thebulwark--2020-09-22--Can Gen Z Save Us? Only with Adult Partners.

In his first inaugural address , former President George W. Bush asked every American “ to serve your nation , beginning with your neighbor .
I ask you to be citizens : citizens , not spectators ; citizens , not subjects ; responsible citizens building communities of service and a nation of character.
” It seems increasingly clear that , in the nearly 20 years since then , we have failed at President Bush ’ s challenge to every American .
We are at record low levels of trust in our neighbors and in government .
Too few of us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ feel , think , or act differently than we do .
We sit in our own echo chambers , reading like-minded media and listening to like-minded others , only further polarizing our attitudes .
Most of us ( 87 percent ) believe that this division is poisoning our current national conversation , threatens our democracy , and is destroying close personal relationships .
And with the cliff ’ s edge of the November election just ahead of us , we have even let the very maintenance of a healthy , thriving democracy become @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their elders—just might save us .
And it may be that they are all that can .
Today ’ s young people are eager to engage civically .
In a recent survey by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts of young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 , 83 percent of the respondents said they “ believe young people have the power to change the country ” and 79 percent said the COVID-19 pandemic has “ helped them realize that politics impact their everyday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or Millennials , Generation Z—comprising people born after 1996—has a deep-seated desire to improve our world .
Many young people are already on task .
For instance , one group of young people in Kentucky ( more on them later ) is actively surveying their peers to understand how virtual learning is going .
Others are petitioning schools to require masks for in-person learning and working with local government to make sure their realities are reflected in the city ’ s plan .
We older Americans must work with young people to capitalize @ @ @ @ @ @ @ take on the roles of mentors , elders , and coaches to give young people the opportunities and the tools to succeed as citizens .
Young people bring energy and idealism and rich personal experience .
We have to help supply them with the knowledge and experience that can help them to better understand the historical , political , and social context of the challenges they face , as well as the habits and practices needed to make practical change .
We must actively create partnerships among young people , adults , schools @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and municipal governments , nonprofits , faith-based organizations , and other community groups .
This year , the foundation I lead launched a pilot program to learn how best to support youth civic education and what might be scalable .
Our “ Civic Spring Project ” ended up funding six youth-led initiatives .
Those high school students I mentioned above who were surveying their peers ?
That was the Student Voice Team from the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence , a Kentucky-based group run by high school students and supported by adults .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ interviewed nearly 15,000 other kids from every county in the state , asking them about COVID and the virtual learning experience and then incorporating the findings into statewide policy recommendations .
In New Jersey , a community group called Groundwork Elizabeth convened a diverse group of young people , 14 to 19 years old , to engage with the city of Elizabeth ’ s ten-year plan and present recommendations to the city council .
Overcoming some difficult political differences , these young people have learned to find common ground and compromised through tough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other Civic Spring projects across the country are tackling a variety of issues : documenting and understanding the urban impact of the coronavirus in Newark , New Jersey ; figuring out how to be active in a rural North Carolina community ’ s life in the time of virtual school and social distancing ; providing an outlet for young people to share their COVID-19 experiences in Houston ; and advocating for unemployment benefits for out-of-work high school wage earners in Minnesota .
Each participant in these projects is learning about what it takes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be an active community member .
Since they ’ re taking on local issues , they can clearly see tangible outcomes .
In all cases , these projects have had to partner with established organizations that provide the counsel , structure , and mentoring for these approaches to be productive .
This is the adult scaffolding that needs to exist .
These youth are taking part in an expanded version of civic education , one I call civic learning .
Civic learning is an investment in a productive and engaged citizenry—the kind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Finn and Mike Petrilli point to , and the kind that , in their words , shapes character and confers dignity and opportunity .
It moves beyond a single class in high school to include a lifetime of learning and practice .
It builds knowledge about our history and public institutions , shapes skills like public speaking and critical thinking , and stokes hope and curiosity about our politics , our government , and our future .
Extracurricular activities , religious institutions , and community groups all provide incredible opportunities to develop young @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kind of civic learning can only be successful if adults provide the counsel , structure , and teaching to complement young people ’ s energy and understanding of their communities .
A sustained public and private commitment to working with our youth can expand civic learning in the years ahead—thereby helping young people to understand that full civic engagement is about more than just voting and protesting .
It must be a lifelong desire to be a committed and engaged member of the nation ’ s citizenry , because only such sustained efforts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and culture .
Aristotle said , “ We become just by the practice of just actions , self-controlled by exercising self-control , and courageous by performing acts of courage.
” Young people become active citizens by practicing citizenship in their communities .
Who but adults can be their role models and partners ?
For all of us who want to see a stronger nation , it ’ s time to invest our own strength in mentoring the next generation .

In his first inaugural address, former President George W. Bush asked every American “to serve your nation, beginning with your neighbor. I ask you to be citizens: citizens, not spectators; citizens, not subjects; responsible citizens building communities of service and a nation of character.”
It seems increasingly clear that, in the nearly 20 years since then, we have failed at President Bush’s challenge to every American. We are at record low levels of trust in our neighbors and in government. Too few of us have friends or neighbors who look, feel, think, or act differently than we do. We sit in our own echo chambers, reading like-minded media and listening to like-minded others, only further polarizing our attitudes. Most of us (87 percent) believe that this division is poisoning our current national conversation, threatens our democracy, and is destroying close personal relationships. And with the cliff’s edge of the November election just ahead of us, we have even let the very maintenance of a healthy, thriving democracy become a partisan issue.
Gen Z—working alongside their elders—just might save us. And it may be that they are all that can.
Today’s young people are eager to engage civically. In a recent survey by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts of young adults between the ages of 18 and 29, 83 percent of the respondents said they “believe young people have the power to change the country” and 79 percent said the COVID-19 pandemic has “helped them realize that politics impact their everyday lives.” Much more than Gen X or Millennials, Generation Z—comprising people born after 1996—has a deep-seated desire to improve our world.
Many young people are already on task. For instance, one group of young people in Kentucky (more on them later) is actively surveying their peers to understand how virtual learning is going. Others are petitioning schools to require masks for in-person learning and working with local government to make sure their realities are reflected in the city’s plan.
We older Americans must work with young people to capitalize on that energy. We have to take on the roles of mentors, elders, and coaches to give young people the opportunities and the tools to succeed as citizens. Young people bring energy and idealism and rich personal experience. We have to help supply them with the knowledge and experience that can help them to better understand the historical, political, and social context of the challenges they face, as well as the habits and practices needed to make practical change. We must actively create partnerships among young people, adults, schools and existing local institutions, including state and municipal governments, nonprofits, faith-based organizations, and other community groups.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
This year, the foundation I lead launched a pilot program to learn how best to support youth civic education and what might be scalable. Our “Civic Spring Project” ended up funding six youth-led initiatives.
Those high school students I mentioned above who were surveying their peers? That was the Student Voice Team from the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, a Kentucky-based group run by high school students and supported by adults. This year they’ve surveyed and interviewed nearly 15,000 other kids from every county in the state, asking them about COVID and the virtual learning experience and then incorporating the findings into statewide policy recommendations.
In New Jersey, a community group called Groundwork Elizabeth convened a diverse group of young people, 14 to 19 years old, to engage with the city of Elizabeth’s ten-year plan and present recommendations to the city council. Overcoming some difficult political differences, these young people have learned to find common ground and compromised through tough but respectful and positive conversations.
The other Civic Spring projects across the country are tackling a variety of issues: documenting and understanding the urban impact of the coronavirus in Newark, New Jersey; figuring out how to be active in a rural North Carolina community’s life in the time of virtual school and social distancing; providing an outlet for young people to share their COVID-19 experiences in Houston; and advocating for unemployment benefits for out-of-work high school wage earners in Minnesota.
Each participant in these projects is learning about what it takes to improve society and what it means to be an active community member. Since they’re taking on local issues, they can clearly see tangible outcomes. In all cases, these projects have had to partner with established organizations that provide the counsel, structure, and mentoring for these approaches to be productive. This is the adult scaffolding that needs to exist.
These youth are taking part in an expanded version of civic education, one I call civic learning. Civic learning is an investment in a productive and engaged citizenry—the kind of “informed citizenship” that Checker Finn and Mike Petrilli point to, and the kind that, in their words, shapes character and confers dignity and opportunity. It moves beyond a single class in high school to include a lifetime of learning and practice. It builds knowledge about our history and public institutions, shapes skills like public speaking and critical thinking, and stokes hope and curiosity about our politics, our government, and our future. Extracurricular activities, religious institutions, and community groups all provide incredible opportunities to develop young people’s civic capabilities.
This kind of civic learning can only be successful if adults provide the counsel, structure, and teaching to complement young people’s energy and understanding of their communities. A sustained public and private commitment to working with our youth can expand civic learning in the years ahead—thereby helping young people to understand that full civic engagement is about more than just voting and protesting. It must be a lifelong desire to be a committed and engaged member of the nation’s citizenry, because only such sustained efforts can change behaviors, norms, practices, and culture.
Aristotle said, “We become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage.” Young people become active citizens by practicing citizenship in their communities. Who but adults can be their role models and partners? For all of us who want to see a stronger nation, it’s time to invest our own strength in mentoring the next generation.


