theamericanconservative--2020-10-22--American Conservatism at a Crossroads

American Conservatism at a Crossroads

As the gatekeepers of the conservative movement have their fantasies ripped away , the Old Right looks for a new way forward .
Blame it on the Eighties , at once the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end .
According to the official script , our country ratified the conservative achievements of that decade .
We twice elected Ronald Reagan president , cut taxes , won the Cold War and launched an information technology boom .
“ The conservative revolution is here to stay , ” wrote Heritage Foundation Distinguished Fellow Lee Edwards at the century @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Americans don ’ t seem to be celebrating .
Urban rioters of all races are destroying property and assaulting “ racist ” whites .
Public debt is nearly 100 percent of Gross Domestic Product , a figure the Congressional Budget Office projects will rise to nearly 200 percent by 2050 .
Hate crime hoaxes are rampant .
And the House of Representatives is home to a collection of reprobates who profess a loathing for our historical identity .
What conservative revolution ?
This wasn ’ t supposed to happen .
American conservatism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ capitalism , a strong military , religious piety and open immigration is a model for the world over , right ?
But consider the possibility that this model has some serious design flaws and was never all that conservative in the place .
Its legacy looks impressive , but that is largely a product of public relations .
Many conservatives sense they ’ re being had .
And the conservative noticing the most is political philosopher Paul Gottfried .
Through numerous books , essays and editorials , he has built a compelling case @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” owes to diluted mimicry of the very Left it claims to abhor , a mimicry that achieves self-parody in the tag line “ Liberals are the real racists.
” This metamorphosis of conservatism from an earlier , more authentic form , Gottfried has argued , has been disastrous , undermining the Right ’ s ability to reverse our nation ’ s accelerating leftward drift .
His new collection , The Vanishing Tradition , featuring 10 outside contributions , unmasks the character of this identity transference and its consequences .
Gottfried , for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania , takes big ideas seriously .
Anyone who has read his published work , or listened to his annual president ’ s speeches at the H.L .
Mencken Club , is familiar with his witty , acidic views of the media-conscious enforcers of Conservatism , Inc .
He doesn ’ t hold back here either .
In the Introduction and Afterword , Gottfried identifies the nature of the power players who run the apparatus of official conservatism .
America , he emphasizes , is not exempt from the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ democracies , certain ideas take precedence over others more because they are officially sanctioned , not because they are the winners in an intellectual “ marketplace.
” People who hold power are not objective referees .
They set the boundaries for what can and can not be said publicly because their goal is protecting their legitimacy .
Egalitarian liberalism is firmly ensconced as America ’ s reigning Big Idea .
Yet tragically , conservatives lie to themselves that they ’ re in control .
If they lose a few matches , that is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or hostile , clandestine liberal forces ( e.g.
, George Soros ) .
Bollocks to that , says Gottfried .
The primary obstacle to conservative dominance is conservatism itself , or more accurately , the amalgam of money men and opinion leaders collectively known as Conservatism Inc. , still trying to give the Eighties a permanent lease on life .
Conservative gatekeepers are not about to risk breaking up the center-Right coalition established in the Reagan era by tolerating heterodox opinions from within .
That this coalition was fragile from the start , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , does not enter their minds .
Desperate to preserve their institutional viability , this faux-Right has no qualms about barring participation by troublemakers , especially on issues related to race and immigration .
Peter Brimelow , John Derbyshire , Jason Richwine and Gottfried himself , among others , have learned first-hand of this version of “ cancel culture.
” Conservatives still can obtain a platform , of course , but on the condition of their good behavior , which is to agree to be on the losing side .
Conservatives who play @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be , are on a fool ’ s errand .
“ ( T ) he conservative movement has insulated itself so well against examination by an independent Right that it no longer has to worry about inventing its past , ” Gottfried states in the Introduction .
“ It has become , with the docile compliance of the Center Left , the ultimate creator of how it got to where it is.
” In his Afterward ( “ The Never-Ending Purges ” ) , he likewise offers : “ The purges were not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they were a defining ( author ’ s italics ) characteristic of a movement , whose modus operandi was to take up stands where the Left had been the moment before.
” This capitulation has imposed real costs upon our nation – such as the recent destruction of the once-lovely Portland , Oregon .
Political philosopher Jack Kerwick clarifies the traditionalist position in the book ’ s template essay , “ Big Conservatism and American Exceptionalism.
” Big Conservatism , or the “ Big Con , ” he argues , rests on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , is a creed , a set of universally applicable propositions such as equality , democracy and liberty .
In effect , we are the French Revolution done right .
By importing people from other countries and exporting our economic , diplomatic and military largesse to other countries , we make the world and ourselves better off .
In this schema , the Somalians are as capable of assimilation as the Scots .
Apparently , Rep. Ilhan Omar never got that memo .
This sentimental fantasy , dressed up as reason , argues @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Exceptionalism ( AE ) .
And accepting it has become a requirement for conservatives in search of an audience .
Our post-Cold War conservative intelligentsia heap scorn upon any intimation that some nations are better for America than others .
Allan Bloom , Irving Kristol , William Bennett , Dennis Prager , Charles Krauthammer , Jonah Goldberg , Ben Shapiro , David Brooks – it ’ s the same story .
AE is less philosophy than political evangelism , concludes Kerwick , “ a set of beliefs to which universal moral and spiritual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nicholas Drummond argues that the purveyors of American Exceptionalism – mainly East and West Coast acolytes of the late philosopher Leo Strauss – habitually distort our nation ’ s founding principles .
They interpret the Declaration of Independence ’ s phrase , “ All men are created equal , ” for example , as a mandate for ignoring race , language , borders and other markers of national identity .
In fact , our Founders , far from celebrating “ diversity ” ( i.e.
, factions ) , greatly feared it .
If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ethnically balkanized landscape , he would be warning fellow Americans of the risk of becoming the province of plutocratic elites ruling over a divided citizenry .
If the traditionalist-neoconservative fissure has a Ground Zero , argues anarchist firebrand Keith Preston , it occurred four decades ago in the “ conservative ” Republican campaign to derail President Reagan ’ s nomination of Melvin Bradford for chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities .
Preston ’ s version of this oft-told story reveals the mendacity of the opponents of Bradford , a Southern traditionalist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who sought to dump him in favor of William Bennett .
On the surface , the battle was over the flow of NEH grant money , but underneath it was over America ’ s reigning ideas and symbols .
In the end , Bennett , an intellectual middleweight and moral scold , won the job .
Mainstream conservatives believe in exporting our propositions everywhere .
But what if nations so inculcated fail even to respect these propositions , much less practice them ?
Suppose the Middle East turns out not to be Eastern @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Marjorie Jeffrey sees downsides everywhere .
The reluctance of establishment Right , locked into an all-nations-are-created-equal psychology , she argues , has mired us in needless wars and diplomatic crises .
She argues for a return to the realism espoused by the late diplomat George Kennan , whose prescient writings of decades ago underscored that nation-states ultimately are about interests , not alliances .
So how does America adopt a more traditionalist-realist sensibility ?
One possible source is the so-called “ Alt Right , ” whose street theater and occasional violence has invited @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the University of Victoria ’ s Richard Marcy , actually recalls French Situationist rebels of the Left in 1968 .
In their goal of disturbing and reframing public discourse , the Alt Right at times has met with fitful successes , especially via online video presentations .
But the street provocateurs are still a long way from being thought-provoking .
The American Catholic Right also could be a countervailing force , but their best days appear long over , maintains Georgia Southwestern State University ’ s Jesse Russell in “ The Contradictions of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Eighties , the leading lights of that world , such as Michael Novak , Richard John Neuhaus , George Weigel and Robert George , served as effective counterweights to an increasingly radicalized Church .
But after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 , they could not finesse their dual role as interlocutors for the Vatican and spokesmen for Republican White House foreign policy .
Nor could they achieve widespread appeal among religious or lay audiences .
Southern conservatives , meanwhile , are without a home , observes native North Carolinian Boyd Cathey @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to their own political goals , depicting traditional conservatives as “ racists ” who jeopardize Republican election prospects .
Something valuable has been lost .
Bob Corker , Lindsay Graham and Nikki Haley are Southerners and call themselves conservatives , but they can ’ t hold a candle to Sam Ervin .
Cathey concludes : “ Southern conservatives , properly understood , have no place in contemporary establishment conservatism .
Their orientation and those who express it have become a hindrance to the ‘ movement ’ as it reaches out and tries to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the left.
” The Right might look northward for inspiration , argues Canadian native and political philosopher Grant Havers .
His essay , “ The Tory Right and the American Conservative Movement , ” emphasizes affirmation of ethnic roots as the basis for any successful nation .
And that doesn ’ t sit well with either big government or big business .
Havers ’ lodestar is the late Canadian social philosopher George Grant , who rejected abstractions like “ freedom ” and “ equality ” in favor of a Tory-progressive fusion that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own.
” To fund its ventures , the Old Right will have to look beyond the Washington , D.C. think tanks , argues Joseph Cotto , chief editor of the San Francisco Review of Books .
Leading conservative nonprofits such as the American Enterprise Institute and The Heritage Foundation have demonstrated that they can be bought .
Cotto recalls one instance about a dozen years ago when Heritage received large donations from Lockheed Martin in return for boosting the company ’ s ( unsuccessful ) campaign to restore Pentagon funding cuts for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ co-dependence , in which research and lobbying functions merge , “ renders it difficult for the funded institutions to change course if their interests will be compromised as a result of a policy shift.
” What about the immediate future ?
Assuming President Donald Trump is reelected – not a safe assumption at this writing – the road is uphill .
His successful campaign four years ago rested implicitly , and at times explicitly , on a rejection of American Exceptionalism .
Why is he avoiding this strategy this around ?
He shouldn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ political scientist George Hawley in his essay , “ Republican Voters and Conservative Ideology.
” Hawley amasses survey data pointing to American Exceptionalism as past its sell date .
One study , published in 2008 , found that only 7.4 percent of potential voters defined themselves as “ strong conservative ” and “ strong Republican.
” Hawley writes , “ The public ’ s conservatism , as the conservative movement understands the term , is more symbolic than substantive.
” That ’ s how Donald Trump was elected president in 2016 .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cared less if he was a “ true conservative.
” As a conservative retrofit is necessary , it should be away from the “ movement ” psychology .
Political movements ( i.e.
, ideologies ) , by nature , demand mass obedience in the pursuit and maintenance of power .
Individualism is a casualty .
Movement conservatism , despite its vast resources , does not have much to show for its efforts .
Sam Francis used to say that the conservative movement isn ’ t conserving anything and it ’ s not moving @ @ @ @ @ @ @ collection written by and for individualists , presents sensible ways both to conserve and move .
Carl F. Horowitz is senior fellow at the National Legal and Policy Center , a Falls Church , Va.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to ethics and accountability in American public life .

