Will Trump's End Justify His Means?

Maybe, just maybe, Donald Trump has a sense of history. After all, despite all his bravura claims about the efficiency and accomplishments of his presidency, he has yet to claim he has “made the trains run on time” (editor’s note—for those unfamiliar with the claim, google it. You’ll find it under Mussolini or Il Duce). 

Seriously, though, The Trumpster has added fuel to a long simmering debate: Does the end justify the means? 

Are his bluster, his arrogance, his indignities, his lying, his disdain for anyone not a Trump, just for show, to be ignored as long as he secures his objectives? Or, do all his character flaws impoverish the office of the president and the heritage of the United States as the beacon of the civilized world?

For Trump, for all of us, the bottom line, the “end,” is his presidency. When will it end? In January 2021? In January 2025? Or sometime before?  

America used to be known as a country where protagonists debated ideas. Trump has reduced politics to a contest of name calling powered by personal animosity and vengeance. 

Too many respected observers of our political landscape, including former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, have issued warnings about the Trump effect and the world’s and our possible slide into fascism for their misgivings to be ignored (your choice of sources: an Op-Ed piece by Albright in The New York Times: https://nyti.ms/2EpFn8F or or an interview with Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air https://www.npr.org/2018/04/03/599120190/madeleine-albright-warns-dont-let-fascism-go-unnoticed-until-its-too-late).

To keep our heads above a fascist tide requires perspective plus a knowledge of history, science and basic truths. In the extraordinary teenage response to the Parkland, FL, high school shooting, what should we make of the use of the #NeverAgain hashtag? As repulsive as the killing of 17 students and faculty at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was, does it compare to the six million Jewish deaths in the Holocaust often commemorated by the phrase Never Again? (http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Never-Again-From-a-Holocaust-phrase-to-a-universal-phrase-544666)

Let’s hope the new Never Again movement has more success than the last. Since first promulgated, the world has witnessed genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Syria, Chile, Argentina, Myanmar. Given the frequency of school shootings, I am not confident of more success. 

Perhaps the students, even the Jewish students among them, did not know of the Never Again association with the Holocaust. Chalk it up, if so, to the sad condition of American education. We’re seeing that sorry state play out in the teacher strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky. It is difficult to attract quality teachers for the poverty wages states pay.

When I started as a reporter in Connecticut back in 1972, my immediate supervisor resented teacher pay scales. He reasoned, as too many do even today, that teachers led cushy lives, that they had summers and holidays off, that their work day ended in the early afternoon, not realizing they spend evenings grading papers and preparing lesson plans. And that they often spend their own money to supplement the meager supplies they need to properly instruct their students.

Back then, teachers, like nurses, social workers, police and firemen, were thought to not need higher pay, that they received part of their remuneration in the positive feelings generated by their good works. Ha! Try paying your mortgage or your grocery bill with positive feelings!

Among the signs held up by a student at one of the Oklahoma teacher protests was one stating, “My textbooks are older than me.” Proper grammar would have taught him he should have written “than I,” but the sentiment was appropriate.

Our country’s history is full of less than noble chapters. Slavery. Near annihilation of Native Americans. Robber Barons. Jim Crow Laws. Segregation. Discriminatory laws against Irish, Italian, Jewish, Chinese immigration. Yes, we are a great country, but we must also keep in mind that dangerous precedents inhabited our past.

That’s why it is so important for our leaders to embrace the symbols of our diversity and greatness. Consider just two events of the past week. For the second straight year Trump chose not to attend a Passover seder at the White House. 

On the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Trump did not visit the monument to the slain civil rights leader a short distance from the White House. He merely tweeted a canned video praising King, but his unrehearsed comments of the last two years have exposed him as a bigot, a racist, a xenophobe and a sympathetic friend of budding, if not already, dictators around the world. 

