Will Philly's "Woke" D.A. Wake Up?

Last week, Philadelphia's recently elected top prosecutor, Larry Krasner, officially moved into his new home at the Office of the District Attorney. And the reform-minded darling of the left has wasted no time rearranging the furniture.

On Friday, reports surfaced indicating that over 30 staff members were asked to resign. Included in the number were several deeply experienced assistant district attorneys. Hugh Burns, chief of the DA's Appeals Unit, was among the victims of the employee purge.

Sources told 6 ABC's Vernon Odom and Dann Cuellar that "Krasner never met face to face with with those fired. But instead they were hauled before a human resource bureaucrat who gave no explanation as to why they were being let go."

Krasner justified the staffing decisions at a press conference that was held in a room his team of ADAs could not access. "The coach," the district attorney proclaimed, "gets to pick the team."
Fair enough. However, if the new DA feels the need to impose such a stiff sentence on his unit, he should have the decency and the courage to swing the sword himself, to borrow a phrase from Game of Thrones.

But Krasner has big plans for Philadelphia, and has little time for the tedious business of dismissing career prosecutors who devoted their time and energy toward fighting crime on behalf of the city. They're all just cogs in the mass incarceration machine, anyway.

In truth, a number of Krasner's proposals are entirely sensible. The new DA pledged to avoid seeking capital punishment, for example. Since the state of Pennsylvania has historically allowed its death penalty cases to lapse into the mire of a never-ending appeals process, and considering the fact that Governor Tom Wolf has imposed a moratorium on the practice pending a study of the issue, it makes little financial sense for a cash-strapped city to pursue this expensive avenue. Moreover, we should all ponder the implications of empowering an imperfect system to impose the ultimate punishment. Most importantly, there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that the death penalty is arbitrarily pursued and disproportionately targets minorities and poor people.

Additionally, Krasner aims to devote the resources of his office toward a more aggressive prosecution of serious crimes. This posture dovetails nicely with one of the main arguments advanced by Jill Leovy in Ghettoside, a book that studied homicide in Los Angeles. Leovy found that one of the factors driving the murder rate in LA was the fact that the police were unable to solve a critical number of serious crimes, which she defined as murder, robbery, rape, and assault. Absent an effective law enforcement presence, the communities she studied resorted to extrajudicial methods to address their grievances. And so the cycle of violence endured.

Furthermore, Krasner hopes to eliminate the city's cash bail system, which has swelled the ranks of Philadelphia's inmate population with prisoners who cannot afford to make payment. Due to the deliberate pace of the criminal justice system, a number of these inmates wallow in jail for months as they await court dates. It's an impefect arrangement at best; at worst, it's an unconstitutional process that violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the Fifth Amendment.

Do you support the recreational use of marijuana for adults? So does Krasner, who hopes the tax revenue generated from legalization will be directed to the school system. Do you like the idea of the government taking your property even though you haven't been convicted of a crime? Neither does Krasner.

Here's the problem with Krasner's platform- he's not the first person to decide the criminal justice system required change. Many of his competitors for the office included similar proposals in their campaign platforms.

In 2010, Seth Williams was swept into office on a pledge to get "smart on crime." Williams implemented a number of reforms, including prosecuting cases involving small amounts of marijuana as summary offenses.  Williams inherited a D.A.'s office that struggled to win convictions and was drowning in disarray, and he righted the ship. Nevertheless, Williams was an aloof supervisor whose management style eventually created resentment in his office. The high-living, cash-poor D.A. was undone by his taste for the finer things and his need to dole out favors for people who didn't need them; Williams was arrested and pleaded guilty to a bribery charge, which netted him a five-year prison term.

During his two-term mayoral stint, Michael Nutter emphasized prisoner reintegration. Nutter offered tax credits to businesses that hired ex-cons; he even got a little Orwellian, proposing a ban on the term "ex-offender" in favor of the euphemistic "returning citizen."

What differentiates an isolated idealist from a productive pragmatist is an ability to negotiate institutional hurdles and develop crucial relationships. Idealists are too in love with the sound of their own voice to reflect on the wisdom of their ideas or reconsider their positions. Pragmatists seek ways to translate their message and work tirelessly to foster consensus.

Thus far, Krasner seems intent merely to burn bridges; this tendency will limit his ability to travel to the utopia for which he longs.

Firing long-tenured staff without warning or sufficient explanation will not endear a newly-minted DA to his charges; neither will a full-throated embrace of leftist rhetoric that is missing critical context. Krasner asserted in his introductory campaign video that "policing and prosecution are both systemically racist. That doesn't mean people on the inside want it to be that way, but it is that way."

Since I share an ideological tent with liberals, I have no problem telling them to clean up their mess. And one pet peeve of mine is this incessant need to deliver condescending lectures peppered with buzzwords that signal to your ideological fellow travelers that you "get it."

How is a person who may not be inclined to agree with Krasner going to feel when his profession is labeled as systemically racist? I'll tell you what that person will do: he will tell himself he is not a racist and will dismiss Krasner as a typical liberal. He will jump to this defensive position because that's the reflex these caustic terms induce when they aren't explained. It does not appear that Krasner fully appreciates that police officers and prosecutors will emerge as the foot soldiers on whom he must rely in order to execute his vision.

The district attorney will also need to forge relationships in Harrisburg and in City Council if he ever hopes to enact reforms that outlast his tenure. Whether Krasner and his supporters grasp it or not, the district attorney is an elected official who is confined to the executive branch. Even though the DA has discretionary power in terms of which prosecutions to pursue and which sentences to push, Krasner ultimately is charged with enforcing the law. It's the duty of the legislature to make the law.

The battle, then, over mass incarceration policies needs to be waged in the halls of the State House.
And it's a battle that can be won, no matter the conservative ideological bent of Pennsylvania's state legislature. Prison reform efforts are in full swing in red states like Georgia and Kentucky. An enterprising district attorney looking to make a lasting impact on the criminal justice system might find a receptive audience among state lawmakers who are historically frustrated by the large amounts of money flowing into Philadelphia's coffers.

