Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein took an important step to stabilize the spiraling series of crises that have enveloped the Trump Administration Wednesday when he named former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate potential collusion between Trump’s team and Russia. Both Republicans and Democrats praised the selection of Mueller, who is widely respected on both sides of the aisle and within law enforcement.
Three things to know:
Naming a special counsel may help to tame some of the chaos.
Mueller’s unimpeachable credentials and reputation for non-partisanship and independence will give weight to the investigation’s findings. If Trump is exonerated, this can only help him.
Mueller is a high-risk/high-reward scenario for Trump. If Mueller discovers fire amidst all the smoke around Trump and Russia, the bipartisan respect Mueller enjoys will make his conclusions hard to discredit.
While President Trump resisted naming a special prosecutor in the past, he may have a lot to gain from a credible investigation led by Mueller. If Trump hasn’t done anything seriously wrong, it will allow him to put suspicions about Russia behind him. With the investigation proceeding independently, Trump will also get some political breathing room to pursue his policy agenda as Mueller’s investigation proceeds independently.
The move has been greeted with rare bipartisan praise. Trump confidant Roger Stone called it a “master stroke” that would allow Trump to “once and for all clear the air.” Senate Majority Leader and frequent Trump critic Chuck Schumer hails it too. “Former Director Mueller is exactly the right kind of individual for this job. I now have significantly greater confidence that the investigation will follow the facts wherever they lead,” Schumer said in a statement.
The White House reaction was measured and devoid of the usual Trumpian hyperbole. In a statement, President Trump said, “as I have stated many times, a thorough investigation will confirm what we already know—there was no collusion between my campaign and any foreign entity. I look forward to this matter concluding quickly.”
It Was the Only Way
In truth this was the only way. Trump’s decision to sack FBI Director James Comey and revelations that he pressured the former FBI Director to curtail the investigation into his former National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, did irreparable damage to the credibility of any Russia investigation led by any new FBI director nominated by Trump. As we wrote earlier this week:
“If Trump is innocent, and he very well may be, his decision to fire Comey had made clearing his name that much harder. Now, any outcome favorable to the President will be tainted by suspicion that Trump’s new FBI director whitewashed the investigation.”
Mueller’s unimpeachable credentials and reputation for non-partisanship and independence will give weight to the investigation’s findings. If Trump is exonerated, this can only help him.
Naming a special prosecutor will also relieve some of the immense pressure on the nomination for Comey’s replacement as FBI Director. With responsibility
for the Russia investigation now with Mueller, Trump may be spared the full brunt of what was sure to be a politically charged confirmation process.
High-risk/High-reward
But, if Mueller discovers fire amidst all the smoke around Trump and Russia, the bipartisan respect Mueller enjoys will make his conclusions hard to discredit. Mueller is a high-risk/high-reward scenario for Trump. Still, that beats the all-risk/little reward proposition of an investigation led by a Trump appointee whose findings would be in doubt.
Mueller offers Trump’s his best hope of putting Russian behind him and getting back to the business of moving his agenda forward.
A memorandum for the file written by fired FBI Director James B. Comey revealed this week is raising charges of obstruction of justice and excited talk of impeachment among Trump critics. The memo, first reported by The New York Times, details a conversation between Comey and the President in which Trump apparently pressured the FBI to drop its investigation into Michael T. Flynn. That conversation supposedly took place the day after Trump fired Flynn because he lied to Vice President Pence about his contacts with Russian officials.
The existence of the memo has led at least one senior Republican senator to say the allegation raised in the memo – that the President may have tried to derail an investigation that possibly could implicate him or close associates – was reminiscent of Watergate. While parallels to Watergate seem premature, that is not a good place to be if you are a President involved, even peripherally, in an FBI probe.
‘I hope you can let this go’
According to The Times account, in a private Oval Office meeting, President Trump encouraged Comey to abandon the FBI’s investigation of his former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, telling the FBI Director, “I hope you can let this go.”
After he returned to his office, Comey wrote a memo for the file that documented the conversation. He showed the memo to senior FBI officials, and told colleagues that he perceived the President’s comments as an attempt to pressure him to halt the Flynn investigation.
These memos would have been nothing unusual for Comey. Multiple people close to the former FBI Director told Roughly Explained that throughout his career, Comey had made it a habit to write memos documenting important conversations in real time.
Unexploded Bombshells
The Times report and suggest potential unexploded bombshells for Trump. The article noted the memo “was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president’s improper efforts to influence a continuing investigation.”
“Improper efforts.” Plural. If the Times report is correct, it suggests that Trump may have sought to halt or impede the FBI investigations into Flynn’s connections with Russia and, possibly, the agency’s probe of Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election on more than one occasion. There may be other shoes to drop.
Congress Requests Documents
The Times’ account was based on a source who read one of them to a Times reporter over the phone. No one outside of Comey’s inner circle has actually seen the memos. But that may soon change.
On Tuesday, Chairman of the House oversight committee Jason Chaffetz wrote a letter to the FBI requesting that the Bureau hand over all documents or recordings related to President Donald Trump’s communications with former FBI chief James Comey.
In his letter to acting Director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, Chaffetz said that if the reports are accurate, “these memoranda raise serious questions as to whether the President attempted to influence or impede the FBI’s investigation as it relates to Lt. Gen. Flynn.”
Chaffetz set a deadline of May 24 for the FBI to hand over the documents.
The Specter of Watergate
For many, including Sen. John S. McCain, the Comey memo raised the dark shadow of Watergate. McCain said Wednesday, “I think we’ve seen this movie before. I think it appears at a point where it’s of Watergate size and scale.” From what we know so far that might be overstating things.
McCain has personal reasons to dislike Trump. In July 2015, then-candidate Trump said of the Arizona senator, “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” McCain was held prisoner for more than five years, during which time he was repeatedly beaten and tortured. McCain still feels the effects of that ordeal to this day. It wouldn’t be surprising if McCain still held a grudge.
While the revelations so far are troubling, comparisons to Watergate seem premature. Watergate was a vast, complex scandal that involved payments of hush money, a plan to enlist the CIA in an effort to shut down the FBI’s investigation, the firing of a special prosecutor and taped conversations that proved Nixon’s complicity. So far, all we know about Trump is that he fired the FBI director and, if this newest report is correct, lobbied the FBI director to go easy on Flynn.
In an interview with Roughly Explained last month, FOX News Senior Washington Correspondent and Watergate historian James Rosen cautioned against getting too carried away with allusions to the Nixon-era scandal. “The American people have become inured to the brandishing, on a near daily basis, of the word ‘Watergate’ to describe this or that, Rosen, who wrote a definitive 2008 biography of Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell said. “It strikes me that too little is yet known about the current situation to merit comparisons to the great scandal of 1972-75.” The developments of this week probably don’t change that analysis much. While there are almost certainly other shoes to drop, we’re not there yet.
Is Trump at Risk for Impeachment?
The articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon charged that he engaged “in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay, impede, and obstruct the investigation,” through, among other things, “interfering or endeavouring to interfere with the conduct of investigations by the Department of Justice of the United States, [and] the Federal Bureau of Investigation. . . .” Thus, there is historical and legislative precedent for the impeachment of a president on the grounds that he merely attempted to interfere in an FBI probe.
Whether Trump’s actions meet that standard will be entirely up to House of Representatives. In an unsuccessful 1970 attempt to impeach Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, then Rep. Gerald R. Ford declared: “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”
GOP in A Quandary
If the allegations contained in the Comey memo are accurate, Trump may find many GOP members of Congress reluctant to come to his aid. Trump’s anti-Washington platform won him few friends on Capitol Hill. Since being elected, the President has made little progress in winning over skeptical members of his party. Still, it will be politically difficult for Congressional Republicans to abandon Trump completely. Trump continues to enjoy strong support among his voters, only 2% of which said they regret casting their ballot for him according to one recent poll. While many Capitol Hill Republicans may be in no hurry to defend Trump, there’s political risk in turning against him at this point.