The Vanishing Tradition: Perspectives on American Conservatism, Paul Gottfried, ed., (Northern Illinois University Press, 2020), 232 pages, $22.95.
Blame it on the Eighties, at once the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end. According to the official script, our country ratified the conservative achievements of that decade. We twice elected Ronald Reagan president, cut taxes, won the Cold War and launched an information technology boom. “The conservative revolution is here to stay,” wrote Heritage Foundation Distinguished Fellow Lee Edwards at the century’s end.
Cut to 2020. Americans don’t seem to be celebrating. Urban rioters of all races are destroying property and assaulting “racist” whites. Public debt is nearly 100 percent of Gross Domestic Product, a figure the Congressional Budget Office projects will rise to nearly 200 percent by 2050. Hate crime hoaxes are rampant. And the House of Representatives is home to a collection of reprobates who profess a loathing for our historical identity. What conservative revolution?
This wasn’t supposed to happen. American conservatism, an ideal fusion of democracy, capitalism, a strong military, religious piety and open immigration is a model for the world over, right? But consider the possibility that this model has some serious design flaws and was never all that conservative in the place. Its legacy looks impressive, but that is largely a product of public relations.
Many conservatives sense they’re being had. And the conservative noticing the most is political philosopher Paul Gottfried. Through numerous books, essays and editorials, he has built a compelling case that American conservatism’s “triumph” owes to diluted mimicry of the very Left it claims to abhor, a mimicry that achieves self-parody in the tag line “Liberals are the real racists.” This metamorphosis of conservatism from an earlier, more authentic form, Gottfried has argued, has been disastrous, undermining the Right’s ability to reverse our nation’s accelerating leftward drift. His new collection, The Vanishing Tradition, featuring 10 outside contributions, unmasks the character of this identity transference and its consequences.
Gottfried, for over three decades a professor of humanities at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, takes big ideas seriously. Anyone who has read his published work, or listened to his annual president’s speeches at the H.L. Mencken Club, is familiar with his witty, acidic views of the media-conscious enforcers of Conservatism, Inc. He doesn’t hold back here either.
In the Introduction and Afterword, Gottfried identifies the nature of the power players who run the apparatus of official conservatism. America, he emphasizes, is not exempt from the logic of political regimes. Even in democracies, certain ideas take precedence over others more because they are officially sanctioned, not because they are the winners in an intellectual “marketplace.” People who hold power are not objective referees. They set the boundaries for what can and cannot be said publicly because their goal is protecting their legitimacy. Egalitarian liberalism is firmly ensconced as America’s reigning Big Idea. Yet tragically, conservatives lie to themselves that they’re in control. If they lose a few matches, that is due to insufficient minority “outreach” or hostile, clandestine liberal forces (e.g., George Soros).
Bollocks to that, says Gottfried. The primary obstacle to conservative dominance is conservatism itself, or more accurately, the amalgam of money men and opinion leaders collectively known as Conservatism Inc., still trying to give the Eighties a permanent lease on life. Conservative gatekeepers are not about to risk breaking up the center-Right coalition established in the Reagan era by tolerating heterodox opinions from within. That this coalition was fragile from the start, prone to capricious shifts in public opinion, does not enter their minds. Desperate to preserve their institutional viability, this faux-Right has no qualms about barring participation by troublemakers, especially on issues related to race and immigration. Peter Brimelow, John Derbyshire, Jason Richwine and Gottfried himself, among others, have learned first-hand of this version of “cancel culture.” Conservatives still can obtain a platform, of course, but on the condition of their good behavior, which is to agree to be on the losing side.
Conservatives who play this game, however lucrative it may be, are on a fool’s errand. “(T)he conservative movement has insulated itself so well against examination by an independent Right that it no longer has to worry about inventing its past,” Gottfried states in the Introduction. “It has become, with the docile compliance of the Center Left, the ultimate creator of how it got to where it is.” In his Afterward (“The Never-Ending Purges”), he likewise offers: “The purges were not a passing ancillary aspect of conservatism; they were a defining (author’s italics) characteristic of a movement, whose modus operandi was to take up stands where the Left had been the moment before.” This capitulation has imposed real costs upon our nation – such as the recent destruction of the once-lovely Portland, Oregon.
Political philosopher Jack Kerwick clarifies the traditionalist position in the book’s template essay, “Big Conservatism and American Exceptionalism.” Big Conservatism, or the “Big Con,” he argues, rests on the premise that America, unlike other nations, is a creed, a set of universally applicable propositions such as equality, democracy and liberty. In effect, we are the French Revolution done right. By importing people from other countries and exporting our economic, diplomatic and military largesse to other countries, we make the world and ourselves better off. In this schema, the Somalians are as capable of assimilation as the Scots. Apparently, Rep. Ilhan Omar never got that memo.
This sentimental fantasy, dressed up as reason, argues Kerwick, is the foundation of American Exceptionalism (AE). And accepting it has become a requirement for conservatives in search of an audience. Our post-Cold War conservative intelligentsia heap scorn upon any intimation that some nations are better for America than others. Allan Bloom, Irving Kristol, William Bennett, Dennis Prager, Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg, Ben Shapiro, David Brooks – it’s the same story. AE is less philosophy than political evangelism, concludes Kerwick, “a set of beliefs to which universal moral and spiritual significance has been assigned.”
Political scientist Nicholas Drummond argues that the purveyors of American Exceptionalism – mainly East and West Coast acolytes of the late philosopher Leo Strauss – habitually distort our nation’s founding principles. They interpret the Declaration of Independence’s phrase, “All men are created equal,” for example, as a mandate for ignoring race, language, borders and other markers of national identity. In fact, our Founders, far from celebrating “diversity” (i.e., factions), greatly feared it. If James Madison could survey today’s ethnically balkanized landscape, he would be warning fellow Americans of the risk of becoming the province of plutocratic elites ruling over a divided citizenry.
If the traditionalist-neoconservative fissure has a Ground Zero, argues anarchist firebrand Keith Preston, it occurred four decades ago in the “conservative” Republican campaign to derail President Reagan’s nomination of Melvin Bradford for chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Preston’s version of this oft-told story reveals the mendacity of the opponents of Bradford, a Southern traditionalist less than enamored of Abraham Lincoln, who sought to dump him in favor of William Bennett. On the surface, the battle was over the flow of NEH grant money, but underneath it was over America’s reigning ideas and symbols. In the end, Bennett, an intellectual middleweight and moral scold, won the job.
Mainstream conservatives believe in exporting our propositions everywhere. But what if nations so inculcated fail even to respect these propositions, much less practice them? Suppose the Middle East turns out not to be Eastern Europe. Then what? Independent scholar Marjorie Jeffrey sees downsides everywhere. The reluctance of establishment Right, locked into an all-nations-are-created-equal psychology, she argues, has mired us in needless wars and diplomatic crises. She argues for a return to the realism espoused by the late diplomat George Kennan, whose prescient writings of decades ago underscored that nation-states ultimately are about interests, not alliances.
So how does America adopt a more traditionalist-realist sensibility? One possible source is the so-called “Alt Right,” whose street theater and occasional violence has invited comparisons to neo-Nazism, but, argues the University of Victoria’s Richard Marcy, actually recalls French Situationist rebels of the Left in 1968. In their goal of disturbing and reframing public discourse, the Alt Right at times has met with fitful successes, especially via online video presentations. But the street provocateurs are still a long way from being thought-provoking.
The American Catholic Right also could be a countervailing force, but their best days appear long over, maintains Georgia Southwestern State University’s Jesse Russell in “The Contradictions of Catholic Neoconservatism.” Starting in the early Eighties, the leading lights of that world, such as Michael Novak, Richard John Neuhaus, George Weigel and Robert George, served as effective counterweights to an increasingly radicalized Church. But after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, they could not finesse their dual role as interlocutors for the Vatican and spokesmen for Republican White House foreign policy. Nor could they achieve widespread appeal among religious or lay audiences.
Southern conservatives, meanwhile, are without a home, observes native North Carolinian Boyd Cathey. Multiculturalists and neoconservatives have refashioned conservatism to their own political goals, depicting traditional conservatives as “racists” who jeopardize Republican election prospects. Something valuable has been lost. Bob Corker, Lindsay Graham and Nikki Haley are Southerners and call themselves conservatives, but they can’t hold a candle to Sam Ervin. Cathey concludes: “Southern conservatives, properly understood, have no place in contemporary establishment conservatism. Their orientation and those who express it have become a hindrance to the ‘movement’ as it reaches out and tries to form alliances with the opposition, always on the left.”
The Right might look northward for inspiration, argues Canadian native and political philosopher Grant Havers. His essay, “The Tory Right and the American Conservative Movement,” emphasizes affirmation of ethnic roots as the basis for any successful nation. And that doesn’t sit well with either big government or big business. Havers’ lodestar is the late Canadian social philosopher George Grant, who rejected abstractions like “freedom” and “equality” in favor of a Tory-progressive fusion that emphasizes “love of one’s own.”
To fund its ventures, the Old Right will have to look beyond the Washington, D.C. think tanks, argues Joseph Cotto, chief editor of the San Francisco Review of Books. Leading conservative nonprofits such as the American Enterprise Institute and The Heritage Foundation have demonstrated that they can be bought. Cotto recalls one instance about a dozen years ago when Heritage received large donations from Lockheed Martin in return for boosting the company’s (unsuccessful) campaign to restore Pentagon funding cuts for the costly F-22 Raptor fighter jet. Such co-dependence, in which research and lobbying functions merge, “renders it difficult for the funded institutions to change course if their interests will be compromised as a result of a policy shift.”
What about the immediate future? Assuming President Donald Trump is reelected – not a safe assumption at this writing – the road is uphill. His successful campaign four years ago rested implicitly, and at times explicitly, on a rejection of American Exceptionalism. Why is he avoiding this strategy this around? He shouldn’t, implies University of Alabama political scientist George Hawley in his essay, “Republican Voters and Conservative Ideology.” Hawley amasses survey data pointing to American Exceptionalism as past its sell date. One study, published in 2008, found that only 7.4 percent of potential voters defined themselves as “strong conservative” and “strong Republican.” Hawley writes, “The public’s conservatism, as the conservative movement understands the term, is more symbolic than substantive.” That’s how Donald Trump was elected president in 2016. The deciding factor was supporters who could have cared less if he was a “true conservative.”
As a conservative retrofit is necessary, it should be away from the “movement” psychology. Political movements (i.e., ideologies), by nature, demand mass obedience in the pursuit and maintenance of power. Individualism is a casualty. Movement conservatism, despite its vast resources, does not have much to show for its efforts. Sam Francis used to say that the conservative movement isn’t conserving anything and it’s not moving anywhere. The Vanishing Tradition, a collection written by and for individualists, presents sensible ways both to conserve and move.
Carl F. Horowitz is senior fellow at the National Legal and Policy Center, a Falls Church, Va.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to ethics and accountability in American public life.