Another, equally important front will be the fight to unite a racially divided city. We've seen the drama unfold over the Frank Rizzo statue. An effective leader would be able to make the case that Rizzo, a high school dropout who rose through the ranks of the Philadelphia Police Department to become commissioner before winning two mayoral terms, embodies the American Dream for ethnic whites. At the same time, he would be able to point out that Rizzo's tenure as police commissioner was checkered with racial incidents; that Rizzo came to be viewed as an oppressor whose overzealous policing tactics exacerbated the racial discrimination black Philadelphians experienced.

Is Krasner capable of walking that rhetorical tightrope?

Will Krasner be able to quell the resentment building between the police force and Black Lives Matter protesters? While I'm sure the DA would have no trouble condemning a statement like FOP President John McNesby's equation of BLM activists to a "pack of rabid animals," I sense he would be considerably less comfortable telling his supporters to refrain from "fuck the FOP" chants.

Will Krasner be viewed as a fair arbiter when he inevitably decides whether to charge Police Officer Ryan Pownall in the shooting death of David Jones? Will the FOP be satisfied that a process at least partially overseen by Krasner was impartial? What happens if the evidence demands the D.A. refrain from pressing charges? Will Krasner supporter and BLM leader Asa Khalif, whose conception of justice in this case seems to be a speedy trial and a speedier imprisonment of Pownall, be receptive to such a turn of events?

Given the charged environment into which he'll be thrust, Krasner will be tested early and often. The first few days of his administration suggest our new district attorney will struggle to enact his reform program. Instead, Krasner will find himself an increasingly marginalized figure, chafing at the limits of his own power. Sound familiar?

Krasner might be the coach, and he might be able to pick his own players, but his failure to understand the game might doom him.

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Goodbye, Doc

On an October afternoon in 2010, Roy Halladay took the mound for the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 1 of the NLDS against the Cincinnati Reds.

It was Halladay's first taste of the playoffs. During the lengthy pregame analysis before the first pitch, the studio talking heads tried to push the narrative that the stage might be too big for the Phillies' ace.

For the next two hours and thirty minutes, Halladay silenced the doubters with a performance for the ages. By the end of the night, the Phillies were ahead 1-0 in their playoff series; October morphed into Doctober; and Roy Halladay joined the elite company of Don Larsen as the only pitchers to toss no-hitters in a playoff series. Larsen had achieved perfection in 1956. Halladay's only blemish was a walk to Jay Bruce in the 5th inning.     

I remember a number of details from the day. I watched the game in my parents' living room. A bright orange blimp emblazoned with the name "Conan" had been meandering in the sky for much of the day, a floating advertisement for the comedian's upcoming show on TBS. I had a slow-pitch softball game later in the night, so I was wearing my red "Mill Pub" t-shirt. My friend Mike was getting married in D.C. that weekend. These memories are stuck in my head because the event I witnessed was unforgettable.

It will be the game we all recall when the inevitable debates about Halladay's professional legacy and his candidacy for the Hall of Fame arise. Halladay's career will be examined through the lens that numbers and figures provide. It's a myopic perspective that will never capture the extent of the pitcher's dominance.

There is no conventional statistic or advanced metric that will explain the way the ball danced when it left Doc's hand, or the way his pitch would zig when the batter expected it to zag. His dominance on the mound was clinical, and that night in October was magical. 

Halladay was a disciple of Harvey Dorfman, the sports psychologist who compelled his charges to remain relentlessly focused on the present. In a game that obsesses over past results in an attempt to compile data that projects the future, Halladay was locked into the task at hand. His attention never shifted away from the execution of the next pitch. He never dwelt on the outcomes, whether good or bad. It was always on to the next pitch and the newest challenge.

It's no wonder, then, that a man who had accomplished so much on land would turn his eyes to the sky in search of a new conquest.

What do clouds feel like? I didn’t know either until I got my new Icon A5! I’m getting bruises on my arms from constantly pinching myself! pic.twitter.com/BaObEUj3Xo

— Roy Halladay (@RoyHalladay) October 13, 2017

On Tuesday, Roy Halladay died when his small plane crashed into the Gulf. He was 40 years old. He leaves behind a wife and two children. They didn't lose an ace pitcher. They lost a husband and a father, and are left with a void that can never be filled.

Godspeed, Doc. You belong to the clouds now.

-30-

A Modest Proposal for Dealing with the National Anthem Protests

On Sunday, Vice President Mike Pence abruptly left the 49ers-Colts game because the teams stink in an expression of displeasure over the demonstration that occurred during the national anthem.

I stand with @POTUS Trump, I stand with our soldiers, and I will always stand for our Flag and our National Anthem. pic.twitter.com/B0zP5M41MQ

— Vice President Pence (@VP) October 8, 2017

In response to the news of the vice president's dramatic walk-out, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones asserted that any of his players who fail to stand at attention during the performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" would be exiled to the bench.

But Pence and Jones are simply riding the red-white-and-blue coattails of the man who resurrected this issue in the past month: President Donald Trump.

Trump, a WWE Hall of Famer who courageously broke through the "stick to sports" barrier that had long silenced prominent athletes when he won the presidency in 2016, is most famous in football circles for his remarkable run in the USFL. During his tenure as owner of the New Jersey Generals, Trump developed a sharp eye for quarterback talent. According to a Sports Illustrated feature by Tim Rohan, Trump boldly rejected the assessment of his coaching staff to select Randall Cunningham in the USFL Draft. He picked Doug Flutie instead. When Flutie failed to perform at a high level, Trump did what any fervent free market disciple would do: he demanded a bailout.

Rohan writes:

Not halfway through the season, a publicist named John Barron, who said he was “vice president of the Trump Organization,” called the wire services and went on a rant about the deal. He said the other owners had asked Trump to sign Flutie “for the good of the league,” and that they had made a verbal agreement with Trump to help pay for the part of the contract.
“When a guy goes out and spends more money than a player is worth,” Barron told the press, “he expects to get partial reimbursement from the other owners.” Trump later said Barron was misquoted and that he had never said he had paid Flutie more than he was “worth.”
The Washington Post recently reported that, around that time, Trump would call reporters masquerading as a publicist named “John Barron.”