Many ordinary Americans have grown numb to the perpetual sense of crisis in Washington. Distrust of the media, disgust with Washington, and a confusing array of overlapping scandals makes it hard to make sense of it all. Trump supporters, who see the accusations against Trump as the handiwork of a cabal of Washington insiders, Hillary loyalists and their media allies, dismiss all of this as a conspiracy to undermine the man they elected and still stand behind.
Where Things Stand
Conclusive evidence that Trump himself was complicit in Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 election has yet to emerge. Too little is known about Trump’s actions in regards to James to merit a judgement on whether they rise to the level of Nixon-era obstruction of justice. There is still some possibility that this all turns out to be all smoke and no fire.
But, the White House’s problems are growing more serious with each passing week. Team Trump’s often ham-handed attempts at damage control are serving only to deepen his troubles. In a sign of deteriorating morale within the West Wing, Trump’s inner circle has become the primary source of leaks to the press as unnerved staffers seek to distance themselves from the air of scandal enveloping their boss.
While there’s still hope that Trump can turn it around, we can say for certain that things look worse for Trump now than they did a week ago.
The author is a former U.S. government investigator.
The Washington Postreported Monday that in a meeting last week with Russian ambassador Sergei Lavrov, President Donald Trump described details of intelligence the U.S. had obtained from a foreign partner about the potential use of laptop bombs by ISIS.
FIVE THINGS TO KNOW
The White House does not deny that the discussions took place, but says that Trump shared information only of a general nature and did not reveal sources and methods. No one said he did.
Instead, the Post reported that Trump, in the meeting with Russian officials, described the intelligence in specific enough detail that the Russians could easily deduce how it was obtained.
The information Trump revealed likely fell in a grey area in which Trump’s supporters and detractors can take more, or less, charitable interpretations of the same basic facts.
Revealing this kind of highly classified information is a significant concern because it could jeopardize ongoing intelligence operations or put the lives of sources at risk.
While it is unlikely that President Trump intended to reveal anything classified, the incident is nonetheless troubling. Still, it probably says more about Trump’s lack of sophisticated understanding of the nuances of intelligence operations than his relationship with Russia.
White House officials, including National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, whose credibility is widely respected, disputed the account saying that the information shared was general in nature. “The president and the foreign minister reviewed common threats from terrorist organizations to include threats to aviation,” McMaster who was in the meeting said. “At no time were any intelligence sources or methods discussed, and no military operations were disclosed that were not already known publicly.”
While McMaster says the Washington Post story is false, he does not say what about it is not true. The difference between the White House’s account and that of the unnamed sources in the Washington appears to be one of degrees. McMaster’s denial that Trump shared sources and methods does not directly contradict the Washington Post’s sources, who did not say that Trump explicitly revealed the sources of information. Nor did the Post say anything about revealing ongoing military operations, making McMasters denial that he did so puzzling.
Instead, the Post reported that Trump, in the meeting with Russian officials, described the intelligence in specific enough detail that the Russians could easily deduce how it was obtained. That raised concerns for two reasons. First, the intelligence was provided by a foreign partner whose trust in U.S. ability to keep information confidential might be diminished. Second, if the same method is used to gather intelligence on Russia or its allies, such as the Syrian regime or Iran, Russia might be able to also work out how to thwart future gathering of valuable intelligence.
Without knowing the specifics of the information in question, it’s hard to tell if the alarm about all this is overblown. It might be. Trump has plenty of detractors in the intelligence community. More now after firing FBI Director James Comey. It’s likely that Trump’s comments fell in a grey area and his detractors are taking the more uncharitable interpretation of the same basic facts. Whether Trump truly revealed classified intelligence or not, he walked closely enough to the line that intelligence agencies felt compelled to spend Monday night doing damage control.
Even if he did reveal classified information, it is unlikely that Trump did so intentionally. The episode may say more about Trump’s lack of sophisticated understanding of the nuances of intelligence operations than his fondness for Russia. Still, intentional or not, it’s troubling.
At the least it appears that Trump failed to exercise appropriate discretion in discussing this material. Information gets classified for a reason, in this case at the codeword level reserved for the most sensitive secrets. Revealing this type of information could put lives at risk or undermine ongoing intelligence and military operations. Considering the amount of criticism President Trump leveled against Hillary Clinton for risking disclosure of classified information stored on her home-brew email server, Democrats will feel well-justified in flogging Trump over this.
But, whatever the case, Trump probably didn’t break any laws. The President has broad authority to declassify anything he wants. If anyone else did the same thing, they’d potentially be facing criminal charges. Still, coming on the heels of Trump’s controversial dismissal of James Comey last week, it doesn’t looks good. It is just one more crisis in what is shaping up to be a really bad couple of weeks for President Trump.
In the week since President Donald Trump stunned official Washington by firing FBI Director James Comey, why he did it and what it means continues to dominate the conversation. Reactions have been sharply divided, mostly along partisan lines. Trump’s fans celebrated it as the long overdue comeuppance of the architect of a politically-motivated witch-hunt. The President’s critics seized on it as confirmation of Trump’s authoritarian intentions. Most everyone else was simply baffled.
A Shifting Narrative
Shifting explanations from the White House heightened the controversy as the week wore on. Team Trump’s original story, that the President made the decision after Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein recommended he do so quickly fell apart quickly. Rosenstein, who wrote a memo at the President’s request laying out the case against Comey, reportedly bristled at the White House’s claim that firing the FBI director was his idea. The rational that Trump dismissed Comey for mishandling the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server didn’t hold much water either. By week’s end, it became apparent that the real reason Trump fired Comey was that his anger with the FBI director over the ongoing Russia investigation boiled over.
“Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire (James) Comey.” – President Donald Trump to NBC’s Lester Holt.
The chief debunker of the White House’s version of events turned out to be the President himself. In an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt Thursday night, the President said that his mind was made up about firing Comey prior to the recommendation from Sessions and Rosenstein. Trump complained that the former FBI director was a “showboat” and told Holt that the Russia investigation, which he felt was baseless, was on his mind when he made the decision. “And in fact when I decided to just do it,” Trump told Holt, “I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it’s an
excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have
won.”
The New York Times threw another wrinkle into the official narrative when it reported that at a dinner soon after taking office, Trump asked for assurance that he had Comey’s loyalty. Comey refused to give it but promised his honesty. This, according to Comey’s allies, infuriated the President and was a big part of the reason he fired Comey. The White House denied Trump made such a demand.
Backfire
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Thursday that Team Trump hopes firing James Comey will help bring the FBI’s Russia probe to a swift close. Yet, if Trump removed Comey to put an end to his Russia-related troubles, the plan is already backfiring.
Firing Comey won’t stop FBI agents from investigating. If anything, said one former FBI agent, “this might rally them.” Acting FBI director Andrew McCabe is not likely to be cowed. Any candidate the Senate will agree to confirm as Comey’s successor is not either. There is little chance that the Senate will confirm a new FBI Director unless Senators are convinced that they will not bury the Russia investigation.
Republicans on Capitol Hill, troubled by the timing of Comey’s dismissal and the dubious explanations offered by the White House have not rushed to Trump’s aid. And public opinion has come down squarely against Trump’s move. By abruptly firing his FBI director in the middle of an investigation into his campaign, Trump poured gasoline on an already burning fire.
‘Enough is Enough’
“There was a sense in the White House, I believe, that enough was enough when it came to this guy.” – Trump confidant Roger Stone.
Still, it seems unlikely that sacking Comey is part of any kind of planned strategy to derail the Russia investigation. Rather, it seems more likely that President Trump simply got fed up. As Axios’ Mike Allen put it, “The answers to why Trump canned Comey are becoming clear: The president was filled with grievance about the FBI probe and acted on impulse without clearly thinking through the fallout.”
The Case Against Comey
There is a case to be made that Comey bungled the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server. Plenty of reasonable people — including a good many FBI agents — don’t see much distinction between “gross negligence” (the legal standard for prosecuting Clinton) and extreme carelessness (Comey’s characterization of Clinton’s actions). It is a fair criticism of Comey that he went too far in publicly announcing his recommendation not to prosecute. It wasn’t his call to make. His October letter announcing that the FBI was revisiting its investigation into the affair was not especially prudent either.
