Kansans in Congress: Here's Why Pat Roberts Is Backing Trump

Test-piloting a feature here at the blog: “Kansans in Congress” — a roundup of coverage at the local, regional, and national level of our state’s congressional delegation. Let me know if you like it, hate it, or if there are sources I need to be eyeballing when I do this roundup.

Pat Roberts advises Donald Trump on farm issues: Donald Trump can’t quite secure the explicit backing of the GOP’s leading figures, but Sen. Pat Roberts has jumped in with both feet — no backhanded nose-holding kinda-endorsement for him: He’s joined Trump’s Agricultural Advisory Committee. How much advising they’ll do remains to be seen, but it’s actually easy to see why Roberts joined up: Farmers might be Trump’s most loyal base of voters: “The latest Farm Futures survey shows that farmers prefer Republican Donald Trump to Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race. Trump led Clinton 73% to 10% in the survey of 1,178 farmers conducted July 18-Aug. 3.” (Editor’s note: !!!!! That would be great for Trump, except it's possible Farm Futures actually surveyed all the farmers in this poll.) [Farm Futures]

I Miss Sidewalks (And I Don't Want to Die Walking to School)

Ok, I'm going to try to make this the last time I gripe about this, but:

I miss sidewalks.

Some of my Lawrence friends have already heard me opine on this topic, but I'm going to put it on the record: Center City Philadelphia was a wonderful place to be a pedestrian — so wonderful, in fact, that we sold our car soon after moving there, realizing it was a bigger pain in the butt to keep a car there (especially price-wise) than it was to have easy access to wheels. Groceries, libraries, parks, schools, and much more were all within an easy 15-minute walk, and every block was bounded on all four sides by sidewalks.

In Lawrence: There is no sidewalk in front of our house.

Scratch that: There is a sidewalk — but we have to cross the street to get to it. Not a big deal, right?

Except for this: School starts on Wednesday. For us, there are two ways to get T's new school — Ninth Street and Yale Road.

Ninth Street has a sidewalk the whole way, though it's also got decent incline. I'll get my morning exercise.

Yale Road has sidewalks in some places — the same blocks where school is. And almost nowhere else, at least not between the school and our house. The Yale Road side is also where students are released after school, so there's going to be a lot of foot and vehicle traffic on that path in the afternoons.

I realize, writing this, I must sound like a cranky old coot. But lordy: Seems to me that residential neighborhoods around schools should be packed with sidewalks, so that there's never a question of whether an elementary school student — or their family — should decide to walk in the street, and thus in the path of traffic.

Eh — I get it. We chose to live on the slightly more suburban, slightly more cul-de-saccy side of town. This is what you get with it. But there are a lot of kids who live in this neighborhood: They're not all being driven to school, are they?

This Woman Worked Hard to Overcome Her Racism. So Why Are We Ridiculing Her?

I'm a bit disturbed by this post at Vox, about a woman whose daughter married a black man — causing the woman to recognize, then work to overcome her racism. The article she then wrote has become the target of ridicule, enough that she's had it removed from the website where it appeared.

Vox:

You can see why this post, which the author almost certainly thought was a message about tolerance, was read differently by people who were irked by the idea that accepting a person of a different race would be a major feat requiring point-by-point instructions and a mandate from God. 

I shudder to think of how she would have treated this person if she hadn’t found a biblical angle that mandated seeing him as human, or if she embraced a different interpretation of scripture.

I mean: This is just liberal snootiness. And I say this as a snooty liberal!

I don't like racism. I hate it. I'm sorry that this woman's racism was so ingrained that it created issues within and for her family. But you know what? I'm really glad she recognized it and took steps to overcome it. For some people, that will require step-by-step instructions and religious motivation.And if she was motivated by her belief in God that racism was wrong ... well, we should probably tell Martin Luther King Jr. he was doing it all wrong.

Don't get me wrong. If I'm black, I'm probably irritated that it takes so much effort to treat me as human.

But still: What's our plan, liberals, to work against racism? To humiliate racists into surrender? Or to actually, genuinely change hearts? What's better for society? What's better for the individuals involved?

Vox is also careful to ridicule this woman for caring that her other, racist family members be treated with respect.

Calling Uncle Fred a bigot because he doesn’t want your daughter in an interracial marriage dehumanizes him and doesn’t help your daughter either. Lovingly bear with others’ fears, concerns, and objections while firmly supporting your daughter and son-in-law. Don’t cut naysayers off if they aren’t undermining the marriage. Pray for them. 

The writer seems to be quite concerned with the potential dehumanization of Uncle Fred and the experience of her daughter, but the impact of the decision on the “African American with dreads” isn’t given any thought at all. It’s a hint that she may still struggle to see him as fully equal to a white person.

Since the original piece was taken down, I can't say if the woman really appears to be more concerned about her racist family than her new son-in-law, and "lovingly bear" could encompass all sorts of responses. Let me suggest that it's possible to be concerned about both, though. And while I hate racism with all my heart and soul, let me say this: Racists are people too. 

That doesn't mean we don't confront racism. And it doesn't mean there aren't times to get angry about it. But if we really want to reduce racism in the world — I don't believe, unfortunately, that it will ever go away — we might try winning of hearts and minds. And we might stop ridiculing the people who are brave enough to acknowledge their own wrongdoing, people who have worked hard to overcome their own racism. Let's make it easy for people to do the right thing.

Back in Lawrence (Or: You Can Go Home Again. Kinda.)

Even as we prepared to return to Lawrence, the place that felt the most like “home” during my adult years, I kept repeating the following to myself:

You can’t go home again. You can’t go home again. You can’t go home again.

Lunch with an old friend.

I’d lived here eight years — most of them encompassing the last, most fun part of my extended bachelorhood — then been gone eight years. I had changed: A child, settled firmly into marriage, my body broken by surgery, my spirit humbled (and saddened) by age and the knowledge that life, my life anyway, is not the series of ever-greater achievements that I once expected it to be.

The town had changed, too. There are new, taller buildings downtown, a sign that this small town is determined to join the ranks of cities. Some old favorite businesses are closed; some new restaurants have popped up. The newspaper where I spent my favorite professional years has been sold and reduced staff. My friends are older; in the intervening years, many of them had become parents, or found new relationships, or simply moved on to other things.