Trump's brilliant stewardship of the Generals undoubtedly affords him substantial currency among NFL executives. When this fluent speaker of "locker room talk" holds court on personnel matters, they ought to listen:


Can we just pause here to marvel at this man's mellifluous elocution? I apologize for my pedantic vocabulary, but, like President Trump, I went to Penn. That makes me, like, a really smart person. I also know the best words. And I cannot be prouder of my alma mater's role in the cultivation of this unique mind.

Notwithstanding his eloquence, President Trump made an irrefutable point about the ongoing national anthem protests by athletes at sporting events. "That's a total disrespect of our heritage," Trump remarked. "That's a total disrespect of everything that we stand for."
Unfortunately, athletes have frequently dragged our flag and our military. Consider the following sentiment from former Arizona Cardinals safety Pat Tillman:

One thing I find myself despising is the sight of all these guns in the hands of children. Of course we all understand the necessity of defense....It doesn't diminish the fact that a young man I would not trust with my canteen is walking about armed.... (John Krakauer, Where Men Win Glory, 171).

That Tillman fellow has no respect for our troops. He's just like Colin Kaepernick!
Finally, we have a commander-in-chief who is willing to call out the shameful behavior of football players who dare to take a knee in a moment when they should be exhibiting reverence. There are only two times when it's appropriate to kneel: when you're in church, and when you're lining up in victory formation!

Americans should be grateful that President Trump has taken time from his busy schedule of golfing and cable news consumption to defend our culture and values from the dual threat of privileged athletes and whiny liberals. Recently, Trump bemoaned attempts to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee from a park in Charlottesville, Virginia. Can you believe these people who want to erase the legacy of an American hero like Lee? They will go to extreme lengths to avoid hurt feelings. If we're not careful, the leftists will spread their participation trophy agenda and weaken the resolve of our children.

With luck, President Trump will help this country rediscover its sense of patrioti$m, one koozie at a time. The recent lack of regard for our country's institutions and its leaders has been utterly appalling. For example, do you remember that game show host who ran for president as a publicity stunt? You know, the guy who relentlessly promoted the lie that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya? I think it was the same candidate who belittled John McCain's military service in Vietnam from the comfortable perch that five draft deferments built. He even made some insensitive comments about a Gold Star mother. Thank God that clown has been driven from the national stage so we can get back to the important work of making sure everyone stands for the anthem.

The president has already suggested to his followers that they protest the NFL until the league mandates universal participation in the pregame patriotic ceremony. It's an ingenious plan, one that will no doubt prove to be wildly successful. Nevertheless, I would like to offer my own modest proposal to resolve this dispute once and for all:

Ban the national anthem from all sporting events.

It's the only way to make "The Star-Spangled Banner" great again.

Our spoiled athletes and the owners who indulge them do not deserve the honor of the performance of this sacred hymn during their pregame ceremonies. For too long, television and league executives have exploited the song to imbue their meaningless contests with a gravitas they do not deserve and a grandiosity they have not earned. They have also reaped a financial windfall from the Pentagon, as the Department of Defense has paid millions of dollars for in-game patriotic displays. Those elaborate flyovers don't come cheap.

We can reinvest the recovered funds into the imminent war we will be waging on the Korean Peninsula. Our president has already laid the groundwork; here he is bravely rattling his Twitter saber:

Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2017

Any leftover money can be directed toward the indefinite military operation in Afghanistan. Ultimately, the best way to honor our veterans is by recklessly pursuing opportunities to create more of them.

The decision to extricate our national anthem from sporting events should in no way discourage us from continuing the conversation we are not having about perceived racial inequality in law enforcement. Let's keep pitching our tents on the moral high ground. Our servicemen and servicewomen fought to defend our liberty; every chance we get, we must invoke the memory of their sacrifice to protect us from expressions of freedom.

Keep spouting that bumper sticker wisdom. There's no need to stray from the ideological safe space that the professional outrage artists have kept furnished just for you. Why risk a moment's discomfort to step outside of your own experience to ponder a viewpoint that is not your own?

Deflect. Distort. Deny. Degrade. We're not trying to listen; we're trying to win an argument.

The protesting athletes don't have a valid position, anyway. They really need to check their privilege. We let them make millions of dollars to play a children's game. It's not like they had to work hard like our ancestors did. And all we ask in return is that they not hijack our national anthem.

The anthem isn't about them. It's not even about the troops. It's about us, and it's about ensuring that everyone knows just how much we support the troops. If the protesting athletes can't understand this basic concept, then we have no choice but to take the national anthem away from them.

It's a time to rise. It's not a time to stand for something.

-30-

The War For Historical Memory

The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. It could scarcely be otherwise, since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations.

 - James Baldwin, "Unnameable Objects, Unspeakable Crimes"

Two days had passed since the Charlottesville uprising, and President Trump had something to say. 

The president strode to a podium in the lobby of Trump Tower and faced a press corps that he has cast as the enemy of his nascent administration. Immediately, Trump was peppered with questions about his response to the white supremacist rally in Virginia, which culminated with a car attack that claimed the life of Heather Heyer and injured 19 of her fellow counter-demonstrators.   

In the course of justifying his deliberate response to the tragedy, the president defended the peaceful nature of the torch-wielding neo-Confederates who gathered in Charlottesville to protest the planned removal of a Robert E. Lee statue from a public park. The land had once borne the name of the famous general who commanded the mighty Army of Northern Virginia, but has since been rechristened Emancipation Park.      

"There were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I'm sure in that group there were some bad ones," Trump observed.

It was unclear where in the "master race" morass the peaceniks positioned themselves. Perhaps they were drowned out by the mob of people alternately screaming, "Blood and soil!" and "Jews will not replace us!" Or maybe they were stationed in the rear of the Tiki Torch Brigade, behind the Confederate and Nazi flag bearers.

After applying a fresh coat of whitewash on the aims of the protesters, the lecturer-in-chief proceeded to offer the nation a history lesson.

"George Washington was a slave owner," Trump declared. "So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down statues to George Washington?"