theamericanconservative--2020-10-22--The Foreign Policy Choice this November

The Foreign Policy Choice this November

Neither Trump nor Biden is a reliable realist on foreign policy , but neither one has the standard record of a hawk , either .
Grappling with a pandemic , recession , and nationwide protests , most Americans are understandably focused on their own country as they prepare to vote .
Foreign policy ranked a distant sixth among the top concerns of registered voters , according to an August survey by the Pew Research Center .
In the wake of President Trump ’ s hospitalization for COVID-19 , it is unclear whether the American people will even have the chance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ foreign policy face-to-face .
Few seem to care .
Yet the coming decade will likely be as pivotal for America abroad as it promises to be at home .
China is soon to pass the United States economically and is flexing its muscles all over the world , from Himalayan peaks to Silicon Valley startups .
The Middle East remains aflame , while America ’ s southern neighbors simmer .
To paraphrase Trotsky : Americans may not be interested in foreign policy , but foreign policy is interested in Americans .
Presidential administrations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , regardless of whether they end up with a “ doctrine ” to their name .
The Constitution gives the president wide latitude in his conduct of foreign policy , even in the face of a divided Congress .
Rhetorically , Donald Trump and Joe Biden offer starkly different visions of the world and America ’ s place in it .
Biden promises restoration , while Trump offers further disruption .
But talk is cheap .
How are Trump and Biden likely to tackle America ’ s foreign policy challenges in 2021 and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2016 Republican primary may well have been the South Carolina debate , where Trump decisively repudiated the previously sacrosanct Bush legacy .
A decade after the darkest days of the Iraq war—and long after most of the country had recognized the invasion for the unadulterated disaster it was—Trump finally broke the GOP ’ s vow of silence on the subject .
Calling Iraq “ a big fat mistake ” and reminding voters that the Twin Towers fell on Bush ’ s watch , Trump was attacked by the Bush dynasty ’ s last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like Marco Rubio .
The audience booed him but Trump cruised to an easy victory in the critical Palmetto State primary and established his bona fides as a man who would break with his party ’ s intellectually bankrupt foreign policy establishment .
Against Hillary Clinton , Trump ’ s forever war apostasy may have been equally salient .
A pair of academics , Douglas Kriner and Francis Shen , have persuasively argued that a “ casualty gap ” explains Trump ’ s excess votes over Mitt Romney in the key states of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ At a minimum , it seems clear that Trump neutralized the foreign policy credentials of Clinton , a former senator and secretary of state .
Yet Trump ’ s record since then is decidedly mixed .
Supporters will note that he is the first president in 40 years not to get the United States into a new war .
But he also hasn ’ t ended any of the interventions he inherited .
Indeed , there are more U.S. servicemen in the Persian Gulf now than when Trump took office .
U.S. soldiers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the Hindu Kush and occasionally find themselves in combat .
America has also sponsored and enabled one of the region ’ s nastiest conflicts , the disastrous Saudi-led campaign in Yemen .
Most recently , Trump helped ratify an emerging entente by midwifing the Israeli-Emirati Abraham Accords .
Regardless of the latest tweet , a few thousand U.S. troops are still likely to be in Afghanistan in January .
Trump ’ s Iran policy , a dangerous seesaw between bellicosity and restraint , has been the most concerning element of the administration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ walking away from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal , subsequently attempting to strangle Iran through economic warfare , and incinerating Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Major General Qassem Soleimani , Trump has repeatedly stepped back when on the brink of war .
The president openly pines for a “ better deal ” with the theocracy , but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued Iran a list of preconditions that amount to surrender .
When faced with non-lethal sabotage of oil tankers , the downing of an American drone , and even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Trump declined to strike the Islamic Republic .
His defenders argue that he has cannily gone where others wouldn ’ t , cowing the Iranians and setting the conditions for an American drawdown in the region .
More terrestrial thinkers , unaccustomed to this 10-dimensional chess , might retort that those who play with fire tend to get burned .
Trump ’ s greatest virtue with regard to the world ’ s most volatile region has been his instinctive realism .
He has grasped that it is neither 1938 nor 1979 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for oil now mostly flowing east ( albeit to both American friends and foes ) is unnecessary .
His willingness to accept the stark facts on the ground and negotiate with the Taliban comes from the same place .
Trump has yet to show either the conviction or the competence needed to extricate American forces from the Middle East morass he regularly denounces .
What of Biden ?
Is he a committed forever warrior , as eager as Hillary to plant American flags in the back of beyond ?
His nearly 50-year career @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first Iraq war and for the second one , regretting both votes .
He opposed both the Iraq and Afghan surges , and though he dutifully carried water for the Obama administration at the time , Biden maintains that he opposed the Libyan intervention that has left that country broken and still at war .
He pledges to return the United States to a nuclear deal with Iran , although that is likely to be far more easily said than done .
Biden ’ s long Middle East record , like Trump ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a mixed bag .
Like Trump , he is free of the most dangerous American impulse , crusading .
Biden ’ s judgment may be questionable but he seems to recognize the clear limits of what American bombs can accomplish .
Nation building is not high on his agenda .
In 2010 , Biden told Afghanistan envoy Richard Holbrooke , that late , lionized legate of the liberal internationalists : “ I ’ m not sending my boy [ Biden ’ s late son Beau ] back there to risk his life on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Last year , he stood his ground when CBS News ’ Margaret Brennan questioned him about the exchange .
Speaking with uncharacteristic clarity , the former vice president explained : What I meant was there ’ s a thousand places we could go to deal with injustice .
I can think of 10 countries where women and or children and or people are being – are being persecuted or being hurt .
But the idea of us going to be able to use our armed forces to solve every single internal problem that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our capacity .
The question is is America ’ s vital self-interest at stake or the vital self-interest of one of our allies at stake ?
Biden ’ s preferred Middle East military policy of counterterrorism amounts to a reluctant acceptance of low intensity attrition warfare , with little end in sight .
But hubris , at least , is absent .
As the University of Birmingham ’ s Patrick Porter noted recently , “ There is a prudent Biden who occasionally peers through the fog.
” Both men fail the best current @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The counter-ISIS campaign in Syria spanned both the Obama and Trump administrations .
The Islamic State ’ s last sanctuary , Baghouz , fell in March 2019 .
Yet U.S. troops remain in Syria today , ostensibly to keep Syria ’ s meager oil supplies from the hands of jihadist dead-enders .
Syria is shattered and U.S. troops are bystanders for the closing act of a civil war—with Russian and Turkish forces also uncomfortably close .
Both Trump and Biden have committed to this most irrational of campaigns , maintaining an ineffectual Syrian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ future crisis .
For good measure , both men support the Caesar Act sanctions , the latest attempt to induce Syrian regime change by other means—actual Syrians be damned .
China has been President Trump ’ s signature foreign policy issue and the place where he has made the most consequential impact on America ’ s trajectory .
Repudiating both the unthinking bipartisan free trade consensus and the even more utopian belief that prosperity would beget liberalism in the People ’ s Republic , Trump put China front and center upon assuming the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Defense on great power competition , initiated a trade war , and strengthened American relations with traditionally neutral India .
In attempting to marshal the world against Huawei ’ s 5G rollout , the Trump administration is trying at the eleventh hour to prevent what author and analyst David Goldman has described as a looming “ digital Pearl Harbor.
” Even the president ’ s critics will concede that he has accelerated America ’ s turn away from China , provoking an extremely belated recognition of China ’ s growing power and challenge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ went to China in 1979 as part of the first congressional delegation to visit after normalization , can claim no such clarity .
As a senator and vice president , he sat firmly in the bipartisan consensus on China : the PRC was largely a responsible partner , increasingly critical to the U.S. economy but not to be feared , let alone provoked .
