Tag Archives: 2016 election

Day 43: Peace, Justice, and The Police

26 Sep 2016 By in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: , , , 4 Comments

Aerial Chicago with harvest moon, © 2016 Susan Barsy

The spectacle of injustice can powerfully inflame beholders; its power is not statistical.  Many Americans have lately become convinced of the need to reform urban policing, as video and other media document the fate of a string of black victims—for so even suspected criminals must be called—whom police officers have killed (or neglected to death) while ostensibly doing their jobs.

Sandra Bland, Laquan MacDonald, Terence Crutcher, Freddy Gray, Philando Castille, Keith Lamont Scott, Eric Garner, Alton Sterling: each of these controversial casualties was different, yet all were the same in leaving behind doubt whether the death of the victim was warranted or necessary.

In each case, officers’ behavior cut off the path to justice, denying a process due both the fallen individual and society by right.  Justice satisfies our need for fairness by examining and weighing conflicting claims.  It dignifies all parties to a conflict, by allowing them to tell their respective stories in a court of law.  Yet in this slew of cases, officers’ manner of policing forestalled an orderly and dignifying process, supplanting it with reactionary violence and answering ostensible offenses with graver misdeeds.

Is it any wonder that many spectators across the country are uncomfortable, even outraged?  Or that the ‘Black Lives Matter’ people are protesting and demanding us to consider, ‘Did that black brother really have to die?’  Whether silent or raging, many Americans sense that these fatalities jar with the principle of presumption of innocence.  When a person who was said to have had a gun or committed a crime dies at the hands of the police, the police and public end up at odds over questions of justice that should have been determined in a court of law.

Local police exist to promote order and protect citizens from harm.  Their proper role is ‘to bring criminals to justice,’ not to administer an appalling sort of  ‘street justice’ themselves.  Because anger springs from injustice, real or perceived, peace will be difficult to achieve until less draconian methods fill the arsenals of police.

As Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump meet to debate tonight, their takes on this disturbing and difficult topic may well influence the outcome of the campaign.

Image: Aerial of Chicago at night, with harvest moon.
© 2016 Susan Barsy.

Day 46: Hillary’s Views, In a Nutshell?

23 Sep 2016 By in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: , , , , , 4 Comments

Florida aerial, © 2016 Susan Barsy
It’s an asymmetry that may determine the election: in contradistinction to the Democratic nominee, Donald Trump has hammered away at the electorate with a few controversial ideas.  These ideas have been castigated, ridiculed, and discussed so much that the main 3 or 4 of them are easy to reel off.  Trump has a gimme cap that says ‘Make America Great Again.’  He ‘wants to build a wall.’  He favors: 1) establishing inviolable national borders and radically altering US immigration policies; 2) ending ‘unfair’ trade deals; and 3) radically reducing US commitments overseas.

Trump has been careful never to disavow these ‘unpopular’ ideas.  He has articulated them with intense discipline for more than a year, through countless interviews, debates, speeches, and rallies.  No matter how odious, these are the main ideas he stands for.  To the mainstream of both parties, any one of these goals is anathema.  So, American politics has been furiously warring over Donald Trump’s ideas for almost two years.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has run a far more sophisticated and decorous campaign.  Suddenly, though, commentators and allies are noting that her campaign is singularly empty of goals and ideas.  The bland sameness she offers is meant to be reassuring, premised on the assumption that most of the country ‘feels okay.’  But what does Clinton stand for?   Where would she lead?  What, in a nutshell, is her vision of our future?

Public intellectuals friendly to Clinton are prodding her to zero in on something.  But the asymmetry already established may continue to weigh heavily on her campaign.

Image: Aerial of Florida,
© 2016 Susan Barsy


RELATED:
Albert R. Hunt, ‘Hillary Needs a Better Slogan’ (Bloomberg View)

Day 50: A Change in the Political Atmosphere

19 Sep 2016 By in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: , , , , 3 Comments

Day 50 beautiful aerial of blue ocean and sky
The atmosphere of the presidential race has changed, with ardent Democrats conscious of a tightening race.  Despite Donald Trump’s negative qualities, he has doggedly chipped away at Hillary Clinton’s lead.  Recent polls, whether from Reuters or CBS, show Clinton’s lead in the battleground states vanishing or perilously thin.  John Zogby, writing in Forbes, has the two candidates in a dead heat for the lead, with Jill Stein and Gary Johnson siphoning off enough support to deny either of the other two an advantage.  The particulars don’t matter as much as this general point: it’s getting more difficult to dismiss Trump and more necessary to admit he could end up in the Oval Office.

It might be unthinkable; but impossible, no.

Over the weekend, John Podhoretz published a column in the New York Post, excoriating Democrats for their misguided belief in Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.  He blames the establishment for failing to vet or challenge her sufficiently.  Even Bernie Sanders’ astonishingly strong showing against her in the primaries failed to awaken party loyalists to the stubborn limits of her appeal.  Some Democrats remain baffled as to why the electorate has not swung toward a candidate they regard as likeable and decent.  It’s painful to admit she offers too little in the way of the backbone and implacability the nation wants.

