, I chided myself for wanting to be “excited” and realized that Clinton was right to pick Kaine, who had far more experience and who could credibly be said to be ready to be president more than most (and certainly far more than the younger and inexperienced Castro and Booker, give them time for goodness sakes! Patience!!); I realized my expectations as a liberal should not outweigh an ability to appeal to swing voters who are not as liberal as I am and to be ready to be Commander-in-Chief should disaster strike.  

In the debate, Kaine deserves some credit for acting like a kamikaze pilot aimed right at Trump: at the expense of his own favorability, he kept the focus on Trump throughout the debate even though it meant a “loss” to the man with whom he shared the stage, Mike Pence: suicide mission accomplished, Sen; Kaine. But on other levels, Kaine was lacking: he stumbled over his words more than a few times, his delivery was off, his attempts at humor fell flat. More than anything else, Kaine’s very presence was a reminder how thin the Democratic bench is, even if the Republican Bench is unquestionably weaker, especially in terms of substance. I remember thinking when Ted Kennedy died—the Last Lion of the Senate—there was no one else even close to him except perhaps for Biden, now aging and in the twilight of his political career. The Lionesses of the senate—Barbara Mikulski and Barbara Boxer—are both retiring this year, with only Dianne Feinstein left in their class, though Claire McCaskill can be said to be a good person to soon be of similar stature.  And Warren, whom I also like, is admittedly mostly talk and to the left of most Americans and is therefore not a viable national candidate for the same reasons Bernie Sanders is not. In the House, Nancy Pelosi, John Lewis, Elijah Cummings, Jim Clyburn, and other elder statesman will continue to serve well there, but that’s pretty much it for them as far as their career, and for the House. Booker and Castro are exciting, but that is a list of two people.

What the VP Debate Told Us About Republicans

Bench

As for the Republican bench, it was eviscerated by the one-two combination of Donald Trump and actual Republican voters this primary season. Newer, supposedly up-and-coming stars like Sens. Rand Paul and Marco Rubio performed abysmally. Tom Cotton (who didn’t run) may have an appealing veteran background, but he, like many other GOP newcomers, is also an irrational extremist who will narrowly appeal to white male voters and few others in terms of demographics or gender, which, in the future, will not be a winning formula even if Trump shocked us all with how many legs this formula can still stand upon in 2016 with what at least convincingly seems like a Picket’s Charge last-gasp of American white ethno-nationalism.

GOP: Party of Fantasy

Now, as to the most serious problem… Especially on the Republican side, people were pining about possibly having the guy in the VP slot switch positions with the candidate on the top of the ticket. While that would spare us the possibility of a Trump cataclysm, it would, sadly, do nothing to alleviate the myriad problems facing our political system before Trump announced his candidacy. 

In fact, the Kaine-Pence debate reminded me of the Bush-Gore, Bush-Kerry debates from years past, minus all the personality and excitement; yes, these two came off blander than we thought was possible, but the recent debate was worse in so many ways. Back then, it seemed the two parties lived in alternate realities on many issues and couldn’t agree on basic facts about the state of the world they cohabited. Today, those divisions are only more pronounced and cover even more issues than before, making the partisanship of the Bush and early Obama years seem almost quaint in comparison.

During the W. Bush years, no mainstream Democrat argued that Bush was responsible for or created al-Qaeda. Sure, there was fair criticism that Bush’s policies were counterproductive and incited and enabled more terrorism—an objectively true claim, as even Bush realized this when he replaced Rumsfeld with Gates and had Gen. Petraeus totally reorient our strategy in Iraq to be (more effectively) population/civilian-centric—but no mainstream Democrat suggested Bush wasn’t actually trying to win the war, that he was the main reason for the rise of al-Qaeda, or, even worse, that he sympathized with al-Qaeda and Muslim terrorists. Now? Even Trump, the Republican nominee for the presidency, has implied or said such things about Obama and terrorists and ISIS, has even clearly said he believes Obama “founded” ISIS even when given chances to clarify, and he is hardly alone in making such statements or holding such beliefs, which have existed since even before Obama took office as president (a Quinnipiac poll from this summer found that over half of Republicans—and nearly one-third of all Americans—agreed with Trump that Obama “may sympathize” with terrorists!). And most Republicans think that it’s mainly Obama’s fault that ISIS has risen as far as it has, which flies in the face of logic and history.

Compared to the W. Bush years, there is even more about basic reality on which the two parties cannot agree, and, as usual, it’s the Republicans who have fantastically constructed an alternative false reality. Republicans today doubt the seriousness of climate change or even its existence and also doubt the validity of evolutionary science and other scientific consensuses, as they did back then; many still believe in the demonstrably false claims of trickle-down Reaganomics; today it is clear that Republicans also and/or increasingly believe in a fantasy of the state of and effects of illegal immigration, that there is not a racial disparity in law enforcement and the criminal justice system when there clearly is, that Obamacare is a total disaster even though it is not (even with its poorly understood problems it has made tremendous improvements), that Syrian refugees as being admitted currently to the U.S. pose a grave national security threat when they do not, that having a minimum wage or raising one is bad even though there is no evidence for the former and little that evidence the latter is true (as long as the raise is not stupidly high), that racism is an equal or larger problem for white people compared to African-Americans when this is flat-out absurd, that there is no discrimination against Muslims in America when there clearly is, that America is not on a steady if slow but also historic economic recovery when it clearly is, that the South was not exactly wrong during the Civil War and that America was founded as an explicitly Christian nation (wrong and wrong), that voter fraud is a pressing issue of major concern when it is virtually non-existent, and, on top of all of this, Republicans trash the quality of the U.S. military when it is still by far the most powerful military in the world and is still being upgraded robustly.

Many of these gaps in reality were on full display in the debate between Pence and Kaine. In fact, throughout the campaigns, including the VP debate, the candidates on opposing sides have sounded like they are talking about two completely different countries when they describe America. On top of all that, Pence was in full-denial-mode when it came to Trump’s many verifiable insanities; either that, or Pence didn’t even attempt to actually defend or address some of Trump’s atrocious behavior.

VP Debate an Awful Look Into Our Political System’s Pre-Trump Deficiencies

So, in what would supposedly be something of a “dream” scenario for Republican elites (the same Republican elites that had unwittingly laid the groundwork for Trump’s hostile takeover), a debate where Pence, not Trump, would be the presidential nominee for their party—a nominee who would still be in denial of basic reality on things like climate change and racial discrimination and immigration and the state of the economy and would also deny the basic reality of much of the ugliness underpinning the Republican party—would be considered ideal.

So even taking Trump out of the equation, we find that we are lacking in key components necessary for a serious, substantive debate about our future and that one of our two parties is willing to perpetually deny reality and its own strong ties to dark forces like racism and anti-intellectualism and militarism and plutocracy. Without Trump, it is still impossible to have a fact-based, reality-situated discussion about our country’s policies and its future. Without Trump, we are still in trouble, and in very deep trouble. Without Trump, it is quite possible that Ted Cruz would be the nominee as he by far had the most delegates compared with any other Republican candidate (well over three times as many) besides Trump. Yes, defeating Trump’s historically awful candidacy is a necessary step, but if victory in that cause is achieved, the real work is only beginning and it will be oh-so-very-hard; the American political system was in dire straits even before he announced his candidacy, and nobody should forget that. Anyone who does, just watch the VP debate and that is all the reminder of this sad truth that anyone should need. 

And I would hope that without Trump lowering the bar to unprecedented depths that this problem would be something we would be discussing intensely; under Trump’s looming, groping shadow, I fear that discussion has been lost, failing to materialize as we try to put out an orange Trump fire all while missing the erosion threatening to send our house divided tumbling down a cliff over a longer period of time in a sinking collapse that would not be as sudden but would be as real a threat as Trump’s more dramatic and more immediate inferno of inanity.

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981), and here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

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The worst thing about Trump? Globally, people like him and his supporters are everywhere and their politics maddeningly banal, as the ethno-centric politics of hate in the Caucasian Republic of Georgia demonstrate frightening similarities to the same politics in the Unites States of America.

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse October 10, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) October 10th, 2016

Patrick Robert/Corbis/Getty; EPA

AMMAN — Amid all the talk of the issue of the “normalization” of Trump, perhaps the most disheartening realization that comes to those who ponder such a concept is in how many ways how utterly banal are figures like Trump and the movement he is cultivating/exploiting, both in the wider world and throughout history. Georgia—the Republic of, in the Caucasus, not the one of peaches, the Atlanta Braves, and America’s Deep South—is as illustrative of this sad reality of the human condition as any other place, and is thus deeply relevant to understanding our own predicament with Mr. Trump and his fans.

To illustrate this point, I will steal from my own graduate school work in 2009 on conflict in Georgia involving Georgians, Abkhaz, Ossetians, and Russians, inserted in italicized blocs (apologies for all the parenthetical citations as we had a very strict and I would argue frustrating series of guidelines; here is the full paper). 

As will be demonstrated, much of Georgian history involves internal and external forces managing the relationships between ethnic Georgians on one hand and ethnic Abkhaz and ethnic Ossetians and others on the other in what can loosely be understood to be Georgian territory and in what comprises the internationally recognized borders of Georgia today. Since 1800, Russia dominated the country and has been nearly the sole major outside actor involved in these ethnic conflicts, and in recent years has acted to allow both Abkhazia and South Ossetia to become de facto independent from Georgia and to become de facto parts of the Russian Federation. After the period of the rule of the Czars over the Russian Empire ended, the ethnic minorities in Georgia competed for favor and power to be bestowed from the Soviet Union’s governing elites, elites whose behavior ranged from accommodating ethnic Georgian nationalism to addressing concerns of minorities in Georgia as a way to check Georgian nationalism when it became too anti-Russian/anti-Soviet (something which continued after the fall of the USSR up through today).