Comey’s actions in 2016 were controversial, but by most accounts he was acting in good faith. Comey was reluctant to make the FBI the meat in anyone’s political sandwich but has a tin ear for politics and ended up doing exactly that. Whether that’s a firing offense doesn’t really matter. While the norm is that there’s a really high bar for firing FBI directors, they serve at the pleasure of the President. Trump can technically fire Comey for any reason or no reason at all. That doesn’t mean it was a good idea.
Firing Comey May Always Haunt Trump
As yet no convincing evidence has emerged, publicly at least, that Trump did anything wrong. Still, there’s no real way for Trump to stop the investigation. Even if Trump turns out to be squeaky clean, there’s good reason to believe that people around him might not be. Regardless, it is important to understand Russia’s efforts to meddle in the 2016 election in order to prevent its doing so in the future. For that reason, the investigation will continue to have bipartisan support. Firing Comey certainly won’t allow Trump to put suspicions about Russia behind him. Instead it will just make matters worse.
If it turns out Trump was not complicit in Russia’s interference, there’s no reason to believe that Comey would not have found as much. Comey’s conclusion would have been seen as credible. If Trump is innocent, and he very well may be, his decision to fire Comey had made clearing his name that much harder. Now, any outcome favorable to the President will be tainted by suspicion that Trump’s new FBI director whitewashed the investigation. In the end, Trump has ensured that Russia will probably always haunt him.The best thing he can do now is nominate the most credible FBI director candidate he can find and hope for the best.
Version 2.0 of the American Health Care Act likely will not even come to a vote in the Senate, at least not in its present form. The reasons have as much to do with politics as they do with a little-understood law, arcane Senate rules that deal with budget reconciliation and how many votes are needed to approve legislation. And the politics are not easy either. Even a version modified to Senators liking faces difficult odds. Either way, repealing Obamacare faces major hurdles in the Senate.
The House crafted the AHCA as a budget reconciliation measure so that it would only have to be approved by a simple majority of 51 Senators to pass, not the usual 60 vote super-majority needed to invoke cloture (or cut off debate). But, in doing so it subjected the bill to an arcane set of rules that restrict what can be in it and how it is considered.
The AHCA – an earlier version of which previously preciously fell short of enough support to win House passage – only passed by a 217-213 vote after a last minute amendment. The amendment authored by Rep. Fred Upton added language to the Social Security Act, and mandates that the “amount otherwise appropriated [under the Act] . . . shall be increased by $8,000,000,000 for the period beginning with [fiscal year] 2018 and ending with [fiscal year] 2023, to be allocated to States with a [pre-existing condition] waiver in effect” for the establishment of high-risk pools for people who have pre-existing conditions. This laid the foundation for a big problem.
First Hurdle: Byrd Rules & U.S. Law
The first issue the AHCA faces in the Senate are what are known as the “Byrd Rules” – after the late Senate President Pro Temp Robert Byrd. Adopted into law in 1985, the rules state what can and cannot be in a budget reconciliation measure. U.S. Code Title 2, Section 644 prohibits including any “extraneous” provisions from a reconciliation bill.
Put into plain English, reconciliation legislation must not change revenues or spending for the fiscal year it covers; cannot increase the deficit beyond the fiscal year covered by it; nor make any changes to Social Security. The AHCA does all of the above.
The Upton Amendment adds language to the Social Security Act. It makes $8 billion in appropriations for FYs 2018-2023, with no spending cuts or revenue increases. The original version of the AHCA changed some of the Affordable Care Act’s insurance regulations, and the second changed even more. All of those provisions, on their face, could be considered extraneous under the Byrd Rules and U.S. Code.
Second Hurdle: Possible Objections on Extraneous Provisions
Under the Byrd Rules and the law, “Notwithstanding any other law or rule of the Senate, it shall be in order for a Senator to raise a single point of order that several provisions of a bill, resolution, amendment, motion, or conference report” are extraneous.
A point of order is a non-debatable motion. Before he either affirms or overrules the motion, the Presiding Officer generally consults with the Senate Parliamentarian. However, the Presiding Officer can consult with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rather than the Parliamentarian. In addition, the Vice President can overrule the parliamentarian, but this has not happened since Nelson Rockefeller did it in 1975.
Any Senator can seek to overturn the Presiding Officer’s ruling. Once again, that motion cannot be debated. But it requires 60 votes – the same to close off debate. The same number McConnell would need in order for the Senate to approve the AHCA if it came up during the regular course of business.
The only way around objections is if the Senate considers the AHCA anew, and the Chairman and Ranking Minority Member of the Budget Committee certify that everything in the AHCA is germane. Considering Democrats’ unanimous opposition to the bill, the likelihood of that happening is zero to nil.
Third Hurdle: How Long It Will Take CBO to Score
The third issue is that of timing. And that could be fatal. As the report on the legislation makes clear, it is being consider as a budget reconciliation measure for fiscal year 2017 – the current fiscal year.
The Congressional Budget Office has not yet scored the approved AHCA, and that may take up to three weeks. Senate insiders said that chamber’s parliamentarian cannot rule on whether any provisions violate the Byrd Rule.
A House member told Roughly Explained that a reconciliation measure cannot be taken up after the President submits his next fiscal year budget to Congress. White House officials publicly have said President Trump plans to submit his FY 2018 budget within the next two weeks.
By the time CBO has a cost estimate for the AHCA, the time for the Senate to take it up may have passed.
Fourth Hurdle: The Calendar & Numbers
The fourth issue is how long Congress has to act on a budget reconciliation measure. A report by the Congressional Research Service notes that, under the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 (which first took effect for FY1987 and still remain in effect), all budget reconciliation measures must be approved by June 15.
Even assuming CBO can score the bill before President Trump’s budget gets to Congress, and no Senator raises a point of personal privilege about extraneous provisions, there is little doubt that the AHCA will undergo a major rewrite before it reaches the Senate floor.
That’s where the calendar comes in. Rewrites take time. There are only six weeks before the statutory deadline for considering budget reconciliation measures. But The House has recesses scheduled for the week of May 8th and the 29th. In reality, there are just four weeks for the Senate to recraft the AHCA send the bill back to the House, and have it approve the new measure. And depending on how the rules shake out, they could need eight Democrats willing to repeal President Obama’s legislative legacy to do it,
Final Hurdle: Not Enough Support in the Senate
The final, and probably fatal, problem in the Senate is arithmetic. It takes the votes of 50 senators plus Vice President Pence to pass a budget reconciliation measure. Republicans have a 52-48 majority. They have only a two-vote margin.
At least four Republican senators either have expressed opposition to the AHCA or have grave doubts about it. They are: Alexander (chairman of the health committee), Collins, Murkowski, and Paul. Sources say that Rubio likely is a “no” vote because the AHCA will hurt Florida’s elderly population. In addition, Cruz and Lee may not support it.
Political Theatre
So why would the House approve a measure they must have realized had no chance in the Senate? Because they had to. Since Obamacare came into existence, Republicans have run on a platform that they would repeal and replace it. The House voted more than 40 times during the Obama presidency to do just that, knowing full well it was a futile gesture.
Since Republicans took control of the White House and both houses of Congress, their base has been demanding that they repeal and replace Obamacare. The House tried and failed. It could not afford to fail again. House members can now say they did their part, blame the Senate, and possibly keep control of the House.
The only thing harder than fixing health care is tax reform, but President Donald Trump means to try. The proposal the White House unveiled today is short on specifics, long on aspirations. Trump’s plan includes:
A 15% corporate tax rate, which would also apply to “pass-throughs” – business structures like LLCs used by many small businesses, hedge funds and real estate partnerships.
A tax reduction for middle income tax payers in the form of a higher standard deduction.
Elimination of most tax preference, but not the popular ones like deductions for charitable contributions and mortgages.
These are ambitious goals. But, paying for them is another matter. On face value they would add trillions to the deficit. But, Trump’s team is counting on massive economic growth they hope the tax cuts will spur to fill the shortfall.
While Trump’s tax cuts would certainly spur economic growth, it is it is far from certain that they would do so at the levels required to pay for themselves. It is more likely that the White House views the principals announced today as a starting point for negotiations rather than a realistic end goal.
