Month: June 2020

 

On the first day of June in the wake of the horrible events in Minneapolis, protests in reaction to the police murder took place around the country and continued for day after day. The protest promptly came to Washington. The protests in Washington were almost entirely peaceful and for the most part were comprised of ordinary people disgusted by the terrible injustice in Minnesota and showing solidarity for Afro Americans who have suffered so much over the years.

Despite the peaceful nature of the composition of the protests President Trump labeled the people taking part as “terrorists” and criminals. Soon regular army units appeared in the Washington area, federal helicopters flew low over the city to disperse crowds, soldiers in camouflage deployed on the Lincoln Memorial and federal law enforcement roamed around downtown. President Trump threatened to use active duty military forces to put down protests around the country by invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807. This allows such deployments at the request of the Governor or Mayor of a location. The DC Mayor was strongly opposed to what Trump had already done in the District. There are two narrow exceptions to the request provision but few except the president believed the peaceful protests qualified under either of the exceptions.

Suddenly late in the day a phalanx of armed riot police using unquestionably excessive force opened a path from the White House to St. John’s Church on the other side of Lafayette Square. Some wore an insignia and were apparently prison guards from a facility in Texas. Trump wanted a photo op in front of the church. This was just after having made a short speech in the Rose Garden on the other side of the White House during which he declared he was the “Law and Order” president.

Allegedly this idea came from Attorney General Barr who seemed to have forgotten that the Bill of Rights permitted peaceful protest or in the words of the Constitution “freedom of assembly.” After shoving, pushing and tear gassing ordinary citizens a path was opened. Trump brought with him a number of senior officials including the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs who were at the White House on other business. Trump got his photo op, posing in front of the church—without asking the Bishop of Washington who later expressed her outrage—standing with several officials and awkwardly holding up a Bible.

Afterwards there was a tidal wave of objections led by retired former military leaders as reported in the New York Times on June 5th.

Said General James Mattis recently Secretary of Defense: “Never did I dream that troops taking that oath would be ordered under any circumstances to violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”

Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska said that Mattis’ remarks were “true and honest and necessary and overdue.” Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah said he found the remarks by General Mattis, “stunning and powerful”.

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Richard Myers, expressed “absolute sadness” at the sight of the events on Lafayette Square.

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Martin Dempsey had earlier said on CNN that calling the military in to suppress mostly peaceful protest “was very dangerous to me.” Secretary of Defense Esper, as reported in The Military Times, said to reporters in a Pentagon briefing on June 3^rd that “The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a last resort and only in the most urgent and dire situations.” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley afterwards said publicly that he should not have been there. And the next day he issued a memorandum to the top active duty military leaders affirming the military’s commitments to the values of the Constitution and which said “We all committed to the idea of America. We will stay true to that oath and the American people.” At the end of the day a tall fence was erected, expanding the White House perimeter into Lafayette Square.

Perhaps President Trump had dreamt the night before he was a reincarnation of Benito Mussolini who had marched in Rome on 1922 to establish the first fascist state. Instead of Rome it was St. John’s Church for him.

And our Founders certainly would have had a view on this. They had deep suspicion of standing armies which is why the Constitution has no provision for such.

“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions for liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger have always been the instruments of tyranny at home.” — James Madison 1787

“…standing armies, in time of pace should be avoided as dangerous to liberty, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by the civil power.” — George Mason 1776

“The way to serve Peace is to be prepared for War.” —  Benjamin Franklin 1747

“That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the proper natural, and safe defense of a free state.” — George Mason 1776

“It follows that as certain as night succeeds the day that without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive and with, everything honorable and glorious.” — George Washington 1781

And to close again with General Mattis:   “Only by adopting a new path—which means, in truth returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.”

John Jay

 

Presidential performance and ultimate merit are often measured by the quality of a president’s management of crisis. The pandemic currently ravaging America—the part that responded to Trump’s reckless encouragement to ignore basic rules of public health—shows no sign of abating. New York at the commencement of this crisis was the single hardest hit of any place in the world because—contrary to President Trump’s assertion that the virus arrived from China—the virus arrived in this country in strength from Europe. But through the vigorous adoption and enforcement of the relevant public health rules, Governor Cuomo has led New York from a very high peak of infection and death to near zero. Likewise the European Union was also ravaged by the virus but its COVID-19 profile rises to a peak and then falls to its current very low level.

By contrast the profile for COVID-19 in the United States as a whole rises to a high peak and stays there—despite the heroics displayed and maintained in New York State. The New York disease level is not far from zero, in the European Union it is in the range of 4,000 new cases per day and in the United States as a whole it remains at 20-25,000 new infections every day and approximately 120,000 deaths with 200,000 predicted by the first of October. On May 21, Germany with 83 million people had 178,000 cases and 8,000 deaths; South Korea with 50 million had 11,000 cases and 264 deaths the United States with 330 million people had one and a half million cases and 93,000 deaths. By June 18 the case number in the U.S. was about two million, one hundred and sixty thousand and as said, a death count just short of 120,000.

Throughout Trump’s performance has been reckless and irresponsible in the extreme. He, at the beginning, with doctors and scientists clamoring for action, constantly belittled the approach of a world-wide health crisis in order to keep stock prices high. Traveling in India in February he was asked about the pandemic and claimed that the U.S. had this crisis “very much under control” and that “the situation will start working itself out.” He added shortly thereafter, “stock market starting to look very good to me.” And then finally when he allowed public health rules to be put in place in late March and the pandemic began to slow after sadly many lives needlessly had been lost, the economy and the stock market crashed. After a week or two Trump was agitating for a reopening.