Speaking at Sichuan University in 2011 , Biden gently chided his hosts on intellectual property theft and human rights but embraced the ethos of “ Chimerica ” : the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ together in a mostly benign mutual interdependence .
He is singing a very different tune now .
Both in advertisements and in person , Biden argues that it is Trump who is weak on China .
He unabashedly asserts that “ China is an authoritarian dictatorship.
” It seems unlikely that a Biden administration would pursue a Russia-style reset with China , button or no .
The consensus has shifted , thanks both to Trump and to China ’ s increasingly aggressive actions on a myriad of issues , a “ wolf warrior @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Biden ’ s closest advisors readily admit their own errors in ignoring or even enabling China ’ s rise .
Biden would seek to reenergize the fraying “ liberal international order ” and attempt to use existing multilateral institutions and non-governmental organizations to constrain China .
Trump scoffs at these and has instead leaned on Japan , Australia , India , and even Europe as partners in containing and confronting China .
Neither Trump nor Biden is likely to have the stomach for meaningful economic decoupling and an end to the Chimerica @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the past three decades .
One man hangs his hat on the stock market above all other metrics of presidential success while the other blithely promised Wall Street that “ nothing will fundamentally change ” with him in the White House .
Even absent the distracting corruption of their scions , neither man seems willing to confront big business in order to hamstring China .
The proposed TikTok deal is the latest evidence .
Should Oracle ( or Walmart , or some other American goliath ) gain a partnership with the social @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the new U.S.-based entity would have control over TikTok ’ s all-important algorithm , never mind control over parent company ByteDance .
While India has banned the app , America ’ s TikTok response has been transparent theater .
Biden purports to take a hard line on Big Tech , dismissing some of its executives as “ little creeps.
” His anger toward Facebook , increasingly the bete noire of Democrats , seems real enough .
But Biden spent eight years in the Obama administration , where Google may as well have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ future staffers have taken the revolving door to Silicon Valley and back .
Biden ’ s willingness to give Big Tech any kind of ultimatum is an open question .
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization celebrated its 70th birthday last spring , an occasion marked with at least as much consternation as pride .
President Trump has frequently made the alliance his whipping boy , lambasting the Europeans as free riders on American security .
Though his math may be fuzzy , the president ’ s basic critique goes back as far as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ term openly questioning Article 5 ’ s vague collective security guarantee , Trump is ending it by pulling thousands of U.S. troops out of Germany .
Yet Trump is not the main cause of the alliance ’ s increasing irrelevance .
The President has certainly been loath to offer the requisite rote paeans to the alliance .
But on his watch NATO has maintained its zombie inertia ( adding security clients Montenegro and Northern Macedonia ) even as its internal fissures and seeming obsolescence become ever more apparent .
French President Emmanuel Macron @ @ @ @ @ @ @ brain dead ” a year ago .
Today , France confronts NATO ally Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean and in Libya , the British are discussing cutting their paltry land forces yet again , and three U.S. senators are threatening to crush a German Baltic port for attempting to spurn American “ freedom gas ” in favor of the much closer Russian supply .
Efforts to drag fence-sitting Europeans into an American confrontation with China continue apace .
Brain dead might be an understatement .
Neither Trump ’ s seeming fondness for Vladimir @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should obscure the administration ’ s actual Russia policy , which has been more hawkish than that of its predecessor .
At the behest of one hawkish national security advisor after another , the United States has shipped Javelin anti-tank missiles to the Ukrainians and withdrawn from accords like the Open Skies Treaty .
In the face of Trump ’ s halfhearted attacks on the alliance , Biden promises a full restoration of NATO prerogatives .
Enamored of quaint references to “ the Free World , ” he seems eager to return to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden also has a curious and perhaps revealing tic : he often invokes Vladimir Putin as the final word on Trump , whether speaking to Washington policy wonks or a New Hampshire union hall .
Biden seems to view Russia as an outright enemy , in contrast to the Chinese competitor .
Russia is one area where Biden ’ s advisors and surrogates seldom equivocate .
Both Trump ’ s incoherence and Biden ’ s intransigence on NATO and Russia promise to be a hindrance to a sound American grand strategy .
One @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he is while still seeking a modus vivendi that benefits America .
Both Biden and Trump are wisely seeking an extension of New START and a broader nuclear framework with Russia .
Both candidates would be wiser still to consistently seek to create daylight between Russia and China .
The junior and senior partner are now reversed , but just as in the Cold War , a Russia—China alliance would be a grave challenge to the United States .
Preventing this axis from solidifying should be among the foremost goals of American statecraft @ @ @ @ @ @ @ failed wars in the Greater Middle East , immigration was critical to Trump ’ s primary and general election success in 2016 .
The Republican base ’ s fury about unstaunched illegal immigration paved the way for Trump ’ s triumph .
The Wall would go up and all would be well .
Four years later , the Wall remains unbuilt and a broader Latin America policy is missing in action .
Despite the supposed centrality of immigration to American economic equality , national security , and even culture , Trump ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ America .
It has cracked down on unfriendly regimes , renewing sanctions on Cuba and making a shambolic attempt at regime change in Venezuela .
Meanwhile , the authoritarianism of friendly governments in Brazil and El Salvador is ignored .
The result of this neglect is a festering problem , if not a ticking time bomb .
Latin America ’ s trajectory looks bad : corruption and violence remain endemic while climate change is affecting crop yields and promising further chaos .
COVID has become the fourth horseman , casting millions of newly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ poverty and worsening inequality in the most unequal continent on earth .
The supposed Soros-funded migrant caravan menace of the 2018 midterms was an ugly chimera , and judging by the election ’ s results , not a very convincing one .
But the migration issue is very real .
Fifty percent of residents of the Northern Triangle—Guatemala , Honduras , and El Salvador—fear that they will be murdered in the next year .
The world ’ s 10 most violent cities are all in Latin America , half of them in Mexico @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country on earth .
There are currently five million Venezuelan refugees , a total second only to Syria ’ s .
As COVID continues and climate change advances , a tidal wave of refugees flooding America ’ s southern border is not a fringe nativist nightmare ; it is an increasingly safe bet .
Guided by a leadership that considers the very idea of a border wall “ immoral , ” there is no indication that the Democrats have become any more serious about border security since 2016 .
But Biden can credibly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vision for Latin America than his opponent .
In 2009 , Latin America was one of those leftover issues that tend to land in an American vice president ’ s lap .
Biden steered the Obama administration ’ s Central America Strategy , an attempt to address the root causes of the region ’ s dysfunction : poverty , corruption , and violent crime .
Biden advisors now speak of an additional wrinkle : attempting to reshore some supply chains from China to Latin America , thereby securing key production vulnerabilities from China @ @ @ @ @ @ @ region .
Biden ’ s focus on root causes may prove inadequate in the face of potentially catastrophic climate change and Latin America ’ s longstanding man-made woes .
It at least promises long-overdue attention to the region .
Paired with robust border security , a renewed Central America Strategy could offer the United States some hope of managing a future refugee crisis .
Yet it appears that American voters can ’ t get both security and strategy .
For advocates of American foreign policy realism and non-interventionism , neither Trump nor Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the talk but neither consistently walks the walk .
Whether possessing four or 40 years of foreign policy experience , neither septuagenarian is apt to reorient America ’ s role in the world , regardless of what the voters want .
Of course , maybe Trump or Biden will surprise us .
Perhaps a true America First administration is about to break through the neoconservative topsoil next spring , or a Biden Doctrine of surprising realism is in the offing .
In the meantime , American voters should be clear-eyed about the foreign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the limits of the choice at hand .
Gil Barndollar is a Senior Research Fellow at the Catholic University of America ’ s Center for the Study of Statesmanship .

