Trump is a racist. And....

Here is my column from this morning about how Donald Trump is criticizing Critical Race Theory and "The 1619 Project":

It is unlikely Trump has read or personally tried to understand much about CRT or "The 1619 Project," or possesses the capacity to engage with either meaningfully. But he probably understands one important thing. What both those efforts have in common is an effort to understand and address the experience of being Black in America — where slavery and Jim Crow have been the law of the land for all but a few decades — and to do so from a Black perspective.

That is what Trump is against.

After nearly four years of this guy's presidency, it feels insufficient to say "Trump is a racist" over and over again. I mean: It is one of his defining characteristics. But the people who are going to listen to you say it already agree with you. Also, it's easy. But it also seems worth pointing out how that actually works from time to time.

I'm not sure I have the best handle on how to do it. Here is what I wrote this morning:

Black Americans are definite underdogs in the telling of this country's story. So theories and histories that center their perspective get crosswise with the old axiom that "History is written by the winners." Trump, we know, has a rather narrow idea of who constitutes America's winners — and contempt for everybody else as "suckers" and "losers." So it is to be expected that he defines such Black-centric ideas as "un-American," and attempts to put them outside the bounds of debate.

And here is a more straightforward way of saying what I was getting at.

“To say antiracism is anti-American is to say racism is American, which is to say Trump wants white Americans to be racist,” said Ibram X. Kendi, the author of “How to Be an Anti-Racist” and director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research. 

How to address the problems of this era in a true and meaningful way -- rather than just heaping more kindling on the fire -- remains a challenge for me. I'm trying to get there.

The frustrating silence of John Kelly

 I am sorry that the death of John Kelly's son has become a political issue, but I am not sympathetic to this: 

But Mr. Kelly, who served for more than 40 years in the Marines, has told associates that a retired four-star general should not come out against a sitting president in the heat of a political campaign, even though former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, another retired four-star Marine general, publicly criticized Mr. Trump in June for lacking “mature leadership” and trying to divide rather than unite the country.

“He wants to avoid taking a position that might be perceived as political,” said Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a retired four-star Marine Corps general and a close friend of Mr. Kelly, who had not spoken to him since the publication of the Atlantic article. “I also think he takes to heart the commitment to confidentiality in matters related to their interaction with the president.”

I don't buy it.

If Kelly wanted to preserve his neutrality as a former four-star general he shouldn't have taken on the political roles of Secretary of Homeland Security and chief of staff to this president. He chose to enter the realm of politics. His asserting of military neutrality is a bit late, then, and only works to obscure the deficiencies of the president. It's an excuse -- one that serves Trump, not the American people.

Performative patriotism

A follow-up thought on the controversy over whether Donald Trump disrespected troops: It is clear that some people genuinely love their country and admire military service as a result. But it is also obvious that a lot of people are more interested in using patriotism (and a related respect for the military) as a means to their own empowerment. 

Trump's also likes feeling like a tough guy: That's why he loves military parades and pardoning war criminals. But the key thing to note about him is that he is almost entirely transactional. From that Atlantic piece:

“He can’t fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself,” one of Kelly’s friends, a retired four-star general, told me. “He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There’s no money in serving the nation.”

We should view Trump's displays of militiaphilia in the same terms we do his relationship with evangelicals: He'd probably toss them under the bus in a second if doing so were to his advantage. Patriotism isn't always the refugee of the scoundrel -- sometimes it's the cudgel used by power-hungry grifters.

About that Trump disrespecting military service and John McCain story...

This is very simple. Somebody needs to ask John Kelly, on the record, if it happened or not. Or Kelly can step forward to deny it of his own volition. If he does so, we move on and The Atlantic loses its credibility. But I feel confident the reporting will hold up -- it's certainly in keeping with what Trump has said and done publicly and on the record.

That said, I can't help but feel somebody like Tucker Carlson is watching and taking notes for 2024. You can get away with mishandling the pandemic, racist policies, undermining America's democratic norms and generally being unpleasant and bad for the country -- and that might be Carlson's agenda, too. But he'll be too smart to ever badmouth the military. Trumpism with a little bit of self-restraint and self-discipline will be a terrible and terrifying thing for the country. The original is bad enough.