thebulwark--2020-09-23--Donald Trump’s Bizarre History Conference

For good reason , President Donald J. Trump is not a man whom one thinks of as having a deep interest in or knowledge of American history .
“ History and culture—so important , ” Trump said , inanely , in a Reno speech in 2017 .
Yet when the president gives examples , his complete ignorance of history comes forth at once .
For example , as conservative journalist Sol Stern pointed out during the 2016 campaign , Trump has constantly repeated a false historical story : He told rallies that General John J. Pershing , during his time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the heart of fifty Muslim fighters he had captured by smearing pig ’ s blood on the bullets he shot them with .
The Muslim religion views the ingestion of pigs as unholy .
Gen. Pershing supposedly spared one of the fifty lives and told the fighter to go back and tell everyone what he had done .
That is why , Trump claimed , the United States had no problem in the Philippines for decades .
That the story was false got wide attention , but Trump ’ s exposure did not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and time again , even after he became president .
Then there was the time he praised his hero Andrew Jackson for being “ really angry that—he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War ” —even though the war started 24 years after Jackson ’ s presidency and 16 years after Jackson died .
And don ’ t forget Trump ’ s early meeting with African Americans during Black History Month , when he said “ Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who ’ s done an amazing job @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , I notice ” —as if Douglass were still alive .
Yet on Constitution Day this year—last Thursday , September 17—President Trump convened a panel to discuss American history in the Great Hall of the National Archives , followed by his own presentation of the issues as he viewed them .
Its central purpose was not to promote history but to use history to fuel the culture wars .
His speech—most likely written by Stephen Miller with input or inspiration from David Horowitz—condemned the use of history by the left as being nothing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” ( More on that in a moment . )
To counter the left-wing presentation of history , Trump announced he was going to create a “ 1776 Commission ” to help “ promote patriotic education.
” It was meant as an alternative to the 1619 Project , published last year in the New York Times .
The faults and flaws of the 1619 Project have been widely discussed by many mainstream historians , ironically many of them available on the World Socialist Web Site .
( Someone quipped that this was the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ accurate than the New York Times . )
Trump implied that only his right-wing cheerleaders objected to the arguments and historical research of the 1619 Project .
It was he and his base who had the “ mission .
.
.
to defend the legacy of America ’ s founding ” and who would “ clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms , and teach our children the magnificent truth about our country.
” Their goal was to stop “ a radical movement ” that is “ attempting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” He told the conference attendees—as he tells the audiences at his rallies—that “ left-wing mobs have torn down statues of our founders , desecrated our memorials .
.
.
[ and ] chanted the words ‘ America was never great.
’ ” Their goal was to force our countrymen to “ bully Americans into abandoning their values , their heritage , and their very way of life.
” They came to their views about America after having received instruction “ from propaganda tracts , like those of Howard Zinn , that try @ @ @ @ @ @ @ history ” and “ the totally discredited 1619 Project.
” “ The left , ” Trump said , “ has warped , distorted , and defiled the American story with deceptions , falsehoods , and lies.
” Much of what Trump said about Howard Zinn and his bestselling book A People ’ s History of the United States is accurate .
Indeed , earlier this year I wrote a positive review of conference participant Mary Grabar ’ s book in which she carefully demolishes Zinn and shows his work to be anything but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ undoubtedly not read one word of Zinn ’ s book , does not realize , however , that many of the most serious critiques of Zinn have been written by liberal and left-wing historians , not by conservatives .
Among the first of these appeared in 2004 in a social-democratic magazine , Dissent , and was written by Georgetown University historian Michael Kazin .
Concluding his essay , Kazin wrote “ Howard Zinn is an evangelist of little imagination for whom history is one long chain of stark moral dualities.
” Then came @ @ @ @ @ @ @ major critique of Zinn in the magazine of the American Federation of Teachers ( later excerpted in Slate ) , in which he writes , “ History as truth , issued from the left or the right , abhors shades of gray .
Such a history atrophies our tolerance for complexity.
” Then in 2013 , in the New Republic , liberal historian David Greenberg wrote that Zinn “ relentlessly criticized American policy and seems to have stayed silent about the Soviet Union ” and believed “ that historical research should be carried @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Greenberg pointed out that Zinn , while he was teaching at Boston University , “ regularly and cavalierly denounced prevailing academic standards , arguing that the university should teach ‘ relevant ’ subjects and forgo what he described as the ‘ endless academic discussion ’ of ‘ trivial or esoteric inquiry ’ that goes ‘ nowhere into the real world.
’ ” But now we must ask ( using Greenberg ’ s words about Zinn ) : Who is in the “ cohort of scholars ” that “ enlist [ s ] history @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or a social agenda ” ?
It once was the Old Left and the New Left ; today , as last week ’ s conference made clear , it is composed of the historians who , however good their intentions , let themselves be treated as props by the president or otherwise participate in his particularly repellent use of history .
To put it differently , there is good history and bad history , and either can be written by historians on the left or on the right .
There is no such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
There is only historical research and the conclusions drawn from evidence .
I tried to find conservatives who opposed Trump ’ s concept of patriotic history .
It ’ s still early—the conference was just last week—and I may have missed some commentators .
But there doesn ’ t seem to be much criticism in conservative circles .
There is a brief Twitter thread from Samuel Goldman pointing out the inherent tension in wanting history that is “ both true and inspiring.
” “ What do we do , ” Goldman asks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t go together ?
” And I found a piece by Rick Moran in PJ Media .
He deserves plaudits for his willingness to go on the record , especially on a Trumpist website .
Moran does not hide that the authors of 1619 Project have “ been called to account .
.
.
by historians of both the right and the left ” ( emphasis added ) .
He writes perceptively that As a conservative , Moran agrees that Zinn ’ s type of history is “ dishonest.
” But he asks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dishonest , just as one-dimensional ” is how the Zinn-type distortions should be answered .
And that precisely is what the Trump conference on American history was all about .
Moran recounts the “ patriotic education ” he received as a young man at a Catholic school : “ The way that our ‘ history ’ was taught guaranteed that we would love America , admire our founding , feel bad for the slaves and Indians , and celebrate the fact that we were the greatest nation on earth because God loved us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scholarship.
” America has had glorious myths and an admirable reality , but Moran acknowledges that running beneath “ the glitz and gold has been a dark current of suffering , oppression , and evil.
” He concludes by noting that how one interprets our past is a choice .
“ And it would be far better to show kids how best to make that choice by teaching them a wide variety of viewpoints and interpretations than propagandize them by indoctrinating them with only one.
” That is a message that Donald Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was absent from his American history conference .
Indeed , Trump wants the mirror opposite of history as written by Howard Zinn ; he wants to go back to the old days when history was taught in such a way that students would unreservedly love the United States .
Trump noted that an NEH grant had been given to the conservative National Association of Scholars to develop a “ pro-American curriculum that celebrates the truth about our nation ’ s great history.
” America ’ s young people , Trump said , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all of their heart and all of their soul.
” Will Trump ’ s concept of patriotic history depend only on books by right-wing historians , of which there are quite a few ?
Would anything else be acceptable to Trump and his followers , since , as Trump put it , “ American parents are not going to accept indoctrination in our schools ” ?
That such a curriculum might in and of itself be indoctrination was never obviously considered .
Let ’ s turn now to the other participants in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for about an hour and a half before Vice President Pence and then President Trump spoke .
Remarkably for a history conference , of the ten participants ( including the moderator ) , only two are actual academic historians : Allen Guelzo , now at the James Madison Center at Princeton , and Wilfred M. McClay , now at the University of Oklahoma but heading soon to the conservative Hillsdale College , where he has accepted a professorship .
( Hillsdale president Larry Arnn moderated the forum . )
McClay was there to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Land of Hope : An Invitation to the Great American Story , published last year by the conservative publishing house Encounter Books .