Meanwhile, Trump, formerly intent on misbehaving himself into oblivion, has subtly shifted his strategy, putting more time into dignified niche appearances (like Monday’s at the Economics Club of New York, which some business channels aired in its entirety) and less into vociferous and controversial rallies.  Fearful of throwing away his shot, Trump has stepped up his game.  He wants to win and senses he can.

Oddly, he suddenly chose to lay to rest the birther controversy, admitting last week (after years of claiming otherwise) that Barack Obama was born in the US rather than elsewhere abroad.  Why bother?  Because admitting the truth—that President Obama is an American—is going to help Trump with African-Americans more generally.  An LA Times poll registers increasing support for Trump among that constituency, prompting the president to warn African-Americans that he will view it as a ‘personal insult’ if they don’t turn out for Clinton.  Meanwhile, Trump’s simple message to urban blacks—that years of the Democratic rule have failed to deliver the safety, employment, and access to decent schools that they deserve—is resonating.

RELATED READING:
Niall Ferguson, “The Fight Isn’t Going Clinton’s Way” (Boston Globe)

Day 53: ‘Economic Patriotism’

16 Sep 2016 By in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Day 53 (aerial of riverside town), © 2016 Susan Barsy
I’m interested in the phrase ‘economic patriotism,’ which Zephyr Teachout of New York has made central to her congressional campaign.  Ideologically, its appearance is significant as a harbinger of the ‘thought revolution‘ destined to shake up both political parties.  As a phrase linking domestic and green production with political empowerment and civic responsibility, ‘economic patriotism’ is smart and historically resonant.  Without pointing fingers, it suggests that economic actors could be encouraged to behave in ways that will promote the good of the country, thus harkening back to a traditional concept of ‘political economy.’

Anti-globalism and a demand for policies that protect citizens’ prosperity have defined the 2016 election cycle.  The popularity of these ideas, which both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have variously articulated, signals Americans’ weariness with the pro-corporate globalism central to the political establishment (and much of the intellectual establishment, too).  Popular anxieties about immigration, out-sourcing, and unfair trade deals all spring from uncertainty as to what will prevent many forms of work from disappearing.  Experts tell Americans that globalism is good, but it’s hard to deny that it undermines national and personal autonomy.  Which lessens American power and independence, right?

Despite eliciting the scorn of experts who point to statistics suggesting otherwise, such ideas, mocked as parochial or alarmingly nationalistic, formerly propelled the US economy to might.  The ideal economy is one that promotes an egalitarian prosperity: this notion has been central to American political development, accounting for such diverse initiatives as protectionism, abolitionism, and the massive sale of public land into private hands, which gave millions of Americans a foothold in the nineteenth century.  A desire to ensure that Americans have the autonomy and cultivation needed to be active and informed citizens of the republic has accounted for many features of the US economy.  It bears considering what ‘economic patriotism’ should look like now.

Day 56: Hillary Has Pneumonia

13 Sep 2016 By in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: , , , , , 4 Comments

day-56
On Thursday, I took about 300 aerial photographs and re-watched All the Way, the HBO film about LBJ, on the plane.  I turned up the volume just as LBJ is entering the Capitol to make his first public remarks as president before Congress.  Still absorbing the fact of Kennedy’s assassination and his own sudden elevation to the presidency, Johnson, played by Bryan Cranston, is the cynosure of all eyes, cameras and former colleagues turning toward him in a swirl of suspenseful curiosity.  Meanwhile, the memory of a recurrent nightmare from childhood spools through Johnson’s mind.  In it, he hides in terror under the floorboards of a house during a Comanche raid.  Cowering in the dark, yet certain of his eventual discovery and death at the hands of an unseen enemy, he intones with grim conviction, “It’s only a matter of time before they haul me up into the light where their knives gleam.”

On Sunday, I caught the nightly news, which showed footage of an obviously unwell Hillary Clinton leaving a 9/11 ceremony and collapsing while trying to get into a car.  It came out that she had been being treated for pneumonia and dehydration.  Shortly after her collapse, Clinton re-appeared, waving at the crowd and asserting that she was just fine.  Having known since Friday that she had pneumonia, Clinton later justified glossing over it, saying “I just didn’t think it was going to be that big a deal.”

Part of me wants to believe that the electorate is capable of understanding what’s entailed in recovering from this common but dangerous ailment.  Hillary must rest, independent of a time-table; doing so needn’t have any ill effect on the prospect of her winning.  Let her surrogates fill the gap.  Let Hillary herself stay at home and wage a modern-day front-porch campaign.  Behaving commonsensically could be a path to victory.

But what if Johnson’s murderous vision of American politics is more realistic?  Will Hillary’s untimely illness destroy her chances?  As All The Way ends, Johnson’s dark vision of politics dogs him, even as the 1964 election validates his claim to the presidency.  As the adulation of devoted friends and supporters washes over him at his victory party, still that inner voice murmurs its grim prophesy:

But the sun will come up, and the knives will come out.  And all these smiling faces will be watching me, waiting for that one first moment of weakness.  And then they will gut me like a deer.