What we're talking about when we talk about Trump

He's a liar. He lies to get his way. He lies to get stuff. He lies to make himself look good. He lies for the sheer hell of it.

Which makes a story like this about how Trump "sows distrust" while saying things "with no evidence" a bit aggravating. It's circling the thing without saying the thing. And I'm tired of White House quotes like this.

“The American people know they never have to wonder what the president is thinking or how he feels about a particular topic, which is one of the many reasons why they chose to elect him over the same old recycled politicians who just use the poll-tested talking points,’’ Mr. Deere said.

Which is, of course, bullshit. The question isn't whether we know how Donald Trump feels. He won't ever let us get away with not knowing. The question is whether there is truth to what he says. And there isn't.

The president wants to cut funding to "anarchist" cities

NYPost: President Trump is ordering the federal government to begin the process of defunding New York City and three other cities where officials allowed “lawless” protests and cut police budgets amid rising violent crime, The Post can exclusively reveal. “My Administration will not allow Federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones,” Trump says in the memo, which twice mentions New York Mayor Bill de Blasio by name.

Of course, depriving these cities of federal funds will almost certainly exacerbate whatever problems they currently have -- but it seems pretty obvious that Trump isn't interested in solving problems as he is in posturing before his base and punishing his perceived enemies. This is an old observation, but: This is a president who has little interest in governing the entire United States for the entire United States. And we see this isn't just a rhetorical ploy on his part -- he wants to deliver real pain to the places that don't vote for him. (And if that pain suppresses voter turnout in November, I'm sure that's just a coincidence.)

"Criminals only understand strength!" Trump tweeted on Wednesday. I guess he'd know.

President Trump wants to know: Are you ready for some football?

 

Millions of Americans face potential eviction. Businesses are failing. The COVID-19 death rate is now north of 180,000 souls. Racial unrest is percolating across the land. And this is President Trump's priority:

Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren had a telephone call with President Donald Trump on Tuesday, after a White House representative reached out about having discussions concerning how the conference can return to playing college football as soon as possible.

"I think it was very productive about getting [the] Big Ten playing again and immediately," Trump said. "Let's see what happens. He's a great guy. It's a great conference, tremendous teams. We're pushing very hard. ... I think they want to play, and the fans want to see it, and the players have a lot at stake, including possibly playing in the NFL. You have a lot of great players in that conference.

How very small of him. How very bread and circuses of him.

I am trying to figure out how to talk to my pro-life friends about Trump

 

A common refrain at this week's Republican National Convention was that Donald Trump "is the most pro-life president we've ever had." No matter where you stand on the topic, I think there's a fair case to be made that's the truth. He has appointed judges who emboldened state legislatures to take a fresh run at knocking down Roe v. Wade. The right to abortion may never be entirely stricken from precedent, given how Chief Justice John Roberts likes to operate, but it seems likely to be greatly narrowed into near-oblivion over the next few years. We'll see.

I grew up in small town Kansas. I attended an evangelical Mennonite Brethren college. A number of people I care about -- and love -- are passionately anti-abortion. This makes things uneasy between us: I don't much love abortion and I think the decision carries moral weight, but I think there are substantial issues of women's freedom and autonomy involved. So I end up on the pro-choice side of the ledger. But I respect why my pro-life friends feel the way they do.

This fall, I suspect many or most of them will be voting for Trump.

I think this is a tremendous mistake. Trump's indifference to life beyond the womb is well-documented by now -- his willingness to separate migrant families at the border, his eagerness to downplay COVID-19 testing that could save lives and prevent outbreaks because he thinks the numbers make him look bad, his gleeful defense and pardon of war criminals. Given his history of infidelity and promiscuity, I feel pretty sure his pro-life position is transactional.

Some of my pro-life friends are aware of this. One told me, a couple of years ago, that he knew Donald Trump was a bad person -- "but I also think maybe I should thank him, you know?"