The audience learned from another panelist , Theodor Rebarber , that the NEH had given a grant—apparently the same grant Trump would later mention—to develop a curriculum based on McClay ’ s book , with the hope that many schools would choose it as a basic text .
McClay ’ s book reads like the history texts I read in high school , such as the classic textbook by Samuel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Growth of the American Republic ( 1930 ) .
Like that two-volume textbook , McClay ’ s runs through American history with a narrative of main eras and events in our past .
It is an old-fashioned trip through the Republic ’ s growth .
In the very last chapter , we get McClay ’ s judgment on Donald Trump .
Writing in 2019 , he notes Trump ’ s “ Make America Great Again ” slogan and says Trump “ seems to have enjoyed considerable success ” in boosting the economy , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ too early at this juncture to make any judgments or predictions about his eventual success or failure.
” Presumably now , more than a year later , McClay has had enough subsequent evidence—an impeachment , a botched pandemic response , skyrocketing unemployment—to make some “ judgments or predictions ” about Trump ’ s presidency .
As left-wing historian Michael Kazin writes in a rather devastating review in Dissent—the same journal in which he wrote his equally devastating critique of Zinn—McClay ’ s purpose is to “ present a past brimming with ‘ hope @ @ @ @ @ @ @ writing “ a history that is dutiful rather than inspiring.
” It is what is left out of McClay ’ s book that is telling .
He writes little about the social movements that fought for change , such as the abolitionists before slavery came to an end .
McClay also gives the “ silent treatment to the long struggle for black freedom , ” Kazin writes .
The great and especially important W.E.B .
Du Bois is mentioned once , but only as a supporter of eugenics .
Booker T. Washington is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ invited him to the White House .
Major black figures of importance to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’ 60s are never mentioned , except Martin Luther King Jr. ( since everyone today claims his mantle ) .
Kazin notes the complete absence of Ida B .
Wells , Marcus Garvey , and A. Philip Randolph .
( I would add Bayard Rustin to the list . )
Malcolm X gets a fleeting mention , but there is only a brief discussion of black nationalism , whose advocates , McClay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anger.
” There is no mention by name of SNCC , nor of Bob Moses or Stokely Carmichael , nor the Freedom Summer ( 1964 ) in which activists braved the wrath of the Klan and registered black citizens to vote .
And , regretfully , no mention of John Lewis , who began his activism in SNCC and ended it as a member of Congress .
Mary Grabar was at the conference essentially to give a précis of her recent book critiquing Howard Zinn .
( Neither she nor the only other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ undergraduate , was asked any questions during the brief Q & A session . )
Zinn ’ s book is reprehensible and deserves criticism , but to do so , as I noted earlier , should not be an occasion for supporting Donald Trump , but rather stand as a serious exegesis of the body of Zinn ’ s work .
At this conference , Grabar acted as one favoring the Trump agenda of a “ patriotic history ” as a sound rebuke to Howard Zinn .
She did not pause to ask @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Howard Zinn text—but written from the views of the Trumpist right .
Allen Guelzo , one of the most distinguished historians in our country today , whose books on Lincoln and the Civil War era are considered among the very best , spoke in a calm , persuasive manner about the negative effects of the politicization of history from the left , and its failure to understand that the American experiment sprang directly from the Enlightenment .
Another panelist , Peter Wood , is an anthropologist and not a historian ; he is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Scholars , a conservative group that opposes many left-wing courses and curricula .
Wood went rather off the deep end when claiming that recent violence on the streets is connected to the left-wing education of college students .
The ideology “ crafted on campus ” is “ exported to the streets , particularly hatred of America and contempt for law.
” He added that the anger and “ fiery emotion ” is “ ignited on campus and intensified by the mob in the streets.
” Wood ’ s claims then grew even stranger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ radical ideology on campus and who were “ alienated from our cultural norms and primed for lawlessness ” were participating in “ staged events managed by well-trained experts.
” Such events are “ made to look like impulsive outbursts of passion but they run according to a well-rehearsed script.
” Does Wood have proof that those participating in riots and vandalism learned that they should act this way from taking a course of a leftist historian ?
“ Maoist tactics ” —really ?
What college or university teaches this ?
Wood acknowledges that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ college students ” have been fully indoctrinated , but these few , he says , are “ the organized , managerial staff of the riots.
” Again I ask , where is the proof ?
Has Wood interviewed the rioters in Kenosha and Portland ?
I doubt it .
Does he know for a fact that they tie in with “ local networks of Antifa and BLM ?
” If all this is , as he says , “ fairly evident , ” where is the evidence ?
Wood cast the problem in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quickly disappear ” if it were “ neglected or attacked outright.
” Indeed , our civilization “ is disappearing , ” he says .
The “ current wave of protests , ” he said , is the result of “ decades of efforts by our radical left to turn our colleges and universities into incubators of profound dissatisfaction with the American way of life.
” Some students leave school with “ a proud delight in destruction for its own sake , ” or even with “ an Ivy League diploma in one hand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” The latter line is likely an allusion to the lawyers arrested last month in New York after throwing a Molotov cocktail into a police car .
These sad and deluded individuals are clearly alone in what they sought to do .
One was a successful Princeton- and NYU Law-educated corporate lawyer .
Neither Wood nor anyone else has much of an idea at this point about what motivated them to act so stupidly .
I have nothing but disdain for the professors who use their courses to try and convert their students @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The late historian Eugene D. Genovese was a major historian .
The books and articles he wrote while he was a Marxist hold up , as do those he wrote when he became a conservative Catholic .
I knew him well enough to know that in both phases he did not indoctrinate students ; he only taught history so that students could understand the past of the American South and its legacy of slavery .
Everything the panelists said at last week ’ s conference must be looked at in the context @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Burnett , writing in Slate , is incorrect when she writes that the conference was “ 100 percent anti-intellectual.
” Allen Guelzo , for example , did not offer a right-wing rant .
But even his appearance—as with those of all the participants—served as a fig leaf , providing legitimization for the development of a Trumpist state-dictated popular history that would be used to teach a “ patriotic ” version of our nation ’ s past .
This is not the attitude of many of the radical professors who are historians I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that their students agree with them .
The activist and professor Cornel West team-teaches a course with Robert P. George at Princeton University .
Robby has written about how West ’ s list of books and articles to read includes scores of conservative books with which he does not agree .
Both men are completely supportive of free speech on campus .
The serious historians who participated last week , as well as the other panelists , were there to provide a cover for the politicized history that Trump favors .
Nothing , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remarks Ben Carson made .
Since everyone knows he was a medical doctor of great accomplishment , but not a historian , nor even someone known to have given any thought to the subject of the conference , why was he even there ?
A clear reason is that he is an African American , and stood out in a panel composed of all white men and two women .
Deploring what he called “ a coordinated attack on her history , her institutions , and her heroes , ” Carson turned inexplicably @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The news media , he said , were meant originally to function as objective “ honest brokers of the truth ” that recorded events and brought knowledge of them to the people .
That was why the media were “ protected , ” he said—obviously referring to the First Amendment .
Carson apparently does not know that the press in the early days of our Republic was as contentious and nasty as ours today , and far less dedicated to reporting objective truth .
Carson suggested that the First Amendment ’ s protection @ @ @ @ @ @ @ say what it wants might have been a mistake .
Sounding like Noam Chomsky , he told the attendees of how easy it is to be “ manipulated ” by the media .
There are some important questions that deserve to be asked about the teaching of history and its contribution to creating a sense of citizenship , and the ways in which those two can be in tension with one another .
But such questions went unasked at last week ’ s conference .
The White House Conference on American History was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forum announced .
It was a publicity stunt , and the participants , including the two historians , were played by Donald Trump and his administration .

