It’s As Simple As Right Vs. Wrong
Want to know what it’s like to live in Donald Trump’s America? Read this piece by Alan Zimmerman, president of the Reform Jewish Congregation Beth Israel in Charlottesville, Virginia. He writes, in part:
“On Saturday morning, I stood outside our synagogue with the armed security guard we hired after the police department refused to provide us with an officer during morning services…Forty congregants were inside. For half an hour, three men dressed in fatigues and armed with semi-automatic rifles stood across the street from the temple…Several times, parades of Nazis passed our building, shouting, “There’s the synagogue!” followed by chants of “Seig Heil” and other anti-Semitic language. Some carried flags with swastikas and other Nazi symbols…
“When services ended, my heart broke as I advised congregants that it would be safer to leave the temple through the back entrance rather than through the front, and to please go in groups.
“This is 2017 in the United States of America.”
Chilling. In case you’ve been on desert island for the past few days, here’s what happened. A group of about 250 white supremacists and neo-nazis held a torchlight march in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting slogans like “Jews will not replace us” and “blood and soil.” Our president likes to obfuscate the truth, so let’s be very clear: these are neo-nazis and white supremacists. Remember, the term “alt-right” was invented specifically to provide a more palatable alternative to these more genuine descriptors. Call them what they are, not what they prefer to be called.
Take a minute to read WaPo’s timeline of the events in Charlottesville, starting with the torch-light march (an old favorite of Adolph Hitler) on Friday night, moving on to the violence that broke out Saturday morning when the neo-nazis charged the crowd of counter-protesters, and culminating in the terrorist car attack on counter-protesters that killed 32 year-old Heather Hyer and injured 19 others.
You may also want to read about the self-described “militia” that showedup wearing fatigues and carrying semiautomatic weapons, and check out Slate Magazine’s analysis of how the second amendment trumped the first amendment in Charlottesville, The Guns Won.
How did the President of the United States react? On Saturday, Trump appeared at his golf club in New Jersey. He looked like a hostage reading a prepared statement that said, “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence.” Then he went off-script, and with some animation finally entering his voice, he added, “on many sides, on many sides.”
Yes,Trump drew no disticntion between the white separtists who charged the crowd and the counter-protesters who were there to support the most American of values, that we are all equal under the laws of man and God. He made no mention of the domestic terrorism that had occurred. And as the KKK and neo-nazis celebrated that for the first time ever, the U.S. President had their back, the rest of the country and the world stood in horror. Over the next two days, the President went back and forth, finally launching into a full-throated defense of these thugs and tried to establish equivalency between them and the people who protested against them.
What are we to make of this horrific spectacle? Here are six things I’m watching:
1. This is a defining moment, a character test, for all Americans. There are two sides. One is good, and one is evil. There is no overlap, there is no moral equivalency. The President of the United States said that “good people” were marching with the KKK and the neo-nazis. If you stick with Trump, you are endorsing or tolerating white supremacy and anti-Semitism, and that is simply not acceptable. Shame on each and every senior official who remains in his White House or Cabinet.
2. Trump is steadily losing support. A recent Gallup Poll put Trump’s approval rating at 34%, a record low for a president’s first term. That was the weekend before Charlottesville! Bush 42 and Bush 44 issued a joint statement rejecting racial bigotry, anti-Semitism, and hatred in all forms. Implicit in their statement, of course, was a rejection of Trump. Let’s hope this is the beginning of mainstream Republicans rescuing their party.
3. He’s not holding his base as well as you might think. That same poll put his Republican approval at 77%, down from a high in the low 90’s. Brookings reports that even his strongest supporters are beginning to have second thoughts. While white working-class voters still support Trump and his agenda, “majorities now believe that he is not honest, not level-headed, and not a good leader. 50 percent say that he does not share their values. 52 percent think he believes that he is above the law.” And this just in, ALG Research is out with their August 16th polling recap that they titled, Trump Is No Longer The Ace Of His Base.
4. There are Trump voters who voted for Obama in 2012 or 2008 who can still be pursuaded to come back to a Democratic candidate. While it’s not a big number, it’s big enough to make the difference in swing states. See the full analysis from The Upshot’s Nate Cohn.
5. Losing the support of CEO’s is a very big deal for a Republican incumbent. Trump had established two different councils comprised of CEO’s of major American companies. Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier started a landslide when he resigned, prompting another three defections before Trump preemtively disbanded both groups before they completely fell apart.
6. All of this continues to mobilize the resistance, shifting the enthusiasm gap to the benefit of Democrats for the first time since 2008.
Finally, the late-night comedians have really stepped up. Click on a name and you’ll go to his video clip. Jimmy Kimmel had an outstanding and hysterical solution to the Trump problem. Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert continue to lead the charge. And even Jimmy Fallon, who has consciously tried to avoid politics (and who has seen his ratings suffer as a result), gave a somber and impassioned response to Trump. They’re all worth the clicks.