The Lawrence I got so much pleasure and meaning from at the age of 30, I said, would not be the Lawrence I found at age 43. At least not precisely.

And that’s true. When I walk into my old favorite coffee shop, the baristas no longer recognize me and call me by name. I don’t have the energy or time, really, to linger on Mass Street until midnights during the week as I once did — and even if I did, I’m not sure who I’d be spending the time with. And the freshman arriving at KU this fall were … Jesus, 10 years old when I left town to begin with.

Ugh.

But here’s the thing.

When we moved into our house last week, we had 10 friends show up to help unload the pod that held our possessions. It had taken us three days to pack it; they unloaded it in under a half-hour.

I find that many of my old friendships are renewing with an easy familiarity. And I find that I’m excited to finally get to join those old friends in sharing the experience of parenthood.

I feel … home.

It’s not a complete fit, not yet anyway, and who knows if it will be? I don’t want to be the same person I was my first go-round in Lawrence. I don’t want to feel as harried as I did in Philadelphia. I still long for new experiences, to learn new things, to read new books, to feel the joy of life that (frankly) I misplaced somewhere along the way. But I also want to face those things armed with some of the lessons learned these last few years.

One of the lessons: It’s good to have a steady foundation from which to launch your adventures. It’s good to have a home. I’m still not sure if you can go home again. But this feels about as close as I can possibly get.

Topeka Is No Joke

True story: When we realized we were moving back to Kansas, my wife and I briefly considered moving to Topeka.

Really. After eight years in Philadelphia, it seemed like Kansas’ capital city might be a good match for us. It’s more urban, more working class, and less white than the state surrounding it. That’s terrain we’d gotten used to. Lawrence, for all its advantages — a smart, educated population, as well as kick-ass music and arts scenes — can sometimes seem insulated from reality, a mini-Portlandia on the Plains. Topeka seemed like a refreshing dose of reality.

The notion lasted about 24 hours. Our friends are in Lawrence. And that seemed to be what we needed most.

Then, right before we moved back, this happened:

Expressing his displeasure with City Manager Tom Markus' budget recommendations, including cuts to the Lawrence Arts Center and the lack of funding for the proposed East Ninth Street project, Commissioner Matthew Herbert made some comparisons between the Lawrence and Topeka arts communities that were not intended to flatter Topeka. 

The Journal-World's Nikki Wentling quoted Herbert as saying: “Congratulations, we just became Topeka, Kansas. I live in Lawrence because it's not Topeka, Kansas. I don't want my legacy to be that I helped to make Lawrence Topeka.”

Herbert later apologized. But his comments weren’t that unusual. Topekans — and Kansans generally — have long decried Lawrence as “Snob Hill” a place where effete liberals gather to sip chardonnay and, well, you get it. Lawrencians have in turn dismissed Topeka as a cultural wasteland of sorts, a place where it’s easier to get mugged than to get a mug of quality coffee. During my first go-round in Lawrence, I participated in the back-and-forth, a rivalry created by, I dunno, the fact that they’re two of Kansas’s biggest cities and they’re just 20 miles apart.

But I’m going to refrain from being a Topeka basher this time around.

Truth is, I should’ve known better: Before we move, my wife and I would occasionally take day trips to the capital city. We enjoyed the fabulous library there — had cards and everything — as well as the Real America dining spots around town: Bobo’s, Porubsky’s, the Mexican cafe that also doubles as a stop for the bus that comes from Guadalajara.

Everybody needs somebody to shit on, I guess. Pennsylvanians had Philly, which in turn had New Jersey, which in truth is lovelier than outsiders really know. Topeka’s a real place with its own treasures, some of which I enjoy. For better or worse, it’s not so insulated from the real world as other places are. I live in and love Lawrence. But Topeka is no joke.

Why I'm Subscribing to the Lawrence Journal-World

My return to Lawrence, Kansas coincided with an epochal moment in the city’s history: After 125 years of ownership by the Simons family, the Lawrence Journal-World passed to the ownership of Ogden Newspapers, a West Virginia company with newspapers all over this great country.

One consequence of the new ownership: A lot of longtime employees lost their jobs.

None of this is a surprise, exactly. Lawrence hasn’t been immune to the newspaper industry’s overall decline over the last decade; the Simons family decided they couldn’t sustain the cost anymore, and Ogden apparently decided the paper would only be sustainable at a smaller size. Even before the sale, there was less LJW than there used to be, as both the staff and the paper had shrunk in fits and starts over time.

Even though I’m a Journal-World alum, I thought about skipping a subscription when we returned. Used copies of the paper are easy enough to find on coffee shop tables or at libraries in town; I wasn’t sure the cost — $18.25 a month — was worth it. I get the New York Times online for $15 a month, and there’s more there there. What can I say? I'm cheap.

A couple of things happened, though. The second one you’ve probably heard about: John Oliver’s lament for the newspaper industry:

You know what? He’s right! Even in its diminished state, the newspaper industry is at the core of much of the journalism that happens in America. Other media — radio and TV especially, but also a lot of aggregating websites — wouldn’t have much to put on the air if they didn’t get some help from their local newspapers.

He’s also right — though less so — that we’re responsible for keeping the papers alive if we want them. In truth, the problem isn’t really audience: Add online to print readership, and most news organizations have bigger audiences than they’ve ever had. But online advertising hasn’t replaced print advertising as a source of revenue, and it’s not gonna. That does mean that newspapers will be more reliant on payments from readers (and not just monetizing their eyeballs through ads) but they’ll probably also have to find some new ways of generating revenue.

Which brings us back to the Journal-World. I chatted last week with a smart friend of mine who contemplated the paper’s future. “From now on,” he said, “the community’s going to get the paper it supports. Before, it got the paper Dolph (Simons) thought it should have.”

Dolph’s willingness to subsidize the paper beyond its natural revenue limitations probably bred some complacency in the local community over the years; many locals wanted to gripe about his conservative politics and Chamber of Commerce alliances (or the paper’s longtime style of referring to the University of Kansas as “Kansas University”) rather than see the ways he served the city well. Now the blinders must come off.

Which is why I’m going to subscribe to the Journal-World instead of catching it for free wherever I can. The community is only going to get the news organization it supports. So I’m supporting it.

606

I sang 606 this morning.