Bending the Laffer Curve
Backers of Trump’s plan point to the Laffer Curve, an economic concept developed by economist Arthur Laffer. The basic premise is that higher tax rates impede economic activity. The Laffer Curve illustrates that there is a point of diminishing returns at which marginal increases in tax rates generate less revenue by impeding economic activity and incentivizing tax avoidance behavior.
If tax rates reached 100%, there would clearly be no reason to work, so there would be no revenue generated to the government either – exactly the same as if the tax rate were zero.
On the front end of the curve, reducing tax rates will generate more income. On the back end, less. Whether tax cuts can pay for themselves depends on where the tipping point on the curve occurs.
Most, but not all, estimates put the peak of the curve higher than current rates. Unsurprisingly, economists on the left see the revenue-maximizing tax rate quite a bit higher than current marginal tax rates, while credible estimates from right leaning economists range from somewhere slightly below current tax rates to slightly above.
Left-leaning economist see the curve peaking around 60-70%. Economists on the right put it as low as 19%, but most would say it’s somewhere between 35% to 50%. So, it seems likely that Trump’s tax cuts are likely on the back end of the curve where they will generate less new income from economic growth than they lose from rate reductions.
According to Gregory Mankiw, who was chairman of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, “A reasonable rule of thumb, in my judgment, is that about one-third of the cost of tax cuts is recouped via faster economic growth.”
Some economists argue that the revenue-maximizing rate shouldn’t matter. The point should not be to make the government as flush with cash as possible, but to drive the strongest economic growth possible. As Marty Feldstien, chairman of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors put it:
“Why look for the rate that maximizes revenue? As the tax rate rises, the “deadweight loss” (real loss to the economy rises) so as the rate gets close to maximizing revenue the loss to the economy exceeds the gain in revenue…. I dislike budget deficits as much as anyone else. But would I really want to give up say $1 billion of GDP in order to reduce the deficit by $100 million? No. National income is a goal in itself. That is what drives consumption and our standard of living.”
All fair points. But, it does matter if you are worried about exploding deficits and unwilling to reduce spending to compensate for the lost revenue. Given President Trump’s ambitions for large investments in infrastructure and reluctance to pair back entitlements, meaningful spending reductions are probably not on the table. The White House seems to be willing to roll the dice and hope economic growth will fill the gap. As Earnest Hemingway’s protagonist Jake Barnes muses to Lady Brett in The Sun Also Rises, “isn’t it pretty to think so.”
Since the first signs emerged of Russian’s hack into the presidential elections, some within the intelligence community have speculated that the operations had two objectives: First to issue a not-very-subtle warning to CIA and NSA of Russia’s cyberwarfare capabilities; Second, to interfere with the process and, thereby, call into question the integrity of our election process and government. Many within the intelligence community think the second motive may have been the most important, because it would undermine voters’ beliefs in Western democracies.
The Hacks Were Very Traceable
In their testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, both NSA Director Rogers and FBI Director Comey said the FSB and GRU made it clear they were behind the hacks. When asked for the difference between the Russian operations in the 2016 presidential elections and previous cyberattacks, NSA Director Rogers said, “I’d say the biggest difference from my perspective was both the use of cyber, the hacking as a vehicle to physically gain access to information to extract that information and then to make it widely, publicly available without any alteration or change.”
FBI Director Comey said, “The only thing I’d add is they were unusually loud in their intervention. It’s almost as if they didn’t care that we knew what they were doing or that they wanted us to see what they were doing. It was very noisy, their intrusions in different institutions.” In intelligence terms, the phrase “unusually loud” means there were many hacks and all were easily traced back to the Russians.
A person in the intelligence community with first-hand knowledge of the investigation into the Russian hacks of the DNC and state election systems told us last year that the Russians did not even try to hide their digital trails. In fact, this person said, one of the hacks traced directly back to a senior Russian intelligence official.
During the summer of 2016, our intelligence community source described the Russian hacks as “the cyber equivalent of flying a MIG 50 feet over the USS Eisenhower in the Mediterranean.”
They Wanted Us to Know
Rep. Ros-Lethinen asked the FBI and NSA directors why the Russians did not mind being loud and, thus, found out. Comey said, “I think part — their number one mission is to undermine the credibility of our entire democracy enterprise of this nation and so it might be that they wanted us to help them by telling people what they were doing.”
Rogers agreed with Comey. He said, “a big difference to me in the past was while there was cyber activity, we never saw in previous presidential elections information being published on such a massive scale that had been illegally removed both from private individuals as well as organizations associated with the democratic process both inside the government and outside the government.”
. . . And Maybe That Was the Point
The intelligence community source said a follow-up exchange between Rep. Ros-Lehtinen and the directors may be a key to the Russian operation. The congresswoman asked whether Comey and Rogers expect further interference in our elections.
Comey said he did, “. . . I’ll just say as initial matter they’ll be back. And they’ll be in 2020, they may be back in 2018 and one of the lessons they may draw from this is that they were successful because they introduced chaos and division and discord and sewed doubt about the nature of this amazing country of ours and our democratic process.”
The NSA director said, “I fully expect them to continue this — this level of activity because I — our sense is that they have come to the conclusion that it generated a positive outcome for them in the sense that calling into question the democratic process for example is one element of the strategy.”
Same Thing Is Happening in Europe
Rogers went on to testify that the Russians were using the same cyberwarfare techniques during the current round of European elections. He testified the intelligence community noticed “some of the same things that we saw in the U.S. in terms of disinformation, fake news, attempts to release of information to embarrass individuals” have begun to “play out to some extent in European elections right now.”
Within weeks of the intel officials’ testimony, a cybersecurity firm issued a report on hacks that involved both the French and German elections. Trend Micro reported that cyberattacks on the campaign of Emmanuel Macron (in the French presidential runoff against Marine Le Pen), and the political party aligned with German Chancellor Angela Merkel seemed to have originated in Russia.
Trend Micro said the techniques (phishing attacks and malware) and internet protocol addresses used by Pawn Storm – the group behind the hacks – were similar to those the Russians conducted against the DNC and other people and entities during the 2016 elections.
The Point Is to Sow Confusion
Since the Russian hacks into the U.S. elections became public, one question that politicians and pundits have been asking is why? What was the Russian’s motive?
The official answer is that “Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him” – to quote directly from the Director of National Intelligence’s report.
A career Russia analyst explained that Russians are chess players, they look many moves ahead. Disinformation also is a hallmark of their tradecraft, the analyst said, who noted that a long-term goal of both the Soviet Union and the Russian Republic is to undermine Western democracies.
As the DNI report of the 2016 hacks noted, “Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.” The report states that Putin “ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process . . .”
The analyst’s comments and the DNI’s report lead to a set of conclusions: The Russians hack into political computers to gain access to information, which they then selectively leak. The leaks undermine political leaders’ confidence in their cybersecurity, and make them search for moles. The Russians sometimes salt the hacked documents with fake ones, to create further suspicion. In addition, through blogs, trolls, and “media reports,” the Russians push out false media reports. All of which causes voters to question what is real and what is true. All of which undermines people’s faith in elected and political institutions, and in the trustfulness of the media.
And that is the point. That is the Russian’s aim: to have us question everything and believe nothing.
The author is a former U.S. government investigator.
Politics, Religion, 2016 Election and Inherit the Wind
The plan for this commentary is to explore the role of the many forms of southern culture in the 2016 election process. More specifically, we will dive into the complex relationship between evangelical Protestantism, political conservatism and the miscalculation by political pundits and pollsters of the Trump phenomenon. This phenomenon however is no longer confined to the south but applies to a broader swath of social strata. The experts seemed unable to approach this election in terms of a merger between many elements. We will shift explanations for this underestimation of Trump-ism from words to images, taking the perspective of “one picture is worth 10,000 words”. We turn to Stanley Kramer’s 1960 movie Inherit the Wind. Kramer dramatizes the infamous Scopes Monkey trial in the mid 1920’s in Dayton Tennessee. Ironically this trial occurred within a few years of Raymond Dart’s announced his discovery of Australopithecus africanus (South African ape-man). Both the trial and the discovery of this supposed “missing link” between man and the apes opened a Pandora’s box of cognitive dissonances.