For good reason, President Donald J. Trump is not a man whom one thinks of as having a deep interest in or knowledge of American history. “History and culture—so important,” Trump said, inanely, in a Reno speech in 2017. Yet when the president gives examples, his complete ignorance of history comes forth at once.
For example, as conservative journalist Sol Stern pointed out during the 2016 campaign, Trump has constantly repeated a false historical story: He told rallies that General John J. Pershing, during his time in the Philippines, put fear in the hearts of fifty Muslim fighters he had captured by smearing pig’s blood on the bullets he shot them with. The Muslim religion views the ingestion of pigs as unholy. Gen. Pershing supposedly spared one of the fifty lives and told the fighter to go back and tell everyone what he had done. That is why, Trump claimed, the United States had no problem in the Philippines for decades. That the story was false got wide attention, but Trump’s exposure did not stop him from repeating the myth time and time again, even after he became president.
Then there was the time he praised his hero Andrew Jackson for being “really angry that—he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War”—even though the war started 24 years after Jackson’s presidency and 16 years after Jackson died.
And don’t forget Trump’s early meeting with African Americans during Black History Month, when he said “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice”—as if Douglass were still alive.
Yet on Constitution Day this year—last Thursday, September 17—President Trump convened a panel to discuss American history in the Great Hall of the National Archives, followed by his own presentation of the issues as he viewed them. Its central purpose was not to promote history but to use history to fuel the culture wars. His speech—most likely written by Stephen Miller with input or inspiration from David Horowitz—condemned the use of history by the left as being nothing less than “decades of left-wing indoctrination.” (More on that in a moment.)
To counter the left-wing presentation of history, Trump announced he was going to create a “1776 Commission” to help “promote patriotic education.” It was meant as an alternative to the 1619 Project, published last year in the New York Times. The faults and flaws of the 1619 Project have been widely discussed by many mainstream historians, ironically many of them available on the World Socialist Web Site. (Someone quipped that this was the first time a Trotskyist website was more accurate than the New York Times.)
Trump implied that only his right-wing cheerleaders objected to the arguments and historical research of the 1619 Project. It was he and his base who had the “mission . . . to defend the legacy of America’s founding” and who would “clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms, and teach our children the magnificent truth about our country.”
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
Their goal was to stop “a radical movement” that is “attempting to demolish this treasured and precious inheritance.” He told the conference attendees—as he tells the audiences at his rallies—that “left-wing mobs have torn down statues of our founders, desecrated our memorials . . . [and] chanted the words ‘America was never great.’” Their goal was to force our countrymen to “bully Americans into abandoning their values, their heritage, and their very way of life.” They came to their views about America after having received instruction “from propaganda tracts, like those of Howard Zinn, that try to make students ashamed of their own history” and “the totally discredited 1619 Project.” “The left,” Trump said, “has warped, distorted, and defiled the American story with deceptions, falsehoods, and lies.”
Much of what Trump said about Howard Zinn and his bestselling book A People’s History of the United States is accurate. Indeed, earlier this year I wrote a positive review of conference participant Mary Grabar’s book in which she carefully demolishes Zinn and shows his work to be anything but good history. Trump, who has undoubtedly not read one word of Zinn’s book, does not realize, however, that many of the most serious critiques of Zinn have been written by liberal and left-wing historians, not by conservatives.
Among the first of these appeared in 2004 in a social-democratic magazine, Dissent, and was written by Georgetown University historian Michael Kazin. Concluding his essay, Kazin wrote “Howard Zinn is an evangelist of little imagination for whom history is one long chain of stark moral dualities.”
Then came educator Sam Wineburg, who wrote a major critique of Zinn in the magazine of the American Federation of Teachers (later excerpted in Slate), in which he writes, “History as truth, issued from the left or the right, abhors shades of gray. Such a history atrophies our tolerance for complexity.”
Then in 2013, in the New Republic, liberal historian David Greenberg wrote that Zinn “relentlessly criticized American policy and seems to have stayed silent about the Soviet Union” and believed “that historical research should be carried out to serve present-day political ends.” Greenberg pointed out that Zinn, while he was teaching at Boston University, “regularly and cavalierly denounced prevailing academic standards, arguing that the university should teach ‘relevant’ subjects and forgo what he described as the ‘endless academic discussion’ of ‘trivial or esoteric inquiry’ that goes ‘nowhere into the real world.’”
But now we must ask (using Greenberg’s words about Zinn): Who is in the “cohort of scholars” that “enlist[s] history in the service of a political crusade or a social agenda”? It once was the Old Left and the New Left; today, as last week’s conference made clear, it is composed of the historians who, however good their intentions, let themselves be treated as props by the president or otherwise participate in his particularly repellent use of history.
To put it differently, there is good history and bad history, and either can be written by historians on the left or on the right. There is no such thing as left-wing history or right-wing history. There is only historical research and the conclusions drawn from evidence.
I tried to find conservatives who opposed Trump’s concept of patriotic history. It’s still early—the conference was just last week—and I may have missed some commentators. But there doesn’t seem to be much criticism in conservative circles. There is a brief Twitter thread from Samuel Goldman pointing out the inherent tension in wanting history that is “both true and inspiring.” “What do we do,” Goldman asks, “when those things don’t go together?” And I found a piece by Rick Moran in PJ Media. He deserves plaudits for his willingness to go on the record, especially on a Trumpist website. Moran does not hide that the authors of 1619 Project have “been called to account . . . by historians of both the right and the left” (emphasis added). He writes perceptively that
there is not a “patriotic” view of history, nor is there a “non-patriotic” view of history. There are the basic facts of “what happened” and then there are interpretations of what happened. The argument isn’t necessarily about America, it’s about the prism that we all look through as individuals to glean understanding from those facts of history.
As a conservative, Moran agrees that Zinn’s type of history is “dishonest.” But he asks whether “offering a counter-narrative just as dishonest, just as one-dimensional” is how the Zinn-type distortions should be answered.
And that precisely is what the Trump conference on American history was all about. Moran recounts the “patriotic education” he received as a young man at a Catholic school: “The way that our ‘history’ was taught guaranteed that we would love America, admire our founding, feel bad for the slaves and Indians, and celebrate the fact that we were the greatest nation on earth because God loved us and blessed us. Not exactly penetrating scholarship.”
America has had glorious myths and an admirable reality, but Moran acknowledges that running beneath “the glitz and gold has been a dark current of suffering, oppression, and evil.” He concludes by noting that how one interprets our past is a choice. “And it would be far better to show kids how best to make that choice by teaching them a wide variety of viewpoints and interpretations than propagandize them by indoctrinating them with only one.”
That is a message that Donald Trump did not want to hear and that was absent from his American history conference. Indeed, Trump wants the mirror opposite of history as written by Howard Zinn; he wants to go back to the old days when history was taught in such a way that students would unreservedly love the United States. Trump noted that an NEH grant had been given to the conservative National Association of Scholars to develop a “pro-American curriculum that celebrates the truth about our nation’s great history.” America’s young people, Trump said, “will be taught to love America with all of their heart and all of their soul.”
Will Trump’s concept of patriotic history depend only on books by right-wing historians, of which there are quite a few? Would anything else be acceptable to Trump and his followers, since, as Trump put it, “American parents are not going to accept indoctrination in our schools”? That such a curriculum might in and of itself be indoctrination was never obviously considered.
Let’s turn now to the other participants in the conference, the panel that went on for about an hour and a half before Vice President Pence and then President Trump spoke. Remarkably for a history conference, of the ten participants (including the moderator), only two are actual academic historians: Allen Guelzo, now at the James Madison Center at Princeton, and Wilfred M. McClay, now at the University of Oklahoma but heading soon to the conservative Hillsdale College, where he has accepted a professorship. (Hillsdale president Larry Arnn moderated the forum.)