Funny thing about 606 — something Mennonites know, but you might not — is that 606 isn’t actually even 606 in the hymnal anymore. Oh, it was a long time ago. These days, it’s No. 118. However. Mennonites like their traditions, and even though 606 hasn’t been 606 for ages, it’s still known as 606. The hymnal even makes a concession to this in the index. Next to the song’s title, in parentheses, it helpfully explains that name and location aside, this is the 606 you’re looking for.

This is 606. The doxology.

Now. It’s been a few years since I was officially Christian. I sometimes describe myself as “lapsed Mennonite,” but that’s kind of a half-assed way of maintaining connection to the faith. I’m agnostic, if I’m honest. But in kind of a half-assed way.

But damn, that’s some beautiful hymn singing. The congregation I sang with this morning was just a fraction the size of the one in this video, but they gave it their all. I suspect all it takes is two Mennonites gathered together — four, at most — to get a really rousing rendition of this song going.

So yeah. I went to church this morning, my first Sunday back in Lawrence after eight years away. And yeah, we sang 606. And yeah, I might’ve gotten a little teary-eyed.

And yeah, I suspect there’s a metaphor there for my return to Kansas. I just haven’t figured it out yet. I’m still a touch bewildered about how to define myself now. Long story.

But I found myself in Lawrence once before. Maybe it can happen again.

Don't Tread on Me (Or: Is the Obama Administration Really Trying to Ban the Gadsden Flag?) (No.)

The latest non-Trump scandal du jour among conservatives is the reported effort by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to consider whether the display of a Gadsden Flag in the workplace amounts to racial harassment. It was first reported by Eugene Volokh here. Here's National Review's take on the topic:

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has ruled that displaying the Gadsden Flag in the workplace — the yellow flag with the words Don’t Tread on Me below a coiled rattlesnake — may be punishable racial harassment.  

In case you’re wondering: That’s it. That’s the extent of the offense. There were no racist statements. No slurs. No threatening looks. A dude wore a cap.  

Ah, but: Complainant maintains that the Gadsden Flag is a “historical indicator of white resentment against blacks stemming largely from the Tea Party.” 

As Hillary Clinton would say: Sigh. There is no evidence that the Tea Party as a movement was motivated by racial animus (even some of the “racist” episodes that critics cited never happened). But there is a strong vein of leftwing historical revisionism that says it was so, presumably because that is easier to accept than the possibility that right-leaning voters circa 2009 had legitimate, defensible discontents. And here’s yet another example. So it turns out the complainant’s logic is just the typical, indefensible sort: The Tea Party is racist. The Tea Party uses the Gadsden Flag as a symbol. Therefore, the Gadsden Flag is racist 

And, naturally, the EEOC bought it. 

Naturally, there's both more and less to this story than meets the eye.

Take a look at the prime document, excerpted heavily in Volokh's post, and the story becomes a bit more clear.

• The EEOC acknowledges that the Gadsden Flag isn't necessarily a racist symbol: "After a thorough review of the record, it is clear that the Gadsden Flag originated in the Revolutionary War in a non-racial context. Moreover, it is clear that the flag and its slogan have been used to express various non-racial sentiments, such as when it is used in the modern Tea Party political movement, guns rights activism, patriotic displays, and by the military."

• But there have been times when it has been used in the service of racism: "For example, in June 2014, assailants with connections to white supremacist groups draped the bodies of two murdered police officers with the Gadsden flag during their Las Vegas, Nevada shooting spree. ... Additionally, in 2014, African-American New Haven firefighters complained about the presence of the Gadsden flag in the workplace on the basis that the symbol was racially insensitive."

• So what the EEOC wants to do is ... investigate a little bit more to determine whether the Gadsden Flag's use in this case and context was used as racial harassment: "In light of the ambiguity in the current meaning of this symbol, we find that Complainant’s claim must be investigated to determine the specific context in which C1 displayed the symbol in the workplace. Instead, we are precluding a procedural dismissal that would deprive us of evidence that would illuminate the meaning conveyed by C1’s display of the symbol."

Somehow all of this has become, in conservative circles, "the Obama Administration wants to ban the Gadsden Flag." But what's really happening is: The EEOC is trying to determine if there's evidence that racial harassment occurred in a workplace. That's the EEOC's job. And if the EEOC does find that such harassment has occurred, it seems obvious from its statement that it won't be issuing a blanket ban on the Gadsden Flag. Instead, it'll be punishing a specific employer for allowing the flag to be used to harass.

Here's the EEOC's explainer of what happened in this case. One interesting fact that emerges — never mentioned by Volokh or the many conservative websites that spread the fear — is that the employer in this case is the U.S. Post Office. A public employer, not a private one.

Now, many conservatives may think the EEOC has no right to be adjudicating such workplace disputes, and that it is an affront to freedom by doing so. That's a different argument. The claim the "Obama Administration" is banning Gadsden? Doesn't hold up to even the mildest scrutiny.

Why are evangelicals supporting Trump? (Try abortion.)

Damon Linker muses at The Week:

Why would voters who engage in politics in large part because of their attachment to a social-conservative agenda rally around a blustering, bragging vulgarian who's on his third marriage; who specializes in such un-Christ-like behavior as mocking a reporter with a disability; who favors such policies as rounding up and deporting millions, torturing terrorism suspects, banning the members of specific religions from entering the United States, and striking first with nuclear weapons; and perhaps most pertinent of all, who shows no interest in, knowledge of, or sympathy for the social-conservative agenda?

Linker goes on to list a variety of reasons — ranging from a seemingly misguided belief that Trump has recently accepted Jesus into his heart to (more to the point) a belief that Trump will basically act as a mob enforcer "protecting" their neighborhood. One word Linker surprisingly never uses: Abortion.

Here's Pew: 

About half of white evangelical Protestant voters (52%) say the issue of abortion will be “very important” in deciding who to vote for in the 2016 election, as do 46% of Catholics. By contrast, 37% of religious “nones” and 31% of white mainline Protestants say abortion will factor prominently in their voting decision. But even among white evangelicals and Catholics, more consider issues like the economy, terrorism, foreign policy and immigration to be very important than say the same about abortion.

If anything, I'd say that understates abortion as a factor for evangelical voters. Not all of them are single-issue voters, as the Pew numbers indicate. But my years spent among conservative Christians suggests to me that there are many of them who vote almost exclusively on the abortion issue: There is literally nothing more important to them — indeed, for many, there is literally nothing else important to them.