"You're changing history," the president cautioned to those who dare to deconstruct monuments to the Confederacy. "You're changing culture." 

The president's words were a salve to the aspiring Nazis, cosplaying militiamen, and self-appointed guardians of white culture who secured what they sought in Charlottesville: affirmation and validation. Trump's comments also served as the latest salvo in a struggle that has lasted more than 150 years: the war for the legacy of the Civil War.

Hostilities commenced when the ink dried on the terms of surrender at Appomattox Court House. The defeated South experienced a radical reconfiguation of its social order. Previously enslaved blacks were now empowered; they were afforded access to the ballot box and protected by the Union Army.

For a brief period, black politicians represented the South in government. Hiram Revels of Mississippi became the first African American to be seated in the US Senate. Black men won office in local and state elections as well, buoyed in part by a prohibition that disenfranchised former members of the Confederate Army and government.

But in the garden of Reconstruction, the vile weed of racism remained rooted in the soil. The pressures of physical resistance in the South, fatigue in the North over the continued military occupation of the repatriated southern states, political scandals emanating from the White House, and an economic recession combined to buckle the resolve of President Grant. In the 1870s, Reconstruction gave way to Redemption. The white power structure reasserted itself. And the South rose again.

In Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War, author Nicholas Lemann articulates the philosophical position of the disciples of Redemption:

"Whites there had in mind instead a social compact under which Negroes would not formally be slaves anymore, but under which they would be unable to vote, hold office, or have legal rights- in which they would be completely powerless, subject to the will of whites without any protection or recourse, even when that will was expressed in individual violence and sexual violation." (28)        

The socioeconomic and political progress of Reconstruction were erased and replaced with a social structure that bore a striking resemblance to the antebellum order.

Lynchings became commonplace, a penalty designed to maintain the racial hierarchy. These extrajudicial killings routinely doubled as social events. White spectators gathered to watch a violator of the race codes pay his or her penance: death by hanging.

Gradually, the number of lynchings decreased as segregation was codified under what would be called Jim Crow laws. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court recognized the legality of these legislative acts.

In a society that demanded black folks "know their place," socioeconomic advancement proved a dangerous and delicate dance. Financial success meant potentially challenging the color line, and thus endangering oneself. Failure was expected, perhaps even demanded as validation of the wisdom of segregation.

The key to survival in the South was instilled at a young age. Richard Wright shared the lesson his mother imparted to him in "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow:"

"She would smack my rump with the stave and, while the skin was still smarting, impart to me gems of Jim Crow wisdom. I was never to throw cinders anymore. I was never to fight any more wars. I was never, never, under any circumstances to fight white folks again." 

In Black Like Me, author John Howard Griffin interviewed an elderly gentleman who cut to the crux of the dilemma. "They put us low," he lamented, "and then blame us for being down there and say that since we are low, we can't deserve our rights," (40).

****

As the white redeemers secured dominion over the physical space of the South, they opened a second front in the pages of our history books. It was not enough to re-establish the societal hegemony of the white race in the present. They had to win the war for the past, too.

Southern sympathizers took to the task in earnest. The war, they argued, hadn't been waged to perpetuate slavery. The Confederate states were simply protecting their autonomy from an overbearing federal government. They exercised their democratic right to secede from the Union, and were invaded as a result. In time, the Civil War would be rebranded "The War Between the States," or the "War of Northern Aggression."

This grand reconception of the origin of the Civil War has come to be known as the Lost Cause. Like all myths, it defies the primary historical evidence that places slavery as the primary driver of the South's secession. The constitution of the Confederate state of Alabama was nearly a carbon copy of the US Constitution, with the exception of a special section dealing with slavery; the first statute in this section asserts: "No slave in this State shall be emancipated by any act done to take effect in this State, or any other country."

Mississippi's Declaration of Secession began with the following pronouncement:

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization."

South Carolina's Declaration of Secession pointed to the Northern states' abdication of their constitutional responsibility to return runaway slaves to their Southern masters as a reason to withdraw from the Union.

Yet, the lies that obscured the truth about the war paled in comparison to the intellectual gymnastics Lost Causers undertook to explain the behavior of slaves during the conflict. In this effort, the redeemers had to negotiate a challenging paradox: how to paint the behavior of Civil War-era slaves in a positive light while simultaneously justifying the barbaric treatment of emancipated black citizens in the Jim Crow era.

In The Negro: The Southerner's Problem, Thomas Nelson Page endeavored to make a case. He spoke glowingly of the slaves who were left to tend to the plantations of their masters. "No race ever behaved better than the Negroes during the war," Page crowed. "Many a master going off to the war intrusted his wife and children to the care of his servants with as much confidence as if they had been of his own blood," (21-22).

In Page's telling, the Union's triumph created a breakdown in the social order. Black men in particular, once loosed from the shackles of slavery, constituted an existential threat to the white race. Page expounds on this point at length:

"Then came the period and process of Reconstruction, with its teachings. Among these was the teaching that the Negro was the equal of the white, that the white was his enemy, and that he must assert his equality. The growth of the idea was a gradual one in the Negro's mind. This was followed by a number of cases where members of the Negro militia ravished white women; in some instances in the presence of their families," (95).

The portrait of white men as the saviors of their race and protectors of their women is a familiar one to those of us who have endured a screening of The Birth of a Nation. Fears of miscegenation had existed since colonial times. The thought of race-mixing infuriated those who viewed whiteness as a formative part of the American identity. Of course, these anxieties only applied to sexual relationships between white women and black men.

Page's vision of the relationship between blacks and whites in the South was surgically constructed to benefit the institution of slavery and the white men who profited from it. The only way to "tame" the black male was to treat him like an animal. Once cowed, he would behave. However, emancipation had reverted him to his original, uncivilized state- a brute who was unable to control his sexual impulses.

It did not matter that Page's low opinion of emancipated black men served as the most convincing indictment of his absurd apologia. If black men were unable to control themselves around white women, why would a master have entrusted his plantation and his family to his slaves? If the institution of slavery had the salutary effects Page claimed, why did they immediately disappear once the war had ended and the practice was banned?

