Warning Bells For 2020

In modern turbine airplanes, when something goes wrong it triggers a chime in the cockpit and a flashing light to get the pilots’ attention, along with a message that describes the problem. Problems that are serious but that aren’t yet life-threatening present an amber caution light and single chime. If a problem is serious enough, triple-chime sounds and a red warning light flashes. The chimes continue and the lights flash until the pilot presses the button to cancel the alarm. Sometimes, when things get really bad, the messages are generated so fast that the chimes are going off continuously.

Over the last week leading up to the Resurgent Gathering in Atlanta, that has been the case for the Republican Party. Warning lights have been flashing, one after another, for days on end. Last week began with a discussion about President Trump’s tweets about Baltimore. The tweets were widely interpreted to have racial overtones and, whether that was the president’s intention or not, it put a predominantly white party in the awkward position of explaining to 38 million black Americans why Donald Trump is not a racist.

The president’s tweets were not problematic only for their effect on race relations. On August 2, Mr. Trump tweeted that Kim Jong Un “has a great and beautiful vision for his country” and called the North Korean dictator “a friend” despite North Korea’s launch of two short-range missiles. The president further tweeted that “these missiles tests are not a violation of our signed Singapore agreement” although he conceded “there may be a United Nations violation.”

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Outside of Twitter, last week also gave us the abortive John Ratcliffe nomination to replace Dan Coats as director of national intelligence. Ratcliffe is a Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee, but otherwise had scant qualifications for the top intelligence post except for the fact that he seemed to have caught Trump’s attention with his questioning of Robert Mueller. With public opposition to the nomination from Democrats and little, if any, support from Republicans, President Trump withdrew the nomination on Friday, less than a week after he had made it.

Yet another caution chime is the building wave of Republican retirements for 2020. On Thursday, Rep. Will Hurd, the sole black Republican in the House, announced his retirement. Hurd was a frequent critic of Donald Trump, including saying that Trump’s tweets were “in essence telling someone because you don’t look like them, that you are not American,” but said on ABC News that he plans “to support the Republican nominee.”

More than his differences with Donald Trump, Hurd may be worried about re-election. His 23^rd district in Texas, with a majority Hispanic population, is a swing district that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. In 2018, Hurd won by less than 1,000 votes, a half percent margin.

Hurd isn’t the only Republican stepping down in 2020. Rep. Martha Roby (R-Ala.) and Rep. Susan Brooks (R-Ind.), two of only 13 House Republican women are retiring next year. The announcement of Rep. Kenny Marchant brings the total of retiring Texas Republicans to four. The two women won their last elections by comfortable margins, but Marchant was re-elected by only three points.

Republicans are retiring for a variety of reasons, but many of those reasons can be traced back to the Trump Administration. Whether the Republicans are personally opposed to Trump or not, many can read the writing on the wall for 2020. In 2018, Republicans lost 60 percent of women and 78 percent of nonwhite voters. Recent polling suggests that 2020 may be worse among both women and minorities, driven largely by his racial tweets. The 2018 Republican losses were presaged by a similar wave of retirements.

The amber cautions turned to a red warning with the El Paso mass shooting. The murder’s manifesto mirrors President Trump’s rhetoric on immigration is only the most recent incident on a growing list of white supremacist and right-wing violence. While there is no evidence that Mr. Trump directly incited the attack, it is credible that his speeches and tweets contributed to the racially-charged political climate that apparently inspired the shooter. In a clear warning sign, a supporter even mentioned shooting illegal immigrants at a Trump rally in Florida back in May.

As I write this, the president is drawing criticism from both sides for his failure to quickly condemn white supremacy after the El Paso shooting. Despite calling the murders “an act of cowardice” and a “hateful act,” the president waited until today, two days later, to specifically condemn the ideology behind the attack.

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Earlier today, President Trump did acknowledge the racist motive of the El Paso shooter, saying, “The shooter in El Paso posted a manifesto online, consumed by racist hate. In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy.”

In an airplane, when these warning and caution chimes go off, the proper response is to “identify, cancel and call for the checklist.” The pilots identify the source of the problem by looking at the message that describes the condition that generated the alert. Then they press the master warning or caution button to cancel the chime and flashing light, acknowledging that they see the problem. Finally, the pilot addresses the problem by calling for the appropriate checklist or memory item for that issue. The problem in today’s GOP is that too many are ignoring the flashing lights and chimes that are warning them of problems.

Often, when there is a serious problem, the stack of alert messages on the screen gets long. A major problem can spark many associated problems in related systems. In many cases, the root cause of the problem is revealed in messages that are near the bottom of the stack since the warning computer posts messages in the order that they occur. An honest appraisal of the current state of the Republican shows that many problem indications can be traced back to President Trump.