Now: Donald doesn't seem like a likely candidate for pro-life president. (Indeed, there's reason to believe he's personally benefited from the right to choose.)  But there are a couple of other factors:

• Pro-life voters will never, ever vote for Hillary Clinton. They're not dumb: They see every outside-the-norm thing Donald has done and said in recent months, but they identify her so strongly with advocacy for abortion rights that they see Hillary as the infinitely worse option.

• Donald has hinted he'll defer to conservative sensibilities on appointment to the Supreme Court. That seems iffy, but it gives pro-life voters something to throw the dice on.

For such voters, it boils down to this: A slight chance Donald will aid their fight against abortion is better than zero chance that Hillary will. It's the Pascal's Wager of the election.

The problem with Trump

There are many.

 But after his RNC speech, there are a couple that jump immediately to attention:

 • His use of "I" language. Most presidential candidates — even the most narcissistic — use "we" language, precisely to avoid charges of narcissism and incipient strongmanism. "I alone can fix it" suggests that there aren't any principles that can guide America toward solutions, only the application of Trumpian will. It's very cult-of-personality strongman type stuff. "I am your voice," too, sounds like a way of assuming the people's sovereignty into the Trumpian person.

 This is scary stuff.

 • Too, there's the assumption — the promise — that problems will bend themselves to the Trumpian will. There are no hard problems, no messy and sometimes contradicting ideals. Opposing forces will bow down before him, or be wiped out. Nothing is hard. On Jan. 20, 2017, he promises, the world will go, Wizard of Oz-like, from black-and-white to color, transformed instantly into a Trumpian wonderland of "law and order."

 All politicians overpromise. This is something different. Wariness is recommended.

How National Review spreads the "Obama hates cops" lie

Are Violent Radicals the "Real" Black Lives Matter Movement?

How Republicans helped cause Hillary's email scandal

The relationship between Republicans and Hillary Clinton is akin to that of the one between Captain Ahab and Moby Dick. One has relentlessly pursued the other across the decades, and in the process things have gotten messy. Should Hillary Clinton win the presidency — an outcome much to be hoped for given the other likely possibilities at this point — the hunt will continue.

Republicans have pursued every misstep and unfortunate occurrence by the Clintons as though each and every incident was in and of itself an IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE, a high crime and something almost certainly more than a misdemeanor. Sometimes there was more there than at other times, but it didn't matter: Every bad thing that occurred in proximity to the Clintons became worthy of a years-long Congressional investigation, or inquiries by off-the-reservation independent counsels who exceeded their mandates to find something, anything, that would put a final nail in the coffin. (All of this sprang from a pre-determined conclusion: The Clintons — and Democrats more broadly — had no legitimate place at the head of government and thus could not be tolerated. The same process has been at work during the Obama years, but the President Obama has — perhaps owing to a lifetime of being a black man working his way up through white institutions — been much more circumspect in his behavior, giving critics much less to latch onto.) Time and again, the overreach failed.

The Clintons have helped feed this process over the years through carelessness and occasional inability to stop following their — his, really — own worst impulses. They never seemed to understand that the appearance of a conflict of interest can be just as bad as an actual conflict. The email scandal is easily seen as the result of all this: Hillary knew Republicans would sooner or later come after her email and mine it for scandal because it's what they do; she tried to build a wall around that email and in the process played a bit fast and loose with the law — an attempt to elude her tormentors instead became the latest tool they used against her.

So it's both the case that the Clintons have been overzealously pursued by Republicans and the case that they were dumb enough not to let it force them to cling to the highest standards of appearance and conduct. 

Everybody's guilty and nobody has hands clean. But most of us have been reinforced in either our cynicism or self-righteousness, and at this point, that's probably the best we can hope for.

Charles Kesler's half-baked case for Donald Trump

Charles Kesler is in the Washington Post this morning, making the case for Donald Trump to NeverTrump conservatives. It's a case made with some speculative leaps, some prayers for luck, and a bottom line suggestion that the devil you don't know — Trump — might be better than the devil you do know.

Here's Kesler on Trump's virtues:

Here Trump’s populism, or what Walter Russell Mead calls his Jacksonianism, comes to bear: He trusts the American people, not the special interests or the governing elite.

I'd say we're terribly short of evidence on that front. True, Trump's been pretty down on the special interests and governing elite — but his rhetoric isn't that "the American people are smarter than that." It's "I'm smarter than that." This glorification of self doesn't suggest a trust of Americans does it? It really only means that Trump thinks he's smarter than all the folks who already think they're the smartest people in a given room.

Kesler on the devil you know....

Liberalism’s century-old effort to turn the president into a “leader” who can rise above constitutional constraints such as federalism and the separation of powers might, under certain circumstances, be music to Trump’s populist ears. But what he might be tempted into is what Clinton is committed to on principle, as a self-described progressive. How could a vote for Clinton be defended as a vote for greater constitutional safety, much less integrity?

But where's the evidence a President Trump would acknowledge the restraints of the Constitution or the law? His promise to force the military to torture terror suspects in violation of the law? His attempts to strongarm news organizations into good coverage?  His encouragement of violence against protesters at his rallies? His illegal solicitation of campaign contributions from overseas? There's no indication Trump has any philosophy regarding the Constitution of governance. Yeah: I think it's more than possible that from a conservative standpoint that Hillary Clinton will hew more closely to Constitutional governance than trump.

Kelser also suggests that Trump's critics make two unresolvable charges against him: That he's a buffoon with control issues and that he's also a "monster, a racist, a wily demagogue, a proto-fascist or full-fledged fascist, a tyrant-in-waiting."

The two arguments are in some tension, insofar as the first implies that Trump doesn’t know what he is doing or is not serious about it, and the second that he knows precisely what he is doing and is deadly serious about it.

I don't know. Seems to me the first argument is that Trump is a fool and the second is that Trump might be an evil fool. There's nothing in conflict there, I don't think. History is full of such fellows.

Kesler's best argument is that conservatives shouldn't so lightly dismiss a candidate approved by millions of their fellow Republican voters. Maybe. But that makes popularity its own justification. Unfortunately, that's the best justification for Trump that Kesler offers.