Page's argument was not meant to convince posterity; it was crafted to justify white supremacy. It does seem fitting, though, that such an irrational social structure would rest on an intellectual foundation made of sand.

The selective memory extended to remembrances of the war. In an op-ed that was published in the New York Times, historian David Blight recounted the ways in which Lost Cause revisionism infected Civil War memorials. "The Southern dead were honored as the true 'patriots,' defenders of their homeland, sovereign rights, a natural racial order and a 'cause' that had been overwhelmed by 'numbers and resources' but never defeated on battlefields," Blight wrote in "Forgetting Why We Remember."

To commemorate their victory in the struggle to define the Civil War, the redeemers commissioned statues and icons of their Confederate heroes. It should come as no surprise that "largely, Confederate monuments were built during two key periods of American history: the beginnings of Jim Crow in the 1920s and the civil rights movement in the early 1950s and 1960s," as Caroline Talleman reported in an article for Town and Country Magazine. 

Rebel soldiers and political leaders were shrouded in the fog of romantic nostalgia. The pervasive suffering of the Confederate army, exacerbated by incompetent generalship and a lack of military discipline, was forgotten. Robert E. Lee, a vicious slave owner who took up arms against the Union of his own volition, was recast as a reluctant warrior who abhorred slavery. He was also regaled as a military genius of the first order. The graveyards of Gettysburg tell a different story.

But these statues did not simply exist to paint a rosy picture of an ugly period in our nation's history. They were prominently placed as visual reminders of the failure of Reconstruction and the re-establishment of the racial hierarchy that relegated black citizens to second-class status. Despite the outcome of the Civil War, black folks in the South lived as a defeated and conquered people.

****

This brief tour through the historical wreckage of the Civil War exposes the tragic ignorance of President Trump and those who follow down the same logical path he advanced in his press conference. For a group of people who seem intent on wallowing in a state of constant grievance, the president and his followers have exhibited a stunning incapacity for empathy during this ongoing travesty.   

This is not an issue of sparing people's hurt feelings. The battle to rid the public square of Confederate monuments is not an effort to erase history, but to reclaim the past. These statues do not further our understanding of the Civil War. They pervert it. And the aggrieved white men who rallied at the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville are not fervent defenders of history. They view the world Lee sought to preserve not as a tragic mistake, but as a prototype for the white ethno-state they yearn to create.

It is past time that we deconstruct Lost Cause mythology and cut through the cloud it has created in our collective memory. Let's aggressively confront our past rather than passively celebrate it. And let's appreciate the Confederacy as it was, not as Southern sympathizers and architects of Jim Crow imagined it to be.
  

-30-

It's Time for America's War Fever to Break

I have a confession to make:

I voted for Gary Johnson in 2012.

For the first eight years of my voting life, I had reliably pulled the lever for Democratic presidential candidates. In 2004, I voted for John Kerry. In 2008, I hopped aboard the Obama train. Like most people my age, I was spellbound by then-Senator Obama. His speeches were nothing short of inspirational. He spoke about race in a way that oozed nuance and empathy. Indeed, his biracial heritage enabled Obama to view the historical chasm between white and black folks from a lofty perch constructed by his lived experience.

After eight years of the Bush Administration, I was ready for hope and change. I was tired of the way in which patriotism had been co-opted and weaponized by the Republican Party after 9/11. Bush officials and their cronies in the conservative media advanced dubious counter-terror and national security policies, packaging them in the American flag. They callously exploited "the troops" as rhetorical pawns to shield from scrutiny disastrous military decisions like the Iraq invasion.  

I watched Fox News fairly regularly when I was a college student. Perhaps I was a masochist, but I was fascinated by the dishonest framing of the Iraq War debate specifically and the behavior of the Bush Administration more generally. Fox News commentator Sean Hannity, for example, would routinely accuse his liberal targets of "providing aid and comfort to the enemy." For those of you unversed in the language of the Constitution, that phrase is the definition of treason as written by our Founding Fathers.

How ironic that, roughly a decade later, Hannity would emerge as the chief shill for a Republican president who has openly bragged about his stern opposition to the Iraq War. Apparently, there is a statute of limitations on treason.

In 2004, Hannity published a book entitled Deliver Us From Evil. Buried in the first chapter of his screed, which was presumably written from the living room of his glass house, is this gem:

"Indeed, the greatest threat to our resolve today in the War on Terror is the political liberalism- and selfish opportunism- of the Democrats. From its leaders on down, America's left-wing party is ideologically inclined toward appeasement, toward dismissing or understating the terrorist threat, and toward containing, rather than confronting, the despotic regimes that aid and abet the terrorists. Whatever momentary interest its members may show in the war is inevitably swamped by the party's unquenchable thirst for political power." 

Hannity crafted this statement in the midst of a concerted national campaign to smear Senator Kerry's war record. It was also in the aftermath of a successful effort to call into question the courage of Senator Max Cleland, a man who lost limbs during his combat tour in Vietnam.

But enough with Hannity. Analyzing his inane political stances over the years is akin to pummeling a straw man. In truth, he was not alone. Fellow commentator Bill O'Reilly exhorted critics of the Iraq War to "shut up" once the conflict commenced because nothing less than unquestioning loyalty to the mission would undermine it. Newt Gingrich opined that Osama bin Laden was encouraged by the political unrest unfolding in the midst of the War on Terror. Cindy Sheehan, a Gold Star mother and prominent war critic, came under severe attack as her profile rose. Finally, Obama himself was raked over the coals for having the audacity not to wear a flag pin on his lapel during his presidential campaign.

It was all part of a playbook to which the Republican Party had adhered since the Vietnam War. Liberals were not patriots. They were cowards, unwilling to support armed confrontations with evil. It was unsurprising that Fox News emerged as the locus of the smear campaign. FNC Chairman Roger Ailes had been serving conservatives the same diet of anti-Democrat invective since his days as Richard Nixon's ad man.

Honestly, I could write a book about the chicanery of the conservative political and media elites during the Bush Administration. Their behavior was an insidious attempt to undermine democracy and free expression. I had enough. I believed Obama's election would serve as an antidote to our poisoned political discourse. More importantly, I thought his presidency would steer the country in a more prudent direction with respect to our counter-terror policies.

