Tag Archives: US politics

The Trump Years: Day 32

20 Feb 2017 By in The Trump Years Tags: , , , ,

Panoramic view of Washington City (Courtesy Library of Congress)
Dynamics: Underneath the Trump presidency are a pair of fragmented and outmoded political parties, contributing to the public’s rightful perception that national politics are inchoate. The Trump presidency itself represents a vertiginous jolt, one that delights those who supported him even while it startles and alarms everyone else.  A nasty political struggle that will take the US in a new direction has begun.

The press:  It is a particularly difficult time for them.  Journalists, opinionators, and social-science experts have just been through an experience that established the limits of their influence and damaged their authority.  The vote showed how much of the nation is indifferent to their views.  A majority of the states are inclined to reject the intellectual establishment’s worldview and its prescriptions regarding what is good for the US.  The nation’s need for a vigilant, balanced, and discerning press remains urgent. Unfortunately, some previously reliable figures (e.g. David Brooks) are wild-eyed and near hysterical post-election.  Is the nation heading toward a Constitutional crisis?  Toward tyranny?  If so, we need journalists who are calm and can help the public focus constructively on matters susceptible to its influence.  The public can do nothing about Trump’s personality.  Move on.

Chinks in Trump’s armour (my sister’s approach):  What aspects of the political situation offer leverage for averting national shame and moving the nation in a positive direction?  Strangely enough, the present constellation of power, which pits an outsider against all officialdom, may give rise to more unity of purpose across party lines.  Trump has made a few sound cabinet picks and shown some willingness to delegate to them.  We need more people like Mattis and Tillerson to stay in the mix.

Image: Panoramic view of Washington City from the new dome of the Capitol, looking west.
Drawn from nature by Edward Sachse. 1856.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Old-Time Schools and Schooling

26 Nov 2016 By in History Tags: , , , ,

Teacher and students stand outside a one-room schoolhouse.

Photographs like this one capture the historically fragile character of public schools and schooling.  Although the nation’s founders believed that our republican form of government could not be sustained without adequately trained leaders and an informed and virtuous citizenry, the political growth of the United States always been somewhat at odds with the development of its schools.  Today, public education is often talked of as a monolith–which in some respects it is.  At the same time, it is a congeries of state and local impulses and arrangements, betokening ambivalence toward the concept of public education itself.

For much of US history, public schools were scarce, and getting schooling was not a right or requirement, but often a too-brief privilege or opportunity.  My maternal grandmother had only a third-grade education, for instance, while my paternal grandfather (who later became an electrical engineer by taking correspondence courses) had to stop school after the eighth grade because his father had died in a mining accident, leaving his mother and many young siblings to provide for themselves.  Children attended school only when circumstance permitted them to, and the education they received was often rudimentary.

In the early 1900s, when the photograph above was taken, children were often absent from school because they were in the fields and factories working.  The nexus of poverty and education has always been strained.  So too has the nexus between education and assimilation.  Why we have public schools and what the aims of public schooling should be will likely hotly debated in the months ahead.

Image by Lewis Hine from this source.

Know Your Fears

17 Nov 2016 By in The Trump Years Tags: , , , , , , , , 10 Comments

know-your-fears-2

My husband told me he plans to write out a list of what he fears from a Trump presidency.  It makes sense, given how much fear is in the air.  Until each of us gets a bead on the nature of our fears, chances are it won’t matter much what we do.

We are exhausted from a long and tortuous election season.  Our nerves are wracked, our moral compasses are twitching.  Our guts are writhing from a roller-coaster ride that isn’t over but barely beginning.

The presidential contest was close, but it was more than that: it was polarizing, salacious, and unedifying.  It was omnipresent and momentous, hauling us all in together in a stinking net of civic obligation.  Then it ended with an ugly surprise, revealing that the nation’s ‘leading citizens’ don’t deserve their reputation as a leading class.  Today, American minds are still traumatized and reeling.  People are depressed, resentful, angry, disapproving.  Most of us sense further calamity brewing. 

Who likes the feeling of powerlessness that sets in after ‘the people have spoken’?  We, the electorate (yes, we’ll all complicit) have tipped the political order upside-down.

So, instead of bringing relief, the outcome of the election brings a new host of worries.  Americans must continue to be attentive and mitigate the various forms of damage Trump’s presidency may cause.  Fissures have opened up in both political parties; they, too, are divided and dangerously weakened.  The next few years will see ongoing tumult and crisis, making it all the more urgent to clarify goals and conserve energies.

American politics requires stamina and organization.  No one person or organization can fight every battle.  So know your fears; name the nature of the danger as exactly as you can.  Let the list you write define the wisest course to pursue.

Feel free to state what you fear most from a Trump presidency
and what you think people who share your fear should be doing.
If you’re viewing this on a laptop, the comments link is in the left sidebar at top.

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 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)