As in most movies (this was a play also) the screen writers and directors take liberties with the historical facts. But the movie does a frightening job of bringing into focus the siege mentality, zealotry, emotionalism, anti-intellectualism, and demands for orthodoxy and conformity in this small Tennessee community. In addition, the movie dramatizes the generational, educational, and regional differences in attitudes towards change. The emphasis on my corner of the world reminds me of a post-Copernican priests who argued “I am more interested in working to get souls to heaven than how the heaven’s work”. The play and movie make stunning use of the fundamentalist mantra of “gimme that old time religion” to get me to heaven. This hymn stands in stark contrast to emerging science and evolutionary biology. The trial scenes emphasize an underlying concern at the time regarding the dissemination of this “modern science” in the fertile young minds in the brave new world of American high schools. This concern persists today as many religious conservatives decry to exclusion of Creation Science and the unfettered teaching of evolution by natural selection to counterbalance evolutionary “theories”. This mind set of faith versus scientific evidence resurfaces from time to time in many disguises. Pundits did not explore the role played by these beliefs, themes, values and conflicts played in the 2016 election. We will try to in a later article.
Stanley Kramer’s 1960 movie version centers on the conflicts between Spencer Tracy (Henry Drummond or Clarence Darrow); Frederick March (Matthew Harrison Brady or William Jennings Bryan) and Gene Kelly (E K Hornbeck or H L Mencken) and a very powerful supporting cast. In a sense it is allegorical. Many younger readers may be not remember, or have read about the events of early 1960’s when the USSR seemed to be ahead in the space race and science teaching in the US looked second rate. Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin (first man in space) were stark reminders. Historical events pitted the anti-science believers (anything attached to evolution by natural selection) with new information about cosmology, evolutionary biology, and other basic sciences. Some consider the rise of a new wave of fundamentalism as a rear guard defense against liberal Biblical modes of criticism. The “old time religion” was far more comforting that this stuff. The rise of terms “godless scientist” and “atheism” seemed intertwined with the challenges to federal effects at desegregation. Culture change and this amalgam of “left behind” working folk may partly explain the emerging shift from democratic to republican hegemony. These changes also helped propel the solidification of the connection between religious Fundamentalism and political conservatism. A similar argument went something like this “we need better scientific education, but not Darwin’s “theory” of natural selection- there is no god in his world”.
Several themes grow out of this movie:
The exaggerated conflict between science (Evolutionary Biology) and Biblical literalism grew out of a sense of disbelief in the meaning and validity of scientific methods and findings when contrasted with emotional beliefs, theology and social values. Unfortunately these ideas merged with hardening support for segregation; elimination of prayer in public school, legalized abortion, growing welfare state, attitudes towards communisms, function of a college education, and many of the programs established by FDR and Lyndon Johnson. The justification for these challenges depended in part on a very distorted picture of the historical interactions between science and religion.
As the complexity of scientific data exploded, the scientific IQ of many people lagged well behind. Many scientists seemed unable to communicate the meaning of their increasingly specialized and often anti-intuitive scientific data. Science was perceived as a destructive force when it perceived in the eyes of many religious folks. In the public eye (populists especially) there was a tendency to devalue pure or basic research at the expense of goal-directed science (and education) with practical or instrumental applications. The impracticality of those in the ivory tower was inferior to personal experience and common sense. They “don’t know anything about how my world works or what is really useful.”
The Butler Act prohibited the teaching of evolution in any public high school in Tennessee. Scopes (Bertram Gates in the movie) openly defied the law and taught an oversimplified version of evolution in a classroom setting. He was charged with violating that Tennessee law. His defense (Spencer Tracy) presented legal arguments based on freedom of thought and belief- a challenge to religious and social orthodoxy. Consistent with a literal interpretation of the Butler Act, the judge (a young Harry Morgan) prohibited the testimony of noted experts and scientists of the day. The prosecution was dominated by Brady (William Jennings Bryan) hinged its case on the narrow issue of breaking the law. The defense countered by questioning the validity of Biblical accounts of the creation of man and miracles that were foundational to the religious fundamentalism. The defense seduced Brady into taking the stand as an expert on the Bible. In a piece of courtroom skill Drummond (Tracy or Clarence Darrow) proceeded to destroy him based on inconsistencies. Brady’s arguments collapsed but the jury ruled against Scopes. But the story is more complex. This trial was a test case for ACLU. They pushed for an appeal and the eventual negation of the Butler act.
Hornbeck (aka Kelley or HL Mencken) plastered his newspaper columns with his depiction of the deplorables in Tennessee as closed minded, backward rubes – the primitivism, anti-intellectualism and fanatical fundamentalism to many of his northern readers. Embedded in both of these events are the hints of a distrust and disgust with lawyers, judges, the press and liberals so prominent in the 2016 election.
The movie depicts the use of religious zeal as an instrument of conformity and a place of asylum from the uncertainty generated by a rapidly changing, conservative society. The greatness of the play/movie lies in the depiction of the human diversity (actually not everyone was vehemently anti-science or evolution). There was compassion and a search for understanding on all sides but the drama was dominated by the brutality and inhumanity of extremism. The goals were not debate but destruction of the other. In the end, it was Tracy and Kelly that clashed over moral and ethical principles of justice versus legal victory. Both Drummond and Hornbeck argued against the stifling effect of rigid conformity in Southern society. This mindset also included a discomfort with “new learning”, a zealous religious fundamentalism and “localism” were over exaggerated for the sake of dramatic effect. Localism referred to a view of our town, our folks, and our experiences are superior to and closer to fundamental Truths in sharp contrast with the scientific truths presented by the experts. The inherent superiority of our folks (even “our blacks”) over those in the next town. These attitudes created a fertile ground for many of the cognitive dissonances that dominated the 1960’s.
In a stark but at times melodramatic fashion, Kramer and his cast captured the complexity of the times. The same argument can be raised during any discussion of southern religion, its relationship to politics and social change. It is a bit foolish to even think that I covered the tip of the iceberg regarding these psychosocial forces. So let me paraphrase a few quotes for your review:
“Swaggering, unyielding characteristics, and unruly congregations, fighting when they deemed fighting appropriate. A premium is placed on a straight-ahead speaking style that emphasizes a thunderous voice that can drown out hecklers, simply experience-tinged ideas with no rational explanations offered as evidence. The events evoked wild emotional responses, recklessness, with a hint of dangerousness and uncivilized- violence”.
Is this a summary of the speaking style of the last presidential campaign? Does it sound familiar from a man that seems disinterested in the complexity of events and the rich learning of experts? Close but no cigar. The collage paraphrases a non-theologically trained, frequently uneducated, travelling revival speakers in the southern frontier of the early 19th century (David T Bailey. Frontier Religion. In Hill SS (Ed) Religion from The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture). This is a revival speaker before a potentially rowdy, violent and clearly emotionally expressive faithful. Compare these observations to the crowds at Trump Campaign. He played a role that resonated with his crowds: his stump speech captured the structure and function of a revival. This congruence between the President’s campaign style and a well-established evangelical world of history was largely overlooked or forgotten by pundits.
Watching his “rallies” awakened old experiences with revivals from my childhood. A good preacher has to tap into the energy and zeal of a sectarian camp meeting designed to preach to the faithful and attract new converts. Part of Trump’s talent lies in his ability to resonate with this camp meeting fervor. He is a master at categorizing others as hell-bound sinners (liberals and progressives) are not worthy of salvation or membership in our brotherhood/sisterhood. In one swoop the deplorables are now accepted and belong to God’s chosen. Even though they are suffering economic and spiritual hardships, they will be redeemed in his “Better America”. Trump himself is a “Convert”. He has given his testimony and made his testimony and is now “saved”.
All of the participants in his rallies struggled with their sins. The rally like a camp meeting “converted and saved” his audience. His foibles were considered in a similar vein- he said he was sorry and this testimony purified his heart and erased obvious biographical “facts” and other sources of cognitive dissonances. His trials and tribulations and suffering were brought on by the press, US Congress and those damnable liberals. He is redeemed, new baptized and now is “one of us”. Even if he backslides, he will be forgiven through god’s grace. But probably not the voter’s grace. Remember this a metaphor and those who unconsciously seize the mantel political religion have to answer for their failure in this world.