Despite all of these things happening over the last week, there was almost no mention of them by the Republican speakers at the Resurgent Gathering. When elected Republicans spoke about the president, it was in glowing terms. One example was Georgia’s Rep. Doug Collins, who said, “The thing I say about this president is that this president is the same on the stage as he is off the stage.”

“He has big ideas that come all the time,” Collins continued. “His ways, at times, can offend people and grate on people. They’re not used to somebody who just comes out and, a lot of the time, just speaks truth. If you hit at him, he will hit you back. I think some people are understanding that now.”

There were hints that some Republicans see that there is a problem. A speaker from the Heritage For America commented, “Some people say the election will be a referendum on President Trump, but that’s defeatist talk.” Reading between the lines, if Donald Trump was a popular president, a referendum on his administration would be a good thing for Republicans and would not be seen as “defeatist.” Likewise, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, while praising the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, remarked that one of the easiest things that President Trump could do to lower taxation and help the economy would be to end the tariff war.

The most direct acknowledgment of the warning chimes was from the Washington Examiner’s David Drucker. Drucker pointed out that while some Republicans look past Trump’s behavior because of his policies, others are being driven toward the Democrats, noting their complaint that, “if one of his rallies is on tv that I can’t watch it with children in the room.” Far from the common assumption that President Trump is assured a landslide in 2020, Drucker said that the Trump campaign is working toward another Electoral College victory with a popular vote loss, but warned, “The election could go either way as of today.”

“As I like to tell Republicans,” he added, “there’s no telling what can happen if Democrats nominate someone who is likable, trustworthy, and not under FBI investigation.”

In airplanes, 12-step programs and politics, the first step is admitting that you have a problem. So far, most Republicans have been unwilling to take that step. Admitting that you have a problem doesn’t mean that the flight will end in a crash. I’ve experienced engine failures, hydraulic failures, and a multitude of other problems, but I’ve always returned to earth safely. Very often it isn’t the fact that you have a problem that leads to disaster but the fact that the problem is ignored.

There is no emergency checklist for dealing with the Republican 2020 problem, but there are several options. The most obvious one is for Republicans to rein in Donald Trump. This might also include taking his phone away or convincing him to let staffers prescreen his tweets. At the other end of the spectrum is replacing Trump with another candidate for 2020. Neither of these options would be easy.

The bottom line for Republicans is that, if they want to win in 2020, it will require more than just pointing at Democrats and yelling, “Socialist!” in a manner reminiscent of Donald Sutherland in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Republicans have 15 months in which to build a positive case for why voters should return them to power. It is also 15 months in which Donald Trump’s tweets and public comments will be threatening to undermine their argument. Ignoring that problem won’t make it go away.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Both Sides Should Look In The Mirror When It Comes To Political Violence

With two mass shootings within 24 hours, the rhetorical battle lines are once again being drawn. On the one side, liberals are blaming guns and President Trump’s rhetoric while many on the right are trying to shift the blame away from white supremacy and presidential tweets. The truth is that there is more than one cause for the murder spree and both sides share some responsibility for the charged political environment that may have contributed to the killings.

While the motive is not obvious for the Dayton murders, an online manifesto posted to the 8Chan message board prior to the El Paso attack appears to be genuine. The manifesto rails against Hispanic immigrants who the murderer blamed for many of America’s political and economic problems. Unlike many on the right, the author of the manifesto did not distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants.

The racist motive for the murders presents problems for conservatives, many of whom don’t want to acknowledge that people on the right are not only capable of violence but commit domestic terror attacks on a fairly regular basis. Since the news of the manifesto broke yesterday, I have seen at least one right-wing social media user speculate that Antifa was behind the El Paso attack as a way to discredit the right. Based on what I’ve seen online in the past, this sort of reaction is not that rare.

The truth is that white supremacist violence is a growing problem. Domestic terrorist attacks by leftist groups were common in the 1970s. In the 1980s and 90s, these gave way to attacks by foreign Islamic radicals. After September 11, homegrown Islamic radicals launched a wave of attacks. Now, it seems that white supremacists are the up and coming source of violence.

In June, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee, “A majority of the domestic terrorism cases that we’ve investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence.”

Domestic terror attacks related to white supremacy from 2018 and 2019 alone include the murder of student Blaze Bernstein in California, a shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue, an arson attack at a California mosque, and another mass shooting at a synagogue in Poway, California. If we expand to include other right-wing attacks, we can add a vehicular attack on a New Jersey Planned Parenthood clinic and pipe bomb attacks by the so-called “MAGA bomber” to the list.     