“Instead of mobilizing international coalitions to take on world problems, he (Trump) touts the doctrine of ‘every nation for itself’ and has led America into isolated positions on trade, climate change and Middle East peace,” wrote Albright. “Instead of engaging in creative diplomacy, he has insulted United States neighbors and allies, walked away from key international agreements, mocked multilateral organizations and stripped the State Department of its resources and role. Instead of standing up for the values of a free society, Mr. Trump, with his oft-vented scorn for democracy’s building blocks, has strengthened the hands of dictators. No longer need they fear United States criticism regarding human rights or civil liberties. On the contrary, they can and do point to Mr. Trump’s own words to justify their repressive actions.”

Trump has used his bully pulpit, both in person and via Twitter, to harangue adversaries. His latest target is Amazon and its alleged sweetheart shipping deal with the U.S. Postal Service. Trump further claims Amazon is the reason many Main Streets across America have vacant storefronts (https://nyti.ms/2Gxtkfq).

Imagine that! Sen. Bernie Sanders agrees with Trump that Amazon is getting too big.

Amazon revenues last year totaled $178 billion. But what about Walmart? Its revenues reached $500 billion. Arguably, Walmart has done more to close down rival merchants than Amazon. To my knowledge Trump is not calling for a breakup of Walmart. Sanders, meanwhile, does criticize the Arkansas-based retailer for paying low wages to most of its associates.

Interestingly, while Trump bemoans the growing strength of Amazon he applauds the consolidation of local news outlets under the banner of the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a steadfast supporter of his views. If Sinclair receives approval to purchase Tribune Media it will have entry into seven out of 10 U.S. households. 

Trump also says Amazon should be required to collect state sales taxes to even the playing field with brick and mortar stores. He’s right, but Trump should be the last person to criticize anyone for not exceeding the requirements of the law. For its direct sales Amazon need only collect sales taxes in states where it has nexus. It is not required to collect sales taxes from sales made by its third party vendors. 

As are too many of our fellow citizens, Trump is under the impression that America owes its greatness to settlement by Western Europeans. He fails to recognize the contributions of Hispanics and Africans to our culture and economic growth. He scapegoats them in appeals to white nationalists and those who live in fear of imminent poverty or financial dislocation because America has shifted first from an agricultural economy to one dominated by manufacturing and now to a service-oriented platform.

Trump promises a return to greatness without ever spelling out the time period he wants to return to. His roadmap to wherever and whenever presumes America needs no partners other than on Trump’s terms. 

Will we be willing fellow travelers? Trump wants to get reelected. So do congressional Republican majorities who have mostly sublimated their constitutional obligations in favor of coattail election politics. 

It’s the people, however, who will determine—even in heavily gerrymandered districts—if democratic values will outweigh a strong man’s bombastic rule and attack on  cherished norms of society and politics. 

Lessons Still To Be Learned From the Holocaust

Donald Trump landed in Poland Wednesday but he was not the only bombastic Republican to make news in that country. As you might have heard, Congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana had to apologize for making a selfie video inside the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, specifically inside a gas chamber and crematoria where visitors are requested to be silent to honor the memory of the thousands who suffered and died there (https://nyti.ms/2tNmcDW).

For his part, Higgins thought his video would convincingly portray the need for vigilance and greater deterrence of outside threats to America. “This is why Homeland Security must be squared away, why our military must be invincible,” he said, adding at the end of the video, “It’s hard to walk away from gas chambers and ovens without a very sober feeling of commitment, unwavering commitment, to make damn sure that the United States of America is protected from the evils of the world.”

Higgins completely misunderstood the meaning of Auschwitz. It is not a call for more armaments. It is a memorial to what happens when governments demonize the vulnerable, different religious and ethnic minorities and enable persecutions and restrictions on their personal liberties. It is a memorial for the living to remember the past in all its barbaric detail so that “Never Again” is more than a catchphrase.

Auschwitz is a reminder of what could happen when evil thoughts are legitimized by an election, when a leader’s often repeated bigoted statements are discounted by politicians sworn to uphold democratic values, when a populace allows itself to be succored by false promises and jingoistic jargon meant to incite passions not principles.