Much of American history, likewise, is the story of race relations between white masters and black slaves in the South and the relationship between the rest of the country and the South when it came to limiting the institution of slavery. Since 1865, slavery ended in America but attempts at legal and political equality for freed slaves in the South failed in the face of a terrorist insurgency that finally succeeded in overthrowing the post-Civil War order everywhere in the South by 1877. It was not until a long period of first oppression and later unrest that legal and political equality for African-Americans was imposed on the South by an activist U.S. federal government by 1965.

Creating Identities

“The creation legend of Abkhazia and Georgia is identical, a sad fact that has not led to unity and fraternity between these two peoples,” writes Goltz (2009), “but rather to a disputation of basic history and the denial of the very humanity of the other group” (Goltz 2009, 21). For most of its history, Georgia had a stronger eastern kingdom which dominated a weaker western Georgian kingdom, and Abkhazia (then called Abkhazeti) was often ruled by a local prince who might submit to another prince or one of the Georgian kings, or might not, and managed to stay free, and eventually grew in power into its own kingdom, supplanting the west Georgian state and rivaling the east Georgian kingdom for several centuries until the latter unified both into a single Georgian kingdom in 1008 C.E. (Suny 1994, 11-33; Braund 1994, 152-313; Rapp 2000, 576; Gvosdev 2000,1). This kingdom would be a “decidedly decentralized state,” where local rulers often flouted the authority of the “kings” and reached out to foreign powers independently for leverage against them, some trying to take the throne (Suny 1994, 33- 38). Through the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Georgia “remained…primarily rural” and its “towns…were largely inhabited by Muslims, Armenians, and other foreigners” until the nineteenth century (Ibid., 38-39). Mongols and plague fragmented Georgia, and Abkhazeti was one of three western regions “ruled as semi-independent” principalities; Georgia would not see reunification “until the annexation by Russia in the nineteenth century” (Suny 1994, 38-59; Gvosdev 2000, 2-5).”

Note how divided and difficult to control the region was.

“Because, arguably, interests are tied to identities,” writes Suny (1999), “self-understandings… must be investigated as prerequisite to analyzing the security requirements of states” (Suny 1999, 139- 140). Georgia is among certain former Soviet states where “uncertainty about current politics and future possibilities are deeply embedded in more general confusion about who ‘we‘ are and where ‘our‘ interests lie” and he writes that “[n]ational identity is a particular form of political identification” in a world where “nation is not natural or given but must be worked for, taught, and instilled, largely through the efforts of intellectuals, politicians, and activists who make the identification with the ‘imagined political community‘ of the nation a palpable and potent source of emotional and intellectual commitment” (Ibid., 140, 144-145). For Suny, “[m]odern nations are those political communities made up of people who believe they share characteristics…that give them the right to self-determination… they can be thought of as arenas in which people dispute who they are, argue about boundaries, who is in or who is out of the group, where the ‘homeland‘ begins and ends, what the ‘true‘ history of the nation is” (Suny 1999, 145; 4 Suny 2001, 866). He argues that many wars in the modern era are fought over such issues, and that “longlived ‘nations,‘ [like]…Georgians… who have written traditions that go back millennia, have in modern times reconstructed and made consistent the varied and changing identities and ways of conceiving themselves that existed in the past;” “earlier identities” have been molded into “frame[s] of later templates, particularly that of the nation” (Suny 1999, 146). He describes Georgia as one of several former Soviet Republics where “the problems of ethnicity, identity, and the appropriate political forms to sustain the new state in the future were at the base of the devastating and violent crises that fractured” them (Suny 1999, 154). For Suny (1994), Georgia is “reinventing its past;” and “[t]the key to the future lies in what a people selects from its past, how it imagines itself as a community and continues to remake itself as a nation” (Suny 1994, 334-335).

Several authors besides Suny articulate a similar position, that the intensely-felt ancient identities of the Georgians and the Abkhaz are important components to understanding their modern struggles conflicts with each other. Grant (2009) comments that these ancient Abkhaz and Georgian identities were so strongly felt that Russia “never entirely convinced…[these people] that they were full partners alongside the rest” of the Russian Empire and the USSR, and Georgia‘s current President, Mikheil Saakashvili, “took a holy oath” as part of his presidential inauguration ceremony at Gelati, where the “greatest Georgian king of the eleventh century…is buried. By receiving the blessing at Gelati, Saakashvili, who wants a strong Georgian state, was symbolically alluding to a period of history when Georgia had such a state” (Grant 2009, ix-x; Nodia 2005, 78).

On the use of history in this debate, Zverev (1996) notes that it is a “salient factor” in understanding “why conflicts break out,” that “in Abkhaz literature, one finds references to the Abkhazian kingdom which existed in the 9th and 10th centuries. This is instrumental to the Abkhazian claim for sovereignty over the region even though the same kingdom could equally be described as a common Georgian-Abkhazian state, with a predominance of Georgian language and culture;” he points out that on the other side, Georgians “stress the allegedly non-Abkhaz character” of the historical Abkhazia, and that some even think of Georgians as “hosts” and that everyone else, including Abkhaz, are “guests” in Georgian territory (Zverev 1996, part I par.7). This debate, for Zverev as it was for Suny, is about presenting a case for who has the right to govern where and over whom, and this representation of the debate is also corroborated by the recent EU report on the August 2008 war (2009), by Khazanov (1996), by the International Crisis Group (ICG) (2006), and by Nodia (1998) (EURII, 66-69; Khazanov 1996, 6; ICG 2006, 3-4; Nodia 1998, 14). Nodia sums up Georgian views: “Abkhazia is Georgia, because it has always been part of Georgia when it was united. Georgians cannot see Abkhazia as a ‘foreign‘ land which was once conquered by them, and the accusation of imperialism usually makes them furious” (Nodia 1998, 19). Jans (1998) sums up the intersection of Georgian and Abkhazian thought, in that after the Cold War they were engaged in a quest for identity since “[d]emocracy, understood as the rule of the people by the people, begs the question of what is to be understood as ‘We, the people.‘“ (Jans 1998, 109) He further argues that “Ethnonational identities base their credibility and legitimacy on an interpretation of the historical past;” so for Georgians and Abkhazians, the past is of very present relevance to them (Ibid., 110). Lynch (2002) says that Abkhaz claims to the right of self-determination are, among other things, “based” on the idea that modern Abkhazia can claim to be the latest incarnation of “a long historical tradition;” he then quotes Abkhazia‘s foreign minister as saying “Abkhazia has a thousand-year history of statehood since the formation in the 8th century of the Kingdom of Abkhazia. Even within the framework of empires, Abkhazia kept this history of stateness. No matter the form, Abkhaz statehood remained intact” (Lynch 2002, 837). Departing from the more neutral posture of others, Chirikba (1998), writing as an Abkhaz government official, argues that Abkhaz history shows more independence from Georgians than not, and thus provides its people with “legitimate grounds for their claims to statehood and sovereignty” (Chirikba 1998, 48).”

Now, if some of this sounds familiar, it should: for much of American history, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants constructed an American identity that was based on their supposed superiority over other whites—Irish, Eastern and Southern Europeans—in addition to Africans and others, and defined being true “Americans” as their exclusive domain, working actively to frame these other groups as non-Americans and undeserving of the same rights, if any. Over time the different whites generally unified when it came to ethnic politics and redefined “American” as being white, which over much of the last century meant seeking to exclude blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and other non-whites from sharing in the spoils of being an “American.”

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Perceptions of Meddling

“Areshidze posits the theory that the Soviet “system of ethnic autonomies was…in reality…a time bomb that Moscow could blow up at its leisure by pushing the ‘protected‘ minorities towards separatism. Thus, this situation gave Moscow a means to weaken and destabilize” Georgia; Zürcher (2005) echoes this analysis (Areshidze 2007, 22; Zürcher 2005, 99). Castells (1996) claims that “the strong development of nationalism in the post-communist period can be related…to the cultural emptiness created by 70 years of imposition of an exclusionary ideological entity, coupled with the return to primary, historical identity (Russian, Georgian), as the only source of meaning after the crumbling of the historically fragile sovietskii narod” (Soviet people) (Castells 1996, 24). Eventually all these trends culminated on the Georgian side with the idea that “their further evolution was hindered by the restraints placed on them by the Russians. An attitude arose that, left to themselves, the Georgians could more quickly realize their historical potential;” “the erosion of Marxist ideology within the Soviet Union cleared the way for its replacement” by the forces already pent up even before Stalin and released after him. Released, they “produced an increasingly potent nationalist mood in all parts of Georgian society—and counternationalism among the ethnic minorities within the republic;” this in turn “stimulated a rapid escalation of ethnic politics in Georgia;” “[t]he specific goals of Soviet nationality policy, the rapprochement and eventual merging of nationalities, were further from realization in the 1980s than they had been at any time in Soviet history” (Suny 1994, 313-316, 320-321; Remington 1989, 145).

Such Georgian views are remarkably similar to those of many conservative white Americans: if the federal government would just get out of the way, they would be free to realize their full potential, and they deeply resent and oppose federal efforts to protect minority rights or to divert any common resources specifically in the direction of minorities; for these white Americans, this is taking what is “theirs” as “true Americans” as they define that concept and they seek to exclude or place limits on other groups that they view as less “American” and worthy than themselves. For them, their concept of their own freedom involves their ability to restrict the freedoms of others as they please. 

It was no coincidence that the election of a black President—America’s first non-white president—who campaigned heavily on giving poor uninsured people (the way conservative whites incorrectly read it: non-white) healthcare gave rise to the Tea Party which was in many ways white nationalism run amok (one only has to look at the many polls and multiple studies that showed that huge numbers of Tea Partiers thought Obama was a Muslim, doubted he was a Christian, believed he was not born in America, and had more prejudicial, insensitive, and extreme views on racial issues than most Americans, even when compared to non-Tea Party conservatives); those Tea party forces have morphed into the Trump movement, which has taken over the Republican Party, one of two major political parties in America, and clearly those people now carry the same noxious and extreme views on race that they did when they were members of the Tea Party; in fact, racial concerns seem to be the largest motivators behind people choosing to support Trump: in other words, Trump is the candidate of white ethno-centrist nationalism in America.