Grappling with a pandemic, recession, and nationwide protests, most Americans are understandably focused on their own country as they prepare to vote. Foreign policy ranked a distant sixth among the top concerns of registered voters, according to an August survey by the Pew Research Center. In the wake of President Trump’s hospitalization for COVID-19, it is unclear whether the American people will even have the chance to see the two presidential candidates debate foreign policy face-to-face. Few seem to care.
Yet the coming decade will likely be as pivotal for America abroad as it promises to be at home. China is soon to pass the United States economically and is flexing its muscles all over the world, from Himalayan peaks to Silicon Valley startups. The Middle East remains aflame, while America’s southern neighbors simmer. To paraphrase Trotsky: Americans may not be interested in foreign policy, but foreign policy is interested in Americans.
Presidential administrations set America’s foreign policy agenda, regardless of whether they end up with a “doctrine” to their name. The Constitution gives the president wide latitude in his conduct of foreign policy, even in the face of a divided Congress. Rhetorically, Donald Trump and Joe Biden offer starkly different visions of the world and America’s place in it. Biden promises restoration, while Trump offers further disruption. But talk is cheap. How are Trump and Biden likely to tackle America’s foreign policy challenges in 2021 and beyond?
Forever Wars?
The seminal moment of the 2016 Republican primary may well have been the South Carolina debate, where Trump decisively repudiated the previously sacrosanct Bush legacy. A decade after the darkest days of the Iraq war—and long after most of the country had recognized the invasion for the unadulterated disaster it was—Trump finally broke the GOP’s vow of silence on the subject. Calling Iraq “a big fat mistake” and reminding voters that the Twin Towers fell on Bush’s watch, Trump was attacked by the Bush dynasty’s last entrant and a succession of fawning epigones like Marco Rubio. The audience booed him but Trump cruised to an easy victory in the critical Palmetto State primary and established his bona fides as a man who would break with his party’s intellectually bankrupt foreign policy establishment.
Against Hillary Clinton, Trump’s forever war apostasy may have been equally salient. A pair of academics, Douglas Kriner and Francis Shen, have persuasively argued that a “casualty gap” explains Trump’s excess votes over Mitt Romney in the key states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. At a minimum, it seems clear that Trump neutralized the foreign policy credentials of Clinton, a former senator and secretary of state.
Yet Trump’s record since then is decidedly mixed. Supporters will note that he is the first president in 40 years not to get the United States into a new war. But he also hasn’t ended any of the interventions he inherited. Indeed, there are more U.S. servicemen in the Persian Gulf now than when Trump took office. U.S. soldiers still defend dusty outposts from the Levant to the Hindu Kush and occasionally find themselves in combat. America has also sponsored and enabled one of the region’s nastiest conflicts, the disastrous Saudi-led campaign in Yemen. Most recently, Trump helped ratify an emerging entente by midwifing the Israeli-Emirati Abraham Accords. Regardless of the latest tweet, a few thousand U.S. troops are still likely to be in Afghanistan in January.
Trump’s Iran policy, a dangerous seesaw between bellicosity and restraint, has been the most concerning element of the administration’s Middle East agenda. Despite walking away from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal, subsequently attempting to strangle Iran through economic warfare, and incinerating Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Major General Qassem Soleimani, Trump has repeatedly stepped back when on the brink of war.
The president openly pines for a “better deal” with the theocracy, but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued Iran a list of preconditions that amount to surrender. When faced with non-lethal sabotage of oil tankers, the downing of an American drone, and even an unprecedented attack on Saudi oil refineries, Trump declined to strike the Islamic Republic. His defenders argue that he has cannily gone where others wouldn’t, cowing the Iranians and setting the conditions for an American drawdown in the region. More terrestrial thinkers, unaccustomed to this 10-dimensional chess, might retort that those who play with fire tend to get burned.
Trump’s greatest virtue with regard to the world’s most volatile region has been his instinctive realism. He has grasped that it is neither 1938 nor 1979, and that a continued American security guarantee for oil now mostly flowing east (albeit to both American friends and foes) is unnecessary. His willingness to accept the stark facts on the ground and negotiate with the Taliban comes from the same place. Trump has yet to show either the conviction or the competence needed to extricate American forces from the Middle East morass he regularly denounces.
What of Biden? Is he a committed forever warrior, as eager as Hillary to plant American flags in the back of beyond? His nearly 50-year career indicates otherwise. Biden voted against the first Iraq war and for the second one, regretting both votes. He opposed both the Iraq and Afghan surges, and though he dutifully carried water for the Obama administration at the time, Biden maintains that he opposed the Libyan intervention that has left that country broken and still at war. He pledges to return the United States to a nuclear deal with Iran, although that is likely to be far more easily said than done.
Biden’s long Middle East record, like Trump’s shorter one, is at best a mixed bag. Like Trump, he is free of the most dangerous American impulse, crusading. Biden’s judgment may be questionable but he seems to recognize the clear limits of what American bombs can accomplish. Nation building is not high on his agenda. In 2010, Biden told Afghanistan envoy Richard Holbrooke, that late, lionized legate of the liberal internationalists: “I’m not sending my boy [Biden’s late son Beau] back there to risk his life on behalf of women’s rights.” Last year, he stood his ground when CBS News’ Margaret Brennan questioned him about the exchange. Speaking with uncharacteristic clarity, the former vice president explained:
What I meant was there’s a thousand places we could go to deal with injustice. I can think of 10 countries where women and or children and or people are being – are being persecuted or being hurt. But the idea of us going to be able to use our armed forces to solve every single internal problem that exists throughout the world is not within our capacity. The question is is America’s vital self-interest at stake or the vital self-interest of one of our allies at stake?
Biden’s preferred Middle East military policy of counterterrorism amounts to a reluctant acceptance of low intensity attrition warfare, with little end in sight. But hubris, at least, is absent. As the University of Birmingham’s Patrick Porter noted recently, “There is a prudent Biden who occasionally peers through the fog.”
Both men fail the best current foreign policy litmus test: Syria. The counter-ISIS campaign in Syria spanned both the Obama and Trump administrations. The Islamic State’s last sanctuary, Baghouz, fell in March 2019. Yet U.S. troops remain in Syria today, ostensibly to keep Syria’s meager oil supplies from the hands of jihadist dead-enders. Syria is shattered and U.S. troops are bystanders for the closing act of a civil war—with Russian and Turkish forces also uncomfortably close. Both Trump and Biden have committed to this most irrational of campaigns, maintaining an ineffectual Syrian expedition that is an invitation to a future crisis. For good measure, both men support the Caesar Act sanctions, the latest attempt to induce Syrian regime change by other means—actual Syrians be damned.
China
China has been President Trump’s signature foreign policy issue and the place where he has made the most consequential impact on America’s trajectory. Repudiating both the unthinking bipartisan free trade consensus and the even more utopian belief that prosperity would beget liberalism in the People’s Republic, Trump put China front and center upon assuming the presidency. He reoriented the Department of Defense on great power competition, initiated a trade war, and strengthened American relations with traditionally neutral India. In attempting to marshal the world against Huawei’s 5G rollout, the Trump administration is trying at the eleventh hour to prevent what author and analyst David Goldman has described as a looming “digital Pearl Harbor.” Even the president’s critics will concede that he has accelerated America’s turn away from China, provoking an extremely belated recognition of China’s growing power and challenge to American hegemony.
Biden, who went to China in 1979 as part of the first congressional delegation to visit after normalization, can claim no such clarity. As a senator and vice president, he sat firmly in the bipartisan consensus on China: the PRC was largely a responsible partner, increasingly critical to the U.S. economy but not to be feared, let alone provoked. Speaking at Sichuan University in 2011, Biden gently chided his hosts on intellectual property theft and human rights but embraced the ethos of “Chimerica”: the world’s two biggest economies bound together in a mostly benign mutual interdependence.