There is no way this friend will ever vote for Joe Biden. I don't think I could ever persuade him too. If you think abortion is murder, how could you ever vote for a candidate or party that supports keeping it legal?

And yet: I am convinced that four more years of Donald Trump will be disastrous. That democracy will be grievously injured and that Americans, particularly minority Americans, will suffer. I'm honestly not sure that's avoidable at this point, anyway, but it feels more certain to me if we have a president who -- it seems obvious to me -- is intent on sowing division for his own advantage over one who might actually cares about things beside himself.

So I want to make the case to my pro-life friends that they should not vote for Trump.

But I am not sure that I can, or that the outcome is possible. They see the same country, the same man, that we do. They will vote for him anyway, because the thing that matters most to them is saving unborn lives. I get that. But I am worried for all of us who are already here. I feel like I share at least 90 percent of my morality with my pro-life friends. But that last few percentage points, whew. Their morality tells them to vote for Trump. Mine tells me to do anything but. I am not sure there is a meeting place between those two points.

The fundamental strategic assumption of the Trump campaign is that you, the voter, are stupid

 So:

Of course, millions more jobs were lost before those three months started. And employers hiring back workers isn't exactly job creation so much as it is job recovery -- a process that still has a long way to go.

But honestly, this isn't even a lie, really, because it's so obvious and stupid. I'm not sure why the Trump Administration can't admit that there are big challenges facing the country when there are obviously big challenges facing the country. They're hoping you're too stupid to notice, I guess.

John Yoo defends the presidency, not the Constitution

John Yoo, the lawyer best known for authorizing war crimes during the Bush Administration, has a piece up at National Review purporting to explain that "Trump has become a stouter defender of our original governing document than his critics."

Let's take a look. He starts with some stuff about how Democrats are the real abusers of the Constitution, before mounting his defense of Trump as (possibly accidental) defender of the realm:

But Trump’s defense of the constitutional order has gone beyond simply blocking bad ideas. His battle for the Constitution took three basic forms. First, and most importantly, he fought off Robert Mueller’s special-counsel investigation and impeachment. Both challenged the president’s authority to govern the executive branch and to fulfill his constitutional duty to enforce the law.

This treats the investigation and impeachment of Trump as though they were merely challenges to his authority, instead of legitimate inquiries into corruption to acquire power and abusing that power to keep it. It's a false distinction. Congress challenges the authority of presidents all the time. It is rare that those challenges rise to the level of special counsel investigations or impeachment. Yoo seems to conceds the legitimacy of the inquiries in the very next paragraph.

Trump didn’t win acquittal based on innocence, however, but because the Constitution gave him a built-in advantage.

That's ... not a great defense of the Constitution, is it?

With 53 Republicans holding the Senate majority, the House had to persuade 20 Republicans to vote to convict. They convinced only one, Senator Mitt Romney (R., Utah). The Founders didn’t impose the two-thirds vote requirement in the Senate to protect Trump. They did it to defend the institution of the presidency. The Framers rejected a parliamentary system in which Congress selects a prime minister who both leads the legislative majority and heads the executive branch. Their great experiment with a separation of powers required a presidency independently chosen by the people and vested with its own unique powers and responsibilities.

This is a great spot to note that Trump wasn't chosen by the people. Won the right states to win the Electoral College, but Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. Common use of "the people" would generally suggest that the vote loser is not the person who represents them.

The Framers feared that impeachment and removal by simple majority vote would render the president dependent on Congress, and thus deprive it of the energy, speed, and decisiveness needed for good government. The two-thirds vote requirement ensured that Democrats could not remove Trump due to partisanship, or even policy disputes. The Constitution became Trump’s great shield, and in winning the impeachment battle, Trump repaid the favor by reinforcing the independence of the executive.

Again, this fogs the actual issues. Democrats didn't try to remove Trump because of "policy disputes," but because he used the power of his office to try to solicit foreign interference in the election. The Constitution didn't shield the executive's ability to act with energy in this case -- it shielded corruption. Yoo's argument here depends on conflating legitimate authority with abuse of power.