When his call for reopening began—contrary to scientific advice—toward the end of April, the White House released a plan, developed by scientists and medical experts, how this could be done in the safest possible way. Immediately Trump was on Twitter undermining his “own” plan, electronically screaming: “LIBERATE MINNESOTA,” “LIBERATE MICHIGAN,” “LIBERATE VIRGINIA and save your great 2^nd Amendment, it is under siege” and encouraged armed mobs to threaten and terrorize these three Democrat governed states until, after holding out a long time and attempting to follow scientific advice finally began to open. It wasn’t long before the virus came roaring back in those states that followed Trump’s advice and reopened rapidly paying no heed to public health rules. Meanwhile for months, Trump was on television during the weekly briefing by the White House Coronavirus Task Force, touting a miracle cure for COVID-19. This so-called cure was an anti-malarial medicine which in a few weeks was declared by the Food and Drug too dangerous for COVID-19 patients to take and likely to lead to additional deaths. He topped this performance with a statement at a subsequent Task Force briefing that COVID-19 patients could eliminate the virus in their lungs by consuming bleach or disinfectants such as Lysol or Clorox. A public outcry followed this. The manufacturers of these chemicals urged the public not to consume their products internally. This turned out to be literally a showstopper as Trump terminated the Task Force because of this embarrassment. The next step for Trump was to schedule his first presidential election rally since March in Tulsa in late June in one of the new hotspots of the pandemic, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Local health officials pleaded with the Campaign for delay. The pleas were of course ignored. Nearly 40,000 people were expected, 19,000 tightly packed inside a large auditorium and an equal number outside. There would be no social distancing and the wearing of masks was optional. This would be virtually certain to add to the infection and death rates.  After all the hype, the President was disappointed by the turnout, the auditorium was only 2/3rds full and there were no supporters outside.  But the public health threat remained.

As Michael Gerson said in his column in the Washington Post on June 19^th entitled “A failure without peer”: “Trump has been permanently marked by failure…what other president would have played down the advance of a global health crisis to keep stock prices inflated?…What other president would have led populist resistance to public health measures as the coronavirus pandemic continued to spread?…and he chose—amazingly, alarmingly—to equate essential health measures with gun confiscation. I can think of no presidential precedent. It is unique in its recklessness.” Not only has this president been the least competent, the most destructive and reckless of any who have sat in the oval office, he is the worst president that one could possibly imagine in their wildest dreams.

The Founders would have made short work of this.

“The natural cure for an ill administration in a popular or representative constitution is a change of men.” —  Alexander Hamilton 1787

“If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is that every man has a right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of American martyrs, but is also the only lawful tenure by which the United States hold their existence as a nation.”  — James Madison 1793

John Jay

On May 29, 2020, Michael Gerson writing in The Washington Post commented on yet another shooting death of an unarmed African American citizen by a white male, in this case, a not infrequent situation, he is a policeman. There have been literally hundreds, even thousands of such incidents over the past several years and perhaps before. This type of racism is a modern form of slavery, so disrespecting a black citizen that in his own mind he or she becomes a second-class citizen with fewer rights, indeed without the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as guaranteed to all Americans by the Declaration of Independence. These rights were denied to slaves in the 18^th Century and largely are denied to black citizens—by the police and others in real or imagined authority today. This is an act contrary to God, to moral conscience, and to American principles.

Michael Gerson notes, in commenting on the racial attack by police in Minneapolis:

“Who is supposed to care deeply about racial justice and reconciliation in the Republican coalition? I should have hoped that religious people would make such moral commitments a priority. Yet (in general) they haven’t. It is the kind of failure that does grave injury to the Christian witness.

“Historically, the most effective attack on the role of Christianity in society has been that it is an epiphenomenon—that Christians employ mystical language to justify their tribalistic interests. In this view, religion is more of a mechanism to rationalize a preexisting political and social worldview rather than transforming it. (This is precisely what Southern slaveholders did when they provided religious justifications for slavery.)…

“People of faith should apply a moral yardstick to any political coalition they join…In Christian terms, the Kingdom of God is not some future blessed state. It becomes present when believers live by a different set of values in the here and now. The nature of those duties can be debated. But they do not include providing an alibi for racism.”

The type of behavior exhibited in Minnesota that gratuitously killed George Floyd, an unarmed black man, is also what Southern slaveholders and their employees and agents employed. As President Obama said recently, “…that for millions of Americans, being treated differently because of race is tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal.’” This is indeed the 2020 version of slavery.

What were our Founders’ view on slavery, this systematic depravation of African Americans of all their rights and their debasement from humanity so as to be treated as property? Black citizens today are no longer chattels but beyond this the rights they do have are set in reality almost unrecognizably far below the Declaration standard. These are rights that the Declaration states that all men (and women) are endowed with by their Creator and their denial is an affront to the Kingdom of God on Earth.

“That men should pray and fight for their own freedom, and yet keep others in slavery, is certainly acting a very inconsistent as well as unjust and perhaps insidious part…”  — John Jay 1785

“Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils.” —   Benjamin Franklin 1789

“This abomination must have an end, and there is a superior bench reserved in heaven for those who hasten it.” — Thomas Jefferson 1787

“Slavery in this country I have seen hanging over it like a black cloud for half a century.” — John Adams 1821

“Ignoble slavery my soul disdain, my only country is where freedom reigns.”  —  John Quincy Adams 1786

“Were not the disadvantages of slavery too obvious to stand in need of it, I might enumerate and describe the tedious train of calamities inseparable from it. I might show that it is fatal to religion and morality, that it tends to debase the mind and corrupt its noblest springs of action. I might show that it relaxes the sinews of industry, clips the wings of commerce, and introduces misery and indulgence in every shape. — Alexander Hamilton 1774

“I wish most sincerely there was not a slave in this province. It always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me—fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have.” — Abigail Adams 1774

John Jay