He is singing a very different tune now. Both in advertisements and in person, Biden argues that it is Trump who is weak on China. He unabashedly asserts that “China is an authoritarian dictatorship.” It seems unlikely that a Biden administration would pursue a Russia-style reset with China, button or no. The consensus has shifted, thanks both to Trump and to China’s increasingly aggressive actions on a myriad of issues, a “wolf warrior diplomacy” that appears to be self-defeating. Biden’s closest advisors readily admit their own errors in ignoring or even enabling China’s rise.
Biden would seek to reenergize the fraying “liberal international order” and attempt to use existing multilateral institutions and non-governmental organizations to constrain China. Trump scoffs at these and has instead leaned on Japan, Australia, India, and even Europe as partners in containing and confronting China.
Neither Trump nor Biden is likely to have the stomach for meaningful economic decoupling and an end to the Chimerica bind that has defined the global economy for the past three decades. One man hangs his hat on the stock market above all other metrics of presidential success while the other blithely promised Wall Street that “nothing will fundamentally change” with him in the White House. Even absent the distracting corruption of their scions, neither man seems willing to confront big business in order to hamstring China.
The proposed TikTok deal is the latest evidence. Should Oracle (or Walmart, or some other American goliath) gain a partnership with the social media phenomenon, there is scant evidence that the new U.S.-based entity would have control over TikTok’s all-important algorithm, never mind control over parent company ByteDance. While India has banned the app, America’s TikTok response has been transparent theater.
Biden purports to take a hard line on Big Tech, dismissing some of its executives as “little creeps.” His anger toward Facebook, increasingly the bete noire of Democrats, seems real enough. But Biden spent eight years in the Obama administration, where Google may as well have kept an office. Many of his future staffers have taken the revolving door to Silicon Valley and back. Biden’s willingness to give Big Tech any kind of ultimatum is an open question.
Europe and Russia
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization celebrated its 70th birthday last spring, an occasion marked with at least as much consternation as pride. President Trump has frequently made the alliance his whipping boy, lambasting the Europeans as free riders on American security. Though his math may be fuzzy, the president’s basic critique goes back as far as the Kennedy administration. Having begun his term openly questioning Article 5’s vague collective security guarantee, Trump is ending it by pulling thousands of U.S. troops out of Germany.
Yet Trump is not the main cause of the alliance’s increasing irrelevance. The President has certainly been loath to offer the requisite rote paeans to the alliance. But on his watch NATO has maintained its zombie inertia (adding security clients Montenegro and Northern Macedonia) even as its internal fissures and seeming obsolescence become ever more apparent.
French President Emmanuel Macron was condemned for describing NATO as “brain dead” a year ago. Today, France confronts NATO ally Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean and in Libya, the British are discussing cutting their paltry land forces yet again, and three U.S. senators are threatening to crush a German Baltic port for attempting to spurn American “freedom gas” in favor of the much closer Russian supply. Efforts to drag fence-sitting Europeans into an American confrontation with China continue apace. Brain dead might be an understatement.
Neither Trump’s seeming fondness for Vladimir Putin nor the sordid machinations in Ukraine should obscure the administration’s actual Russia policy, which has been more hawkish than that of its predecessor. At the behest of one hawkish national security advisor after another, the United States has shipped Javelin anti-tank missiles to the Ukrainians and withdrawn from accords like the Open Skies Treaty.
In the face of Trump’s halfhearted attacks on the alliance, Biden promises a full restoration of NATO prerogatives. Enamored of quaint references to “the Free World,” he seems eager to return to the status quo ante in Europe. Biden also has a curious and perhaps revealing tic: he often invokes Vladimir Putin as the final word on Trump, whether speaking to Washington policy wonks or a New Hampshire union hall. Biden seems to view Russia as an outright enemy, in contrast to the Chinese competitor. Russia is one area where Biden’s advisors and surrogates seldom equivocate.
Both Trump’s incoherence and Biden’s intransigence on NATO and Russia promise to be a hindrance to a sound American grand strategy. One can regard Putin as the opportunistic gangster he is while still seeking a modus vivendi that benefits America. Both Biden and Trump are wisely seeking an extension of New START and a broader nuclear framework with Russia. Both candidates would be wiser still to consistently seek to create daylight between Russia and China. The junior and senior partner are now reversed, but just as in the Cold War, a Russia—China alliance would be a grave challenge to the United States. Preventing this axis from solidifying should be among the foremost goals of American statecraft.
Looking South
Even more than America’s failed wars in the Greater Middle East, immigration was critical to Trump’s primary and general election success in 2016. The Republican base’s fury about unstaunched illegal immigration paved the way for Trump’s triumph. The Wall would go up and all would be well.
Four years later, the Wall remains unbuilt and a broader Latin America policy is missing in action. Despite the supposed centrality of immigration to American economic equality, national security, and even culture, Trump’s State Department has all but ignored Latin America. It has cracked down on unfriendly regimes, renewing sanctions on Cuba and making a shambolic attempt at regime change in Venezuela. Meanwhile, the authoritarianism of friendly governments in Brazil and El Salvador is ignored.
The result of this neglect is a festering problem, if not a ticking time bomb. Latin America’s trajectory looks bad: corruption and violence remain endemic while climate change is affecting crop yields and promising further chaos. COVID has become the fourth horseman, casting millions of newly middle-class Central and South Americans back into poverty and worsening inequality in the most unequal continent on earth.
The supposed Soros-funded migrant caravan menace of the 2018 midterms was an ugly chimera, and judging by the election’s results, not a very convincing one. But the migration issue is very real. Fifty percent of residents of the Northern Triangle—Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador—fear that they will be murdered in the next year. The world’s 10 most violent cities are all in Latin America, half of them in Mexico. El Salvador is the most violent country on earth.
There are currently five million Venezuelan refugees, a total second only to Syria’s. As COVID continues and climate change advances, a tidal wave of refugees flooding America’s southern border is not a fringe nativist nightmare; it is an increasingly safe bet.
Guided by a leadership that considers the very idea of a border wall “immoral,” there is no indication that the Democrats have become any more serious about border security since 2016. But Biden can credibly claim to offer a far more comprehensive vision for Latin America than his opponent. In 2009, Latin America was one of those leftover issues that tend to land in an American vice president’s lap. Biden steered the Obama administration’s Central America Strategy, an attempt to address the root causes of the region’s dysfunction: poverty, corruption, and violent crime. Biden advisors now speak of an additional wrinkle: attempting to reshore some supply chains from China to Latin America, thereby securing key production vulnerabilities from China while also promoting economic growth in the region.
Biden’s focus on root causes may prove inadequate in the face of potentially catastrophic climate change and Latin America’s longstanding man-made woes. It at least promises long-overdue attention to the region. Paired with robust border security, a renewed Central America Strategy could offer the United States some hope of managing a future refugee crisis. Yet it appears that American voters can’t get both security and strategy.
For advocates of American foreign policy realism and non-interventionism, neither Trump nor Biden offers a satisfying choice. One talks the talk but neither consistently walks the walk. Whether possessing four or 40 years of foreign policy experience, neither septuagenarian is apt to reorient America’s role in the world, regardless of what the voters want.
Of course, maybe Trump or Biden will surprise us. Perhaps a true America First administration is about to break through the neoconservative topsoil next spring, or a Biden Doctrine of surprising realism is in the offing. In the meantime, American voters should be clear-eyed about the foreign policy records of their presidential options and the limits of the choice at hand.
Gil Barndollar is a Senior Research Fellow at the Catholic University of America’s Center for the Study of Statesmanship.


