27 Feb The Activism of Hope

The hailstorm of breaking news continues to outdate what I write as I write it. So though stuff is bound to get left out, here goes.

In a shade over one month, Trump has lost a court battle and a cabinet nomination fight, fired his national security adviser and the acting attorney general, been rejected by three high-profile invited cabinet replacements, had to withdraw a cabinet nominee and a proposed Army chief, offended Australia, Germany, China, France, and the United Nations, ordered a disastrous military raid, held a catastrophic press conference, and denounced the U.S. court system as a national security threat, the intelligence community as Nazis, and the free press as “the enemy of the people.”

But. One scripted, stilted speech at the National African American History Museum, plus a single interview in which he was finally forced to say he didn’t approve of the increasing anti-Semitic and racist attacks in the U.S., and GOP leaders (plus some TV pundits) are eager to declare he’s “maturing” into the office of the presidency.

That is not the audacity of hope. That is the stupidity—or, to be generous, the naïveté—of hope. It makes me want to set star-sail for any of the seven possibly habitable planets NASA just discovered only 40 light-years away.

Some people are also falling over sideways with relief at the appointment of a “grown-up,” H. R. McMaster, an Army lieutenant general, as the new national security adviser. We’re supposed to be grateful for an appointment that still fails to meet what we’re entitled to as citizens? Me, I can’t lose sight of the fact that this creates a powerful troika of generals, making Trump’s the first ever U.S. administration to have all three top security jobs filled by military men at the same time, by teaming McMaster with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of Homeland Security John F. Kelly, both retired four-star Marine generals. It’s claimed that these are forthright men who might dare talk back to Trump and Bannon, which hardly guarantees they’d be listened to. Furthermore, placing the military in historically civilian posts of authority is alarmingly reminiscent of banana republic juntas, and of the praetorian guards around Caesar—and that’s not good, folks.

Meanwhile, amidst all this relief and maturation, the Water Defenders are being forced off their protest site at Standing Rock.

Meanwhile, new immigration guidelines call for hiring thousands of additional enforcement agents (and suspending minimum qualification standards to do so), expanding the pool of immigrants who are prioritized for removal, speeding up deportation hearings, and enlisting local law enforcement to help make arrests.

Meanwhile, more scandals surface: It turns out the intelligence community’s analysis of the Muslim travel ban showed the ban having no protective value and even a negative effect on national safety. Also, it turns out the FBI rejected White House pressure by Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to quash intelligence reports confirming communications between Trump associates and Russians during the campaign. Oh my god. Direct communications between the Administration and the FBI during an ongoing investigation by the FBI of the Administration were what brought down Nixon!

Article I, Impeachment Proceedings Passed by the House of Representatives on July 27, 1974: “Subsequent thereto, Richard M. Nixon, using the powers of his high office, engaged personally and through his subordinates and agents in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay, impede, and obstruct the investigation of such unlawful entry; to cover up, conceal and protect those responsible; and to conceal the existence and scope of other unlawful covert activities. . . . Wherefore Richard M. Nixon, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.”

Meanwhile again, in another unprecedented move, Press Secretary Sean Spicer barred White House reporters from The New York Times, CNN, Buzzfeed News, The Los Angeles Times, and Politico from his Friday briefing, while admitting additional “Trump-friendly” media. Time magazine and The Associated Press, who were allowed in, chose not to attend in protest of the White House’s actions. In an interview with Politico last December, Spicer answered a question about certain journalists having been banned from Trump rallies by insisting that in the White House things would be different: “We have a respect for the press when it comes to the government, that that is something you can’t ban an entity from— conservative, liberal, or otherwise. That’s what makes a democracy a democracy versus a dictatorship.”

Are you feeling relieved yet?

Meanwhile, at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump overturned his “maturing” anti-bigotry comments of a few days earlier with a rousing tribute to the Christian evangelical far-right. (By the way, according to a Public Religion Research Institute poll, when people claim to be Christian and commit violence in the name of Christianity, 75 percent of Americans say that person wasn’t really Christian. But when people claim to be Muslim and commit violence in the name of Islam, only 50 percent of Americans say that person isn’t really Muslim. Isn’t it time we named Christian bigotry accurately–as Christian supremacy, right there alongside white supremacy and male supremacy?)

Sorry, I digress.

Meanwhile, the concept of “ethics” is now as vestigial in government as is the appendix in a human body. The Trump clan claims they’re withdrawing from more than a dozen planned international deals—though they’ve managed to grandfather-in and proceed with resorts, hotels, or golf courses in Indonesia, both Mumbai and Gurgaon India, Uruguay, Dubai, and the Dominican Republic. Moreover, they’re expanding domestic plans in 26 major metropolitan areas, particularly in Dallas, Seattle, Denver, and San Francisco (ALERT, activists in those cities!). Wary of now-negative associations with the word Trump, they’re shrewdly branding these new acquisitions with a new name: Scion. These deals will need approval from local metropolitan governments, so—heh heh—why not ask your city councilwoman or councilman about Scion, and make your non-welcome mat preferences clear?

Trump greed makes Gordon Gekko look like St. Francis. Having now raised entrance and membership fees for his Florida club Mar-a-Lago, Trump is brazenly making money on the office of the Presidency, while running up a colossal bill we taxpayers are footing. His elaborate lifestyle and that of his traveling family puts a huge burden on the Secret Service and the Treasury. Each trip to Mar-a-Lago costs an average $3.5 million, including money for Coast Guard units to patrol the exposed shoreline, and other military, security, and staffing expenses. (Trump refuses to use nearby Camp David, the official presidential retreat in Maryland that’s a short helicopter ride from the White House, because it’s “boring”—and doesn’t bring him in any cash.)