This analogy of his campaign rallies as “tent meetings” (religious revivals) also function as a conversion experience. Conversion takes a candidate with many flaws (all of us are sinners) who is “born-again” and acceptable to his believers. Regardless of lying, cheating, abusing or any other sins of his past he is “saved” by virtue of this conversion experience.
Although this article is speculative and woefully over simplified it may offer possible clues to the functional similarities between this campaign and a revival meeting. These are largely unconscious processes but they manipulate expectations of the crowds and loyalists. These observations are not limited to the southern political/religious universe. These observations may provide meager insights into why voters seem to be capable of suspending disbelief and develop a sense of unity with this president. To belong in Trump-land does not emphasize intellectual synchrony, and cognitive dissonance is swept away by faith and devotion. A political-religious experience meets much deeper psychological needs. Calling these folks “deplorables” unites them and matches their sectarian world view. Clinton provided an apology but it was not perceived in term of a conversion or testimony. She relied on intellectual arguments, abstractions, and burdensome facts.
About the Author
Jarrett Barnhill is a native of rural eastern North Carolina. He earned his BA from the UNC-Chapel Hill in anthropology and is a graduate of Wake Forest University School of Medicine. As a psychiatrist, Barnhill has studied the effects culture change and emotional responses to social stress.
CIA Director Michael Pompeo delivered a speech on April 13 that amounted to a detailed declaration of war against both Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Aside from Fox News Channel, which covered the speech live, the media largely ignored the CIA director’s first major policy address. Which is a shame, because there was a lot of information in it.
Equates Julian Assange with Philip Agee
In the speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Pompeo equated Wikileaks founder Julian Assange with a former CIA agent who made his name outing CIA covert operators. The DCI related that Philip Agee helped found Counterspy magazine, which in 1973 called for the exposure of CIA undercover operatives. In its first issue, Counterspy unmasked Richard Welch as the agency’s station chief in Athens. Less than a year later, Welch was assassinated by a terrorist group while returning home from a Christmas party.
The DCI said,
“Today, there are still plenty of Philip Agees in the world, and the harm they inflict on U.S. institutions and personnel is just as serious today as it was back then. They don’t all come from the Intelligence Community, share the same background, or use precisely the same tactics as Agee, but they are certainly his soulmates. Like him, they choose to see themselves in a romantic light—as heroes above the law, saviors of our free and open society. They cling to this fiction, even though their disclosures often inflict irreparable harm on both individuals and democratic governments, pleasing despots along the way. The one thing they don’t share with Agee is the need for a publisher. All they require now is a smart phone and internet access. In today’s digital environment, they can disseminate stolen US secrets instantly around the globe to terrorists, dictators, hackers and anyone else seeking to do us harm.”
Paraphrasing an op-ed that Assange wrote in the Washington Post, Pompeo said the Wikileaks founder claimed to be a legitimate news organization, and that Assange compared his Website’s contributions to the Pulitzer Prize-winning work of leading newspapers. “Julian Assange and his kind are not the slightest bit interested in improving civil liberties or enhancing personal freedom. They have pretended that America’s First Amendment freedoms shield them from justice. They may have believed that, but they are wrong,” he said
Wikileaks Is “A Hostile Intelligence Service”
The reality, Pompeo said, is much different. The DCI declared that Wikileaks was effectively a hostile intelligence service:
“WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service. It has encouraged its followers to find jobs at CIA in order to obtain intelligence. It directed Chelsea Manning in her theft of specific secret information. And it overwhelmingly focuses on the United States, while seeking support from anti-democratic countries and organizations. It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is – a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.”
Snowden’s Links to Russians & Aid to Terrorist
As we previously have commented on these pages, the intelligence community has long believed that former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who passed on materials to Wikileaks, is a Russian agent. Pompeo made that allegation – not exactly earth-shattering news given that he is living in Moscow – but this marked the first time that a senior CIA official has said so publicly.
The DCI said:
“When Snowden absconded to the comfortable clutches of Russian intelligence, his treachery directly harmed a wide range of US intelligence and military operations. Despite what he claims, he is no whistleblower. True whistleblowers use the well-established and discreet processes in place to voice grievances; they do not put American lives at risk. In fact, a colleague of ours at NSA recently explained that more than a thousand foreign targets—people, groups, organizations—more than a thousand of them changed or tried to change how they communicated as a result of the Snowden disclosures. That number is staggering.”
Pompeo said that, as a result of Snowden’s disclosures, terrorists are better at hiding their communications.
“[T]he bottom line is that it became harder for us in the Intelligence Community to keep Americans safe. It became harder to monitor the communications of terrorist organizations that are bent on bringing bloodshed to our shores. Snowden’s disclosures helped these groups find ways to hide themselves in the crowded digital forest. Even in those cases where we were able to regain our ability to collect, the damage was already done. We work in a business with budgetary and time constraints. The effort to earn back access that we previously possessed meant that we had less time to look for new threats.”
Assange Has Assisted Terrorists
Pompeo said Assange was either complicit with al Qaeda or a willing idiot – to use a Russian phrase that means someone who unwillingly is being used by an intelligence service.
The DCI said Assange’s “actions have attracted a devoted following among some of our most determined enemies. Following a recent WikiLeaks disclosure, an al Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula member posted a comment online thanking WikiLeaks for providing a means to fight America in a way that AQAP had not previously envisioned. AQAP represents one of the most serious terrorist threats to our country and the world. It is a group that is devoted not only to bringing down civilian passenger planes, but our way of life as well. That Assange is the darling of terrorists is nothing short of reprehensible.”
The Declaration of War
The DCI then effectively declared a three-step war against Assange and Wikileaks. Pompeo said, “First, it is high time we called out those who grant a platform to these leakers and so-called transparency activists. We know the danger that Assange and his not-so-merry band of brothers pose to democracies around the world. Ignorance or misplaced idealism is no longer an acceptable excuse for lionizing these demons.”
Second, Pompeo said, the intelligence community had to boost its own systems, and “improve internal mechanisms that help us in our counterintelligence mission.” Finally, he said, “we have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us. To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now.”
First Shots Fired in War
Exactly a week after Pompeo’s speech that denounced Wikileaks and implied that the administration would not idly stand by, the Washington Post reported that the Justice Department opened an investigation into Wikileaks.
The newspaper, in its April 21st print edition, reported, “Federal prosecutors are weighing whether to bring criminal charges against members of the WikiLeaks organization, taking a second look at a 2010 leak of diplomatic cables and military documents and investigating whether the group bears criminal responsibility for the more recent revelation of sensitive CIA cyber-tools, according to people familiar with the case.”
Interestingly, the article note, “The Justice Department under President Barack Obama decided not to charge WikiLeaks for revealing some of the government’s most sensitive secrets — concluding that doing so would be akin to prosecuting a news organization for publishing classified information. Justice Department leadership under President Trump, though, has indicated to prosecutors that it is open to taking another look at the case, which the Obama administration did not formally close.”
The Post reported that the DoJ is also looking at the leaks from Chelsea Manning, the Army soldier who was convicted in 2013 of revealing sensitive diplomatic cables. The paper noted, “Manning chatted with Assange about a technique to crack a password so Manning could log on to a computer anonymously, and that conversation, which came up during Manning’s court-martial, could be used as evidence that WikiLeaks went beyond the role of publisher or journalist.”
When asked to comment on the reopened investigation, Attorney General Sessions said, “We are going to step up our effort and already are stepping up our efforts on all leaks. Whenever a case can be made, we will seek to put some people in jail.”
Assange and Wikileaks may be in for some interesting times ahead.
I am a native of eastern North Carolina who grew up in the midst of tobacco fields, textile mills and the darkness of Jim Crow. I have spent my professional lifetime as a psychiatrist but have remained keenly interested in the social changes that left a large number of my family and friends in the realm of anachronisms. My home town is dying. Progress killed it when a new bypass reduced it to an exit ramp. It is now invisible to most people driving to and from the coast. This is the heart of North Carolina’s Trump country.