theamericanconservative--2020-10-22--Inside America’s Other Pandemic

Inside America’s Other Pandemic

A silent killer is percolating in America .
It began its journey in Wuhan , China , where it emerged from a lab , crossed the Pacific Ocean , and infiltrated the United States .
It ’ s not COVID-19 , it ’ s fentanyl—and in many parts of the country , it ’ s killing more Americans than the virus itself .
“ It ’ s not wrong to call the fentanyl crisis a pandemic too , ” said Ben Westhoff , author of Fentanyl , Inc. 2020 is on track to be the worst year yet for overdose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the main contributor .
More than 40 states have documented increases in overdose deaths this year , according to the most recent brief from the American Medical Association .
The crisis is rapidly intensifying .
Overdose deaths climbed to record numbers nationally in 2019 , despite falling for the first time in 25 years in 2018 .
Deaths in 2020 are continuing to soar , driven by an influx of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl and carfentanil—substances 50 to 10,000 times more potent than morphine .
Experts doubt the crisis will abate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to think things were moving in the right direction , ” said Dr. Rachel Winograd , an addiction researcher at the Missouri Institute of Mental Health .
“ Once March came along , overdose numbers really started to skyrocket.
” Winograd said overdose deaths in Missouri spiked 33 percent through May , while deaths in St. Louis rose 32 percent through July .
The trend is hardly limited to the state .
City- and county-level data shows overdose deaths spiking in every region of the country .
In San Diego , California , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Beach , Florida , deaths rose upwards of 50 % from 2019 levels .
In Cincinnati , Ohio , and Prince George ’ s County , Maryland , overdose deaths more than doubled .
The surge in fentanyl deaths is a product of the thriving illicit opioid trade .
China is the biggest supplier of synthetic opioids , Westhoff said , since many substances that are banned in the U.S. and Europe are “ completely legal ” there .
Chinese authorities only regulate a select handful of synthetic opioids—and even if a drug @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can subtly manipulate it to create a similar yet just as potent version .
“ It sounds crazy , ” Westhoff said , but the Chinese government is “ directly subsidizing the production of these drugs.
” Chinese chemical companies receive substantial grants and value-added tax rebates , including Yuancheng in Wuhan , which produces more fentanyl ingredients than any other company in the world .
The substances are then sold and shipped to Mexico , where cartels finish the product and smuggle it into the U.S. China , the drug cartels , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ the most cost effectively , ” Westhoff said .
In addition to heroin , fentanyl is now being added to drugs like cocaine , methamphetamine , and counterfeit opioid pills , according to a recent study published in Missouri Medicine .
The result is a more unreliable and increasingly lethal drug supply—and in many parts of the U.S. , it ’ s killing more people than the pandemic that ’ s intensified demand .
In a sizable portion of America , COVID-19 is not the deadliest health crisis in town .
Nearly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ single death , and an additional 1700 have less than 20 .
Yet in many such communities—and even in COVID hotspots—the overdose crisis is taking its toll .
In Boone County , Missouri , COVID-19 killed 2 people through the first half of 2020 .
Pending confirmation from the medical examiner , overdoses killed between 9 and 43 .
In Washington County , Maryland , COVID-19 killed 26 people through the first half of the year .
Overdoses killed a confirmed 57 .
In Milwaukee County , Wisconsin , COVID-19 is projected to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
If current trends hold , overdoses will kill 514 .
The two crises aren ’ t acting in parallel .
While opioid users are known to have weakened respiratory and immune systems , the surge in overdose deaths is not a direct effect of the virus .
Instead , Winograd said the “ indirect effects ” of the pandemic—from layoffs and evictions to “ record-breaking levels of violence ” —are exacerbating the stressors that lead to an overdose .
Those presently abusing opioids aren ’ t the only ones susceptible .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ healthy populations , including those who ’ ve made progress towards sobriety .
Depression and loneliness have hit all-time highs , Winograd said , and resources for those in recovery have been drastically reduced .
People who were seeking addiction treatment or rehabilitation now have nowhere to turn .
The economic devastation wrought during the lockdowns is adding another layer of pressure .
“ If someone lost their job as a result of the pandemic—and now they ’ re behind in rent—that additional stress can lead some people to have a relapse , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coordinator for the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse .
Costerison said housing instability is one of the primary indicators of an overdose—and areas moving forward with evictions are laying the groundwork for overdose deaths to increase .
Amidst the influx of fentanyl and the uncertainties of the pandemic , experts say the overdose crisis is too pervasive to ignore .
“ It ’ s really important we don ’ t view the overdose crisis in isolation , ” Winograd said .
“ It ’ s a constellation of factors that always @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hardest.
” For all its synergy with the coronavirus pandemic , one might think the overdose crisis would be widely covered in the press .
Yet even in areas hit hardest by the opioid crisis , local media outlets dedicate magnitudes more coverage to COVID-19 .
Over the past several years , media interest in overdoses has fallen flat .
In Boone County , Missouri—where overdoses killed up to 21 times as many people as the virus—local media ran 295 headlines on coronavirus through June , and none on overdoses .
In Washington @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many people as the virus—local media ran 259 headlines on coronavirus through June , and one on overdoses .
In Milwaukee County , Wisconsin—where overdoses are outpacing the virus as of August—the coverage was over 7,300 to four .
It ’ s a disappointing reality , experts say , but not entirely unpredictable .
“ One of the things that ’ s been remarkable to see is how rapidly the overdose crisis disappeared , ” said David Herzberg , a professor specializing in the history of narcotics at the University at Buffalo .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ was talking to more than one journalist every week , and then suddenly it was just over as a phenomenon.
” Westhoff believes the “ peak coverage ” of the overdose crisis was when pills and heroin were mainly affecting white suburbs .
“ Now it ’ s gotten much , much worse with fentanyl and it ’ s no longer discriminating by race , ” he said .
Poor and black neighborhoods are being “ decimated ” by synthetic opioids , while overdose victims are frequently deemed “ morally compromised people.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ judgement ” when it comes to overdoses , Westhoff said .
“ That could be another reason we ’ re not seeing it in the media as much.
” In a day of 24-hour news cycles and short attention spans , experts say the overdose crisis is no longer a compelling story .
“ The news is quite predictably interested in things that can be portrayed as ‘ new ’ , ” Herzberg said .
“ It seems like it ’ s difficult to make the case that they should write an article @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they wrote the other day , just with new names in it.
” “ I spoke with a journalist this week , and they were like , ‘ Overdoses are horrible , they ’ ve been horrible for a while , we get it—what ’ s the new story now ?
’ , ” Winograd said .
COVID , on the other hand , “ very much brings about an aura of innocence and victimhood .
It ’ s a very sympathetic story to tell.
” Born in an obscure region in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through America , their death counts rivaling those of the nation ’ s bloodiest wars .
Yet while progress toward a coronavirus vaccine has raised hopes for the end to one pandemic , the prospects of an end to the overdose crisis are bleak .
With an unstable supply and an uncertain future , for millions of American drug users , the specter of a fatal overdose looms large .
It ’ s a harsh reality that confounds even those who ’ ve made finding a cure their life ’ s work .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the extent that it does , we will continue to deal with tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives lost each year due to preventable deaths , and that ’ s devastating , ” Winograd said .
“ I don ’ t know what it ’ s going to take , I don ’ t know how many deaths it ’ s going to take , but really we need a more generous society , and that applies to COVID and the overdose crisis alike.
” Colin Martin is an editorial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2020 graduate of Boston College .
Contact him on Twitter @ ColinMartin98 .

A silent killer is percolating in America. It began its journey in Wuhan, China, where it emerged from a lab, crossed the Pacific Ocean, and infiltrated the United States. It’s not COVID-19, it’s fentanyl—and in many parts of the country, it’s killing more Americans than the virus itself.
“It’s not wrong to call the fentanyl crisis a pandemic too,” said Ben Westhoff, author of Fentanyl, Inc. 2020 is on track to be the worst year yet for overdose deaths, Westhoff said, and fentanyl is the main contributor.
Many Americans with addictions shifted to more potent substances after taking OxyContin, an opioid Purdue Pharma encouraged doctors to over-prescribe. Just yesterday, the Justice Department announced the drug maker will plead guilty in federal court as part of an $8 billion settlement for its role in the crisis.
More than 40 states have documented increases in overdose deaths this year, according to the most recent brief from the American Medical Association. The crisis is rapidly intensifying. Overdose deaths climbed to record numbers nationally in 2019, despite falling for the first time in 25 years in 2018. Deaths in 2020 are continuing to soar, driven by an influx of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl and carfentanil—substances 50 to 10,000 times more potent than morphine. Experts doubt the crisis will abate anytime soon.
“We were starting to think things were moving in the right direction,” said Dr. Rachel Winograd, an addiction researcher at the Missouri Institute of Mental Health. “Once March came along, overdose numbers really started to skyrocket.”
Winograd said overdose deaths in Missouri spiked 33 percent through May, while deaths in St. Louis rose 32 percent through July. The trend is hardly limited to the state.
City- and county-level data shows overdose deaths spiking in every region of the country. In San Diego, California, Madison, Wisconsin, and West Palm Beach, Florida, deaths rose upwards of 50% from 2019 levels. In Cincinnati, Ohio, and Prince George’s County, Maryland, overdose deaths more than doubled.
The surge in fentanyl deaths is a product of the thriving illicit opioid trade. China is the biggest supplier of synthetic opioids, Westhoff said, since many substances that are banned in the U.S. and Europe are “completely legal” there. Chinese authorities only regulate a select handful of synthetic opioids—and even if a drug is on the list, a chemist can subtly manipulate it to create a similar yet just as potent version.
“It sounds crazy,” Westhoff said, but the Chinese government is “directly subsidizing the production of these drugs.” Chinese chemical companies receive substantial grants and value-added tax rebates, including Yuancheng in Wuhan, which produces more fentanyl ingredients than any other company in the world. The substances are then sold and shipped to Mexico, where cartels finish the product and smuggle it into the U.S.
China, the drug cartels, and dealers all tend to do things “the most cost effectively,” Westhoff said. In addition to heroin, fentanyl is now being added to drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine, and counterfeit opioid pills, according to a recent study published in Missouri Medicine. The result is a more unreliable and increasingly lethal drug supply—and in many parts of the U.S., it’s killing more people than the pandemic that’s intensified demand.
The Deadlier Pandemic
In a sizable portion of America, COVID-19 is not the deadliest health crisis in town. Nearly 500 counties have yet to record a single death, and an additional 1700 have less than 20. Yet in many such communities—and even in COVID hotspots—the overdose crisis is taking its toll.
In Boone County, Missouri, COVID-19 killed 2 people through the first half of 2020. Pending confirmation from the medical examiner, overdoses killed between 9 and 43. In Washington County, Maryland, COVID-19 killed 26 people through the first half of the year. Overdoses killed a confirmed 57. In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, COVID-19 is projected to kill 455 people by years’ end. If current trends hold, overdoses will kill 514.
The two crises aren’t acting in parallel. While opioid users are known to have weakened respiratory and immune systems, the surge in overdose deaths is not a direct effect of the virus. Instead, Winograd said the “indirect effects” of the pandemic—from layoffs and evictions to “record-breaking levels of violence”—are exacerbating the stressors that lead to an overdose. Those presently abusing opioids aren’t the only ones susceptible.
The pandemic is putting additional pressure on otherwise healthy populations, including those who’ve made progress towards sobriety. Depression and loneliness have hit all-time highs, Winograd said, and resources for those in recovery have been drastically reduced. People who were seeking addiction treatment or rehabilitation now have nowhere to turn.
The economic devastation wrought during the lockdowns is adding another layer of pressure. “If someone lost their job as a result of the pandemic—and now they’re behind in rent—that additional stress can lead some people to have a relapse,” said Brandon Costerison, a policy coordinator for the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse. Costerison said housing instability is one of the primary indicators of an overdose—and areas moving forward with evictions are laying the groundwork for overdose deaths to increase.
Amidst the influx of fentanyl and the uncertainties of the pandemic, experts say the overdose crisis is too pervasive to ignore. “It’s really important we don’t view the overdose crisis in isolation,” Winograd said. “It’s a constellation of factors that always hits people who are most vulnerable the hardest.”
The Forgotten Pandemic
For all its synergy with the coronavirus pandemic, one might think the overdose crisis would be widely covered in the press. Yet even in areas hit hardest by the opioid crisis, local media outlets dedicate magnitudes more coverage to COVID-19. Over the past several years, media interest in overdoses has fallen flat.
In Boone County, Missouri—where overdoses killed up to 21 times as many people as the virus—local media ran 295 headlines on coronavirus through June, and none on overdoses. In Washington County, Maryland—where overdoses killed twice as many people as the virus—local media ran 259 headlines on coronavirus through June, and one on overdoses. In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin—where overdoses are outpacing the virus as of August—the coverage was over 7,300 to four.
It’s a disappointing reality, experts say, but not entirely unpredictable. “One of the things that’s been remarkable to see is how rapidly the overdose crisis disappeared,” said David Herzberg, a professor specializing in the history of narcotics at the University at Buffalo. “There was a moment when I was talking to more than one journalist every week, and then suddenly it was just over as a phenomenon.”
Westhoff believes the “peak coverage” of the overdose crisis was when pills and heroin were mainly affecting white suburbs. “Now it’s gotten much, much worse with fentanyl and it’s no longer discriminating by race,” he said. Poor and black neighborhoods are being “decimated” by synthetic opioids, while overdose victims are frequently deemed “morally compromised people.” “There’s so much value judgement” when it comes to overdoses, Westhoff said. “That could be another reason we’re not seeing it in the media as much.”
In a day of 24-hour news cycles and short attention spans, experts say the overdose crisis is no longer a compelling story. “The news is quite predictably interested in things that can be portrayed as ‘new’,” Herzberg said. “It seems like it’s difficult to make the case that they should write an article that says the same thing as one they wrote the other day, just with new names in it.”
“I spoke with a journalist this week, and they were like, ‘Overdoses are horrible, they’ve been horrible for a while, we get it—what’s the new story now?’,” Winograd said. COVID, on the other hand, “very much brings about an aura of innocence and victimhood. It’s a very sympathetic story to tell.”
Born in an obscure region in a faraway land, dual pandemics are cutting through America, their death counts rivaling those of the nation’s bloodiest wars. Yet while progress toward a coronavirus vaccine has raised hopes for the end to one pandemic, the prospects of an end to the overdose crisis are bleak. With an unstable supply and an uncertain future, for millions of Americans who use drugs, the specter of a fatal overdose looms large. It’s a harsh reality that confounds even those who’ve made finding a cure their life’s work.
“Even after COVID gets resolved, to the extent that it does, we will continue to deal with tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives lost each year due to preventable deaths, and that’s devastating,” Winograd said. “I don’t know what it’s going to take, I don’t know how many deaths it’s going to take, but really we need a more generous society, and that applies to COVID and the overdose crisis alike.”
Colin Martin is an editorial assistant at The American Conservative and a 2020 graduate of Boston College. Contact him on Twitter @ColinMartin98.