Bag O' Books: James Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time"

I came to this book after reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Between the World and Me", which a number of reviews suggested followed in Baldwin's footsteps. It's true there are similarities — both relatively short, yet incisive, essays on what it's like to live as a black man in America — but there are differences: Baldwin's book is written when (in 1963) it seems like white supremacy in America might be undone; perhaps as a result, it's a more hopeful book than what Coates delivered. Which is an odd thing to say about a book that remains bracing, angry, and uncompromising after all these years.

A few quotes from the book that seem relevant to our current discussions. These are all taken from the second part of the book, ""Down At The Cross — Letter from a Region of My Mind":

Steve Hayward's Wrong About Diversity and "Trump 101"

My friend Steve Hayward is put out with The Chronicle of Higher Education for not including non-white-guy voices in its recent “Trump 101” syllabus:

Where to begin. First, let’s note that Trump has caught on precisely because he speaks to “marginalized groups” that the fashionable, race-obsessed academic left (and much of the GOP establishment—ahem) disdains. So the identity politics set gets a failing grade here for low self-awareness. Second, it is embarrassing but necessary to point out that when inquiring about any subject, any serious list will want to include only the best work that bears on the subject. When Ta Nahesi Coates writes something sensible about Trump, someone will include it on a recommended reading list.

So let’s talk about the “identity politics” involved here.

John Hinderaker Misses White (Electoral) Supremacy, But Thinks It's Dems Who Stir Racial Resentment

This post from John Hinderaker is a doozy, oozing wistfulness for a time when white folks decided how the country was run:

One thing is worth pointing out, however: even in this outlier poll, Trump holds a ten-point lead among white voters, 50%-40% (down from 57%-33% in May!). It is remarkable that even at his low ebb, Trump wins by a near landslide margin among white voters, a majority of the electorate. Not many years ago, that would have assured him of victory.

This is why Democrats stir up racial resentment, he says:

This is why Democrats are so anxious to “fundamentally transform” the United States through mass immigration from Third World countries. Only by building up the minority population do they have a chance to stay competitive. But that still wouldn’t be enough, even if the Democrats got most of the votes cast by minorities, if minorities voted in anything like a normal pattern. In order to win, the Democrats need to roll up ridiculous margins, like the 90%-8% lead that Clinton holds with blacks in the ABC/WaPo poll.

Hinderaker's got a couple of presumptions going here:

• That minority groups are incapable of determining their own best interests and easily suckered by Democrats who are playing them. This is, er, patronizing, let's say. 

• It ignores the role Republicans have played in their own marginalization — they're on the verge of nominating a presidential candidate who regularly demonizes persons of minority races and religions, and who has a personal history of racial nastiness. White people are the only voting group he can appeal to, given that rhetoric. What's more his positions merely echo the nasty stuff that's been said by conservative popularizers like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and the Fox News crew for years. Physician, heal thy own goshdarn self.

Now: Yes, Democrats have their own problems with race. I won't pretend otherwise. But Hinderaker's play-it-both ways game — pining for white (electoral) supremacy and blaming Democrats for exploiting his preferences — doesn't bear scrutiny.

I'm for an assault weapons ban

I believe in the right to self-defense. I believe that that right encompasses, to some extent, the right for individuals to bear arms — even though that's a particular right I personally choose not to exercise it.

By recognizing that right I have, in recent years, focused my solutions to the gun-violence problem around the edges — solutions I thought might be effective in keeping guns out of the wrong hands (convicts, the mentally ill, domestic abusers, and so forth). I've even suggested expanding gun-safety classes. (Yes, I've also argued that guns, far from being the inanimate objects their defenders try to suggest they are, are uniquely efficient tools of death. It's possible to hold both ideas in my head.)

It's meant nothing.

 The latest mass shooting has changed my mind on one part of the issue, though. I now favor an assault weapons ban.

 My conservative friends will be angry with me. Some will say "what do you mean by assault weapons?" They've decided to contest such efforts, essentially, by essentially denying that any such category exists or can even be reasonably defined, mocking the lack of gun knowledge possessed by anti-gun activists.

 But — my conservative friends will object to this — we know assault when we see them. As I say in my latest column with Ben Boychuk: "

 The Orlando attacker used a high-power semi-automatic rifle with a large, easily reloadable magazine. This allowed him to kill or injure a large number of people in a relatively short time. Most people recognize such a gun for what it plainly is: An assault weapon." 

 I'll let the lawyers come up with a more precise definition.

But yeah: An assault weapon makes it easy to fire rounds quickly, and features a large magazine so the shooter can fire many rounds quickly. If guns are uniquely efficient tools of death, then what we commonly understand to be assault weapons exist on a whole other plane. The fair question to this is:

Will it work? The answer: It probably depends on how the law is executed. I don't pretend this is a perfect answer to the gun violence problem. But reducing the number of assault weapons available to the public might begin to reduce the number of mass shootings American experiences. Even that won't be perfect: Dylann Roof, after all, killed nine people in a Charleston church using nothing more than a handgun.

 My conservative friends will suggest I want to infringe on their rights — that I'm on the side of gun grabbers or tyrants or worse. The truth is, though, we have few rights in American life that aren't at least a bit curtailed because of the harms they can create. As a working journalist, I'm a big fan of the First Amendment, but I'm not allowed to libel or slander people without consequence. The American people can judge that some types of weapons create more harm than good, and act accordingly.

 My conservative friends will suggest such a law would be ineffective. They might be right! But it might also be the case that the law does its job, but does it imperfectly. That's the great thing about conservative and libertarian views of governance: Government only has to be imperfect once to validate anti-government beliefs. The rest of us should not let perfect be the enemy of good.

What's more, the Supreme Court has just turned away challenges to state assault weapons bans. It suggests that even the gun-friendly court sees the right to guns as having some limitations.

 Curbing guns is not the only answer to curbing gun violence. But it might well be part of the answer. We should act accordingly.

This is why "empathy" on the Supreme Court is a good thing

A few years back, President Obama earned sneers from conservatives when he said "empathy" is a quality he looks for in making judicial nominations. I thought about that today when reading about Justice Sotomayor's dissent in a police evidence case.