Abandon Common Sense All Who Enter
The quote is a paraphrase of the warning above the entrance to Dante’s Inferno. The goal of this brief overview is to apply this psycho-social and cultural principles to an age of rampant cognitive dissonances. Our current political struggle is act one in the drama of increasing polarization and perhaps tribalization in America. This past election splits the electorate (or 55% or so that voted) into nearly equal percentages of people believe that we are already passed through the gateway. The other half are on the verge of leaving Purgatorio and about to enter the Paradiso.
The divisions within the news media seem equally cavernous. The boundary between truth versus fake news and outright lying is semipermeable. Objectivity is the first casualty. Even the viewing public is divided between zealous followers. This sectarian split creates situation in which ethics and sense of fairness in news reporting and governing is now prey to party loyalty and overzealous devotion. We are moving away from “just the facts ma’am” to pandering to belief systems. The highly competitive, 24-hour news cycle feeds the faithful and vilifies the heretics on the other side of the great divide. Winning at all costs is preferable to common truths. We are a “house divided against itself”, but the big question is whether we “cannot survive”. “E pluribus Unum” is crumbling away like a dry pie crust. Do we need a war or some catastrophe to repair the damage?
My job is not to assume the mantle of a Soviet Era psychiatrist and use the power of a diagnosis to label opposing politicians as suffering from a mental illness. I deeply respect the Goldwater rule. This was an ethics restriction issued to psychiatrists that sanctioned the speculative diagnoses for political figures (Barry Goldwater in 1964). This is not a diagnostic case study. It is my best attempt to explore the social forces that lead to a suspension of disbelief by my fellow southerners. I think it has generalized to a much larger segment of our complex, fragmented and perhaps tribal society. But I know southerners first hand by virtue of being a southern white male who grew up in a working, lower middle class, farmer- handyman led family. If anything is grossly biased or incorrect please remember an old southern aphorism: “he tried but he just can’t help it”.
Why Did This Happen?
The Federalist papers argued for unity and a common sense of purpose in order to override state rights in terms of economics and international affairs. Today we see, to be creating a chain of lesser being in which even state’s right is regressing to increasingly smaller units- county, town/city, organization (like the NRA or ACLU), political party, and tribal affiliation. What remains is a fragmented reality in which the individual becomes his own governing body. We have replaced loyalty to North Carolina with loyalty to self –interest and the party line. The pursuit of happiness is perverted into a lust for wealth and power. The winners are blessed, let the rest “eat cake”.
If this transition continues, the Senate and House of Representatives may become the next Fort Sumter. Sen McConnell has lit the fuse. Will the nuclear option further militarize the great divide and ring the death knell for compromise and governance? Will the future be determined party line votes; totalitarianism by simple majority; gerrymandering as “double speak” for the destruction of general welfare and the common good; a rewriting history with the demise of a free press or dissent; dismantling of the constitutional balance of power, a rubber stamp congress, and ruining the desire for a greater America as we run headlong into the quicksand pits in the Washington swamp? Or are we on the verge of a very strange Utopia in which people willfully support a voluntary destruction of their safety net for short term sense of well-being and power?
These versions of myopia also include a belief that facts are what we believe them to be rather than what science and unity or consensus dictate. Unfortunately, we seem to have lost the ability to assess the amount of self-damage that such rigid loyalties might bring. This translates into political self-mutilation in a desire to conform to an ideology that pits my basic needs against the desire to cut the very programs that sustain a modern society. We are currently in a political cold war with no Mutually Assured Destruction to keep a lid on ambition and further division- the acronym MAD seems apt for our times.
Befuddled many of us are groping to understand the balance between vengeance to hold back progress and life in a post-modern nation state. There seems to be a trend towards “getting the ravenous government off our backs; a cleansing that spruces up our unabashed drive for self-promotion, a fundamentalist political religion that preaches rampant individualism and laissez-faire economics. The chorus seems to be chanting: “I am not and nor should I ever be, my brother/sister’s keeper”. This new Renaissance glorifies the “good old days” without acknowledging the remarkable technological and scientific breakthroughs that might launch a new economic surge.
It seems that those who are most alienated and disenfranchised are lining the streets and glorifying the political and socio-economic myths of our sacred industrial past, while others are glorifying the ongoing positivism and urge to purchase any new technology borne of this scientific revolution. Change is the evil that lurks in the hearts of those who vilify or glorify newness. The idea that creating future industries by dismantling the inefficient or unsavory parts of the past practices becomes a malevolent act. The epidemic of amnesia affects everyone. Today is a becoming a massive rear guard defense to slow down “progress”.
At the core of this struggle is how we view and the psychological stress of adapting to change. The attitude that culture change is dissonant at best and malevolent at its worst seems to underlie the responses of many rural and working class southerners. Technology is fine for entertainment and escape but not for automating and modernizing traditional southern industries. Who would vote for someone who vows to oppose or destroy a living wage; federal loans for their children to attend college, caring for the less fortunate around the world, or health care that covers their many pre-existing conditions. On the surface this seems like sheer lunacy, but the ideas offered to explain this regression fill up the sociological, political and historical accounts are equally vexing.
The Rise and Fall of the South shall Rise Again
First of all, the South is a euphemism for rural and other blue and red state voters who pulled off this ignominious defeat of the politically correct establishment — the Democrats and others wearing a scarlet “L” for liberal on their foreheads. The L word is a dirty name in some parts of conservative southern America. But even the
2016 Presidential Election Results by county.
conservative tribe or sect seems fragile as regional differences in politics splinter this coalition. In addition, the fundamentals of regional differences are now being replaced by a socio-economic and political red shift that seems to characterize our current politics. It seems that rednecks in the north, south and other regions of the US are more similar than different- except they speak with different accents. The myth of homogenization is mostly a populist, demagogue’s dream. Is fragmentation sufficient to destroy unification or does it propel the old cry “the south will rise again” and re-assert itself in the noble struggle to reshape society? If so then will the new winners erase the past and recreate their version of history and the future.
But I wonder how many people recall the facts surrounding the American Civil War. Most of us are more familiar with the mythology of the War of Northern Aggression. W J Cash described the tenacity of this mythical history in The Mind of the South. Later studies suggest that the escalation and polarization of socio-political, fire-breathing religious fervor, and regressive pull of these forces led to the civil war. Slavery, state’s rights and a sense of being impoverished second class citizens contrasted with the myth of noble, paternalistic planter class. The issue of slavery split political, social and religious organizations and the election of 1860 touched off the fuse to explode the powder keg. The south was destroyed, but the myth lived on as progress propelled the another myth- progress in education, industry and wealth.
Jim Crow as an oddly placed variant of xenophobia that was no accident. It served as payback for Reconstruction and became one method of sustaining the mythical South. The myth was expanded and further glorified by subsequent generations of southerners who promoted the ideal of a valiant nobility, engaged in chivalrous war against the invading masses of Northern Huns. The noble generation lost but did so with chivalry and glory for the Lost Cause. David lost to Goliath but a vengeful God of wrath was entering history. In this Apocalyptic, the War and Reconstruction was hell. The initial survivors adopted and recapitulated Milton’s Satan:”tis better to rule in hell than serve in heaven.” Over time, no matter how battered the survivors were this remained an issue of honor. They could turn hell into a mythical heaven- at least as long as African Americans were horribly worse off than they were. The infiltration of Northern missionaries, teachers and black enfranchisement was seen as an invasion that threatened their myth of the south. But many would never surrender without a fight. Since 2010, this cycles of elections has been both a retribution and a redemption.The underlying psycho-sociology of the assault on Southern “culture” by an amalgam of outsiders seems to re-invent itself over and over again. From the early 20th century onward it appeared that the “Cause” of post-civil southern mythology was transformed into a new asymmetrical civil war — the return of a continuum from runaway state’s rights, community and party loyalty, the demise of the yellow dog democrat to a solid republican majority; the superiority of personal and group beliefs over scientific evidence, and a deep distrust of overly educated, liberals who live in ivory towers and lack enough common sense to change a tire. When the 2016 presidential election is viewed through this lens the outcome makes sense.