Higgins apologized for disrespecting the solemnity of Auschwitz-Berkenau and for violating the memorial’s specific admonition not to talk (much less film) inside the gas chamber and crematoria areas.

But if you managed to view his video before he took it down you will be struck by an even more egregious sin. Not once during his five minute film (which might still be viewed by clicking on the previously linked Times article), while recounting the horrors more than 1 million “poor souls” went through, did Higgins say almost all of them were Jews. Not once!

Yes, he ended the video standing before American and Israeli flags, but he was silent, SILENT, about exactly who were the victims—Jews, Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war. 

It is that type of selective memory that undermines the commitment government officials have to the lessons of the Holocaust. Higgins was as tone deaf to the Jewish genocide as Trump was earlier this year when on Holocaust Remembrance Day his official message failed to mention Jewish victims. 

Well, Trump is now in Warsaw, Poland. He will give a speech commemorating the 1944 uprising in Warsaw against the Nazis. But will he also mention the Warsaw Ghetto rebellion by Jews in 1943? 

I wonder …

A Day of Liberation Not Yet Fulfilled

Tuesday’s weather forecast included snow with temperatures hovering a few degrees below the freezing mark, colder if you calculated the wind chill. It’s the forecast for Auschwitz, Poland, fitting weather for the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp where more than one million, mostly Jews, were slaughtered during World War II. 

By contrast, the atmosphere seemed a little out of whack when our family visited Auschwitz during the summer of 2008. The sun shone brightly. The grass was lush and verdant. Birds chirped. Everything was neat, in its place. Serene even. Color was everywhere. It made it difficult to comprehend that this was the epicenter of man’s bestiality toward his fellow man. 

A former Polish military installation of mostly brick buildings, Auschwitz proved to be too small for the mass murder the Germans had in mind. So they built Auschwitz II, also known as Birkenau, just down the road. That’s where the often-pictured railroad gateway with the Arbeit Macht Frei (work brings freedom) slogan greeted the wretched crammed into boxcars, most of them transported from Hungary and surrounding countries during the latter stages of the war. Those “fortunate” enough not to be immediately consigned to the “showers” and crematoria at the rear of the camp found shelter in row after row of wooden barracks (I’ve previously written how the Nazis carried fire insurance provided by Allianz for the structures: http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2010/01/chain-of-one-person-events.html). 

We’ve all seen concentration camp scenes from movies. They’re often rendered in black and white or gauzy color meant to take the life out of the reality. Now a museum dedicated to preserving the memory of those killed and meant to be a cautionary monument to the extremes every generation must guard against, Auschwitz, to me at least, did not evoke the same sense of loss and despair I experienced when visiting Holocaust memorials in Washington, DC, New York City or Jerusalem. It lacked context. Personalization. Scope. 

Sure, the seemingly endless number of victims was remembered through mounds of luggage. Eyeglasses. Shoes. Hair. But what escaped my consciousness was an overwhelming feeling of individual suffering, of agony, of crushing horror and hopelessness. The museum was…too clinical. Too…German. Apparently, mine was not the only such reaction. Plans are underway to humanize the tragedy (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/world/europe/for-auschwitz-museum-and-survivors-a-moment-of-passage.html?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphone&_r=0). 

Will it matter? Will mankind stop mass murder and genocide? The record over the last 70 years is not reassuring. Think China’s Cultural Revolution. Cambodia’s Killing Fields. Rwanda’s Hutus and Tutsis. The massacre of Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Boko Haram in Nigeria. Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The Assads in Syria. Sunnis and Shia in Iraq and Syria. 

I don’t find it depressing (ok, too depressing) that atrocities of unspeakable scale still occur. What I find truly depressing and maddening is that the civilized world does not or cannot, or does not want to, stop them from happening. With all the knowledge and technology available to us, with our commitment to “Never Again,” again keeps happening again and again. 

The commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz should be a moment of reassurance. Sadly, it has not yet attained that status.