Weaponizing History

Suny (2001) claims that Soviet policy created a tendency for ethnic groups like Georgians and Abkhaz to invent imaginary histories that can bolster “the legitimacy of the nation and particular claims to territory and statehood” while at the same time becoming become “exclusivist” and encouraging “desperate policies of deportation and ethnic cleansing” (Suny 2001, 895-896). The EU report concludes that in the atmosphere discussed, there was “no political framework that would have been strong enough to integrate the conflicting national demands” (EURII 2009, 63). Violence, war, and revolution would soon erupt as Soviet rule ended in Georgia.

One only need to look at how conservatives in America, particularly in the South, have created a fantasy about the Civil War that they maintain to this day: Lincoln was a tyrant while the South was bravely fighting for freedom and small government, despite a clear and overwhelming preponderance of evidence that, without question, slavery and white supremacy were at the heart of the Civil War—were actually its primary drivers—and at the heart of the ideology of the self-styled “Confederate States of America.” White ethno-centrists even try to force textbooks into public schools that downplay the issue of slavery, minimize discussion of racial oppression, and falsely frame America’s founding in a Christian context. Georgians and Abkhaz and others fight among themselves over their founding myths and over their histories, trying to distort and weaponize history as a way to delegitimize certain groups and assert exclusivity over this or that, but Americans are clearly no different.

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Zero-Sum Mentalities on Minorities: Identity and the Meaning of Independence

“Many Georgian nationalists are apprehensive of minorities like Ossetians and Abkhaz having too much autonomy and see this as a threat to Georgia; it was ethnic Georgian protests against the Abkhaz request for separation from Georgia in 1989 which sparked the rapid acceleration of Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s nationalist, anti-ethnic minority agenda and “radicalized” Georgian nationalism; it became more belligerent towards perceived threats from minorities, especially Ossetians and Abkhaz” (Suny 1994, 317-323; Zürcher 2005, 90). For Devdariani (2005) Gamsakhurdia and his movement “perceived Abkhazia and South Ossetia as simply tools for Russian pressure directed against Georgian independence… “[C]oncerns of [their] local elites…[were ignored and]…tensions spiraled into violent clashes…[They failed] to see how…[their] own quest for independence challenged the identities of the Abkhazians and Ossetians” (Devdariani 2005, 161)…

Jones (2006), seeking to downplay ethnic tensions in favor of economic ones, disagrees that the protests were about Abkhazia and argues they were more about “Georgian independence,” but Jones still describes Gamsakhurdia as “using nationalist slogans to gain authority” and “manipulat[ing] a formerly moderate Georgian populace into a chauvinistic mob;” Zürcher maintains with others that the Abkhazian call for secession “led” to the protest (Jones 2006, 257; Zürcher 2005, 89). The EU report and Zürcher take care to mention Georgians, especially those in Abkhazia, saw concessions to minorities as too generous, and that this explains the rise of leaders like Zviad Gamsakhurdia (EURII 2009, 69; Zürcher 2005, 89)

When ethnic minorities tried/try to assert themselves in America, there was/is almost always a hostile backlash from the white majority, and these backlashes are often violence and can take on a form of terrorism. This was the plight the Irish faced as famously depicted in the Scorcese’s Gangs of New York, and of freed slaves who suffered at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan in the aftermath of the Civil War and for a century after, and violence spiked again when they asserted themselves in the later 1950s and 1960s. Today, with racial, gender, and sexual orientation movements, there has never been a more diverse array of loud assertions of minority groups for their deserved place in public and private life, and the discourse is richer and more diverse than it has ever been as a result. But with the rise of the Tea Party and Trump after the election of a black president and the codification of homosexual marriage as a right protected by the Constitution (both good things), with the yet further proliferation of oversensitivity, an extreme form of politically correct discourse, and complaints of microaggressions (no so much good things), we are seeing a major backlash and Donald Trump’s rise to a height of just a few percentage-points of votes away from the presidency is the face and spirit of that backlash. Many of Trump’s supporters look at groups like blacks, Hispanics, and the LGBT community as tools for an unholy alliance between such groups and a liberal activist federal government—led by a black president they generally believe is a foreign-born Muslim—that these whites perceive has come to oppress them in order to favor brown people and gays and non-Christians (more or less non-Americans to them). Hence, we have whites chanting All Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, with many whites condemning Black Lives Matter and some even trying to frame it as a terrorist group; too many and too often, whites feel they must have a virtual monopoly on group victimhood and cannot stomach the idea of recognizing and legitimizing the grievances of other groups.

Trump is therefore in many ways just America’s Zviad Gamsakhurdia. And it should be noted that Gamsakurdia propelled his country onto a path of ethnic hatred and violence that led to civil war. I don’t think Trump would push America into a civil war, but, as I’ve noted before, I do see America at an already dangerously high level of racial tension and violence not seen since the Civil Rights Era half a century earlier, with the one major exception being the 1992 L.A. riots, and I do see American society becoming far more divided than it is even now should Trump be at the helm, and view Trump as a danger to Western democracy. 

Still, it is clear that the nativism and ethno-centrism that are driving today’s Republican Party and have handed it to Trump are parts of a longstanding American tradition, best exemplified by the “Know-Nothings” for which Abraham Lincoln harbored such disdain, Southern Civil-War slaver secessionists and Redeemers, and George Wallace’s movement from the Civil Rights Era. And, as in Georgia, these often regional movements are both about hostility towards other ethnicities and about independence, and independence from a federal government perceived almost as a foreign power and from a foreign power for the U.S. and Georgia, respectively. Such a concept of independence is tied to spheres both public and private that are seen to be contested with these other ethnicities in a landscape that has long been ethnically and/or racially polarized.

In America, people, locations, and states that are very anti-federal government hardly look at what they deem interference from Washington—in particular from Democrats, and in particular from the African-American-led Obama Administration—differently from how Georgian chauvinists look(ed) at Russian/Soviet efforts to accommodate Abkhaz and other minorities in Georgia; likewise, minorities in America have long looked to the federal government to establish and protect their rights against a white majority that, to varying degrees depending on location, has often sought and still seeks to infringe or even outright destroy those rights, much like Abkhaz and Ossetians have appealed to Soviet/Russian authority to protect them from abuses at the hands of Georgians.

A most salient case-in-point in America involves recent controversies in North Carolina; as one of the states that had used state laws to institutionalize the oppression of African-Americans until 1965, the U.S. Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) had included North Carolina along with a number of states and localities in a list of places—mostly in the South—that had to receive “preclearance” from federal authorities before changing any of its voting laws, with this preclearance provision on component of an effort to prevent the re-disenfranchisement of black voters. This system worked quite well until 2013, when the narrowly conservative U.S. Supreme Court issue a partisan 5-4 ruling that basically said the VRA was no longer needed and that it constituted federal oppression of state sovereignty. Almost immediately after the Supreme Court ruling, North Carolina was one of several states that enacted controversial restrictive voting laws under Republican leadership. These laws were criticized to varying degrees as thinly veiled attempt to suppress the votes of African-Americans, and at the end of August of this year, that is just what the federal court system decided: a federal appeals court had ruled that the North Carolina law sought to “target African Americans with almost surgical precision” and struck it down as unconstitutional, and the U.S. Supreme Court in a 4-4 partisan tie issued on August 31st (with a vacant seat since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, perhaps the most conservative justice on the Court) was unable to alter this decision (but almost certainly would have had Scalia been alive; a close call indeed).

Thus, as American Republican right-wing white ethno-centrist nationalists seeks to curb and flout federal authority and prodding on many issues related to minorities, from accepting refugees and affirmative action to voting rights and Medicaid expansion to LBGT rights and imposing sectarian religious agendas, so Georgian ethno-nationalists long sought to fight Soviet/Russian attempts to protect and ensure minority rights for Abkhaz and Ossetians. Georgia has been a part of the Russian Empire for over 200 year until the end of the Cold War, so though this involves two separate sovereign nations today, many of the dynamics still resemble those of Russian/Soviet intranational politics; conversely, the South of the United States experimented with secession as a unit from 1861-1865 and tried to form its own nation, an experiment which failed miserably but which still helps to explain why the South above all other regions of the United States exhibits a staunch resistance to the rest of the national will and to attempts by the U.S. federal government to bring it along with other national projects, from segregation to the ACA (Obamacare) and any of a whole host of other items.

As in the case with Georgia, at the heart of all this tension are ethnic tensions between those in a majority that see any concession to minorities as a loss of their “rightful” power and societal position on one hand and ethnic minorities that depend on outside forces for protection from outright oppression and domination at the hands those in that majority on the other. And, much as Trump is galvanizing a backlash in minority consciousness and activism in America, so, too, did Gamsakhurdia galvanize Abkhazians and others to resist him.

Conclusion: All Politics Is Local (Exclusion of “The Other?”)

The bottom line is that the sad identity politics of hate and division and resentment are hardly anything exceptional in America and can be found all over the world throughout history and up through today, from Burma to Turkey, from Israel to Burundi, from France to Syria. Americans can only hope that Trump is not nearly as successful as Gamsakhurdia and that America will not follow Georgia in fracturing itself over ethnic hatred. Even if it manages to stave off such a scenario, that will only be a starting point for much needed healing and mending of racial and ethnic fences.

On a final note: Russia at one point gave military support to Gamsakhurdia, after he had been overthrown, as a way to weaken Georgia’s overall position before turning on him after Russia had wrested concessions from the new Georgian leadership. Trump might be interested in such history, with Putin’s Russia today interfering in America’s election and trying to help Donald Trump get into the White House.

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Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981), and here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

  Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse October 8, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) October 8th, 2016

AMMAN – To say that the recording in question is not good for Donald is quite the understatement. I’m not here to go over the contents in detail; plenty of other people will do that. I’m here to provide a dispassionate analysis as to why this is not going to have the effect that many hope (and that it should) have. 