theamericanconservative--2020-10-23--The Parable of the Stone Crabs

The Parable of the Stone Crabs

In the middle of last October , two harvesting operations went into high gear .
At first glance , the two might seem completely unrelated .
Actually , they had a lot in common .
Taken together they offer a rather depressing political parable for our times .
One harvest involved people , the other involved decapods .
I ’ ll start with the decapods .
While many of you may not recognize the formal name of the decapods in question—Menippe mercenaria of the family Xanithidae , according to Merriam Webster ’ s—you ’ re probably familiar with them as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ brownish creatures are found on the southeastern coast of the U.S. and in the Caribbean area .
Millions of seafood lovers , myself included , look forward to the annual stone crab season ( October 15 to May 15 ) when this succulent delicacy is featured in upscale restaurants across the country .
Unlike the more familiar Atlantic blue crab and the Dungeness crab of the Pacific west coast , the only part of the stone crab that is eaten is its claw .
Each year , in a rather sadistic variation on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the creatures , ripping off a single claw and then returning the living but mutilated beasts to the sea .
Most survive the ordeal , grow a replacement claw , and may undergo the same annual ordeal for many years to come .
While not an ideal situation for the stone crabs , it definitely pays off for their harvesters .
Which is where the parable comes in .
As this year ’ s stone crab harvesting began , so too did the Democratic Party ’ s vote harvesting operation aimed at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ both the fishermen and Democratic campaign effort were eerily similar : harvest as many as you can , take what you want from them , and throw them back into the troubled waters they came from .
Then forget about them until it ’ s time for the next harvest .
It has been said that politicians are people who , when they see light at the end of the tunnel , rush out and buy more tunnel .
You could call it the Politics of Hopelessness .
While it has done nothing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it has paid off handsomely for the left .
The tragic decline of once great American cities—Chicago , New York , Los Angeles , Philadelphia , Portland , Minneapolis and Baltimore , to name only a few—has been presided over by an unholy alliance of white radical politicians ( like New York ’ s Mayor de Blasio ) and black racial demagogues ( like the not-very-reverend Al Sharpton ) driving more and more decent , hard-working Americans of all races out of the cities and into the suburbs and exurbs for their own @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mass exodus , especially of educated , successful black Americans , has transformed many urban areas into squalid combat zones where decent people who can not afford to leave are at the mercy of violent criminals who own their streets and kill more of them in a week than all the rogue cops in America do in a year .
While these blighted areas have profited nothing from long years of “ progressive ” local government , they still provide enough of a bloc vote to sway statewide and presidential elections in mega-states @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many swing states like Pennsylvania , Michigan , Wisconsin , and Minnesota .
All of these destructive elements were being cynically exploited by the left long before Donald Trump entered politics , and unfortunately they ’ re likely to be with us long after he is a distant memory .
If there is one thing we can count on , it is that the so-called mainstream media will keep on fanning the flames as it did so shamelessly in the long , hot summer of 2020 .
The working model from the “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other cities since we first saw it in Minneapolis .
There , in the case of George Floyd , the liberal Democratic mayor and state attorney general were slow to react to a brutally shocking incident .
When they did react , they spent more time railing about “ systemic ” racism than they did taking responsibility for what had happened on their own watch , in their own backyard .
The blood of George Floyd , we were told , was on the hands of white America in general and the Republican @ @ @ @ @ @ @ away from where it happened .
Cities burned , monuments were destroyed , and streets that were supposed to belong to all of us were taken over and often trashed by disorderly mobs .
In the short term , it may have helped the left harvest black voters in November .
But in the election ’ s aftermath , like stone crabs after the harvest , those black voters will find themselves thrown back into the same old sea of sorrows .
Aram Bakshian Jr. is a former aide to presidents Nixon , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on politics , history , gastronomy , and the arts have been widely published in the United States and abroad .

In the middle of last October, two harvesting operations went into high gear. At first glance, the two might seem completely unrelated. Actually, they had a lot in common. Taken together they offer a rather depressing political parable for our times. One harvest involved people, the other involved decapods.
I’ll start with the decapods. While many of you may not recognize the formal name of the decapods in question—Menippe mercenaria of the family Xanithidae, according to Merriam Webster’s—you’re probably familiar with them as Florida stone crabs. These large, brownish creatures are found on the southeastern coast of the U.S. and in the Caribbean area. Millions of seafood lovers, myself included, look forward to the annual stone crab season (October 15 to May 15) when this succulent delicacy is featured in upscale restaurants across the country.
Unlike the more familiar Atlantic blue crab and the Dungeness crab of the Pacific west coast, the only part of the stone crab that is eaten is its claw. Each year, in a rather sadistic variation on the catch-and-release theme, fishermen trap thousands of the creatures, ripping off a single claw and then returning the living but mutilated beasts to the sea. Most survive the ordeal, grow a replacement claw, and may undergo the same annual ordeal for many years to come. While not an ideal situation for the stone crabs, it definitely pays off for their harvesters.
Which is where the parable comes in. As this year’s stone crab harvesting began, so too did the Democratic Party’s vote harvesting operation aimed at black Americans. The modus operandi of both the fishermen and Democratic campaign effort were eerily similar: harvest as many as you can, take what you want from them, and throw them back into the troubled waters they came from. Then forget about them until it’s time for the next harvest.
It has been said that politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, rush out and buy more tunnel. You could call it the Politics of Hopelessness. While it has done nothing to improve the plight of minorities, it has paid off handsomely for the left. The tragic decline of once great American cities—Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Portland, Minneapolis and Baltimore, to name only a few—has been presided over by an unholy alliance of white radical politicians (like New York’s Mayor de Blasio) and black racial demagogues (like the not-very-reverend Al Sharpton) driving more and more decent, hard-working Americans of all races out of the cities and into the suburbs and exurbs for their own and their childrens’ sakes.
This mass exodus, especially of educated, successful black Americans, has transformed many urban areas into squalid combat zones where decent people who cannot afford to leave are at the mercy of violent criminals who own their streets and kill more of them in a week than all the rogue cops in America do in a year. While these blighted areas have profited nothing from long years of “progressive” local government, they still provide enough of a bloc vote to sway statewide and presidential elections in mega-states like New York and California and in many swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
All of these destructive elements were being cynically exploited by the left long before Donald Trump entered politics, and unfortunately they’re likely to be with us long after he is a distant memory. If there is one thing we can count on, it is that the so-called mainstream media will keep on fanning the flames as it did so shamelessly in the long, hot summer of 2020.
The working model from the “progressive” handbook has unfolded in many other cities since we first saw it in Minneapolis. There, in the case of George Floyd, the liberal Democratic mayor and state attorney general were slow to react to a brutally shocking incident. When they did react, they spent more time railing about “systemic” racism than they did taking responsibility for what had happened on their own watch, in their own backyard. The blood of George Floyd, we were told, was on the hands of white America in general and the Republican administration in Washington in particular—half a continent away from where it happened.
Cities burned, monuments were destroyed, and streets that were supposed to belong to all of us were taken over and often trashed by disorderly mobs. In the short term, it may have helped the left harvest black voters in November. But in the election’s aftermath, like stone crabs after the harvest, those black voters will find themselves thrown back into the same old sea of sorrows.
Aram Bakshian Jr. is a former aide to presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan. His writings on politics, history, gastronomy, and the arts have been widely published in the United States and abroad.