Samples of the mounting bills? New York City is paying $500,000 a day to guard Trump Tower, and police estimates say the amount could reach $183 million a year. Secret Service and U.S. embassy staff paid nearly $100,000 in hotel bills to support Eric Trump’s business trip to Uruguay. Eric and his security detail also flew to the Dominican Republic for a business meeting about a luxury resort; the Secret Service advance trip alone cost $5500. The Trump brothers zipped to Dubai on business over the weekend, costing the Secret Service $16,000 just in hotel bills, and they’re off to Vancouver on February 28 to open a new skyscraper (no estimated cost yet for that one). When Trump’s ego needs a boost and he takes off on Air Force One for a new “campaign” speech as he did last week, remember that Air Force One costs an estimated $200,000 an hour to fly—not to mention accumulated cost for salaries, watercraft, military working dogs, rental cars, hotel rooms, and the Coast Guard rescue helicopter standing by wherever he goes.

Back in Florida, Palm Beach County officials are begging Washington to reimburse tens of thousands of dollars a day in expenses for deputies handling security and traffic. Trump’s neighbors are miserable. A local airport lost $200,000 in fuel sales during a single Trump visit, since all planes were grounded for security. It costs $60,000 a day in overtime for sheriff’s deputies to guard numerous closed roads, a tab that’s approaching $1.5 million since the election. Due to road shutdowns, restaurants have been standing empty and some are already having to consider closing.

But here’s an especially painful example of the local Trump effect: Miami-Dade County formally abandoned its status as a Sanctuary for unauthorized immigrants, falling in line behind Mayor Carlos Giminez’s cowardly decision to mollify Trump by detaining jailed inmates sought by the government for deportation. More than 150 people went to County Hall to deliver an impassioned defense of South Florida’s proud reputation for diversity and to plead for retaining Sanctuary status. But the county commissioners voted to kill that status by 9 to 3. The crowd then cried “Shame!”

These are signs of a “maturing” presidency? Trumpists would sure like to sell us that propaganda. They’re counting on democracy defenders to tire of the grassroots actions so gorgeously evident across the land. (During the confirmation battle over Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Americans were faxing their senators as often as 300 times an hour.) The Republican-controlled Congress is now scared of its own constituents.

This is true at the state level, as well. Texas State Senator Charles Schwertner, Republican chair of the Texas Senate Committee on Health and Human Services, had a meltdown at a public hearing on his bill banning donations of fetal tissue from abortions to science; it was bundled with two other anti-abortion bills—one to outlaw the safest procedure during second trimester, the other to mandate all abortion tissue be buried or cremated. It took just 10 minutes of women testifying against all three bills for him to begin banging the table, finally banging so hard he broke the glass in his attempt to silence the women. Then he claimed he’d merely been concerned about running out of time for public testimony—but immediately thereafter permitted a Texas Right to Life representative to speak for twice as long as any of the women had.

But, hey, that at least reminds me of three fresh entries for my new category, Bit the Dust. (I’m getting quite fond of this category.)

Bit the Dust. Utah’s James Green, vice-chair of the Wasatch County Republican Party, pontificated in a letter to local newspapers that paying women equally would ruin the the traditional family, and that having more women in the workforce would create competition for “even men’s jobs,” which would in turn lower the pay for all jobs and force more women—who should be mothers and at home—into the workforce. Because it’s 2017, not 1017, the Utah Women’s Coalition erupted on social media. Green had to apologize and resign—within two days.

Bit the Dust. Nebraska State Senator Bill Kintner, who boasts that he’s “a fighter” for having survived a cyber sex scandal, dived into hot water again for an offensive re-tweet about the Women’s March. A photo of three older women marchers carrying a sign referencing Trump’s “Grab ’em by the . . .” comments was retweeted with the additional line “Ladies, I think you’re safe”—in other words, not attractive enough to deserve being assaulted. After the ensuing avalanche of comments from women constituents, Kintner announced, “I have concluded that it is wise to step down as a member of the Nebraska Legislature.”

Bit the Dust. Milo Yiannopoulos—Steve Bannon protégé, Trump worshipper, Breitbart writer, and “alt right” male-supremacist exhibitionist permanently banned from Twitter for toxic racism—was disinvited from addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference. This followed an outcry from conservatives about Yiannopoulos’s comments on the glories of child sexual abuse. Although he tried to deny his own videotaped comments, he was also dropped by his publisher, Simon & Schuster, who had reportedly contracted with him for a $250,000 advance. Author Roxanne Gay had earlier withdrawn from her own S&S contract in a principled protest against the publisher for their having signed Yiannopoulos to begin with. Finally, even Breitbart dumped him. (Imagine how hideous you need to be before Twitter permanently bans you and Breitbart feels you’re too full of hate even for them!)

Bottom line: it’s undeniable that democracy in action—and a free press acting like one—makes all the difference.

Nevertheless, we’re entering a dicey period here, people. That’s what’s behind those expressions of relief and gratitude about “grown-ups” and “maturation.” The regime is banking that we’ll tire of demanding our elected representatives do their jobs, that we’ll tire of defending immigrants, Muslims, each other, The Constitution, the planet. They’re counting on an erosion of energy, the passage of time, and staged “normalization”—those few scripted, superficial comments and gestures—to make us fade away. They ain’t seen nothin’ yet. This is precisely when we need to step up our pace and intensity. And here are two new tools to help us do that.

1. The Town Hall Project—TownHallProject.com—lists times, dates, and places to meet with your members of Congress at their district offices or at the town hall meetings they’re supposed to attend.
2. ResistanceCalendar.org calls itself the one-stop shop where you can find—and add to—dates, times, and places of demonstrations and actions of all sorts across the nation.

That, my friends, is not the naïveté of hope. That is the activism of hope.