At this point, it’s lost on me that people think that Americans collectively possess the capacity to react in a rational way and to punish candidates for wrongdoing and reward them for doing the right thing; this is the year where any such claim has been proved to be inane beyond a reasonable doubt, and let us count the ways… The Republican primary field of 17 candidates had at least a dozen candidates far more qualified and that were far better human beings than Trump that committed nothing like the offenses that Trump routinely committed throughout the entire primary season, beginning with the day he announced his presidential run when he implied large portions of Mexican immigrants were rapists, drug traffickers, and murderers. Trump has ridiculed prisoners-of-war and the disabled; he attacked the appearance of the wife of one of his opponents and attacked the same opponent’s father as being linked to the assassination of JFK based on a tabloid report. He talked about his penis size on stage during a nationally-televised debate. He repeatedly made misogynistic comments about female members of the media who criticized him and about Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina. He cursed and used vulgar language repeatedly on the campaign trail and casually played around with stoking or excusing violence at his rallies. He changed his positions on many major issues casually and sometimes repeatedly unlike any candidate before him. He called for banning all immigrants of a certain religion and for giving a religious test to immigrants. He questioned a federal judge’s objectivity based solely on that judge’s Mexican ancestry. And he lied many times. Pretty much every day (and every 5 minutes when talking). Far more than any other candidate. 

And all that was during the primary. 

Additionally, ample evidence exists that Trump’s businesses frauded customers, misled investors and clients, and failed to pay contractors for their work. Trump attacked parents whose son died fighting in an American uniform in Iraq. Trump’s campaign team has ties to Putin—America’s enemy—that even in the most generous terms would have to be described as shady. Trump has repeatedly made comments about Hillary Clinton that the Secret Service and many other have deemed as threatening, and he also encouraged the Russian government to hack Clinton’s personal information. He lied about his role in and about who started the racist birther controversy about Obama’s birth certificate.

The list can go on and on but I’ll stop there. The point is, though, if none of these caused Trump to lose a significant amount of support before because he rose, and rose, and rose in the polls despite and sometimes seemingly because of these things, is this latest Trump pile of awful really that dramatically different from his others to the degree that it will cause him to lose a lot of support? I would venture a big fat no, despite my strong wish that this not be the case.

Yes, Trump’s numbers seem to be dipping a bit since his abysmal debate performance against Clinton, but he’s only about 3% behind Clinton (about 44% Clinton to about 41% Trump in four-way races with Johnson and Stein) even factoring in her recent upswing, according to the Real Clear Politics polling average. Of course, this was before this weekend’s revelations; you’d think that this would mean certain doom for a normal candidate in a normal election year, but Trump is not a normal candidate and this not a normal election year. In my last article, I discussed how few voters were truly open to switching votes: basically, Trump’s deplorables aren’t going anywhere. That still leaves undecideds, again, people that I find so strange and incomprehensible that I am not willing to make any strong projections for how they will break one way or another, even in light of this latest Trump foot-in-mouth demonstration. Maybe this might galvanize some third-party supporters who are so disgusted by Trump and are hit viscerally by this scandal in a way that helps them wake up and move to Clinton in larger numbers than they would have otherwise, but, again, he has such a long list of awfulness that I still find it hard to envision this as a tipping point when no other items on the list proved to be.

Other points to consider: while I personally find the remarks by Trump awful and reprehensible and incredibly objectionable, the sad reality is that Mad Men was one of the most popular shows in America and many Americans talk like this (as a former student-athlete, I heard this stuff in many a locker room, and let’s not forget misogyny is a very popular part of popular culture in terms of movies, TV, music, and video games) and are not bothered that deeply by this and will certainly not place the greatest weight on this scandal over the issues that drive them the most, e.g., if you were going to vote Trump because you are most concerned with getting conservative Supreme Court justices appointed, this won’t make you vote differently or stay at home. No matter how much public outrage, then, we must admit that far too many of us, pathetically, don’t care about this stuff in the way we should. And think about the people that are likely to me be particularly animated by this: they weren’t going to vote for Trump anyway. In fact, I have a hard time envisioning the Trump voter who switches to Clinton because of this, and I question how many people who are undecided will now choose to move to Clinton because of this latest Trump outrage when all the previous outrages failed to do the trick. Among other things, this depressing election cycle is reminding us how bad sexism still is in this country.

Today, we are seeing some Republican elites—former and current officials, particularly those in competitive races—running away from Trump (many are doing this now, at this moment, because they feel vulnerable in their reelection bids out of political convenience and that doing so will help them win, not because of any great moral moment of truth; note how proportionately many more senators are fleeing Trump than congressman, and that senators are elected statewide by a much wider group of voters; representatives are voted into office by more narrow-minded partisans in much less diverse, smaller districts, and they are by far mostly sticking with Trump). Liberals are gleefully pointing this out, and as a card-carrying liberal, I surely won’t deny that this has been entertaining schadenfreude, but if there’s one thing the 2016 GOP primaries taught us, it’s that the gap between elites and elected officials in the Republican Party on one hand and the mass of GOP voters on the other is YUUUUUGE. Basically, Trump voters don’t care about this Senator or that Congressmen of this intellectual or George H. W. Bush and Mitt Romney not supporting Trump; in part, these people are voting Trump to say a big “FU!” to these people and to Washington. So all the media coverage of the Republican elites abandoning Trump is not going to give us an accurate picture of the mind of the voters, who gleefully chose Trump despite the resounding disapproval of said elites.

Again, this leaves us with those pesky undecideds, only roughly 4.5% of voters. And right now, rather than this scandal, I think tomorrow night’s debate itself is going to be far more important one in shaping voters’ views, and who knows what new horrors await us in the final weeks of this dreadful and disheartening general election.

In other words, we have a month of campaigning and two debates and who knows what the hell else before Election Day. Anyone who think this insane election is over because they are predicting rational, humane responses to Trump’s tirade of sexual outrage or who wants to gauge Republican voters’ feelings based on how congressmen or senators are acting in the heat of the moment right now might want to calm down and not get ahead of themselves buying their Inaugural Ball outfits. If anything, if people think Clinton will run away with the election, that might make voters complacent at a time when they should be anything but.

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Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981), and here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse September 15, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) September 15th, 2016

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

AMMAN — I’ve written repeatedly about 9/11 before: what it meant for me, what it should mean for Americans, how we have failed to properly honor the memory of the victims, how our nation has become worse, not better, since that fateful day, about all the missed opportunities. I think today it’s pretty clear that we as a nation still have not honored the memory of the victims through proper action, but what I could write about that now would be nothing new that I and others have not written before.

I’m not sure if it would make me feel better or worse to be able to write an article saying “9/11 helped to ruin us by starting a new style of politics that is ruining us.” In any case, I can’t, for while in many ways 9/11 must still clearly be regarded as a watershed, cataclysmic event in world history, let alone American politics and history, that sad truth is that the disgusting political gamesmanship of sucking in foreign policy and national security issues into the partisan maelstrom in the same manner as any other issue is not something that began (or ended) with 9/11, with the politics of 9/11 marking more continuity than change, just a larger example of growing partisanship amidst a rising tide of partisanship in post-Cold War America.

The big move towards consistent politicization in any significant way started almost exclusively with the Republican Party just a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the USSR, beginning with its withering partisan criticism of Bill Clinton’s efforts in Somalia in 1993, criticism that was wildly inconsistent and undermined U.S. policy.  When Republicans began using 9/11 as a partisan wedge issue in the run-up to the Iraq invasion of 2003 and in the 2004 presidential election, this was merely a continuation of the post-Cold War modus operandi of the Republican Party, which is only more extreme today. It is worth going through some of this history to better understand this dynamic besetting America today.

Bipartisanship During the Cold War, But Not For Bill Clinton

Somalia

In 1991, Somalia’s longstanding dictator, short of international support when he was no longer “needed” after the Cold War had drawn to a close, was overthrown, and the country fell into anarchy and warlordism. The political and security situation combined with a famine into one of the first great humanitarian disasters of the post-Cold War era. With the UN Security Council supporting a relief mission, and the Democratic-led U.S. Congress, including Republicans, urging support for such a mission, Republican President George H. W. Bush, though he had just lost re-election nearly two months earlier, announced on Dec. 4th, 1992, that he would send 28,000 U.S. troops as part of a peacekeeping force intended to ensure the distribution of food to hundreds of thousands of Somalis on the verge of starvation, a move supported by President-Elect Clinton. 

Not long after Clinton became president, though, Republicans especially began voicing strong criticism of Clinton’s efforts to sustain the mission, contradicting their earlier support for the mission under George H. W. Bush; while criticism was by no means coming from Republicans alone, they were generally particularly vocal and harsh in their criticism, exaggerating and distorting what was going on and using hyperbolic language to criticize a mission they were perfectly happy to support when commanded by a Republican president only a few months earlier. The mixed support of WWII veteran (and soon-to-be-Republican presidential nominee in 1996) Bob Dole was more the exception, rather than the rule, as Republicans were generally unified in opposing Clinton and succeeded in undermining public support and confidence in the mission, calling for an end to the mission and constantly threatening to cut off funding for the mission even while U.S. troops in the field were carrying it out, a mission that was far from a disaster and hardly a failure. Even when President Clinton announced a withdrawal date after the unfortunate October 1993 “black hawk down” incident, in which U.S. forces tangled with warlord forces and incurred relatively substantial casualties, many Republicans, rather than accept the withdrawal announcement as a sufficient political victory, pushed for a faster withdrawal than the one Clinton had called for; whatever Clinton did, these Republicans were sure to meet it with scorn and criticism. 

In the end, hundreds of thousands of Somali lives were saved by the mission, for all its faults. But Republicans seemed to be in lock-step with Osama bin Laden as viewing the mission as an American failure (even before the “black hawk down” incident), and sure helped to move public opinion in that direction despite the significant achievements of the mission. Perhaps even more hauntingly, the experience was a major influence on Clinton’s decision not to intervene during the Rwandan genocide that occurred only months later, in the spring of 1994.