I was wrong.

Barack Obama preserved and expanded the Bush Doctrine. He made liberal use of drones in countries on which the United States had not declared war, like Yemen and Pakistan, relying on the AUMF (Authorization of Use of Military Force) agreement Congress passed after 9/11 to give President Bush the flexibility to attack terrorist havens. Evidence emerged that drone operators engaged in a practice known as "double tap," which involved re-striking a target after first responders arrived on the scene. Funerals for the terrorists who were killed in strikes were also subjected to drone attacks.

Although the drone program was billed as a surgical bombing campaign that limited civilian casualties, it became clear that drone operators frequently were unsure of who would be victimized by the missiles that were dropped onto targets. More disturbingly, the Obama Administration would count any military-age male who was killed after a bombing as an enemy until proven otherwise. The tactic was reminiscent of the Bush Administration's practice of labeling every combatant killed in the Iraq war zone a terrorist.

Moreover, President Obama's extrajudicial drone program killed American citizens. In 2011, a drone strike authorized by Obama killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an al Qaeda senior member who recruited jihadis through online videos. He is also alleged to have plotted attacks on the United States, including the attempted bombing of an airplane bound for Detroit in 2009. Two weeks later, Awlaki's son, Abdulrahman, became "collateral damage" in a drone strike in Yemen.

No one will cry over the corpse of al-Awlaki, an evil man who actively pursued the mass murder of innocent people. The tears should be reserved for his innocent son, and for the utter disregard for the right to due process that our constitutional law professor-in-chief exhibited during his tenure in the White House.

A teenager was killed as a result of a program whose success in preventing the spread of terrorism was, at the very least, debatable. In fact, one could make a compelling counter-argument that the murder of civilians would only cause the cancer of terrorism to metastasize.

So, where was the debate?

I knew my vote didn't matter. Barack Obama was winning Pennsylvania, with or without my support. If Mitt Romney somehow discovered a path to victory, he would simply continue the foreign policy that George Bush created and Obama expanded.

I made a choice. I chose Gary Johnson.

*****

Fast forward to 2017. Barack Obama has left the White House. In his place resides the least competent person to ever hold the office of the presidency. Nearly three months into his term, Donald Trump has validated every concern I harbored about him. 

He knows nothing about policy, as evidenced by the seriously flawed healthcare bill he unsuccessfully tried to bully through Congress. He promised to appoint "only the best people," but a large number of staff positions have gone unfilled. Michael Flynn made it one month as National Security Adviser before he was forced to resign when his contacts with the Russian government were exposed.

Meanwhile, Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has an absurdly ambitious list of responsibilities, but zero government experience. Ivanka Trump™ has taken a position as an adviser, but remains tethered to her business empire. Like her father, she is a walking conflict of interest. Ivanka Trump's supporters hail her as a feminist champion; yet "having it all" should not mean Ivanka gets to have it both ways when it comes to the positions her father advocates.  

The reckless disregard for the truth that Candidate Trump demonstrated has carried over to President Trump. The Idiot King of the Birther Movement lies constantly. He lied about the size of his inauguration crowd. He lied about the election, claiming that illegal immigrants voted against him in California, which pushed the popular vote total in Hillary Clinton's favor. He also lied about Massachusetts residents crossing into New Hampshire to cast ballots against him. Most importantly, he lied about President Obama wiretapping Trump Tower. 

Trump's apologists claim that his opponents should take Trump seriously, not literally. If citizens cannot take President Trump at his word, how can he be taken seriously? How can he possibly hope to lead the country? In the Trump Era, truth has been rendered meaningless.

Ultimately, Donald Trump remains the thin-skinned, insecure bully that he was during the 2016 election. There is no chance that he will change or grow into the job. Our only hope is that he does not reverse the economic recovery with his shortsighted protectionist policies. 

On Thursday, however, Trump found the elixir that could reverse the fortunes of his dysfunctional presidency. He discovered the power of the bomb.

After video evidence emerged of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's forces deploying chemical weapons on a hospital, Trump decided to act. He ordered a cruise missile attack on a Syrian air base from which the chemical weapons presumably emanated. 

The media, which had previously busied itself by wildly speculating about the Trump campaign's connection to Russia, jumped at the opportunity to celebrate this righteous display of American weaponry. Recovering fabulist Brian Williams could not help but be amazed by the "beauty" of our arsenal of democracy:

you dope pic.twitter.com/JL3lxKZfDa

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) April 7, 2017

It was a highly revealing display, one reminiscent of the glowing coverage Operation Iraqi Freedom received at the beginning of the invasion. War makes for good television, and those who do not stick to the script are often jettisoned. Just ask Phil Donahue, a staunch Iraq War critic whose television program was cancelled by MSNBC at the height of war hysteria. Ashleigh Banfield was marginalized within the NBC News division for rightly calling into question the sanitized images of battle that the networks were selling to the American public.

Across the cable news landscape, the tomahawk missile deployment was treated like an elaborate fireworks display. It was entertainment. Retired generals were brought into studios to shower praise on Trump's decisive action. Here's hoping, unlike in the midst of the Iraq War, they were not parroting talking points prepared by the Pentagon.

Pundits joined the cheerleading session. Fareed Zakaria proclaimed that Trump "became President of the United States" by initiating the attack, a statement whose grandiosity is only eclipsed by its emptiness. Zakaria had plenty of company in the media world as the task of propping up Trump's presidency commenced in earnest.

Despite reports of extensive damage to the targeted air field, the runway was not affected. The base was operational by the next day. So what was the point? To flex our muscles? To show that we do not tolerate chemical weapons attacks?

For the sake of the Syrian civilians trapped in the middle of a civil war, I hope that the bombing dissuades Assad from further use of chemical weapons. However, the civil war in Syria will abide. People will continue to perish. A selective display of outrage will not fundamentally change Assad's brutality, which he clearly views as an existential necessity.