Second, Trump defended traditional executive primacy in foreign affairs and war. Trump has used his executive control over foreign affairs to achieve what may prove to be his most lasting effect on American policy — shifting America’s strategic focus onto China and away from the Middle East. He has used power given to him by Congress to ratchet up economic sanctions on Beijing, and exercised his constitutional powers to terminate arms-control agreements that restrained the U.S. but not China. 

It's important to note the arms control agreements that Trump terminated were with Russia, not China. The result is that China is still not restrained -- and, now, neither are the U.S. and Russia. But that's not really a question of his Constitutional prerogatives, but of his wisdom. (Maybe it should be: I'm not really sure why the Constitution requires a president to get Senate approval for a treaty, but presidents are seemingly free to withdraw from treaties without any kind of Congressional backing. Treaties are, Constitutionally speaking, the law of the land. Presidents generally don't get to repeal laws willy-nilly.)

Trump used his power as commander-in-chief to contain Tehran, as in the drone killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani...

That was an act of war against Iran. Congress has the power to declare war. Trump didn't even notify Congressional leaders ahead of time. Lauding this use of "his power as commander-in-chief" is to suggest Congress has no real role in warmaking or foreign policy. That's not what the Constitution says.

...while reducing U.S. troop levels in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Congressional opponents sought to block Trump by narrowing his war powers and control over foreign affairs, but so far with little result. While Congress may seek to advance different policies through spending or legislation, the Constitution designed the executive branch specifically so that it could quickly and effectively protect national security and pursue our interests abroad.

Again: The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. In reality, it has mostly ceded that responsibility to the president in recent decades, but that reality doesn't make it any less Constitutionally suspect.

Third, Trump appointed a Supreme Court that could return the Constitution to its original understanding on questions ranging from federalism to individual liberties. He nominated Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, conservative judges with eminent qualifications, to the Supreme Court, and has filled more than a quarter of the lower courts with young, bright, conservative intellects. Liberals rightly worry that these appointments augur a sea change in constitutional law that could threaten the vast administrative state, the creeping control of Washington, D.C., over everyday life, and even Roe v. Wade’s protections for abortion. Progressives responded by attacking the Supreme Court. During the Democratic presidential primaries, senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris and Mayor Pete Buttigieg, among others, called for expanding the Supreme Court from nine to 15 justices so that the next Democratic president could pack it with liberals. 

I'm no fan of court-packing. But changing the number of justices wouldn't be against the Constitution: "The Constitution does not stipulate the number of Supreme Court Justices; the number is set instead by Congress. There have been as few as six, but since 1869 there have been nine Justices, including one Chief Justice." It has happened before. It might happen again. 

Democrats have attacked the personal records of judicial nominees and have even threatened to impeach Kavanaugh for sexual-harassment claims that the Senate fully aired during his confirmation. 

No they didn't.

All of these attacks leave Trump in the position of defending the Supreme Court and the institution of judicial independence.

This seems pretty clearly to be BS. Trump is no more interested in "judicial independence" than he is in the Bible he held aloft at Lafayette Square. As Noah Feldman notes:

In nearly four years in office, President Donald Trump has challenged the independence of the judicial branch more than any other president. He’s accused judges of being “Obama judges” or “Mexican judges.” When he’s been investigated for corruption or obstruction of justice, he’s routinely portrayed himself as above the law. He’s directed his administration to issue a spate of unlawful executive orders. With the November election looming, it’s a good time to ask: Can the legitimacy of the federal judiciary survive another four years of this president?

Yoo's notion that Trump is a defender of the Constitution requires believing two things: A) Trump is honest. B) That Congress doesn't have Constitutional prerogatives of its own worth defending. As ever, John Yoo is defending the presidency, not the Constition. As ever, he is doing it to dangerous ends.

Why Axios got a good Trump interview and cable news (mostly) can't

A lot of talk this morning about President Trump's disastrous interview with Axios' Jonathan Swan. Here is one piece of feedback I found intriguing.