Bosnia

Clinton was already clashing with Congress over the war in the disintegrating Yugoslavia in 1993, as well, as more and more reports of Serbs committing atrocities against Bosnian Muslims dominated the headlines. It was an odd mixture of Republicans and Democrats who said the Clinton Administration was doing too little, and Republicans and Democrats who argued the Administration was doing too much. Such wide-ranging bi-partisan criticism reflected how complex and difficult the situation was in the Balkans as Europe’s first real test of the post-Cold War era unfolded; against a backdrop of confused and divided U.S. lawmakers, European governments were nervous that any aggressive U.S. action would endanger their peacekeeping forces, already on the ground in the Balkans. In other words, there were no easy solutions and no single plan had widespread, bipartisan support or even strong agreement within one party. As president, Bill Clinton was in an unwelcome and lonely position in trying to craft a position on the conflict. This situation more or less continued through 1994, though after the November midterm elections, at least the leadership of the victorious Republicans signaled a desire for more forceful action.

But somewhat conflictingly, even as Republicans seemed to want to end the arms embargo to help arm the Bosnians (unwise for multiple reasons, e.g., that escalation could have prompted Russia to arm their Serbian friends, could have weakened the NATO alliance and prompted the UK and France to withdraw their forces from the region and force America’s hand in filling the void, measures that nonetheless also had some significant support from some Democrats; still, Clinton correctly noted that “…unilaterally lifting the arms embargo will have the opposite effects of what its supporters intend. It would intensify the fighting, jeopardize diplomacy and make the outcome of the war in Bosnia an American responsibility” and increased air strikes against the Serbs. But Republicans mostly balked when Clinton publicly weighed the idea of U.S. ground forces either assisting beleaguered UN peacekeepers or helping to enforce an eventual peace; thus, Republicans slammed him for not doing enough even while slamming him for raising the possibility of what would likely help the most. They also later balked at Clinton’s efforts to help support a new UN plan to create a rapid-reaction force of European troops to help the thinly-spread peacekeeping forces already on the ground.

When a cease-fire was finally negotiated in October 1995, and the U.S. held talks in November, a more partisan nature to opposing the president came into being, just when it was most crucial to achieve peace in the Balkans for Congress to support a long-term peace plan. Nearly every Republicans in the Senate but only one Democrat sent a letter to Clinton asking him to ask Congress for approval before committing any U.S. troops to a peacekeeping force; this was done just days before formal peace talks were to begin in the U.S., undercutting the president’s team’s negotiating authority at a crucial moment. Next, nearly the entire House Republican caucus voted on a successfully-passed (non-binding) resolution that spurned and disavowed Clinton’s promise to provide 20,000 troops as part of an eventual peacekeeping force, undermining the prospects of an agreement and an end to the war, but a majority of Democrats opposed this resolution even as a substantial minority voted with the Republicans. 

With negotiations between the warring parties underway on U.S. soil, House Republicans voted to prevent the deployment of U.S. troops without Congress specifically authorizing money to do so in what was largely a partisan vote, and even after the peace treaty was signed, House Republicans only narrowly failed in a bid to cut off funding for the mission (210-218) and Senate Republicans barely failed to pass a vote condemning the mission but “supporting” the troops (47-52). Another partisan vote passed just before the peace treaty was signed condemned Clinton’s decision to deploy troops, and another vote that would have offered language supporting the troops but not criticizing Clinton’s plan failed to pass pretty much along party lines the very day the treaty was signed. And in 1996, many Republicans rather myopically criticized both Clinton’s decision to provide substantial reconstruction aid for Bosnia and an extension of the peacekeeping mission. Despite Republican opposition, U.S. forces in Bosnia undoubtedly played a key and decisive role in forging and maintaining peace and stability in Bosnia and, in a larger sense, the Balkans and southeastern Europe.

Kosovo

Just a few years later, Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic was again threatening massive numbers of civilians, this time the mainly Muslim Kosovar Albanians in Serbia’s province of Kosovo. In response to a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing, NATO launched airstrikes against Serb forces threatening Kosovar Albanians. House Republicans, in particular, engaged in behavior that could reasonably (certainly) be said to have undermined the Clinton Administration’s efforts during the crisis. Not long before NATO began its airstrikes, a substantially large majority of Republicans in the Republican-dominated House voted to bar the use of American ground troops: “American soldiers have been trained to be warriors, not baby sitters,” was how House Majority Whip and Republican Tom DeLay put it. The measure was defeated by nearly every Democrat and a minority of Republicans teaming up to vote down the amendment. Even after the airstrikes began, a tie vote in the House failed to give public backing to the airstrikes. While Republican leaders tended to prevent direct challenges to the president in these cases, especially in the Senate, it was clear that many rank-and-file congressional Republicans, including a clear majority in the House, felt differently. Thus, when George W. Bush ran for president in 2000 and campaigned on pulling out of the peacekeeping efforts in the Balkans—making it clear how much value he placed on the missions in Bosnia and Kosovo—that position was not terribly surprising.

Of course, after 9/11, the Balkans receded greatly in importance in America…

9/11: More Continuity Than Change

Most people would have missed the fact that The 9/11 Commission Report, while produced ostensibly at a time when the nation was trying to heal and explicitly avoiding leveling particular blame with one administration or political party, nevertheless does make it clear how lax, unmotivated, and ill-prepared George W. Bush and his Administration were to deal with the crisis, and a careful reading (one which the general public did not even attempt or would even have been capable of attempting) showed that, while the Clinton Administration had not done everything it possibly could have done to go after bin Laden (after years of partisan Republican criticism whenever it had tried to act forcefully elsewhere!), it had increasingly focused on bin Laden as a threat over time and stridently recommended to Bush’s team during the 2000-2001 presidential transition to make bin Laden a top priority, advice which Bush’s people just as stridently refused to accept. Here is just one glaring example that exemplified both the Commission’s unwillingness to point fingers but willingness to still lay the clear picture there for those intelligent enough to follow the evidence:

“In May, President Bush announced that Vice President Cheney would himself lead an effort looking at preparations for managing a possible attack by weapons of mass destruction and at more general problems of national preparedness. The next few months were mainly spent organizing the effort and bringing an admiral from the Sixth Fleet back to Washington to manage it. The Vice President’s task force was just getting under way when the 9/11 attack occurred.” (6.5 The New Administration’s Approach)

Specifically, President Bush’s announcement that Cheney’s task force would be coming came May 8th, but presumably some thought and groundwork had occurred prior to this date. Then from May 8th until September 11th—more than four full months after Bush’s announcement—Cheney’s group had, famously, not met once; “The Vice President’s task force was just getting under way when the 9/11 attack occurred” is about as polite and diplomatic a way as possible to say that next-to-nothing had been done in those four months. One finds such an understated approach throughout the report, and an ability to look past it makes it clear a partisan gap, not in favor of senior Republican officials, in regards to the attention paid to bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Much like after the terrorist attacks in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983, that killed 258 Americans (among others), after 9/11 Democrats supported the Republican president—tending to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt, including then-Sen. Hillary Clinton—and conspicuously avoided playing a partisan political blame-game in the wake of a major attack against Americans even though the way both Presidents Reagan and his administration and Bush and his administration handled the events leading up to and surrounding the respective attacks in 1983 and 2001 were objectively ripe for criticism.

Of course, none of this mattered to Republicans in general, who were quick to blame 9/11 on Bill Clinton, continued to do so for years and still do so today, and who were also quick to politically weaponize foreign policy and national security as a partisan club with which to beat down Democrats into submission and defeat.  Especially as debate on potential and then actual war in Iraq intensified, those who raised questions, doubts, or criticism about the decision to go to war or even how the war was being prosecuted were loudly shouted down as “unpatriotic” and/or “not supporting the troops” (I had a reputation as one of the few liberals on my small conservative college campus back in the day, and late one night at a party in 2003 one drunken Republican angrily asked me “Why do you hate the troops?”). This happened in spite of the fact that the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and the prosecution of the Iraq war were far more deficient and problematic than the H. W. Bush/Clinton Somalia intervention and Clinton’s two Balkan interventions. Democrats also did not really intensify their opposition until it was quite clear that Iraq was going from bad to worse and the promised WMDs that were the main ostensible pretext for the invasion never materialized.

The rancor of the debate in 2002 and 2003 was just a warmup for the 2004 general election campaign between Democratic Senator John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam war veteran who was wounded twice in action, and incumbent President George W. Bush, whose stateside service in the Texas Air National Guard was largely understood as a way to keep him out of having to serve in Vietnam. A group calling itself “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” attacked Kerry on his very Vietnam record, disputing his heroism, his accounts of what happened during his service, and his worthiness of receiving any of the medals he did receive with a bevy of shamefully false and misleading accusations, most notably displayed on prominent television ads and myopic media coverage that damaged Kerry’s candidacy greatly with various segments of the public and maybe was the greatest single factor contributing to his defeat at the hands of Bush that November. Lies, not truth, prevailed in 2004. Some of the impetus behind those attacks on Kerry had to do with the fact that Kerry, then as a recently decorated combat veteran, famously and prominently came out against the Vietnam War just after he had served in it and while that war was still very much ongoing. Even years after the election, Kerry found that he was still having to defend his reputation against those 2004 lies about his service in Vietnam. The attacks were so damaging that the term “swift boat” came to be a phrase commonly used to describe extreme and false political attacks.

This was just another chapter in the right’s attempts to both “own” national security as an issue to the exclusion of Democrats and serving up caricatures of liberals as haters-of-the-military and extremist hippies, caricatures that served as straw-man phantoms and that bore little resemblance to reality. Other recent chapters had been 1992’s and 1996’s attempts by the Republicans to portray Bill Clinton as a raging antiwar pot-smoking draft-dodging hippie unfit to be Commander-in-Chief.

Recently, It’s Just Getting Worse

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

While the rise of Obama occurring hand-in-hand with an increasing, newly dominant anti-war feeling in America meant such fault-lines, concerns, and lines of attack would recede as they became increasingly ineffective (especially after the Obama Administration successfully took out Osama bin Laden; Mitt Romney barely mentioned, or challenged Obama on, foreign policy during the campaign homestretch in 2012), when the Arab Spring really turned for the dramatically worse and ISIS burst into view, Republicans, once again, found effective returns from investing in familiar tactics.