Essentially, the court ruled that evidence can sometimes be used against defendants even if that evidence was gathered by police illegally. Sotomayor was cranky. From TPM:

She was joined in most of her dissent by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who also joined a dissent penned by Justice Elena Kagen). But, in the final portion of Sotomayor's dissent, she said she was "[w]riting only for myself, and drawing on my professional experiences." There, she expounded upon the "severe consequences" the unlawful stops in question have, including being "degrading" and causing "indignity." 

"Although many Americans have been stopped for speeding or jaywalking, few may realize how degrading a stop can be when the officer is looking for more," Sotomayor, the first Latina justice on the Supreme Court, said. "This Court has allowed an officer to stop you for whatever reason he wants—so long as he can point to a pretextual justification after the fact." 

In this case, "empathy" means having a visceral understanding that some people — minorities — are targeted for stops that have "pretextual justification after the fact" more than others. "Empathy" means knowing that outside the ivory-tower domain of an appellate courtroom, the law falls on different people in disproportionate and burdensome ways. "Empathy" seeks, then, to hold the law not just to the letter of the Constitution but the spirit. Justice Sotomayor is an asset to the court.

About those terrorist watch lists

Eliminating One Constitutional Right Does Not Make All the Rest Fair Game | Kevin Drum

"Due process" is the key phrase here: the US government should never be able to revoke fundamental liberties based on mere suspicion. This doesn't necessarily mean that suspects are entitled to a full-on court hearing, but due process does mean something substantive, speedy, and fair.

That's why I'm not comfortable with proposals to use watch lists — as currently constructed — to deprive suspects of gun rights. I think it's wrong that those lists are used to deprive suspects the right to fly.

Understand: I'm not against depriving guns or flight rights to terrorists. But there's got to be a process that's open, understandable, and lets the accused make a legitimate effort at challenging the designation.

Does "domestic gun violence" cause "domestic gun violence?"

When nonsense becomes the party line | Power Line

Surfing past Fox News this morning, I heard someone report on a poll about what caused the massacre in Orlando. Apparently, most Republicans believe it was caused by Islamic extremism, whereas most Democrats believe it was caused by “domestic gun violence.”

But the massacre was domestic gun violence. Democrats might just as well say that murder caused of murders.

I dunno. It occurs to me that it might be more like saying that the flu virus causes the flu. In such case, I guess, you could say "the flu causes the flu" and people would laugh at you, but you wouldn't be wrong.

We have a culture unique in its access to and (I'd say) worship of guns, a founding that depends on righteous violence to achieve, and a political culture that to a large degree believes might makes right. And we have an awful lot of gun violence that, in some cases, leads to copycat gun violence. I'm not so sure that domestic gun violence isn't the cause of domestic gun violence.

Why we debate the Second Amendment the way we don't debate other rights

NRO's Charles CW Cooke:

“It is not acceptable to treat the Second Amendment as if it is a second class or less important right, and it’s not acceptable to deprive individuals of it purely because they are under suspicion… In my view, the way to take someone’s rights is to convict them of something.”

I hear this kind of thing a lot from my conservative friends, but it seems there's a kind of willful naiveté involved here. The reason our discussion of the Second Amendment is different is because the effects are different.

As I've said a million times: The function of a gun is to kill. Other things that a gun is useful for — hunting, self-defense — are a byproduct of its function to kill. That differentiates it from other tools or inanimate objects that can also cause death:

Yes, lots of people die in cars each year, but that's an accidental and unfortunate byproduct of the car's essential function to provide fast transportation — and, incidentally, we've worked successfully to mitigate that accidental byproduct. When a person takes a gun and kills 50 people in a nightclub, the person is defective, but the gun is working precisely as it should. No other civil right has quite the same results.

The First Amendment doesn't result in a Sandy Hook. The Fifth Amendment doesn't create a Columbine. But guns — and a Second Amendment that makes access to guns easy and widespread — often result in death. Lots of it.

 Now: Just because this is true doesn't mean the policy discussion should go one way or another, necessarily. But it's the reason, sensibly, we don't just say "welp, it's a Constitutional right" and shrug our shoulders. Guns are different. The Second Amendment is different. We shouldn't pretend otherwise.

Karl Rove is the reason we can't get along after big terror attacks

For a few years now there's been a fond hearkening back to the so-called "9/12 moment" — a memory of the last time the United States responded to a terror attack with something like unity. Now, whenever there's a man-made disaster, everybody retreats to their usual battle lines and starts throwing grenades.

 David French laments this today at National Review:

I can’t recall a better time to be an enemy of the United States. The message to the jihadist world is clear: Not only is it open season on Americans wherever they live, work, and play, but jihadist attacks will have the added strategic benefit of further dividing a polarized country.

So what happened? My guess: Politics, of course.

The problem with Tom Friedman's "New Republican Party."

Tom Friedman tells thoughtful never-Trump conservatives it's time for them to go form their own party today:

America needs a healthy two-party system. America needs a healthy center-right party to ensure that the Democrats remain a healthy center-left party. America needs a center-right party ready to offer market-based solutions to issues like climate change. America needs a center-right party that will support common-sense gun laws. America needs a center-right party that will support common-sense fiscal policy. America needs a center-right party to support both free trade and aid to workers impacted by it. America needs a center-right party that appreciates how much more complicated foreign policy is today, when you have to manage weak and collapsing nations, not just muscle strong ones. But this Republican Party is none of those things.

Sounds good. Here's the problem: What kind of electoral success would thoughtful conservatism have without its Trumpkian allies? Not much of one.  Damon Linker identifies the problem:

In praise of distracted, Internet-addled writing

In his review of Freewrite's "Smart Typewriter," Ian Bogost offers praise for the pre-Internet era of writing, when one could set one's fingers to the keyboard and simply write, without all the distractions and bells and whistles that a wifi connection bring to the process.

There's more than a hint of protesting too much.

No one would reasonably dispute that writing tools affect the shape and content of both writing and the thought that goes into writing, but it's mistaken to suggest — as Bogost seems to — the the older, slower way was necessarily deeper. Here's an odd passage:

For Nietzsche, the typewriter offered a way to write despite his deteriorating vision (and sanity). He knew that tools changed their users; “Our writing tools are also working on our thoughts,” Nietzsche aphorized. These are facts I happen to know just because they were memorable, not because I remember facts like these regularly anymore. I’ve long since outsourced such easily-rediscovered knowledge to the Internet.