I think Laswell put her finger on why you don't see these kind of interviews* with Trump more often, despite the fact the president does a fair number of TV interviews: It's hard to watch. 

I don't enjoy watching combative TV interviews -- would rather read a transcript afterwards. For all the shouting of my opinion that I do, I'm not big on real life interpersonal conflict. So perhaps I'm projecting here, but I suspect a lot of people feel the same way. (A lot of other people clearly don't, for what it's worth.)

Why does this matter to the Trump situation? Because -- as always -- TV news tends to be more about TV than news. Ariana Pekary, who just quit her job at MSNBC, explains this: 

It’s possible that I’m more sensitive to the editorial process due to my background in public radio, where no decision I ever witnessed was predicated on how a topic or guest would “rate.” The longer I was at MSNBC, the more I saw such choices — it’s practically baked in to the editorial process – and those decisions affect news content every day. Likewise, it’s taboo to discuss how the ratings scheme distorts content, or it’s simply taken for granted, because everyone in the commercial broadcast news industry is doing the exact same thing.

Cable news decisions are driven as much by what executives think audiences will watch as what is actually news. And this gets us back to why Trump doesn't often face challenging TV questions: Executives want to make you feel a lot of extreme emotions that will keep you tuned to their channel -- but they don't want to be hard to watch.  

Chris Wallace has proven a recent exception. And it's true that Trump very frequently gives his interviews to friendly outlets. But I don't think it's a coincidence that Swan is largely a "print" journalist. (These distinctions are blurrier in the digital age.) Print journalists aren't above clickability considerations these days, obviously, but I think there's a stronger culture of "getting the news" in print than in TV -- where, again, the point is to put on a show. 

* One-on-one interviews are a different setting than briefings, where every reporter may only get one question and possibly not a follow-up.

Is Trump burning everything down?

Back in 1991, as the Iraqis were being routed from Kuwait by US and coalition forces, they set fires to a number of oil wells along the way. There was not strategic purpose to that action, as far as I can tell. It was simply a churlish and cruel decision that signaled: "If Saddam can't have this, nobody can."

Which brings me, naturally, to Donald Trump.

Big story in the NYT this morning asks: "Does Trump Want to Save His Economy?" It tries to explain the seemingly inexplicable -- while this president is dithering on getting a new economic package passed for Americans who have lost their jobs and face losing their homes because of the pandemic.

Lobbyists, economists and members of Congress say they are baffled by Mr. Trump’s shifting approach and apparent lack of urgency to nail down another rescue package that he can sign into law.

The president’s strategy to help the economy “is hard to decipher,” said Michael R. Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who has urged Congress to provide more aid to people, businesses and hard-hit state and local governments. “It seems to me there isn’t a clear strategy to support the economy right now coming from the White House.”

Perhaps -- as this story suggests -- Trump is just engaging in another round of magical thinking, believing that if he speaks a recovery into existence without doing the hard work of actually making a recovery happen. Donald isn't big into hard work, after all.

But what if Trump -- dispirited by polls that show him losing badly to Joe Biden -- has simply decided to burn things down?

There is one rule we can be certain of with this president: He does not do anything for the greater good, only for his own benefit. He is entirely transactional, and only in the most material sense -- he doesn't seem to have a sense of enlightened self-interest. It's why he can't see the harm done by accepting and soliciting assistance from foreign countries, for example. It's why -- as Vanity Fair reported yesterday -- administration officials were happy to let the coronavirus rage as long as it was contained to blue states. 

Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.

So it's not unreasonable, I think, to speculate that Trump has forseen he may soon no longer derive benefits from being president. In that scenario, he might decide -- or instinctively move -- to use his remaining power and platform to set fire to American institutions. He's not the kid who takes the ball and goes home. Worse. He's the kid who takes your ball and chucks it into the river.

If you contemplate the "burn it all down" strategy, it becomes easier to understand why Trump seems uninterested in the economy, or why he continually tries to undermine confidence in elections, or why -- even now -- he does so little to combat the pandemic. He never had much interest in the governing part of being president, anyway, as far as I can tell. 