Yes, back were the days of Republicans using national security and foreign policy in hyperpartisan politicized attacks during Obama’s second term. The baseless, repeatedly-proven-to-be-false accusations trying to pin the blame on Hillary Clinton for the Benghazi attacks that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya—including our then-Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens—is perhaps the best example of this shameful disgrace of abuse of the concepts of oversight and political discourse (especially when contrasted with how Democrats responded to the 1983 Beirut and 2001 9/11 attacks, as discussed above). Other great recent examples of Republican weaponization of foreign policy and national security politics include trying to blame Obama for both the rise and success of ISIS, both accusations being quite factually incorrect, as well as pretty much the entire Republican/Trumpian critique on immigration and the despicable demonization of Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s refugee policies (and refugees, for that matter; the previous five links are to my own detailed rebuttals of each criticism). The irony is lost on Republicans, too, as they criticize Obama both for being feckless on Syria but for doing too much on Libya, when criticism of one of those policies begs the very response of the one they are criticizing in the other, take your pick; the same can be said when they try to blame Obama for Ukraine’s crisis, even though Russia’s Putin also invaded and annexed parts of Georgia under W. Bush’s watch. The irony in their criticism is also lost on Republicans because they themselves either have terrible alternative “policies,” if they have any at all, a reality simply augmented terribly by their terrible candidate for the presidency but a reality that is very much the status quo in today’s Republican Party even without Trump.

Conclusion

Linda Davidson/The Washington Post

One thing that is certain is that the trend of Republicans hyperpartisanizing and politicizing national security issues as a party began under Clinton in the 1990s with Somalia, not with 9/11. To a very large extent, national security and foreign policy were bipartisan issues during the Cold War, but that did practice not survive after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Ancient republican (small “R!”) Roman historian Sallust hits the nail right on the head with the hammer describing this dynamic some 2,000 years ago in his Roman Republic:

“…the pattern of routine partisanship and factionalism, and, as a result, of all other vicious practices had arisen in Rome… It was the result of peace and an abundance of those things that mortals consider most important. I say this, because, before the destruction of Carthage, mutual consideration and restraint between the people and the Roman Senate characterized the government. Among the citizens, there was no struggle for glory or domination. Fear of a foreign enemy preserved good political practices. But when that fear was no longer on their minds, self-indulgence and arrogance, attitudes that prosperity loves, took over. As a result the tranquility they had longed for in difficult times proved, when they got it, to be more cruel and bitter than adversity…In this way all political life was torn apart between two parties, and the Republic, which had been our common ground, was mutilated.” ( The Jurgurthine War 41.1-5)

With the U.S., we can simply replace Rome with ourselves and Carthage with the Soviet Union, and that’s pretty much where we are today. While we faced the more-or-less existential threat of the Soviet Union, bipartisanship governed much (though hardly all) of our politics when it came to foreign policy and national security, and American victory in the Cold War was largely the result of decades of bipartisan policy and internal Soviet dynamics, hardly just because of the efforts of one man named Reagan, as many conservatives would have you believe.   Since then, largely because of the Republican Party (at least until the rise of the Bernie Sanders crowd), good practices are very much on the decline, not least of all in terms of how politics and issues of both foreign policy and national security have become toxically mixed, and we can’t blame this on 9/11, for it was a disease already growing in our body politic years before.

Today, there is hardly anybody left in a Republican leadership position who is someone like Bob Dole, who, though often opposing Clinton, put American interests and productive outcomes in foreign affairs ahead of partisanship and political gain, often acting to reign in his unruly Party members. There does not seem to be any new blood among Republicans who are capable of leading and cooperating like Dole, which means this untenable status quo of today is something with which we will be stuck for some time to come.

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Since Trump has never held public office, the best indicator we have of what he would be like as president and how a Trump Administration would perform is this week’s Republican National Convention.  And everyone should be paying attention now because it ain’t pretty.

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse July 21, 2016   

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) July 21st, 2016

Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images

AMMAN — If you can’t admit that what the Republican National Convention being held in Cleveland, Ohio, tells us about Donald Trump and how he would perform as president is not at all reassuring, you’re simply in denial.  From beginning to end, even for some genuinely great and powerful moments, the RNC was a comedy of unforced errors and conflicting chaos.

How to Judge…

If you read me, you know I’m a proud Democrat, but don’t take my word for it as to the Trump campaign’s handling of its convention; a good number of Republican commentators have also echoed what I am about to explain below.

Republicans often make the assumption that business competence translates directly into campaign competence and governance competence.  For now, we will leave the robust, ongoing debate about Donald Trump’s business management competence aside, and simply deal with the premise of the above assumption, regardless of its veracity…

The thing about Donald Trump, as I have noted before, is that he is the only candidate for a major political party in American history who has never held public office (including military experience) with the exception of Wendell Willkie, the businessman who challenged FDR in 1940.  So with Trump, we have no political or government experience to look at to judge him on other than his campaign management, and so far, nothing is more important for his campaign than this week of the Republican National Convention.

Overall, the Convention has been an unprecedented, disorganized mess; the speaker order and schedule is often: counterproductive, illogical, and counterintuitive, with key speeches being delivered late, at off-times, with speakers often speaking to an emptying or unfilled arena.  Furthermore, the Trump campaign’s typical lack of discipline has meant that they have ceded control of the narrative through their own incompetence.

MIA in CLE

More specifically, to begin with, most of the major speakers from the first two nights, including the two senior Republicans in Congress—Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—barely seemed to even want to mention Trump by name, and preferred to talk about the Republican Party in general, attack the Democratic Party, or attack Hillary Clinton specifically.  Only his children and friends among the major highlighted speakers seemed willing to enthusiastically speak at length about Donald Trump (all his kids who spoke, even recent college graduate Tiffany, were admittedly impressive), performances in part echoes at best from an array of B-list celebrities and no-names and others whose appearance on stage was not only questionable in and of itself, but indicated just how hard a time the Trump campaign was having pulling in quality speakers in significant numbers.

In fact, so many prominent Republicans did not attend—including every living Republican president and presidential nominee with the surprising exception of 1996’s Bob Dole—in addition to many sitting senators and congressmen, that the lack of party unity on display even before the convention began was remarkable; many of Trump’s Republican primary rivals also did not attend, including Ohio’s popular governor, John Kasich (more on that in a bit).

Schedule of Screw-Up: Day 1

Work of author

The first day’s advertised theme was “Make America Safe Again,” although “BE AFRAID!  FEAR!! FEAAARRR!!” would have more accurately described a significant portion of the evening, which was at least as much about bashing Hillary Clinton.  The keynote speaker of the evening was Trump’s wife, Melania, who did a good job delivering an impressive speech for her national debut.

The problem with the speech was that the aide most closely helping her craft it, after hearing how much Melania was inspired by Michelle Obama, simply copied almost-word-for-word, position-for-position, multiple sections from Michelle Obama’s 2008 Democratic National Convention speech (the aide’s position in the Trump Organization also raises the possibility that there is some activity going on that is illegal in terms of campaign finance law, which prohibits corporate employees from using those positions to do campaign work, compounding this unforced error).  This is a mind-numbingly stupid move and It truly begs the question: how the hell was someone who would make such a decision so involved in such an important, momentous speech, the most important speech given on the opening night of a presidential candidate’s party’s national convention?

Now, though this is incredibly embarrassing, it was a relatively simple problem to solve: admit what was obvious plagiarism, discipline or even fire the aide, apologize to Michelle Obama, and move on.

Instead of putting out the fire, though, Team Trump poured gasoline onto it, flat-out denying there was any plagiarism (it was obvious there was), with even Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign manager, repeatedly denying it, quibbling that it wasn’t that many words, among other horrible explanations.  Suddenly, denying that obvious plagiarism was actually becoming its own story, with even many Republicans shocked it was not quickly admitted to, and therefore swept under the rug.  The new controversy distracted attention from the GOP’s and Trump’s campaign’s messages from the previous day.  In addition, open displays of disunity on the first day of the campaign also dominated the coverage during the second day, adding further distractions as the convention began its proceedings on day 2.

Day 2

Day 2 was supposed to be “Make America Work Again” day.  This sounds like important stuff, near and dear to the hearts of many economically distressed Americans.  It would be a tragedy for the plagiarism scandal to distract from this important theme…

Except almost no discussion of jobs or the economy ensued, so there was not much to be distracted from.  The second night ended up being a collection of jumbled speeches that were either unfocused, or focused on criticizing Hillary Clinton.  In fact, the only major common thread through the first two days was a spirit of “F&*K HILLARY!” as the below word cloud shows.

FiveThirtyEight

So, rather than have a night focused on a positive message about jobs and the economy, and rather than have that be the discussion as the third day of the convention began, instead, there was no discernible message on the economy, and talk was dominated by a new scandal of the campaign and its senior staff lying/denying when it came to the plagiarism issue.  If this wasn’t bad enough, a new New York Times Magazine report that Kasich was offered the Vice President slot by one of Trump’s sons—apparently even offered the power to run both domestic and foreign policy (denied by the Trump team)—escalated an already existing feud between Trump and Kasich (Kasich was called a “sore loser” at one point).  So you’d think the Trump people would want to put the plagiarism thing behind them, but they continued to double down on lying and denial, until much later that day a statement was released by a relatively-inexperienced-in-speechwriting-aide took responsibility for the plagiarism, in which she wrote that she offered her resignation, which Mr. Trump refused.

Day 3

Still, own goal on Team Trump, which prolonged a story that broke late Monday night that could have been quickly quashed but which lasted until well into Wednesday, causing much anxiety among Republicans for the unnecessary drama created.  And much airtime and inkspace was devoted to this drama, on the third day that was supposed to belong to Mike Pence and his prime-time, extended debut at the end of the convention proceedings for the third night.