Here's the thing: The human brain is at once both wondrous and limited. In writing this essay 30 or 40 years ago, Bogost might've dropped the exact same knowledge from memory — or, if he (as is often the case with this kind of learning) remembered-ish Nietzsche's comment, he would've gone into the stacks of books (his own, or perhaps a library's) to find the comment, quote it precisely, and cite it. Now, if he's unsure, he can Google it up. Good writing rarely stops and starts with the writer's brain and the writing tools; it's often augmented by reporting and research, knowledge of not just how to marshal facts in service of a story or argument, but how to marshal those facts. Forty years ago, Bogost might've written: "I've outsourced such easily-rediscovered knowledge to the encyclopedia," and it would've sounded silly as a lament. We writers use such tools to enlarge our understanding, and our craft.

Our old arguments don't explain Donald Trump. (Or, why point-counterpoint is in danger.)

Dennis Prager's approach to column-writing is pretty simple: A) Something is bad in the world. B) Democrats are at fault. So goes his explanation for the rise of Donald Trump.

It's tendentious and dumb — as per usual with Prager — but reading it made me consider a possibility: The old right vs. left construct of our debates might be a bad template going forward. It depends on how much Trumpism survives 2016. If this is more than a one-off, then "telling both sides of the story" won't work anymore, nor will point-counterpoint presentations. (I say that as somebody who co-authors a nationally syndicated point-counterpoint column.)  Trumpism has an array of causes, and grafting an explanation for him onto our old debates seems to not quite hit the point. We're going to need new arguments.

Vulture ponders: "Why X-Men: Apocalypse Is Generating So Little Excitement"

Unexplored possibility: We're at peak super-hero, and maybe after two giant comic-based adventure movies in the last six weeks - including one a week ago -  maybe we're about all ka-blammed! out.

Teaching Philly kids to use guns — the right way

Two years ago, trying to find a radical solution to the gun violence problem in Philadelphia, I suggested that maybe it was time to stop clamping down on guns and time to start inculcating a culture of responsible gun ownership and usage. It was kind of a controversial idea. 

While there are plenty of guns circulating in Philadelphia, there are also plenty of guns — per-capita, at least — in my home state of Kansas. Yet there are relatively few gun deaths there: As best I can tell, 9.9 gun deaths per 100,000 residents in Kansas, compared to 24.3 in Philadelphia. (The comparisons aren’t quite exact, but I think the disparity between those two numbers is probably in the neighborhood of correct.) Why? 

One of the reasons, surely, is that cities are simply more violent places: Living cheek by jowl can produce short tempers; short tempers can produce violence. 

But it’s also true that my rural friends have built a culture of gun safety that goes hand-in-hand with the culture of gun ownership. The clearest expression of this: To get a hunter’s license in Kansas, you must complete a 10-hour hunter safety course — heavy, of course, with lessons on how to handle firearms safely and respectfully. Some classes are taught by the NRA, but a hunter safety course was offered in my rural Kansas middle school back in the late 1980s.

Today, Helen Ubinas reports somebody else had the idea, too, and is running with it. Meet Maj Toure:

While gun-control advocates are forever looking for ways to reduce the number of guns in circulation, Toure favors dealing with a gun culture that isn't going anywhere, believing that legal gun ownership and training can reduce crime. In a city where so many people die by guns, I'd love to believe that solution would work. But my guess is that the people who go to the trouble of educating themselves about what it takes to own and handle a gun legally aren't the yahoos creating chaos with guns on the streets. 

"I was 15, walking around with a gun I had no idea how to use and no real respect for," he said. "In hindsight, I wish there would have been somebody to say, hey, this is a firearm, it's not a game. So when I'm seeing other people living out the same scenario, I want to be that adult teaching them properly."

Toure's militance puts Ubinas off a bit — he apparently favors black gun ownership as a deterrence against police brutality. It's worth noting, though, that Second Amendment activists often suggest that private gun ownership is a means of restraining government; Toure is well within NRA norms on that one. And for what it's worth, gun control efforts largely have their roots in white fears of an armed black populace. I'm curious to see what impact Toure's efforts have in Philadelphia. It's a hell of an experiment, at the very least. 

Senate GOP investigates Facebook

If Facebook really has biased its feed results against conservative outlets, that truly sucks. But I wonder if my conservative friends think that warrants government intrusion into the company's affairs, and if so: On what basis?

WaPo: Hillary can win only by deferring to the sensitive egos of short-fingered men

Wonder if Hillary has a sexism problem? Read this morning's column by Danielle Allen in the Washington Post:

Consider her slogan, “Fighting for us.” For many men, this slogan would have to be experienced as emasculating. 

Wait. Really? Are America's men really so easily afflicted with a sense of emasculation?

A woman fighting for them? Rightly or wrongly, the slogan rubs the wrong way in relation to traditional notions of masculinity. 

Apparently so.

Her slogan itself reveals a limited conception of who she seeks to represent. 

This, I don't get. "Us" is a fairly broad and innocuous term. The only way the slogan could be more rhetorically inclusive is if it it was "Fighting for us AND them." But that, uh, would present its own set of challenges.

How does Allen suggest Clinton overcome her problem?

Personally, she should meet his insults with a cheery silence, or a lighthearted deflectionary joke.

Don't want to seem like an angry feminist! This, of course, cedes too much ground to Donald Trump -- he's free to continue his misogyny and the advice is not to counter it and call it out for what it is, but to smile and say something pleasant. It's the same advice women have been getting for years, and it's mostly been offered in order to keep men from feeling uncomfortable in the face of women's frustration with the behavior of bros.

Are conservatives relevant to 2016's politics?

One relief about the rise of Donald Trump is that his alienation from the conservative intellectuals in the Republican Party means he can’t — and probably won’t — gussy up his campaign with any pretense that it’s about restoring limited-government Constitutionalism to American governance. We don’t really know if Trump even has a theory of Constitutional interpretation, but his public statements seem skeptical of the idea that his presidency would be one that could be checked or balanced.

Why is this a relief? Because for all the talk my smart conservative friends have about the Founders, liberty, fiscal rectitude, and a strict-constructionist view of the Constitution, Republicans don’t actually govern that way all that often. George W. Bush was more or less handpicked by the conservative establishment, and defended vociferously by it, but his administration was defined by both mounting deficits (just like Reagan’s!) and its attempts to innovate theories of expanded executive power. (Remember the unitary executive?) Republicans often talk a sort of libertarian talk, but they don’t walk it very often. And there's plenty of evidence that's not really what their voters want from them anyway, except when a Democrat is president. (When a Democrat is elected, they beat their chests, try to make the Democrat conform more fully to their constitutional vision, and promise to do better next time.) This election, at least, they won’t talk it, either.