This might not be a correct take on the president's behavior. But again: He does so little for the good of the country. But I think we start with the idea that his behavior is selfish, and seek explanations from there.

The challenge of writing about politics in the Age of Trump

I recently took a look back at my last few columns for THE WEEK and saw a pattern:

Now: I stand by each of those columns. But it felt like maybe I was getting into a rut. And within my capabilities, I greatly desire not to be a hack. So I tried to get out of it by reframing the questions I was looking at. Yes, Trump Sucks. But that's a given. What else is there to say about the issues that face us? Why not de-center the president?

So when I the federal government started kidnapping protesters and throwing them in unmarked cars in Portland, I tried to take a different look at the issue. And I came up with this:

Which I also stand by. But looking at it two days later, with the Trump Administration expanding its Portland efforts to other cities, I wonder if that was too small-bore. Maybe the real story here is Trump Sucking, Again and More.

Trying to find the balance is difficult. The problems we face are bigger than Trump, and have roots that precede him -- at least in many cases. But Trump is also the catalyst for elevating those problems to crisis level. He is the elephant in the room of almost any political topic I'll write about, whether I write about him or not. Focus on the Big Picture and maybe you miss something important about the now. Focus on the immediate threat, and maybe you lose something important about the Big Picture. I honestly don't know what the answer to this is -- at least in terms of writing stuff that both informs and advances the conversation we collectively have about our politics. I guess I'll keep trying as long as they let me.

The Trumpist trolling of The Lincoln Project

I've been arguing for awhile that if Trumpism is understood not just as ideology but as a particular style -- trolling, for lack of a better word -- than the NeverTrump Republicans who make up The Lincoln Project are fighting Trump with Trumpism.

At Vox, Jane Coaston more or less confirms this theory:

One tweet describes President Trump’s campaign as a “criminal enterprise.” An ad — with the hashtag #TrumpIsNotWell — shows the president struggling to walk down a ramp, and another mocks the size of the crowd at Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, saying, “You’ve probably heard this before, but it was smaller than we expected.”

They’re all from a political action group called the Lincoln Project, and according to co-founder Reed Galen, they’re meant for one specific audience: Trump himself.

“We have what we call ‘an audience of one’ strategy, which is clearly aimed at the president,” Galen told me.

So: Trolling.

As Coaston notes: "Some observers have argued that the campaign operatives responsible for the Lincoln Project are, through their deep ties to the pre-Trump GOP, indirectly responsible for his rise. Lincoln Project board members helped George H.W. Bush win office in 1988 and George W. Bush win reelection in 2004, as well as down-ballot races where their ads often featured the same kind of fearmongering they now appear to abhor."

More than that, some TLP folks -- and their allies -- cultivated a conservative culture of trolling long before that word became Internet currency. They're the ones who encouraged (and benefited from) the rise of figures like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter as "thought leaders" for the conservative base. Those figures, in turn, were foundational to Trump's rise.

Lots of liberals like to share TLP ads on Twitter when they come out, and it's easy to get gleeful at their audaciousness. But if Trumpism is both the result of and cause of a vulgarizing political scene that is, ultimately, bad for Democracy, then what might feel good -- and maybe even be effective, in the short run -- might ultimately be destructive. 

KellyAnne Conway's family - and ours

If you're reasonably informed, you probably know about the Conway family. Kellyanne is a top advisor to President Trump. Her husband, George, is a Washington lawyer who has emerged as one of the president's vociferous critics. There has been a lot of speculation about their marriage, and I've tried to refrain from spending much energy or many words on the whole topic because, frankly, marriages are weird and the accommodations we make inside a marriage might be incomprehensible outside it. Plus, the soap opera aspect of it 

Their daughter, a teenager, has now joined Twitter -- and joined the fray, as another very harsh critic of Trump. She's gathered a lot of fans along the way, and said (or implied) terrible things to or about both her parents. I'm not going to link to it. If you have to find it, you have to find it.