It will also not absolve our country of its own misdeeds and miscalculations in the region. For two years, the United States has actively supported Saudi Arabia's incessant bombing of Yemen, which has resulted in scores of civilian casualties. The failure of the Iraq War created the conditions which fueled the rise of ISIS, a fighting force composed in part of disaffected Ba'athists who were purged from the Iraqi Army and shut out from the government in Baghdad.

The ill-conceived raid in Yemen that Trump authorized in January, which resulted in the death of Navy Seal William "Ryan" Owens, also led to the deaths of 10 women and children. Among the deceased was 8-year old Nawar al-Awlaki, the daugher of Anwar al-Awlaki.

Compare the picture of Nawar with this image of a Syrian boy, which caused much consternation around the world. As we address the depravity of Assad, how about we confront our own malfeasance?

The more disingenuous among us would label such an exercise a false equivalence. This rhetorical tactic is a close relative of "what about"-ism and ad hominem artistry; they all function as defense mechanisms. Rather than accept even a moment of discomfort or contemplation, practitioners of these forms of sophistry place the onus of critical thought back onto the questioner. They believe that, by attacking the integrity of the questioner, they are bolstering their ideological beliefs. In fact, they only expose the weakness of their position.

No rational person would equate Assad with the Bush-Obama-Trump triumvirate. Assad is a brutal dictator who has clung to power by indiscriminately slaughtering his citizens. The American presidents in the post-9/11 era, by contrast, have been required to face a series of geopolitical challenges that do not lend themselves to easy solutions. Barack Obama did not deploy drones to kill civilian noncombatants. He sincerely wanted to address national security threats without putting soldiers in harm's way. In an era when enemies do not wear uniforms, are not bound by traditional borders, and thrive in countries with ineffectual governments, drone activity may well be a necessary evil. Moreover, the Special Forces mission in Yemen that killed civilians was not designed with that goal in mind, obviously. It was a tragic consequence of a mission that did not go according to plan.

Notwithstanding our good intentions, innocent people have lost their lives. And, rather than cower behind euphemisms like "collateral damage," we need to reckon with that reality at some point in this post-9/11 era. We need to stop viewing the Constitution as an inconvenience and make it the compass we use to guide us through the various moral quandaries we face in the Middle East.

When war is unavoidable and necessary, we should go. But we shouldn't be celebrating exercises of military power; nor should we be speculating how a bombing might boost the president's popularity.

Furthermore, when we refuse to confront our own mistakes, we perpetuate them. And we exacerbate our problems when we insist on using the troops as a collective shield to repel criticism of military action:

— S.E. Cupp (@secupp) April 7, 2017

We owe it to the soldiers who have borne the burden of our 15 years (and counting) of endless war to start asking questions and demanding answers. When bombs begin raining down on sovereign countries in our collective name, critics should not be shamed into silence and battered with red-white-and-blue cudgels. Instead, the tone of the questions should only get louder and sharper. Such is the responsibility of a citizen in a representative democracy.

When will the narrative drivers in the media internalize their mistakes during the Iraq War? When will Congress reclaim its power to declare war? Where are all of the Constitutional originalists who cheered for the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court? When will we stop conflating obedience to the government with respect for the troops? Who benefits from this environment?  

When will we learn? When will our war fever break?

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For Pete's Sake

It was the first day of my new life as a teacher.

I wasn't ready. 

I had just graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. During my senior year in college, I had decided to apply for a program that my high school alma mater, St. Joseph's Prep, has been running for years. It is called the Alumni Service Corps. The pitch is simple: a Prep graduate who has just finished his college studies returns to the school to offer one year of service. In return, he receives a small monthly stipend, free housing, and on-the-job training. 

It was an easy decision to apply. The two people I admire most in this world are my parents. My dad is an excellent teacher and, though I never consciously realized it, I have always wanted to be just like him. His entire life is oriented toward helping others. In that effort, he has an equal partner in my mother. Mom is one of the most generous and caring people you could ever hope to meet. For years, she organized an incredible Christmas gift operation for the adults who lived at the Cardinal Krol Center until the facility was shuttered by the Archdiocese. 

I wanted to be a teacher, too. I also hoped for an opportunity to help others. Without the education I received at the Prep, I never would have survived at Penn. Heck, I likely never would have gained admission in the first place. I owed the school a tremendous debt. The ASC Program was my opportunity to provide repayment.

After a thorough application process, I was offered a position. I would be tasked with teaching two History classes and performing other types of service at the school throughout the day. Often, this involved proctoring a class for an absent teacher or monitoring the cafeteria to ensure that students threw out their trash after they finished lunch.

It sounded like a good deal. Two classes? No problem! My plan was to get the textbooks in May and start plotting my courses in earnest. I would comb through the material to find points I could emphasize and primary sources I could introduce to complement the curriculum. Alas, the best laid plans of mice and men....

I did not find out what specific courses I would be teaching until August. I did not receive the assigned textbooks for the courses until the week before the start of the school year. 

It was a gut punch, but I opted to try my best. My best was not good enough.

My students likely smelled my fear as soon as they walked in the classroom. Here was a rank amateur trying to teach them a subject he knew well, but had zero experience in translating. I lacked the confidence to command the room, and they took advantage of my weakness. 

The pressure was too much to bear. The parents of these students were spending a fortune to send their kids to the Prep. They rightly expected a superior education. 

I began to crack. I would work late into the night, fruitlessly trying to get ahead of the curriculum. Sleep was a luxury I could not afford. When I took showers, I would find small clumps of hair falling out of my head.   

By October, I was ready to quit. The students deserved better. The school deserved better.

I deserved better, too. I was tired of raising my voice. I was tired of working relentlessly to prepare my lessons, only to be greeted with indifference when I walked into the classroom. I was tired of the person I had to become in order to survive as a new teacher. I was tired of losing sleep. I was tired of the stress. I was just tired. 

There are many people who helped carry me through that year, too many to thank, but one person in particular stands out in my memory. That person is Pete Reid.

Pete was assigned as my mentor teacher. He had just returned to the Prep after waging a successful battle with leukemia that, by all rights, should have killed him. Though he miraculously survived, his triumph over cancer was a Pyrrhic victory. Pete looked like a ghost that had somehow retained its flesh. Most of the color from his body had been sucked out of him, leaving him a pallid shell of himself. There were times when Pete's every movement seemed labored, when the simple act of rising to his feet required a herculean effort. 