McClay was there to push his new American history text, Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story, published last year by the conservative publishing house Encounter Books. The audience learned from another panelist, Theodor Rebarber, that the NEH had given a grant—apparently the same grant Trump would later mention—to develop a curriculum based on McClay’s book, with the hope that many schools would choose it as a basic text.
McClay’s book reads like the history texts I read in high school, such as the classic textbook by Samuel Eliot Morrison and Henry Steele Commager, Growth of the American Republic (1930). Like that two-volume textbook, McClay’s runs through American history with a narrative of main eras and events in our past. It is an old-fashioned trip through the Republic’s growth. In the very last chapter, we get McClay’s judgment on Donald Trump. Writing in 2019, he notes Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan and says Trump “seems to have enjoyed considerable success” in boosting the economy, but says that it is “far too early at this juncture to make any judgments or predictions about his eventual success or failure.” Presumably now, more than a year later, McClay has had enough subsequent evidence—an impeachment, a botched pandemic response, skyrocketing unemployment—to make some “judgments or predictions” about Trump’s presidency.
As left-wing historian Michael Kazin writes in a rather devastating review in Dissent—the same journal in which he wrote his equally devastating critique of Zinn—McClay’s purpose is to “present a past brimming with ‘hope,’” but he ends up writing “a history that is dutiful rather than inspiring.”
It is what is left out of McClay’s book that is telling. He writes little about the social movements that fought for change, such as the abolitionists before slavery came to an end. McClay also gives the “silent treatment to the long struggle for black freedom,” Kazin writes. The great and especially important W.E.B. Du Bois is mentioned once, but only as a supporter of eugenics. Booker T. Washington is mentioned in passing only because Teddy Roosevelt invited him to the White House. Major black figures of importance to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s are never mentioned, except Martin Luther King Jr. (since everyone today claims his mantle). Kazin notes the complete absence of Ida B. Wells, Marcus Garvey, and A. Philip Randolph. (I would add Bayard Rustin to the list.) Malcolm X gets a fleeting mention, but there is only a brief discussion of black nationalism, whose advocates, McClay comments, were guilty of “nihilistic anger.”
There is no mention by name of SNCC, nor of Bob Moses or Stokely Carmichael, nor the Freedom Summer (1964) in which activists braved the wrath of the Klan and registered black citizens to vote. And, regretfully, no mention of John Lewis, who began his activism in SNCC and ended it as a member of Congress.
Mary Grabar was at the conference essentially to give a précis of her recent book critiquing Howard Zinn. (Neither she nor the only other woman participant, a University of Virginia undergraduate, was asked any questions during the brief Q&A session.) Zinn’s book is reprehensible and deserves criticism, but to do so, as I noted earlier, should not be an occasion for supporting Donald Trump, but rather stand as a serious exegesis of the body of Zinn’s work. At this conference, Grabar acted as one favoring the Trump agenda of a “patriotic history” as a sound rebuke to Howard Zinn. She did not pause to ask whether the result would be like a Howard Zinn text—but written from the views of the Trumpist right.
Allen Guelzo, one of the most distinguished historians in our country today, whose books on Lincoln and the Civil War era are considered among the very best, spoke in a calm, persuasive manner about the negative effects of the politicization of history from the left, and its failure to understand that the American experiment sprang directly from the Enlightenment.
Another panelist, Peter Wood, is an anthropologist and not a historian; he is the president of the National Association of Scholars, a conservative group that opposes many left-wing courses and curricula. Wood went rather off the deep end when claiming that recent violence on the streets is connected to the left-wing education of college students. The ideology “crafted on campus” is “exported to the streets, particularly hatred of America and contempt for law.” He added that the anger and “fiery emotion” is “ignited on campus and intensified by the mob in the streets.”
Wood’s claims then grew even stranger: He said that activists who learned radical ideology on campus and who were “alienated from our cultural norms and primed for lawlessness” were participating in “staged events managed by well-trained experts.” Such events are “made to look like impulsive outbursts of passion but they run according to a well-rehearsed script.” Does Wood have proof that those participating in riots and vandalism learned that they should act this way from taking a course of a leftist historian?
His answer follows:
Who writes that script? The answer is fairly evident. It is the campus activists—some faculty as well as students—who have spent years immersed in anti-liberal ideology, identitarian indignation, and the study of Maoist tactics. They’ve been taught that gaining power by any means necessary is the legitimate path to what they think of as “social justice.” And they are eager to put what they have learned into practice.
“Maoist tactics”—really? What college or university teaches this? Wood acknowledges that “only a fairly small minority of college students” have been fully indoctrinated, but these few, he says, are “the organized, managerial staff of the riots.” Again I ask, where is the proof? Has Wood interviewed the rioters in Kenosha and Portland? I doubt it. Does he know for a fact that they tie in with “local networks of Antifa and BLM?” If all this is, as he says, “fairly evident,” where is the evidence?
Wood cast the problem in existential terms. “Our civilization could quickly disappear” if it were “neglected or attacked outright.” Indeed, our civilization “is disappearing,” he says. The “current wave of protests,” he said, is the result of “decades of efforts by our radical left to turn our colleges and universities into incubators of profound dissatisfaction with the American way of life.” Some students leave school with “a proud delight in destruction for its own sake,” or even with “an Ivy League diploma in one hand and a Molotov cocktail in the other.” The latter line is likely an allusion to the lawyers arrested last month in New York after throwing a Molotov cocktail into a police car. These sad and deluded individuals are clearly alone in what they sought to do. One was a successful Princeton- and NYU Law-educated corporate lawyer. Neither Wood nor anyone else has much of an idea at this point about what motivated them to act so stupidly.
I have nothing but disdain for the professors who use their courses to try and convert their students to Marxism or any other radical ideology. The late historian Eugene D. Genovese was a major historian. The books and articles he wrote while he was a Marxist hold up, as do those he wrote when he became a conservative Catholic. I knew him well enough to know that in both phases he did not indoctrinate students; he only taught history so that students could understand the past of the American South and its legacy of slavery.
Everything the panelists said at last week’s conference must be looked at in the context of the event itself. Historian L.D. Burnett, writing in Slate, is incorrect when she writes that the conference was “100 percent anti-intellectual.” Allen Guelzo, for example, did not offer a right-wing rant. But even his appearance—as with those of all the participants—served as a fig leaf, providing legitimization for the development of a Trumpist state-dictated popular history that would be used to teach a “patriotic” version of our nation’s past.
This is not the attitude of many of the radical professors who are historians I still know. They do not insist that their students agree with them. The activist and professor Cornel West team-teaches a course with Robert P. George at Princeton University. Robby has written about how West’s list of books and articles to read includes scores of conservative books with which he does not agree. Both men are completely supportive of free speech on campus.
The serious historians who participated last week, as well as the other panelists, were there to provide a cover for the politicized history that Trump favors. Nothing, however, compared to some of the remarks Ben Carson made. Since everyone knows he was a medical doctor of great accomplishment, but not a historian, nor even someone known to have given any thought to the subject of the conference, why was he even there? A clear reason is that he is an African American, and stood out in a panel composed of all white men and two women.
Deploring what he called “a coordinated attack on her history, her institutions, and her heroes,” Carson turned inexplicably to the role of the press. The news media, he said, were meant originally to function as objective “honest brokers of the truth” that recorded events and brought knowledge of them to the people. That was why the media were “protected,” he said—obviously referring to the First Amendment. Carson apparently does not know that the press in the early days of our Republic was as contentious and nasty as ours today, and far less dedicated to reporting objective truth. Carson suggested that the First Amendment’s protection of the media’s right to say what it wants might have been a mistake. Sounding like Noam Chomsky, he told the attendees of how easy it is to be “manipulated” by the media.
There are some important questions that deserve to be asked about the teaching of history and its contribution to creating a sense of citizenship, and the ways in which those two can be in tension with one another. But such questions went unasked at last week’s conference. The White House Conference on American History was anything but what the title of the forum announced. It was a publicity stunt, and the participants, including the two historians, were played by Donald Trump and his administration.