Earlier this week, an FBI bulletin released by Yahoo News detailed concern about  “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists,” who might be inspired by such Deep State conspiracy theories such as QAnon. The Q conspiracy theory ties President Trump’s opponents to “a conspiracy involving ‘deep state’ actors and global elites allegedly engaged in an international child sex trafficking ring.” The report notes, “the uncovering of real conspiracies or cover-ups involving illegal, harmful, or unconstitutional activities by government officials or leading political figures” could further incite domestic terrorists.

It’s clear that there is a problem on the right, but the flip side is that the left is all too willing to tar all conservatives with the extremist brush. As Erick Erickson pointed out on Twitter, liberals are quick to label anyone who supports border security as a racist. For many on the left, “common sense gun controls” for many Democrats would amount to near-total bans on privately-owned guns and ammunition. For every liberal who says, “I don’t want to take your guns,” there seems to be one who openly says, “yes, I do want to take your guns.”

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Liberals complain that conservatives won’t have a meaningful discussion or take action on the issue of gun violence, but liberals have shown themselves to be untrustworthy on the issue. The same policy prescriptions are trotted out after each attack. In many or most cases, the policies that the left advocates, such as waiting periods and high capacity magazine bans, would not have prevented the attack.

Even an outright ban on guns would have a minimal effect since there are an estimated 393 million guns in private hands in the United States. A large percentage of those guns would remain outstanding in the case of a gun ban and confiscation as law-abiding citizens suddenly became outlaws. It’s interesting to note that, despite the ratio of more than 120 guns per 100 Americans, the US violent crime rate has been falling since 1993. This has remained true even as the “assault weapons” ban expired and concealed and open carry laws were passed around the country.

A liberal orthodoxy that needs to be shattered is that gun control is equivalent to crime control. Mass shootings seem to occur almost randomly around the country. They have occurred in states with strict gun controls such as California and New York and they have occurred in permissive states such as Florida and Texas. They have even occurred in military and government facilities where personal weapons are prohibited.

Mass killings are also not limited to AR-15s and similar types of semi-automatic rifles. The murderers have used various combinations of rifles, shotguns, and pistols. In other cases, killers have also used weapons such as bombs made from pipes and pressure cookers, knives, machetes, nerve gas, swords, and even a baseball bat to commit mass murder.

One of the few types of gun control that might be effective is red flag laws. Since many murder sprees have been committed by people with long histories of mental illness, some states are passing laws that allow temporary confiscation of guns owned by people who are deemed to present a threat to themselves or others. However, the potential for abuse and the deficit of trust between gun owners and the left presents a problem here. Earlier this year, police killed a Maryland man who had committed no crime as they attempted to serve a red flag order.

Rather than guns being the problem, weapons are merely a symptom of a problem with the human heart. The violence problem is related to a number of evil thoughts and desires such as greed, racism, the desire for political power, or the belief that one is a holy warrior or an instrument of divine judgment.

It is a defect of one’s humanity to possess the desire to gun down innocent people in cold blood, but it doesn’t mean that the person is crazy. The murder plot might be a calculated desire to incite a race war, as Dylann Roof intended to do, or it might be a desire to defend one’s country against its enemies, as Cesar Sayoc’s attorneys claim. Maybe the shooter bought into a conspiracy theory like Pizzagate or QAnon or maybe they blame their own misfortunes on people who look or talk differently.  

Sometimes underlying prejudices can be ignited by claims from political leaders, which brings us back not only to Donald Trump but to opposition leaders as well. Yes, President Trump says many irresponsible things and, yes, he should tone down his rhetoric. The president has demonized immigrants as violent criminals, whipped up fear of migrant caravans prior to last year’s election, and railed against both Democrats and his own Justice Department as corrupt Deep State enemies of America. It isn’t hard to imagine that this sort of talk could inspire someone who is already on the brink of violence.

But it isn’t only Donald Trump’s rhetoric that is a problem. Claims that Trump is a stooge of Russian President Putin, that he is a fascist, that he is a white supremacist, and that he will refuse to leave the presidency after his term is up are all examples of things said by the left that could incite violence from Trump opponents. It should not be forgotten that it was only two years ago that a radicalized Bernie Sanders supporter nearly killed a handful of Republican senators as they played baseball.

The truth is that both sides are guilty of overheated rhetoric as they attempt to drive their respective bases to the polls. What often motivates voters is the fear that the other side will win and destroy the country rather than the hope that their own side can implement good ideas. Instilling fear requires a scapegoat, but when people, either individuals or an ethnic group, become the object of fear, that fear can lead to violence.

Currently, the national political climate seems to be a tinderbox around which warriors of the two parties are constantly dropping sparks and red hot coals. It’s a wonder that we haven’t experienced more political violence in recent times than we have. Both sides are more than willing to point the finger at the other when violent attacks occur, but if we really want to make America better, both sides need to look in the mirror.

Originally published on The Resurgent