All posts filed under: US Election

Stop Sensationalizing the Threat of Right-Wing Political Violence

Published by Zaid Jilani

On Friday, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki announced that President Joe Biden had ordered intelligence agencies to conduct a “comprehensive threat assessment” regarding domestic terrorism. “The [January 6th] assault on the Capitol and the tragic deaths and destruction that occurred underscored what we have long known,” Psaki said. “The rise of domestic violent extremism is a serious and growing national security threat.” It’s beyond question that the riot at the Capitol building—in which crowds of incensed Trump backers invaded Congress, interrupted the certification of the presidential election, ransacked offices, and provoked deadly fights—was an unprecedented security failure. And a thorough investigation should be completed into why 2,300 members of the Capitol Police weren’t able to protect the building and its occupants. But it’s also worth examining Psaki’s claim that the riot at the Capitol proves that domestic violent extremism in the United States is a “serious and growing national security threat” that could be used to justify the expansion of censorship, surveillance, and possibly new anti-terror laws. Simply put, this is an example of what …

Visions Are Sublime; Social Reform Is Messy

Published by John Lloyd

The 2020 US elections and the subsequent inauguration of Joe Biden have returned a centre-Left party to power in the United States, buoyed by a Democratic majority in Congress and the Senate (though the first is thin and the second is only a single vote). The Democrats’ opponents in the Republican party, meanwhile, are poised for an internal struggle over its future direction and character—the raucous belligerence of the Trumpism to which it has lately become accustomed, or moderation that allows for robust opposition and the prospect of deals with a new president whose record suggests he’ll oblige, at least on some issues. The solidity of Biden’s future governance is restricted, however, to the slender majorities the Democrats have managed to secure in Washington. If Trump does decide to remain in politics, boosted by a losing vote higher than any Republican candidate had received in the past, his base will remain, in substantial part, angry, disaffected, and militant. As at least two polls have shown, they are as likely to believe that Trump did win …

Republicans’ Lyceum Moment—and America’s

Published by Brian Stewart

The assault on the US Capitol, not by foreign invaders but a domestic mob, left the American public (outside the most hardened and credulous pro-Trump precincts) bewildered and alarmed. The ubiquitous refrain from reporters on the scene struck a note of incomprehension: “This is happening in the United States of America.” The unspoken subtext was clear: such an outbreak of fanaticism was the stuff of banana republics, and no part of the American tradition. But this attitude served only to remind viewers of Gore Vidal’s quip that U-S-A stands for the United States of Amnesia. For the Trump mob’s invasion of Congress was scarcely the first time Americans have surrendered to mass frenzy. Almost two centuries ago, a spirit of anarchy seized the people, and the country began degenerating into bedlam. The source of mob violence in that day lay not with any particular partisan social or political cause. There were mobs motivated by religious sectarianism, hostility to gambling, and naked xenophobia. The passions loosed by the “peculiar institution” of slavery, of course, helped propel …

America Has Serious Problems. It’s Time to Stop Blaming Them on ‘Trumpism’

Published by Quillette Magazine

Donald Trump may have been defeated in his quest for re-election. But not so the shadowy ideology he supposedly champions. “Even in defeat, the embers of Trumpism still burn in the Republican Party,” declares the Washington Post. “Trumpism wasn’t repudiated,” warns a New York Times columnist. “Trump may be on his way out—but Trumpism marches on,” proclaims the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. At the Guardian, it’s “Trump lives on.” At the Chicago Tribune, “Trumpism has been vindicated.” The Daily Beast ran a piece entitled “This Isn’t Enough—We Wanted a Repudiation of Trumpism,” and, to hammer home the point, added an unsettling graphics banner that reads, “Dark Victory.” And what is this “Trumpism” of which they speak? It’s hard to say, since Trump himself was always a recklessly unpredictable populist who changed tune unpredictably to suit his own ambitions and vanities. But in the way the term is used journalistically, “Trumpism” often serves as a stand-in for all that is malignant in the world—a sort of Voldemort-like spirit nourishing itself on unicorn blood within the souls of …

PODCAST 121: Jamil Jivani on the Inconvenient Truth About Donald Trump’s Non-White Supporters

Published by Quillette Magazine

While Trump’s hopes of a second Presidential term seem to be vanishing, his surprisingly strong showing among Black, Hispanic, Muslim, and Asian voters is challenging the progressive claim that Trump’s primary appeal is rooted in racism. Quillette’s Jonathan Kay discusses these surprising election results with author and journalist Jamil Jivani.