thebulwark--2020-09-23--McConnell’s Only Principle Is Power

McConnell’s Only Principle Is Power

Those are my principles , and if you don ’ t like them , I have others .
—Groucho Marx Senator Mitch McConnell , seeking a new fig leaf to disguise the squalid spectacle of hypocrisy that Republicans are presenting regarding the Advice and Consent Clause , is sputtering that there really is a principle involved and there is no inconsistency .
In order to reach that conclusion , you must contort yourself into a pretzel , so limber up .
McConnell argues that people misconstrue the principles he enunciated in 2016 .
It wasn ’ t that a Supreme @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the final year of a president ’ s term .
No , as he explained in 2019 when asked what he would do in the event of a 2020 vacancy , “ I ’ d also remind everybody .
.
.
[ that ] the Senate is of the same party as the president of the United States .
And in that situation we would confirm.
” The McConnell of 2019 should talk to the McConnell of 2016 .
Justice Antonin Scalia died on February 13 , 2016 .
Here ’ s what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ later : “ Rarely does a Supreme Court vacancy occur in the final year of a presidential term , and the Senate has not confirmed a nominee to fill a vacancy arising in such circumstances for the better part of a century.
” Nothing there about the Senate and the presidency being held by different parties .
McConnell waxed eloquent about the need for the voice of the American people to be heard in the process .
“ How often does someone from Ashland , Ky. , or Zearing , Iowa , get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was for the people !
Speaking from the well of the Senate a month later , McConnell insisted , disingenuously , that he was only following the “ Biden rule , ” because as chairman of the Judiciary Committee , Biden had said in 1992 that a Supreme Court nominee shouldn ’ t be confirmed in an election year .
So you see , McConnell concluded triumphantly , “ The American people have a voice in this momentous decision.
” On March 20 , 2016 , appearing on Fox News Sunday , McConnell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ We think the important principle in the middle of this presidential year is that the American people need to weigh in and decide who ’ s going to make this decision.
” Let ’ s see if we ’ ve got this : The 2016 principle was that the people should decide .
In 2020 , McConnell pivoted to ( I paraphrase ) Oh , well , only when the presidency and Senate are held by different parties .
McConnell added that “ Americans reelected our majority in 2016 and expanded it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with President Trump and support his agenda , particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary.
” But why does the party composition of the Senate matter , as a principle ?
McConnell seems to be saying that because Republicans gained Senate seats in 2018 , the people have given them a popular mandate to do the president ’ s bidding .
Is that the new principle ?
Because if so , it ’ s a flimsy one .
It ’ s true that the Republicans gained two Senate seats in 2018 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they lost one in 2017 , in Alabama .
Are they basing their mandate on a net gain of one ?
That ’ s the vox populi ?
The map was very favorable to Republicans in 2018 , with Democrats defending 10 seats from states Trump had won .
Further , it ’ s a stretch to distill popular mandates out of Senate races when only one-third of the body is up for reelection every two years .
If we ’ re talking about the voice of the people being dispositive , what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about the 41 House seats and the 350 legislative seats the Democrats flipped ?
That suggests something about the national mood , no ?
There ’ s another problem with McConnell ’ s logic .
How long does the mandate last ?
What ’ s the expiration date ?
In February and March of 2016 , he stressed again and again that the voice of the people that mattered was the upcoming one—the November 2016 election .
On February 23 , 2016 , he said , “ The Senate will appropriately revisit the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in November the decision they ’ ve already started making today.
” There was no mention of the mandate that dated back to 2014 or to 2012 .
And in 2016 , the November election was seven months away , not six weeks .
This is sophistry .
There never was a principle and there isn ’ t now .
No one exemplifies the charade better than Sen. Lindsey Graham , who invited opponents to “ hold the tape ” as he declared fealty in 2018 to the iron law of thou-shalt-fill-no-vacancies-in-an-election-year .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ The rules have changed as far as I ’ m concerned.
” They have .
We are spiraling down to a position where there are no rules , and that is a perilous place for the nation .
Both Democrats and Republicans have drunk deeply from the cup of hypocrisy on all subjects and on nothing as much as Supreme Court nominations .
And both sides have inflicted and suffered wounds .
But this is beyond hypocrisy .
Republicans sat on President Obama ’ s nomination of Merrick Garland for the better part @ @ @ @ @ @ @ election year , the Senate need not act on the president ’ s nomination .
To reverse themselves now is not just to be hypocrites , but to make fools of those who accepted their explanation four years ago .
The appropriate words here are fraud and deceit .
There are times—or there ought to be—when you ’ ve boxed yourself in .
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander .
If not , you invite chaos .
If no one ’ s word can be trusted , not even a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ force .
Ginsburg ’ s tragic death comes at a moment when the country can barely contain the atmospheric pressure of a pandemic , a deep recession , and poisonously partisan politics .
Republicans object that they are only doing what Democrats would surely do if the shoe were on the other foot .
While that might be true , it ’ s a guess .
The shoe is where it is , and the responsibility falls on Republicans not to blow up the process .
This administration has demonstrated contempt for law @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Department of Justice is becoming an arm of Trump , Inc .
The military has been used to clear demonstrators from Lafayette Square ( before curfew no less ) .
The administration flatly refuses to honor congressional subpoenas .
Congressional Republicans have prostrated themselves before the president , repeating his lies and declining to play any moderating role .
The president threatens not to respect the outcome of the election .
Violence between anti- and pro-Trump extremists has already led to deaths .
Republicans are choosing to set fire to their credibility @ @ @ @ @ @ @ floor just when the nation most needs to back away from shattering provocations .
Republicans are sensitive to the demands of their constituents , some of whom are eager to seize the moment .
But wise Republicans should pause to consider that Democrats have constituents too , and they will be outraged and radicalized by a pre-election confirmation .
What would it gain Republicans if they achieve a six-vote majority on the Court only to see the Democrats expand the size of the Court as payback ?
The Supreme Court remains one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enjoy credibility with the American people : 58 percent approve of the way the Court is handling its job , compared with 21 percent who approve of Congress , 45 percent who trust mass media , and 36 percent who trust organized religion .
Only 43 percent of Americans approve of President Trump .
If the Democrats “ pack ” the Court , its precious prestige will be destroyed .
Republicans should pull back from the precipice , or risk reaping the whirlwind .

Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them, I have others.
—Groucho Marx
Senator Mitch McConnell, seeking a new fig leaf to disguise the squalid spectacle of hypocrisy that Republicans are presenting regarding the Advice and Consent Clause, is sputtering that there really is a principle involved and there is no inconsistency. In order to reach that conclusion, you must contort yourself into a pretzel, so limber up.
McConnell argues that people misconstrue the principles he enunciated in 2016. It wasn’t that a Supreme Court vacancy should not be filled in the final year of a president’s term. No, as he explained in 2019 when asked what he would do in the event of a 2020 vacancy, “I’d also remind everybody . . . [that] the Senate is of the same party as the president of the United States. And in that situation we would confirm.”
The McConnell of 2019 should talk to the McConnell of 2016. Justice Antonin Scalia died on February 13, 2016. Here’s what McConnell and Chuck Grassley wrote five days later: “Rarely does a Supreme Court vacancy occur in the final year of a presidential term, and the Senate has not confirmed a nominee to fill a vacancy arising in such circumstances for the better part of a century.” Nothing there about the Senate and the presidency being held by different parties. McConnell waxed eloquent about the need for the voice of the American people to be heard in the process. “How often does someone from Ashland, Ky., or Zearing, Iowa, get to have such impact?”
It was for the people! Speaking from the well of the Senate a month later, McConnell insisted, disingenuously, that he was only following the “Biden rule,” because as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Biden had said in 1992 that a Supreme Court nominee shouldn’t be confirmed in an election year. So you see, McConnell concluded triumphantly, “The American people have a voice in this momentous decision.” On March 20, 2016, appearing on Fox News Sunday, McConnell reiterated the rule he was applying: “We think the important principle in the middle of this presidential year is that the American people need to weigh in and decide who’s going to make this decision.”
Let’s see if we’ve got this: The 2016 principle was that the people should decide. In 2020, McConnell pivoted to (I paraphrase) Oh, well, only when the presidency and Senate are held by different parties. McConnell added that “Americans reelected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we pledged to work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary.”
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
But why does the party composition of the Senate matter, as a principle? McConnell seems to be saying that because Republicans gained Senate seats in 2018, the people have given them a popular mandate to do the president’s bidding.
Is that the new principle? Because if so, it’s a flimsy one.
It’s true that the Republicans gained two Senate seats in 2018, but it’s also true that they lost one in 2017, in Alabama. Are they basing their mandate on a net gain of one? That’s the vox populi? The map was very favorable to Republicans in 2018, with Democrats defending 10 seats from states Trump had won. Further, it’s a stretch to distill popular mandates out of Senate races when only one-third of the body is up for reelection every two years. If we’re talking about the voice of the people being dispositive, what about the other 2018 races? What about the 41 House seats and the 350 legislative seats the Democrats flipped? That suggests something about the national mood, no?
There’s another problem with McConnell’s logic. How long does the mandate last? What’s the expiration date? In February and March of 2016, he stressed again and again that the voice of the people that mattered was the upcoming one—the November 2016 election. On February 23, 2016, he said, “The Senate will appropriately revisit the matter after the American people finish making in November the decision they’ve already started making today.” There was no mention of the mandate that dated back to 2014 or to 2012. And in 2016, the November election was seven months away, not six weeks.
This is sophistry. There never was a principle and there isn’t now. No one exemplifies the charade better than Sen. Lindsey Graham, who invited opponents to “hold the tape” as he declared fealty in 2018 to the iron law of thou-shalt-fill-no-vacancies-in-an-election-year. On Saturday, he mumbled, “The rules have changed as far as I’m concerned.”
They have. We are spiraling down to a position where there are no rules, and that is a perilous place for the nation.
Both Democrats and Republicans have drunk deeply from the cup of hypocrisy on all subjects and on nothing as much as Supreme Court nominations. And both sides have inflicted and suffered wounds. But this is beyond hypocrisy. Republicans sat on President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland for the better part of a year explaining that in an election year, the Senate need not act on the president’s nomination. To reverse themselves now is not just to be hypocrites, but to make fools of those who accepted their explanation four years ago. The appropriate words here are fraud and deceit. There are times—or there ought to be—when you’ve boxed yourself in. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If not, you invite chaos. If no one’s word can be trusted, not even a little bit, everything comes down to force.
Ginsburg’s tragic death comes at a moment when the country can barely contain the atmospheric pressure of a pandemic, a deep recession, and poisonously partisan politics. Republicans object that they are only doing what Democrats would surely do if the shoe were on the other foot. While that might be true, it’s a guess. The shoe is where it is, and the responsibility falls on Republicans not to blow up the process.
This administration has demonstrated contempt for law and procedure in a thousand ways. The Department of Justice is becoming an arm of Trump, Inc. The military has been used to clear demonstrators from Lafayette Square (before curfew no less). The administration flatly refuses to honor congressional subpoenas. Congressional Republicans have prostrated themselves before the president, repeating his lies and declining to play any moderating role. The president threatens not to respect the outcome of the election. Violence between anti- and pro-Trump extremists has already led to deaths.
Republicans are choosing to set fire to their credibility and push the polarization accelerator to the floor just when the nation most needs to back away from shattering provocations.
Republicans are sensitive to the demands of their constituents, some of whom are eager to seize the moment. But wise Republicans should pause to consider that Democrats have constituents too, and they will be outraged and radicalized by a pre-election confirmation. What would it gain Republicans if they achieve a six-vote majority on the Court only to see the Democrats expand the size of the Court as payback?
The Supreme Court remains one of the last institutions in American life to enjoy credibility with the American people: 58 percent approve of the way the Court is handling its job, compared with 21 percent who approve of Congress, 45 percent who trust mass media, and 36 percent who trust organized religion. Only 43 percent of Americans approve of President Trump.
If the Democrats “pack” the Court, its precious prestige will be destroyed. Republicans should pull back from the precipice, or risk reaping the whirlwind.


thebulwark--2020-09-23--200,000 Dead Isn’t a Statistic. It’s a Tragedy.