That night‘s theme was supposed to be “Make America First Again.” Instead, there was a collection of speeches that discussed so many different topics there was no discernible theme.  One female astronaut spoke about the space program, and then omitted (apparently deliberately) a passage endorsing Trump that had been included in the prepared statement she had provided.  Then we heard from three of Trump’s former rival.  First was Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (the one with the terrible record) who did give Trump a solid endorsement on stage.  Marco Rubio, who really got into it with Trump during the campaign, where Trump kept calling him “Little Marco” and Rubio questioned Trump’s penis size jokingly, came next: he delivered a passionless, tepid, taped address that was sent in that did not directly endorse Trump, and this was embarrassingly delivered in prime time; the audience seemed to barely react to the video.

But following the video, and also during prime-time, second-place-Republican-primary-finisher Sen. Ted Cruz stepped onto the stage.  The fight between him and Trump had gotten very ugly before Cruz finally dropped out, and his prepared text, it was reported, had not endorsed Trump.  Still, a decent minority of the delegates in the arena when he stepped onto the stage were Cruz supporters, and he was warmly received overall.  He gave a speech that skillfully marketed how many Republicans would describe the values of their party, and was interrupted many times for applause (which, sadly, was notably more muted on most things that paid attention to issues of concern to non-white communities). 

His speech went on and on, as Cruz has habit of pausing for dramatic effect over and over throughout his addresses.  As his speech went on, he paused at times where people could be tempted to think he might be about to endorse Trump; but the endorsement didn’t come and the most of the crowd began to grow restless and impatient.  Some in the crowd (possibly with encouragement from Trump campaign staff, who had already previewed Cruz’s speech and knew the prepared text, at least, did not contain an endorsement) started calling on Cruz to endorse Trump; chants of “Trump!” and “Endorse Trump!” echoed and built up from the floor.  Cruz looked at those chanting repeatedly, smiled repeatedly, and kept delivering his speech, with quite the twinkle in his eye; he even seemed to feed off the anxiety and negativity of the crowd, much like a Sith Lord. As he droned on, taking his sweet time, the crowd began to grow even more restless, and boos began to rise from it.  When Cruz told people to vote their conscience—code word for the #NeverTrump movement and other non-Trump supporters, not at all lost on the delegates on the floor and a deliberate provocation on the part of Cruz, whatever lies he has subsequently utters/ed (such a skilled liar is Cruz that he can technically claim he didn’t mean anything by it to the general public)—the booing cascaded into a roar.

John Moore/Getty Images

Cruz kept going and the scene turned ugly, and as the booing got louder and louder (even, apparently, from many pro-Cruz delegates!), Trump left his family box, where he and his family had been watching unamused, and made his way to the floor, when all attention turned to him and people began to cheer Trump while Cruz was delivering the final words of his speech; cameras didn’t even catch Cruz as he scurried off stage.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Such a scene was pretty unprecedented: an actual nominee coming to the floor to steal the show from his main defeated rival as that rival was being booed by the crowd for not endorsing the nominee.  It was all anyone was talking about that night, or even for most of the next day. Furthermore, this might have helped Trump more or less unite the Convention floor behind him, but it might have created a larger split in the Party nationwide.

Oh, and shortly after that, Mike Pence delivered an excellent political speech, demonstrating a surprising ease, affability, and poise for someone who is so reserved and one that got the crowd solidly behind him.  THAT was supposed to be the highlight of the night: Pence’s extended introduction to America. 

But it sure wasn’t after Cruz.

Poor Pence: he got upstaged by Trump during the public event introducing Pence as Trump’s VP selection when Trump rambled for about half an hour and barely said a word about Pence; he got upstaged and interrupted by Trump during their first joint-interview for 60 Minutes; and he got upstaged by Cruz and by Trump again in the sense that his team allowed Cruz to pull his stunt by giving him the time slot & opportunity to speak that day and shortly before Pence’s speech, which started late.

Day 4

Finally, on the final and fourth day, we are supposed to take seriously the notion that one of the most divisive political conventions in American history is somehow going to focus on unifying Americans, that Trump—who has throughout the whole election season has been a Divider in Chief—will somehow magically transition to a Unifier in Chief.  The first two speakers of the night—the official theme of which was dubbed “Make America One Again”—were Jerry Falwell, Jr. who gave a divisive speech much in the vein of his late yet appalling father, whom he quotes as saying that if interviewed by Chelsea Clinton, Hillary’s daughter, he would tell her that the three greatest threats to America were “Osama, Obama, and yo momma.”  He was followed by Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio, famous for making incendiary remarks about immigrants and for implementing racial profiling policies for which his office is being sued in a major class action lawsuit and in which he has been rebuked. 

So right out the of the gate, once again the nominal theme was destroyed and discarded by the speakers, like every other night, so unbelievably miserable were the coordination and organization of this convention.  Yes, Peter Thiel spoke later and movingly spoke for acceptance of the LGBT community, but his view is a minority in the party and his words don’t cancel out so much hate spewed from so many others.

In fact, in general, the level of hate and vitriol directed at Hillary Clinton is something I haven’t seen before at a forum like this.  Yes, downright nasty political speech is as old as America itself, as the musical Hamilton can show any of us.  Still, chants of “LOCK HER UP!”, at least one call to execute her from a floor delegate, and other abuse are a dark turn not seen before in at least my lifetime. Disturbingly, some Israelis say this reminds them of the hate that was directed at Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, shortly before he was assassinated by a right-wing Jewish extremist.

Trump’s impressive, warm, and talented daughter introducing him was a bright spot, and she was eloquent like his other children. 

But we are not voting for her, or her siblings, and in the end, Trump will be judged on Trump, not his wife, not his children.  And Donald Trump is still horrifying, as his speech tonight showed us, which was just a rehash of the same nonsense he constantly spews, just more polished and organized and delivered with more focus, yet still full of fear, misinformation, division, and facile platitudes.

Even on the day Trump accepted his nomination, he/his campaign still managed to be fighting with fellow Republicans and inflicting self-inflicted wounds.  The newest wound?  Two nights ago, he gave an interview to The New York Times that came out today, an interview in which he contradicted some of Mike Pence’s points on foreign policy made just the previous night, in which Trump questions the core principles of the NATO alliance.  Yes, Trump managed to upstage Pence even one more time.

See, the week of a convention, a candidate is supposed to lay low until the last night of it and control the narrative; giving an interview to a major paper without coordinating policy with his VP pick and allowing that paper to inject a major addition to the narrative the day that nominee is supposed accept the nomination and then present his narrative to the whole countryis a violation of basic convention competence. 

All throughout the RNC, the Trump campaign allowed their own actions and mistakes to create a jumble of contradictory narratives.  There is no rational explanation for this, period, let alone an excuse.

Conclusion

This convention by all traditional metrics has been at best a borderline disaster, and a historically bad one, certainly the worst since the late 1960s/early 1970s.

That is not to say that there have not been specific moments of high quality.  So far, all of Trump’s children who spoke were incredibly impressive: poised, sharp, at ease, presenting a practical narrative that avoids the ideological-bent, division, and extremism that is so pervasive in the Party today; we would only be far too fortunate if they represented the future of the Republican Party.  Mike Pence was more impressive and at ease than I expected; and I felt myself personally very moved both by former Gov. Rick Perry’s address and ex-Navy S.E.A.L. Marcus Luttrell’s address, who was introduced by Perry and who veered away from partisanship and attacking people and focused, instead, on service and veterans.

But in general?  We can learn that, outside the business world at least, Trump’s management skills, and those of the people he chooses to surround himself with, are so pitiful as to be a joke.  He is still great at manipulating the media and the mob and bullying opponents, but that is not a way to govern a democracy.

And ALL of this should matter to the voters.  And they SHOULD judge him on it.  But will it matter?  Will they?  That is up to us.  If it doesn’t matter, if we don’t judge, to quote the comedian Lewis Black after he began watching the RNC: “Democracy’s great, but it’s just not working.”

Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse June 26-27, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) June 26-27th, 2016

The Economist

AMMAN — Apart from the many negative and potentially-and-likely disastrous series of effects on England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland—what is now but perhaps not for long known as the United Kingdom—there are far greater things at stake in the wake of the UK’s vote to leave the European Union, popularly termed “Brexit.” 

This vote result—which The Economist termed a “senseless, self-inflicted blow”—occurred even after British Prime Minister David Cameron secured a number of important and unprecedented concessions from the EU; it clearly wasn’t enough for the majority of Britons who voted to leave, 51.9% over the 48.1% of voters who wanted to stay and by a margin of nearly 1,270,000 votes out of over 33,550,000 total cast, or 72% of eligible voters.

The New York Times

Brexit: A Bookend on the Post-WWII Era?

Over three months ago, I wrote how between trends in the EU and Trump’s rise in America, Western democracy was not looking so good.  Now, with the Brexit vote beginning the process of the UK’s severance from the EU, and possibly-and-likely the fracturing of the UK itself to the degree that possibly only England and Wales will remain, 2016 may very well be remembered as the year the post-WWII international system—at least in Europe—began to unravel.  This was a world order based on coming together, and on a political and economic union in Europe supporting a military union that would make the division, strife, conflict and wars that had devastated the continent since ancient Rome’s fall a thing of the past.  After WWII, Western, Northern, and much of Southern Europe eastward through Greece slowly came together over decades; after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the iron curtain, this process of integration proceeded much more rapidly and included much of Eastern Europe.  Since WWII, the trend has been one of coming together.

A few days ago, with the Brexit vote, that trend, which had already been slowing considerably in Europe, seems to have come to an irrevocable, screeching halt, and the gear seems to have been switched to reverse. 

As an American who cares deeply about the international world order, I know that a strengthening European Union that could be a true partner in promoting peace, security, and justice around the world would be most welcome, as the U.S. acting to shoulder most of the burden has not seemed the best, let alone the most sustainable, model.  Recent crises in Syria, Libya, and Ukraine beg questions about what a more unified, determined, and enthusiastic Europe could have achieved, working as a true partner with the U.S., not just a junior one.  As bad experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, and paranoia over immigration and terrorism, drive a mentality of far lower engagement in the collective mind of the U.S. public, the Brexit could not have come at a worse time in recent memory for those looking to see another center of gravity besides the United States emerge to put their money where their mouth is in terms of promoting a just world stability.