Without and Within, a Fin-de-Siècle Moment

Published by Stephen Elliott

The day after the election, the weather is perfect in New Orleans. The street cleaners have scrubbed Bourbon and the street is looking new and wet. Two older white women stop me to ask if there are any daiquiri places open. “There will be,” I tell them. “It’s only eight in the morning.” The gates are locked at Armstrong Park, so I bicycle down to the river. There are a few people walking near the water. I sit near the boats that have been docked since the outbreak in March, determined to stay away from home for as long as I can hold out. I just got back a couple days ago. I’d been on the campaign trail, interviewing Trump supporters in Arizona and Pennsylvania, my first writing assignment in years. But now I was back to my regular work, trying to make the ends meet. This morning, a washing machine went out. The cleaning lady working on the house next door said she wasn’t feeling well. She’s seven months pregnant and kept holding her …

For Five Months, BLM Protestors Trashed America’s Cities. After the Election, Things May Only Get Worse

Published by Mike Gonzalez

This week marks the first time in living memory that widespread violence was widely viewed as a foreseeable, and even expected, outcome of an American national election. The votes are being counted just days after riots broke out in Philadelphia, causing the governor to deploy the National Guard in the largest city of a key battleground state. Since June, in fact, such scenes have been a common phenomenon in dozens of American cities. The Transition Integrity Project (TIP), a group that has opposed Donald Trump, ran simulations that foresee disruptions caused by pro-Trump actors. “During TIP’s exercises, Team Biden almost always called for and relied on mass protests to demonstrate the public’s commitment to a ‘legitimate outcome,’ with the objective of hardening the resolve of Democratic elected officials,” the group (somewhat predictably) reported. On the other side of the spectrum, the Texas Public Policy Center (TPPC) and the Claremont Institute cast TIP’s prediction as a “candid admission of the high likelihood of Team Biden encouraging street demonstrations that might spiral out of control.” The Claremont-TPPC’s …

‘Nobody Likes the Other Guy’: On the Road With Donald Trump’s Diehards

Published by Stephen Elliott

I sent my friend Robert a note that I might not be around when he gets to New Orleans. He’s moving from Kansas to start a new life, arriving November 2nd, the day before the presidential election. I told Robert I had been hearing from some friends that there was going to be armed violence in the streets. These friends are Trump supporters. They work in the housing trade—painters, carpenters, furniture movers. More of them are mixed race than not. A couple are white. The point is, they aren’t media people. They aren’t well-educated, generally. But they’re the main people in my life these days, the people I interact with day to day. They believe things that seem crazy to me. But I spent the last 20 years in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles around well educated, ambitious liberals. And those people aren’t so great either. So when a Trump supporter complains about the racist treatment of Amy Barrett’s children, I understand where they’re coming from. There’s certainly enough racism to go around. …

How The Intercept Abandoned Its Truth-Seeking Mission—And Lost Its Best Journalist

Published by Zaid Jilani

Journalist Glenn Greenwald shocked his global readership on Thursday, when he abruptly announced his resignation from the Intercept, the six-year-old site that became famous after publishing documents released by Edward Snowden. The incident that sparked Greenwald’s departure was the Intercept’s refusal to publish in whole an article he’d written criticizing much of the US media for failing to seriously cover allegations by a former business associate of Hunter Biden—son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden—that the Biden family had used its name to profit from business deals in foreign countries where the United States has important foreign-policy interests. Since his early days at the Intercept, which Greenwald co-founded in 2014 with left-wing journalist Jeremy Scahill and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, he operated under an agreement stipulating that his columns would be published without the requirement that they be edited by colleagues. In a lengthy statement posted to his new Substack page, Greenwald argues that politically motivated Intercept editors violated this agreement in regard to his latest article, by “refusing to publish it unless I remove all …

Sanders’ Indifferent City on a Hill

Published by Brian Stewart

In the months since the outbreak of a deadly global pandemic, Americans have rediscovered the world outside. None of the contenders vying for the presidency in 2020 has articulated a particularly coherent or ambitious global role for America. But the only candidate who seems to understand at least that foreign policy is not a dispensable part of American politics is Joe Biden. It is possible that the appearance of a lethal virus incubated in the wet markets of Wuhan has persuaded voters in the Democratic primaries that Biden is the only viable option in a world of such bleak possibilities. The current incumbent, of course, is wedded to an “America-First” program—in truth, little more than an irritable mental gesture, to borrow Lionel Trilling’s gruff description of conservatism—that is plainly ill-suited to a superpower in an interconnected world. Trump’s brash pursuit of transactional dealing and short-term self-interest is also incompatible with the design of American power in a democratic order. Meanwhile, the Democratic field, evincing a deep-seated provincialism, has not inspired confidence about its willingness to …