I feel sorry for the GOP staffers who do rapid response for Donald Trump .
I did similar work at various times in the past , writing talking points for the House Republicans and the Republican National Committee .
Back then , I responded to attacks by putting the best face on the events of the Reagan-Bush years .
My successors have a challenge that I never had to worry about : In 2020 , there is no best face .
The central fact of this election is that more than 200,000 Americans have died because of COVID-19 .
President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ benchmark for judging his response .
On March 29 , he said : “ And so , if we can hold that down , as we ’ re saying , to 100,000—that ’ s a horrible number—maybe even less , but to 100,000 ; so we have between 100- and 200,000—we all , together , have done a very good job.
” Well , we are now over 200,000 and the pandemic is still killing more than 5,000 Americans a week .
By his own standard , Trump has done a very bad @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make the bodies disappear .
And yet , Trump and his minions have tried to dodge this basic fact .
A few weeks ago , Trump retweeted a claim that the Centers for Disease Control had “ quietly ” revised its numbers .
According to the tweet , “ only 6 % ” of the deaths were due to COVID and the rest involved other serious conditions .
Twitter removed Trump ’ s retweet because its assertion was bogus .
Dr. Anthony Fauci , the government ’ s top expert on infectious diseases @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not mean that someone who has hypertension or diabetes who dies of COVID didn ’ t die of COVID-19 .
They did.
” As any communications person will tell you , messaging will fail without having at least roots in reality .
At a Michigan rally , Trump said : “ You see how good we ’ re doing relative to other countries.
” Nope .
This claim flunks both the eyeball test and the smell test .
The United States has more COVID deaths per 100,000 than most other nations .
Our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Canada ’ s , five times greater than Germany ’ s , and 18 times greater than Australia ’ s .
Another thing Trump does is claim that he acted boldly and early .
Well , he did cut off some travel from China—but that “ ban ” was porous and allowed the virus to come in from other nations .
Touting the China ban is like taking credit for closing one porthole on the Titanic .
And even mentioning China calls to mind Trump ’ s fawning praise of the regime : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to contain the Coronavirus .
The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency , ” he tweeted .
“ It will all work out well .
In particular , on behalf of the American People , I want to thank President Xi !
” Any way you look at it , COVID is a losing issue for Trump .
His only alternative is distraction , getting voters to focus on anything other than death and disease .
But what else is there to talk about ?
The Trump people like to say @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pandemic .
“ The economy was good before it was bad.
” Go slap that bumper sticker on your truck .
For a few weeks Trump tried to divert attention to crime .
But this tactic had a couple of problems , too .
Until a few months ago , Trump was proudly pointing to falling crime rates .
But now he was warning that crime is rising .
Even in politics , you need a little consistency : If Trump is responsible for the one , then it follows that he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ too .
Of course , crime is a problem .
But it ’ s not as urgent as COVID .
Rhetoric about “ American carnage ” will only remind people that the real carnage has taken place in hospital rooms where gasping patients die alone .
Think about this for a moment : The COVID death count in the eight months of 2020 ( so far ) exceeds the total number of murders in the United States between 2008 and 2018 .
Maybe some miracle will save the country and thereby revive Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will have to come from a higher power than a political staff .
As Trump has said , it is what it is .

I feel sorry for the GOP staffers who do rapid response for Donald Trump. I did similar work at various times in the past, writing talking points for the House Republicans and the Republican National Committee. Back then, I responded to attacks by putting the best face on the events of the Reagan-Bush years. My successors have a challenge that I never had to worry about: In 2020, there is no best face.
The central fact of this election is that more than 200,000 Americans have died because of COVID-19. President Trump himself set that number as a benchmark for judging his response. On March 29, he said: “And so, if we can hold that down, as we’re saying, to 100,000—that’s a horrible number—maybe even less, but to 100,000; so we have between 100- and 200,000—we all, together, have done a very good job.”
Well, we are now over 200,000 and the pandemic is still killing more than 5,000 Americans a week. By his own standard, Trump has done a very bad job.
No amount of spinning will make the bodies disappear. And yet, Trump and his minions have tried to dodge this basic fact.
A few weeks ago, Trump retweeted a claim that the Centers for Disease Control had “quietly” revised its numbers. According to the tweet, “only 6%” of the deaths were due to COVID and the rest involved other serious conditions. Twitter removed Trump’s retweet because its assertion was bogus. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top expert on infectious diseases, said a preexisting condition “does not mean that someone who has hypertension or diabetes who dies of COVID didn’t die of COVID-19. They did.”
As any communications person will tell you, messaging will fail without having at least roots in reality.
At a Michigan rally, Trump said: “You see how good we’re doing relative to other countries.”
Nope. This claim flunks both the eyeball test and the smell test. The United States has more COVID deaths per 100,000 than most other nations. Our death rate is twice as great as Canada’s, five times greater than Germany’s, and 18 times greater than Australia’s.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
Another thing Trump does is claim that he acted boldly and early. Well, he did cut off some travel from China—but that “ban” was porous and allowed the virus to come in from other nations. Touting the China ban is like taking credit for closing one porthole on the Titanic.
And even mentioning China calls to mind Trump’s fawning praise of the regime: “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency,” he tweeted. “It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
Any way you look at it, COVID is a losing issue for Trump. His only alternative is distraction, getting voters to focus on anything other than death and disease.
But what else is there to talk about? The Trump people like to say how well the economy was doing before the pandemic. “The economy was good before it was bad.” Go slap that bumper sticker on your truck.
For a few weeks Trump tried to divert attention to crime. But this tactic had a couple of problems, too. Until a few months ago, Trump was proudly pointing to falling crime rates. But now he was warning that crime is rising. Even in politics, you need a little consistency: If Trump is responsible for the one, then it follows that he’s responsible for the other, too.
Of course, crime is a problem. But it’s not as urgent as COVID. Rhetoric about “American carnage” will only remind people that the real carnage has taken place in hospital rooms where gasping patients die alone. Think about this for a moment:
The COVID death count in the eight months of 2020 (so far) exceeds the total number of murders in the United States between 2008 and 2018.
Maybe some miracle will save the country and thereby revive Trump’s prospects. But that miracle will have to come from a higher power than a political staff.
As Trump has said, it is what it is.


thebulwark--2020-09-23--President Trump’s Unpatriotic ‘Patriotic Education’