The Brexit, then, basically signals to a weary American public to not count on Europe to increase its role on the world stage, or in any way help to shift the global leadership burden away from a United States whose public seems increasingly unwilling to shoulder that responsibility.  This bodes ill for the world’s ability to tackle its greatest collective challenges.

Dark Days for Europe

Beyond the aforementioned, Brexit signals that Europe is now ripe for new divisions and quarrels that could, over time, undo much of the progress made since WWII.  In my piece where I discussed how Western Democracy is on trial, I noted that Russia is actively “poking and prodding” Europe from Europe’s edge, orchestrating war in Ukraine, menacing parts of Eastern Europe, fomenting unrest, and both forming relationships with and funding right-wing extremist parties.  Make no mistake about it, Putin is ecstatic over the Brexit result; anything that weakens European unity and sees the rise of the right plays directly into his hands and there is no doubt that Putin is mightily pleased at the prospect of a weaker and more divided Europe; such divisions provide opportunities for Russian influence and meddling as Putin seeks to peel away parts of Europe into his ideological, economic, political, and perhaps eventually military camps.  We see in Eastern Europe, specifically in Ukraine, the chance of open, armed conflict to occur; Kosovo (which Russia is still very upset about) is also ripe for mischief, as is Northern Ireland currently, especially after the Brexit vote.

Bad Signs for America

In the U.S., this emphatically anti-establishment, populist decision by UK voters has also caused alarm for Hillary Clinton and her supporters and given comfort to Trump (who called the vote to leave “a great thing”) and his supporters in the U.S., even if the result hardly makes a Trump victory in November a foregone conclusion.  If anything, this vote makes even more painfully obvious what should already have been obvious: what we think of as “Trumpism” is a global phenomenon of anti-“Establishment” rage, from the Tea party to the Arab Spring to the Occupy movement, and now to the Brexit vote; there are clearly both liberal and conservative versions of this, exemplified in the U.S. by Bernie Sanders’ “Sandernistas” on the left and the Tea Party/Trump supporters on the right.  The low turnout of youth voters in the Brexit vote—who overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU—should also cause Clinton concern as questions remain as to how young Bernie Sanders supporters will behave come November, when not voting for Clinton will help Trump and youth turnout could become the deciding factor in who sits in the White House’s Oval Office.

Something else that makes me nervous after this vote and which generally hasn’t yet gotten much mainstream scrutiny is what I regard as the very real possibility of secessionist movements arising in the United States to a serious level, with the Brexit vote as a major part of the inspiration; many of the left simply can’t stomach the idea of a Trump presidency, and many on the right feel the same about Hillary Clinton, and I imagine large numbers of people will be receptive to secessionist arguments in certain locations of the country, depending on who wins; even one state in America seriously moving to secede would create an internal national crisis not seen in America since 1860, when secession precipitated the American Civil War(1861-1865).  It may not happen, but I would put the chances of a serious secessionist movement emerging in the very-near-future at it highest since the Civil War.

Sadly, Americans—least of all young Americans—cannot take it for granted that love will trump hate…

A Rotten and Backwards Mentality

Perhaps most disturbingly, the UK leave vote is just the latest in a pervasive Western trend of voters irrationally favoring xenophobia and nationalism to their own personal and national detriment.

As Fareed Zakaria noted on his CNN show this week, “The new politics of our age will not be left vs. right, but open vs. closed.”  The last time the world lurched in the direction a closed mentality favoring nationalism, ethno-centrism, and insulation, the world was propelled into WWII.  It seems the Brexit vote to leave the EU was fueled more by angst over immigration (all part of ethno-centric identity politics) than anything else, just as is the case with the rise of Trump in America; Brexit was a vote to be a less diverse, more closed society.

Not least of all to note among all the issues surrounding the Brexit is that one of its strongest opponents, Member of Parliament and passionate supporter of integration, diversity, justice, and human rights Jo Cox was assassinated in an act of terrorism that targeted her for her beliefs, a killing timed shortly before the vote.  Perhaps the only silver lining in this sorry experience is that she did not live to see her beloved UK vote to make such a regrettable decision, one that would have pained her deeply.

How to Avoid War Amid So Much Hate, Fear, & Division? 

If 2016 truly does mark the end of an era of increasing openness that lasted from 1945-2016 and the beginning of populations saying “No!” to globalization and “No!” to reasonable, measured centrism, the real question we must all start asking ourselves right now is, if, for the time being, a more closed, insular, nationalist, and bigoted world is where we are headed, how will we be able to operate in such a world to avoid the massive levels of armed conflicts those mentalities have always produced in the past? 

The answers are not easy or even apparent, but this question must be central to our politics and our worldview in the post-Brexit world.  I personally hope that, if this is the direction in which humanity is headed, there is a way to avoid large-scale conflict, but I am not sure I can objectively say that I hold this hope with a high level of confidence.  Yes, we can take hope that, whether with Trump in America or the Brexit vote in the UK, the rising generation is clearly choosing openness and diversity over being closed and bigoted (for the time being, anyway); at least in the UK, though, we see that the old and fearful carried the day and have set the course of the UK for time being, and younger voters turned out in significantly lower numbers than older voters.  Will these trends be mirrored in the U.S.?  It appears to be too late to stop Europe’s rightward lurch at the hands of the old and fearful, at least for some time; should the U.S. follow suit, I tremble for the West, democracy, and the world.

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here.

Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse June 12, 2016 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) June 12th, 2016

TEL AVIV — My heart is weary. 

All around me in Jordan, where I have lived for two-and-a-half years, I see the effects of horrific violence that targets people because of who they are.  Jordan itself is incredibly safe, but it increasingly filled with refugees from Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, people often targeted for death by governments or terrorists in the region because they are Christian, or Shiite, or Sunni, or because of some other aspect of their personal identity, joining large numbers Palestinian refugees that have been in Jordan for decades, many of whom were targeted by Jewish and later Israeli forces for displacement because of their identity.  I am writing this piece while I am traveling in Israel, and am currently in Tel Aviv; four Israelis were killed in a terrorist shooting a few days ago because of their identity, and I ate at the restaurant where these people had been killed just yesterday and snapped this picture of a shrine to the victims:

Photo taken by author 

A few years ago, such violence seemed to be mostly contained in a few specific parts of the world, like the Middle East, my current home.  Today, all over my own country of America, all over Europe, even all over the world, this type of violence and hate seem to be on the rise, a violence and hate that targets people based on their identity and that often come from “lone wolf” individuals acting on their own.  This violence joins the stage with the more organized sort of violence and hate committed by states, terrorist organizations, insurgents, and organized crime. Roughly a century ago, anarchists almost quaintly didn’t care who they targeted, so random were their attacks.  Society could sort of just shrug  off such attacks, because people didn’t need to feel that they were targeted because of their race, ethnicity, religion, beliefs; it was easy for such attacks to unite people, rather than divide them. 

The current incidents around the world have the opposite effect.

Donald Trump, the presumptive nominee of one of America’s two major political parties, the Republican Party, says that an American judge of Mexican ancestry should recuse himself because of this ancestry from a legal case involving Trump because Trump is campaigning as being tough on illegal Mexican immigrants; Trump thinks this judge, who grew up in Indiana, cannot be objective because of his ethnic background.  Trump has also said (and later partly walked-back) that banning all Muslims from coming into the U.S. would be a good temporary measure.  Last night in Orlando, we had an attack directed against the LGBT community at a popular gay nightclub, committed by a U.S. citizen who was an ISIS sympathizer; before this, we had ISIS sympathizers carry out an attack in San Bernardino, a white supremacist commit terrorism in Charleston when he killed many African-American worshipers in a historic church, and a spate of police brutality against minorities.

Meanwhile, all over Europe, political parties on the far-right are rising on platforms of hate and division against immigrants and Muslims; Islamist terrorist attacks against Europeans because they are Europeans are on the rise, as is violence on the part of native Europeans directed at helpless immigrants and refugees.

Things may not seem that bad in the West compared to elsewhere in the world, yet, as I have written before, even pop-culture like The Walking Dead and The Leftovers shows us that a society’s decline can occur quite rapidly under certain conditions.  And what frightens me are what I see as clearly increasing trends in America and Europe: an increasing number of individuals who take it upon themselves to carry out violence against others based on their identity, the rise of intolerant identity politics and support of candidates who espouse such beliefs, the vitriol in political discourse.  None of these things will help us combat violence, either at home or abroad.  And while for a long time it was clear the conservatives in America were leading the charge here, the rise and behavior or Bernie Sanders and especially his supporters exhibiting extremist behavior and language combined with the militant rise of extreme political correctness that seeks to drown out dissenting views and focuses on anger mean that Americans now have to be checking themselves from both ends of the political spectrum as the left is seeing the formation of its own version of Tea-Party like activists.

All I can say is that I see the effects here in the Middle East, indirectly in Jordan, and directly in Israel and Palestine, of these trends; hatred and intolerance, and the politics of division, and the willingness of individuals to engage in violence are a recipe for disaster.

Today, I mourn the at least fifty dead in America in its largest mass shooting and the third-largest terrorist attack in at least its modern history, as I have mourned dead Israelis, Palestinians, Syrians, Iraqis, French, Belgians, and others before.  And I fear for the longer-term effects such violence will have on American and European society, relative centers of tolerance and peace in recent years, and now devolving into something moving away from such values.  I fear the reinforcing feedback loops, where violence and intolerant politics feed off of each other, something that is the sad reality here in Israel and Palestine.  I don’t want to see that in America, which has, by far, the most heavily armed civilian population on earth. 

But what I want is not going to carry the day just because I want it to: it is up to each of us as individuals to fight the trends outlined above.  Yet, as I see with too few Israelis, too few Palestinians, and too few others, those who fight these trends are often a minority out of power, and, I fear, may be a minority in America.  I hope with all my heart that I am wrong.  As to whether we will resist or succumb to  cyclical violence and hate, this election will give us a clear answer.

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981)