Although surely one for the ages, the shock and awe of November 2016 set a whole generation of progressives and political junkies scattering like a covey of quail. The ecstasy of the winners is the agony of those hoping for a rerun of the “New South”.
Living in this New South may be another story. The “deplorables, rednecks, crackers and other “degenerates” fooled the experts, pundits and pollsters. In keeping with the Bible David slew Goliath- the “deplorables” won. As a child I remember folks talking about such an outcome as a redneck’s payday- except this was winning the lottery. Described in less pejorative terms the disenfranchised rural and working classes bypassed an unsophisticated, inarticulate manner of debating style and spoke with their votes. The elections had all of the earmarks of historical political campaigns in the south. It was filled with theatrics, demagoguery, focus on personalities and mudslinging; a flagrant disregard of political decorum, political correctness, or rhetoric about upholding southern political traditions in spite of preaching progress. The flyover from 30,000 feet now suggests that the traditional regional forces have disappeared, and the “mind of the south” is now based on socioeconomic boundaries. As a surprise to the pollsters America is filled with rednecks and the southern cause is now shared in part by a substantial minority of the voting public.
This election was a street fight and you had to get down and dirty to win.
So how did you convince millions of voters to suspend disbelief and vote against what appear to be their self-interests. In the rural south of my childhood “the south shall rise again” and the noble cause is now in the legislatures, House of Representatives, the Senate and now the US Supreme Court. The irony is that the winner said and did things that would have disqualified any politician over the nearly 227 years since the Constitution was completed. In the 19th century, the log cabin was symbolic of humble beginnings, hard work, and determination. The candidate captured the heart and soul of a frustrated, disenfranchised population in culture shock and promised to restore the idealized past. The “experts” babble on about the science of politics, economics and culture change. This election was a street fight and you had to get down and dirty to win.
Perhaps the most dramatic triumph was convincing people who claim to think for themselves, revel in individualism, claim to be good Christian folks, work hard every day want America to be great as it is dismantled around them? First of all, I suspect the president is not the messiah and Obama, is not the anti-Christ. Perhaps George Wallace was the last great master of this art form. He was a master of working crowds, sayingthings in a simple brand of English, kindling and stoking the fires of segregationists and working class folks who had little time, inclination or perhaps academic smarts to worry
about the nuances and subtle art of proper politics. Nixon’s southern strategists
unleashed Spiro Agnew (and Pat Buchanan as the writer of a fiery brand alliterative street fighting) that relied on condemning a free press, independent judiciary, evidence versus belief, and brutal art of devaluing the very government and intellectual foundation of our political system.
This is not the time to hide behind old political theory and voting patterns. It is a time to face the reality of hand to hand political combat. In a sense pundits who relied upon a process analogous to Robert McNamara’s approach to the Vietnam War- fight by statistical analysis, kill ratios, and with technological wonders. Ho Chi Minh and General Giap knew otherwise. This was a bloody mess not a chivalrous battle for principles honor. In the south of my youth politics is a blood sport not a game of chess or bridge. From another angle, how could the Confederate battle flag (Stars and Bars) waivers, Klansmen and other die-hard survivalists celebrate the election of a New York businessman with no comparable life-experiences? Perhaps his aura of anti-intellectualism and an underdog who won rekindles the old myth- “the south did rise again”.
To those who see this in millenarian terms, the president is the great white hope for their version of American greatness. This was a rehearsal for Armageddon. The President’s campaign flare for media attention and drawing zealous crowds resembled a well-choreographed pas de due that played well among the scoop-hungry monster of a 24 hrs./day, seven day a week, 365 days a year news media. Reality TV, like alternative facts is constantly in everyone’s home, car and workplace. There should be an anti-Emmy or Academy Award for best director, actor, screen play and cinematography for old time southern politics wearing new suits.
Next we will continue a larger review with a look into the role of religious and political fundamentalism, evangelicalism and sectarianism in our current drama.
About the Author
Jarrett Barnhill is a native of rural eastern North Carolina. He earned his BA from the UNC-Chapel Hill in anthropology and is a graduate of Wake Forest University School of Medicine. As a psychiatrist, Barnhill has studied the effects culture change and emotional responses to social stress.
underestimation of Trump-ism from words to images, taking the perspective of “one picture is worth 10,000 words”. We turn to Stanley Kramer’s 1960 movie Inherit the Wind. Kramer dramatizes the infamous Scopes Monkey trial in the mid 1920’s in Dayton Tennessee. Ironically this trial occurred within a few years of Raymond Dart’s announced his discovery of Australopithecus africanus (South African ape-man). Both the trial and the discovery of this supposed “missing link” between man and the apes opened a Pandora’s box of cognitive dissonances.
The underlying psycho-sociology of the assault on Southern “culture” by an amalgam of outsiders seems to re-invent itself over and over again. From the early 20th century onward it appeared that the “Cause” of post-civil southern mythology was transformed into a new asymmetrical civil war — the return of a continuum from runaway state’s rights, community and party loyalty, the demise of the yellow dog democrat to a solid republican majority; the superiority of personal and group beliefs over scientific evidence, and a deep distrust of overly educated, liberals who live in ivory towers and lack enough common sense to change a tire. When the 2016 presidential election is viewed through this lens the outcome makes sense.
Although surely one for the ages, the shock and awe of November 2016 set a whole generation of progressives and political junkies scattering like a covey of quail. The ecstasy of the winners is the agony of those hoping for a rerun of the “New South”.
Living in this New South may be another story. The “deplorables, rednecks, crackers and other “degenerates” fooled the experts, pundits and pollsters. In keeping with the Bible David slew Goliath- the “deplorables” won. As a child I remember folks talking about such an outcome as a redneck’s payday- except this was winning the lottery. Described in less pejorative terms the disenfranchised rural and working classes bypassed an unsophisticated, inarticulate manner of debating style and spoke with their votes. The elections had all of the earmarks of historical political campaigns in the south. It was filled with theatrics, demagoguery, focus on personalities and mudslinging; a flagrant disregard of political decorum, political correctness, or rhetoric about upholding southern political traditions in spite of preaching progress. The flyover from 30,000 feet now suggests that the traditional regional forces have disappeared, and the “mind of the south” is now based on socioeconomic boundaries. As a surprise to the pollsters America is filled with rednecks and the southern cause is now shared in part by a substantial minority of the voting public.
things in a simple brand of English, kindling and stoking the fires of segregationists and working class folks who had little time, inclination or perhaps academic smarts to worry
about the nuances and subtle art of proper politics. Nixon’s southern strategists
unleashed Spiro Agnew (and Pat Buchanan as the writer of a fiery brand alliterative street fighting) that relied on condemning a free press, independent judiciary, evidence versus belief, and brutal art of devaluing the very government and intellectual foundation of our political system.
This is not the time to hide behind old political theory and voting patterns. It is a time to face the reality of hand to hand political combat. In a sense pundits who relied upon a process analogous to Robert McNamara’s approach to the Vietnam War- fight by statistical analysis, kill ratios, and with technological wonders. Ho Chi Minh and General Giap knew otherwise. This was a bloody mess not a chivalrous battle for principles honor. In the south of my youth politics is a blood sport not a game of chess or bridge. From another angle, how could the Confederate battle flag (Stars and Bars) waivers, Klansmen and other die-hard survivalists celebrate the election of a New York businessman with no comparable life-experiences? Perhaps his aura of anti-intellectualism and an underdog who won rekindles the old myth- “the south did rise again”.
To those who see this in millenarian terms, the president is the great white hope for their version of American greatness. This was a rehearsal for Armageddon. The President’s campaign flare for media attention and drawing zealous crowds resembled a well-choreographed pas de due that played well among the scoop-hungry monster of a 24 hrs./day, seven day a week, 365 days a year news media. Reality TV, like alternative facts is constantly in everyone’s home, car and workplace. There should be an anti-Emmy or Academy Award for best director, actor, screen play and cinematography for old time southern politics wearing new suits.
Next we will continue a larger review with a look into the role of religious and political fundamentalism, evangelicalism and sectarianism in our current drama.