Anti-American propaganda in schools , such as the blatantly inaccurate but widely lauded 1619 Project , is a real problem .
So it is certainly welcome to hear someone prominent complain that it “ rewrites American history to teach our children that we were founded on the principle of oppression , not freedom.
” The problem is that this was said by President Trump in a Constitution Day speech announcing a new initiative to promote “ patriotic education , ” whatever that means .
Trump is a discrediting spokesman for any idea , and on the rare occasions I hear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I don ’ t want to cheer .
I want to cringe .
That ’ s especially true for his push for “ patriotic education , ” which he intends to pay for by engaging in a Third World shakedown so he can get cash from foreign countries to use as an unconstitutional private slush fund for the chief executive .
President Trump announced that by executive order , he will create a “ 1776 Commission , ” operating under the National Endowment for the Humanities , to “ promote patriotic education.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ floated early in the year for an executive order mandating “ classical ” architecture in all federal buildings .
It ’ s becoming a pattern for Trump : He looks at the vast machinery of Big Government and its power to intrude itself into the life of our nation , and instead of asking how it can be reined in , he asks how it can be harnessed to his purposes .
The proposed executive order on architecture was an attempt to overturn the Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture written by Daniel Patrick @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kennedy , in 1962 .
“ The development of an official style must be avoided , ” Moynihan wrote .
“ Design must flow from the architectural profession to the government , and not vice versa.
” This was a time when the federal government was rapidly expanding its involvement in art , ideas , and education .
In the following decades , it would form the National Endowment for the Humanities , the National Endowment for the Arts , the Corporation for Public Broadcasting , National Public Radio , and the Department @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the very legitimate fear that government funding would create an intellectual and artistic establishment—official schools of art and ideas imposed on the country from Washington , D.C. Moynihan was an old-fashioned liberal who wanted to have Big Government but also have intellectual freedom , so this is precisely what he was trying to head off by declaring that ideas should flow from the private sector to the government and not the other way around .
This didn ’ t entirely work out .
When the government starts throwing money at art , ideas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appoint someone to decide where to put that money , and this usually ends up entrenching the existing establishment .
But Trump isn ’ t really trying to fix that problem .
He ’ s not trying to dismantle the government “ establishment , ” but to take it over .
Thus , his main means for enforcement of “ patriotic education ” is the abuse of federal funding , which he has threatened to withdraw from schools that teach a curriculum of which he disapproves .
Because it would be a shame @ @ @ @ @ @ @ freedom .
How Trump says he ’ s going to pay for his proposed “ patriotic education ” is even worse .
At a campaign rally in North Carolina , he proclaimed that the money would be diverted from a government-brokered deal for the purchase of the Chinese social media platform TikTok .
Here is how he described his ultimatum to technology company executives : “ Do me a favor , could you put up $ 5 billion into a fund for education , so we can educate people as to real history @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the fake history ?
” The rationale for the TikTok deal was that , given the Chinese government ’ s lurch back toward strident totalitarianism , TikTok ’ s algorithm poses a threat to the data privacy of American users .
So the federal government has been using national security concerns to force a sale of TikTok ’ s operations to a consortium of the American firms Oracle and Walmart ( which may still not address the problem ) .
Trump has apparently been angling for the U.S. government to get a cut @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that this is illegal .
Instead he is trying to get these tech companies to create a multi-billion-dollar fund for education , which he has now proclaimed will be used for his own pet project .
This is a corrupt , authoritarian shakedown by the president , an abuse of his power to extort money from private corporations to be used for his own propaganda campaign .
It is exactly the sort of thing we can expect from the president who sought a similarly corrupt quid pro quo in Ukraine .
For all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and American exceptionalism , this episode shows that he neither knows nor cares about what actually makes America ’ s system of government distinctive .
Then again , there ’ s a good chance this was just bluster to impress the rubes at his political rally and none of it will ever happen .
Trump has a history of hawking culture war vaporware .
The draft executive order on “ classical ” architecture was announced in February and has not been heard of since .
His “ National Garden of American Heroes , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no specific site or source of funding .
So it should be no surprise that TikTok ’ s owner , ByteDance , says it has never heard of the “ patriotic education ” initiative and instead plans to “ work with partners and global shareholders to launch online classroom projects.
” But this still sets a bad example , making a mockery of the limits on presidential power and establishing a precedent for authoritarian , top-down control of American education .
As with Trump ’ s other trial runs as our national arbiter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also a foolish temporary victory .
The power to decide what education is “ patriotic ” could soon pass to Joe Biden—and while I ’ m not sure he will be eager to make use of it , I ’ m pretty sure President Harris will love all of the new executive authority Donald Trump is scheming to create for her .
As for myself , I would prefer that instead of trying to teach “ patriotic history ” or any other ideological flavor of history , we simply teach accurate , factual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ story of America ’ s past is told truthfully , our country will come out looking pretty good .
America ’ s present , on the other hand , is frankly a little embarrassing .

Anti-American propaganda in schools, such as the blatantly inaccurate but widely lauded 1619 Project, is a real problem. So it is certainly welcome to hear someone prominent complain that it “rewrites American history to teach our children that we were founded on the principle of oppression, not freedom.”
The problem is that this was said by President Trump in a Constitution Day speech announcing a new initiative to promote “patriotic education,” whatever that means.
Trump is a discrediting spokesman for any idea, and on the rare occasions I hear him say something I agree with, I don’t want to cheer. I want to cringe. That’s especially true for his push for “patriotic education,” which he intends to pay for by engaging in a Third World shakedown so he can get cash from foreign countries to use as an unconstitutional private slush fund for the chief executive.
How patriotic.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
President Trump announced that by executive order, he will create a “1776 Commission,” operating under the National Endowment for the Humanities, to “promote patriotic education.” This reminds me of the idea he floated early in the year for an executive order mandating “classical” architecture in all federal buildings.
It’s becoming a pattern for Trump: He looks at the vast machinery of Big Government and its power to intrude itself into the life of our nation, and instead of asking how it can be reined in, he asks how it can be harnessed to his purposes.
The proposed executive order on architecture was an attempt to overturn the Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture written by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an aide to president Kennedy, in 1962. “The development of an official style must be avoided,” Moynihan wrote. “Design must flow from the architectural profession to the government, and not vice versa.”
This was a time when the federal government was rapidly expanding its involvement in art, ideas, and education. In the following decades, it would form the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Public Radio, and the Department of Education. All of this raised the very legitimate fear that government funding would create an intellectual and artistic establishment—official schools of art and ideas imposed on the country from Washington, D.C. Moynihan was an old-fashioned liberal who wanted to have Big Government but also have intellectual freedom, so this is precisely what he was trying to head off by declaring that ideas should flow from the private sector to the government and not the other way around.
This didn’t entirely work out. When the government starts throwing money at art, ideas, and education, it has to appoint someone to decide where to put that money, and this usually ends up entrenching the existing establishment. But Trump isn’t really trying to fix that problem. He’s not trying to dismantle the government “establishment,” but to take it over.
Thus, his main means for enforcement of “patriotic education” is the abuse of federal funding, which he has threatened to withdraw from schools that teach a curriculum of which he disapproves. Because it would be a shame if anyone did something to threaten our freedom.
How Trump says he’s going to pay for his proposed “patriotic education” is even worse. At a campaign rally in North Carolina, he proclaimed that the money would be diverted from a government-brokered deal for the purchase of the Chinese social media platform TikTok. Here is how he described his ultimatum to technology company executives: “Do me a favor, could you put up $5 billion into a fund for education, so we can educate people as to real history of our country—the real history, not the fake history?”
The rationale for the TikTok deal was that, given the Chinese government’s lurch back toward strident totalitarianism, TikTok’s algorithm poses a threat to the data privacy of American users. So the federal government has been using national security concerns to force a sale of TikTok’s operations to a consortium of the American firms Oracle and Walmart (which may still not address the problem). Trump has apparently been angling for the U.S. government to get a cut of the deal, despite being told that this is illegal. Instead he is trying to get these tech companies to create a multi-billion-dollar fund for education, which he has now proclaimed will be used for his own pet project.
This is a corrupt, authoritarian shakedown by the president, an abuse of his power to extort money from private corporations to be used for his own propaganda campaign. It is exactly the sort of thing we can expect from the president who sought a similarly corrupt quid pro quo in Ukraine.
For all Trump’s chest thumping about patriotism and American exceptionalism, this episode shows that he neither knows nor cares about what actually makes America’s system of government distinctive.
Then again, there’s a good chance this was just bluster to impress the rubes at his political rally and none of it will ever happen.
Trump has a history of hawking culture war vaporware. The draft executive order on “classical” architecture was announced in February and has not been heard of since. His “National Garden of American Heroes,” announced in July, still has no specific site or source of funding. So it should be no surprise that TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, says it has never heard of the “patriotic education” initiative and instead plans to “work with partners and global shareholders to launch online classroom projects.”
But this still sets a bad example, making a mockery of the limits on presidential power and establishing a precedent for authoritarian, top-down control of American education. As with Trump’s other trial runs as our national arbiter of taste and ideas, it is also a foolish temporary victory. The power to decide what education is “patriotic” could soon pass to Joe Biden—and while I’m not sure he will be eager to make use of it, I’m pretty sure President Harris will love all of the new executive authority Donald Trump is scheming to create for her.
As for myself, I would prefer that instead of trying to teach “patriotic history” or any other ideological flavor of history, we simply teach accurate, factual American history—in the confidence that if the story of America’s past is told truthfully, our country will come out looking pretty good.
America’s present, on the other hand, is frankly a little embarrassing.