Here’s the weird news: That means the argument is about to change.

The Long Struggle Against Trumpism

Well, that's it. Donald Trump is your presumptive GOP nominee for president.

I do not think he will win the presidential election — but I don't take  his loss for granted. I'm more worried about a repeat of 1964. Barry Goldwater went down in flames. But his candidacy provided the platform for Ronald Reagan's political career. And the battle of 1964 was won, ultimately, in 1980.

Does Trumpism have that kind of staying power? I suspect yes, but I'm a pessimist. If so, then, we who disagree with Trumpism have to work to defeat him this year — but his spiritual successors in years to come, as well. Will the battle of 2016 be decided in 2032? We should prepare for that possibility.

One way to battle Trumpism: Acknowledge that some of Trumpism's underlying causes have merit. (Not all of them: The anti-Semites and racists are just evil people.) Those of us who have been nattering on about income inequality for years — well, this is a reason why. When people finally get tired of the Way Things Are, they rarely change things in a pretty or pleasing way. Stuff gets broken. And there's no point in complaining about the mess. So maybe it would be better to address some of those issues proactively.

It's probably the work of a lifetime.

Netflix Queue: E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

Three thoughts about E.T., coming up after the trailer....

1. My family watched E.T. tonight — for me, the first full sit-through since I originally saw the movie as a 9-year-old in 1982. Back then, popular movies stuck around in the theaters for a few months; they didn't do all their business the first week or two. So after months of increasing word-of-mouth, my parents took us to see. I remember crying when E.T. died and shouting with joy when the kids took off into the air on their bicycles.

My 7-year-old son didn't get teary-eyed tonight. But the adults did. And when Elliott and ET took the air and sailed "across the moon," my boy did, in fact, shout out with delight. What can I say? It made me happy the movie can still connect, and it made me happy that my blockbuster-blitzed son isn't already jaded.

2. One thing Spielberg does in the movie is create the world as a children's world. Something I'd never noticed before: Except for Dee Wallace, as E.T.'s mother, you never directly see an adult's face for the entire movie until Peter Coyote shows his, three-quarters of the way in, after the family's house has been sealed off and quarantined.

3. Henry Thomas as Elliott: Gives an amazing performance by a child actor, actually. So does Drew Barrymore. They feel real, not like kids acting. Some of that, I'm sure, has to be Spielberg's directing.

Bonus point: Since I obsessively re-watch movies I love, why no return visit to E.T. until now? I'm not sure. I think I was afraid I'd find it overly saccharine as an adult. That didn't turn out to be the case. But it might be also true that I did revisit E.T. obsessively when I was a kid: My uncle owned the movie's novelization — do they still do that? — and I read and re-read that paperback until it literally fell apart. The movie I created in my mind's eye was as rich as what had appeared on screen, and for a long time, it served my purposes.

And yes: For several years, I fantasized about finding my own extra-terrestrial. Never happened.

Netflix Queue: No, Punisher isn't "Daredevil's" most moral character

I actually enjoy Marvel on Netflix better than most of what the company brings to the big screen. So this piece at The Federalist caught my eye:

The Punisher, who murders dozens, if not hundreds, of people in the second season of Netflix’s “Daredevil,” is actually the most moral character on the show. 

Daredevil, who’s willing to break every law and ethical rule on the road to putting villains in useless prisons but unwilling to go any further, willingly participates in a vicious cycle that makes a mockery of justice. Allowing the revolving door of crime to continue ad infinitum is naive at best and immoral at worst. The Punisher realizes this and attempts to end the cycle instead.

Through murder, of course.

Now, we're talking about comic book characters here, so this probably isn't a topic worth dwelling on too long but a counterpoint is needed here. If your viewpoint is that there's good and evil and evil can only be overcome by being destroyed, maybe the writer — Stephen Gutowski — has a point.

But if your moral framework includes the possibility of redemption — of being lost, then found; of making the journey from darkness into light — then the Punisher's ethos has to be reconsidered.

Gutowski all but calls Daredevil a "wimp" in his piece here, and it's true that Matt Murdock's angst in the Netflix show can get a bit overbearing sometimes. But it's interesting that Gutowski never quotes Murdock's defense of his "take them off the streets but let them live" approach:

DD: What about hope? 

P: Oh, f*ck. DD: Come on, Frank... 

P: You wanna talk about Santa Claus? 

DD: You wanna talk about Santa Claus? I live in the real world too, and I've seen it. 

P: Yeah? What have you seen? 

DD: Redemption, Frank. P: Ah, Jesus Christ. 

DD: It's real. And it's possible. The people you murder deserve another chance. 

P: What, to kill again? Rape again? Is that what you want? 

DD: No, Frank. To try again, Frank. (panting) To try.

I'm lapsed in my own faith, but I'm reminded (as I so often am) of John 8:

8 But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2 Early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people were coming to Him; and He sat down and began to teach them. 3 The scribes and the Pharisees *brought a woman caught in adultery, and having set her in the center of the court, 4 they *said to Him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in adultery, in the very act. 5 Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women; what then do You say?” 6 They were saying this, testing Him, so that they might have grounds for accusing Him. But Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground. 7 But when they persisted in asking Him, He straightened up, and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. 9 When they heard it, they began to go out one by one, beginning with the older ones, and He was left alone, and the woman, where she was, in the center of the court. 10 Straightening up, Jesus said to her, “Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?” 11 She said, “No one, [a]Lord.” And Jesus said, “I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more.”]

If Jesus wanted to guarantee the woman sinned no more, of course, he could have stood by and watched as the Pharisees killed her. Instead, he reminded everybody of their own moral failings, and admonished her to do better.

Morality untempered by humility, given the power over life and death, is often twisted into something ugly and, frankly, immoral in and of itself. It's a tension that makes for great storytelling — the Punisher is a great character, and so is Javert, and hell, so is the John Lithgow character in "Footloose." Frank Castle might be "Daredevil's" most interesting character this season, but most moral? Nah. That's too easy.