A lot of people are rooting the whole ugly mess on. I think we should be mourning what's happening to the family. But a lot of people don't.

Maybe it's just Twitter. It's probably just Twitter. The site, as any number of observers have suggested, is filled with "vice signaling." Maybe real people are better than this. I haven't actually seen many real people lately, so it's hard to know.

We need to figure out what are politics are for. Is it just about getting ours and (bleep) everybody else? Or is it to work together, however imperfectly, to try and make the places we live better than they would be if we all just went our own ways?

I prefer the second option. 

The history of humanity is full of stories about how a righteous pursuit can shade into self-righteousness and eventually into bloody zealotry. We're not at the last stage, at least not yet. But a whole lot of us have decided we don't need to be humane to people we think are wrong -- or even to people who are demonstrably wrong. Cruel schadenfreude has become, to a remarkable degree, our national default.

This isn't to say that we can't or won't or shouldn't disagree, or that there aren't some people who deserve upbraiding for self-interested or bigoted beliefs and acts. But I don't think a lack of righteous outrage is our problem right now. We need to bring more humanity to our debates, more treating other people like they are humans with moral worth and real, complex, sometimes noble and sometimes misguided motivations -- because they are. 

Even Kellyanne Conway. Even George Conway, if you think he's the asshole in all of this. 

The 'stock villainy' of Trumpist voters

These tweets from Michael Brendan Dougherty bothered me overnight:

A few thoughts:

First, I had some good - even deep - relationships with a few semi-prominent conservatives before Donald Trump appeared on the scene. Those relationships have been wrecked, for the most part. And guess what? As much as I despair for what is happening in this country, for what he has done to it and how he has been enabled by those former friends, I also deeply grieve the loss of those friendships. I'm not certain if they can be put back together, or if they should, but I have lost something.

Dougherty's phrase "stock villainy" keeps coming back to me. The phrase implies seeing people in one dimension instead of the three. Few people are only good or only bad, and seeing them that way reduces them, dishonestly. And yet: Donald Trump is the closest thing to a stock villain I have encountered in public life. I cannot discern a redeeming quality in the man. I despised George W. Bush -- but hey, at least he gave the world PEPFAR, and he struck me as somebody who might've been a decent person had he not been given the power of the presidency. I can't even give that much credit to Trump. I can only see one dimension in him. I can see only bad. Sometimes I think that's a failing on my part. I'm certain that it is a failure on his.

So what does Trump's stock villainy say about the people who put him in power?

As Dougherty suggested, there's a strong impulse on the left to just lump them all in together as undifferentiated bad, to write them all off. I get that. But I don't think it's true.

Humans are flawed. Humans are selfish. Humans make mistakes. Humans are dumb! Humans often see the razzle dazzle and miss the conman stealing their wallets. And humans sometimes have bad priorities alongside their good priorities. Only occasionally are humans outright evil. Even more rarely, I think, are humans outright good.

We see Republicans through the lens of Trump, and thus impute his stock villainy to them. They should see what we see and act accordingly, right? But many of his supporters are more complicated than that. It doesn't mean they're right to support him. It doesn't mean we shouldn't upbraid them for their support of the man. But it does mean maybe we should approach the enterprise with just a touch more humility than we usually bring to our politics.

We who aren't Trump supporters are more complicated than that, after all. I've said this repeatedly over the years: We are tremendous at spotting the speck in our brother's eye while ignoring the log in our own. 

Where am I going with this? I don't know. If you've bailed out, I understand. I think Trump is a stock villain. I don't think his supporters are, or at least not many of them. We've decided that we can no longer try to tell the difference, or live with the differences. That, too, is profoundly human. But we're going to be stuck in this awful spiral of recrimination if we can't step back, just a little bit. I can defend my values and acknowledge the humanity of Trump voters. Indeed, my values demand that I do so.

The pure narcissism of Donald Trump

I know we know this, but still...

...it is remarkable the degree to which this president thinks everything is about him. I don't wear a mask when I go out because I don't like Trump. I do it to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in my community. And the Supreme Court didn't rule against Trump on DACA because of Trump, but because his administration bypassed the legal process for overturning DACA. To the extent that the latter ruling came about because Donald Trump doesn't like to bother doing things the right way, I suppose it is about him. But only indirectly. He could still be Donald Trump, and the court would've ruled in his favor if his administration just had its shit together. He's too narcissistic to understand that.

Trumpist Christianity isn't Christianity

McKay Coppins writes about President Trump's photo op at the church:

As I’ve written before, most white conservative Christians don’t want piety from this president; they want power. In Trump, they see a champion who will restore them to their rightful place at the center of American life, while using his terrible swift sword to punish their enemies.

If you believe in Christianity, you believe in a God who sent his son not to overpower his enemies, but to die at their hands. It is really that simple. And that is the opposite approach of Christians who seek to dominate their neighbors rather than love them.

Trumpist Christians aren't Christians, at least not in a religious sense. Sure, they may attend church. But mostly, they're another tribe -- a tribe that wants little more than what other tribes want. Power. Profane power.

It will not lead to salvation.

The president's "dominance" ideology

The president is talking a lot about "dominance" today.

It would be one thing if he was talking about "restoring order" in the wake of protests that have -- to some extent -- morphed into violence. (Some of it is real rebellion, some of it is simple looting, and some of it instigators trying to create disaster. I don't know how much of each go into the mix.) If the president simply was trying to bring about calm, that might be welcome.

Instead, he is talking about dominance.

That's different. It is undemocratic and authoritarian. But it reflects Donald Trump's truest ideology. More than appointing conservative judges, more than stopping immigration, his real goal is dominance -- those other goals simply help him achieve the thing he desires most of all.

We can no longer save democracy. But we can reclaim it.

A few weeks ago, I wrote for THE WEEK that democracy was slipping away, and I wondered if we would notice if and when we hit the tipping point.

Many Americans understand that Trump and his allies have given the country's norms and institutions quite a beating, but they may not realize how close our democracy is to outright failure. The breakdown will not come all at once, in a single moment. Instead, constitutional governance might die a death by a thousand cuts. The shutdown of the Michigan legislature is a warning sign: American democracy is still alive, for now, but the end could be nearer than we think.

That was before George Floyd.

Tonight, the president threatened to send the military into American cities if protests over Floyd's death continue. He seemed to offer praise to peaceful protesters -- "we cannot allow ... peaceful protesters to be drowned out by an angry mob" -- but his words were immediately belied by his actions.

Simply put, the president of the United States unleashed state violence against peaceful demonstrators outside the White House.

And he did so ... for a photo op.

Moments earlier, just outside the White House, federal authorities used rubber bullets, flash bangs and gas to clear peaceful protesters from the area.

Trump then walked across Lafayette Square to St. John’s Church, where a fire was set Sunday evening. The president held up a Bible and nodded to media cameras, before being joined by Attorney General Bill Barr and others to pose for photos.

I would submit to you that the tipping point has been reached. The rule of law -- of a Constitution that guarantees the freedom of expression, and to peacefully assemble -- has been replaced, for now, by the rule of dominance. That is not democracy. 

So I believe we can no longer save democracy.

But I do believe we can reclaim it. Or, at the very least, we should make every effort to do so.

How? Uh, that's where I come up short. I think there are some dark days ahead. I think it will be easier to go along to get along because the costs of not going along may be high indeed. All I'm left with, really, is the final words from Anne Applebaum's new piece in The Atlantic:

In the meantime, I leave anyone who has the bad luck to be in public life at this moment with a final thought from Władysław Bartoszewski, who was a member of the wartime Polish underground, a prisoner of both the Nazis and the Stalinists, and then, finally, the foreign minister in two Polish democratic governments. Late in his life—he lived to be 93—he summed up the philosophy that had guided him through all of these tumultuous political changes. It was not idealism that drove him, or big ideas, he said. It was this: Warto być przyzwoitym—“Just try to be decent.” Whether you were decent—that’s what will be remembered.

Just try to be decent.