And yet, the man stood up to face every challenge. His immune system had been crippled to the point that a common cold would cause an existential crisis, though I do not recall Pete requiring many days off from school. He continued to suffer, but he endured his pain with such grace and persistence. He was determined not to let the defeated cancer define his life, to rob him of any more days than it already had. He was a happy warrior. 

Pete's courage inspired me. Indeed, his example powered me through the challenges I had been experiencing. When I was overwhelmed, I turned to Pete for advice. When I felt I could not continue, I swiveled in my office chair and looked at my colleague, who refused to quit in the face of much more difficult obstacles.

We talked about all sorts of subjects. We discussed our shared love of history, of course. We debated the topics we were both teaching and shared information we had gleaned from our own reading. Pete was incredibly generous in sharing his teaching materials with me, and I tried my best to return the favor. I offered to help him grade quizzes and homework assignments, which he occasionally accepted. Looking back, I see now that Pete didn't really need my assistance, but I think he sensed that allowing me to share his burden would lighten my own. 

I made a habit of observing Pete's classes when time allowed. As I watched Pete at work, I saw a man who was completely in his element. He was a damn good teacher. He owned the classroom. He was at home there. The 200 minutes per day he was teaching history were likely his most peaceful. That time afforded him a welcome respite from the health issues that plagued him during the year.

No words, no matter how eloquent, could adequately satisfy the incredible debt I owe Pete. But words were all I had to offer when, a few months ago, I heard the news that Pete had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It was a death sentence for a man who, in the decade since his leukemia battle, had been steadily rebuilding his life. He and his wonderful wife, Jen, had welcomed a son, PJ, into the world. He had transitioned out of the classroom and into an administrative role at the Prep, though he and the school parted ways before this academic term. To say Pete's fate was unfair does not do justice to the tragic hand life had dealt him.

However, knowing Pete, I am sure he resolved to play the hand anyway. And so I sent him a card and thanked him for his guidance and encouragement during my ASC year. I expressed my hope that the inspiration he provided me and so many others would strengthen him as he prepared once again for a bout with cancer. 

Pete Reid passed away this morning. Even our heroes can endure only so much pain.

Pete's memory lives on in all of us who were lucky enough to call him our teacher, our colleague, and our friend. Remember the lessons he imparted. Draw reassurance from his indomitable spirit. Please keep his wife and son in your thoughts and prayers. And, for Pete's sake, let's find a cure for cancer. 

-30-               

       

What Happens on Wednesday?

Today marks the merciful end of the 2016 presidential election. By midnight, we most likely will know which candidate has prevailed and will be tasked with the responsibility of leading this nation through the end of the decade. Soon afterward, the deluge of campaign commercials will disappear from our televisions and, with a little luck, our mad world will regain a measure of sanity. Yet, as anxious as I am to usher in the end of this election cycle, I wonder if the damage that has been wrought is irreparable. One question in particular nags me.

What kind of country will we be on Wednesday, November 9?

The expedient answer is the dismissive one. Nothing will change. Everything will be fine. Nobody’s life is much affected by the triviality of selecting the next leader of the free world, anyway.

I beg to differ. Not this time. Not after the campaign that Donald Trump has waged for the White House.     

Since the announcement of his candidacy in June 2015, Mr. Trump has sold the electorate a vision of America so dystopian that I wonder if the windows at Trump Tower require a more rigorous cleaning. Trump has placed America in front of a funhouse mirror, presenting the nation with an image of itself as a crime-infested hellscape. In his view, the United States has lost its place atop the global marketplace due to the mismanagement of political elites who have enriched themselves at the expense of their fellow citizens. And, like other aspiring authoritarians, Trump has offered his rabid supporters a mixture of  vulnerable and powerful scapegoats to blame not only for America’s perceived decline, but also for their own reversals of fortune. Into the former group Trump has placed undocumented Mexican immigrants and Muslim refugees seeking asylum in the United States. Mexican immigrants, according to Trump, are stealing jobs and driving up crime rates, while Muslim refugees cannot be trusted to assimilate and very well may plot terrorist attacks. Onto the list of powerful saboteurs Trump has lumped together the media, the political establishment, international corporations, various special interest groups, and countries like China and Mexico, which he claims are taking advantage of lopsided trade deals. 

Does it matter that illegal immigration has zero impact on jobs and wages? Is it surprising that Donald Trump’s claim about illegal immigration causing an increase in crime is not supported by empirical evidence? Should Trump supporters reconsider their candidate’s dire warning about the dangers of Syrian refugees in light of the two-year vetting process the United States has in place for asylum applicants? How does one reconcile the fact that the television networks handed the Trump campaign $2 billion in free advertising during the primary season with the notion that the media has somehow tipped the scales against the GOP candidate? Is it disingenuous for Trump to target a political establishment that has endorsed him and helped him craft a list of potential Supreme Court nominees, thereby assuaging any concerns about the Republican nominee’s conservative bona fides? Is it disconcerting that Trump’s concerns about a cabal of global special interests derailing his election chances bear a resemblance to the plot of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Should we engage more with the nuances of the free trade issue instead of resorting to simplistic declarations of failure?  

Of course not. Because, according to Trump, the entire system has been rigged against him. In this environment, facts no longer matter because the integrity of the journalists entrusted with establishing the truth has been challenged. Trump partisans have eschewed the reportage of The New York Times and the Washington Post in favor of “more venerable” outlets like Breitbart and the Drudge Report. 

On these Trump-friendly websites, one can blissfully avoid stories about Donald Trump’s history of stiffing contractors and outsourcing business. Into these dark recesses of the internet one intrepidly travels to discover the “evidence” that the racist Obama birther conspiracy in which Donald Trump reveled for years actually originated with the Clinton campaign in 2008. Rather than wrestle with the implications of Trump’s history of sexual harassment, a reader can indulge in the lurid catalogue of Bill Clinton’s indiscretions. In this alt-right oasis, Khizr Khan is not a grieving father wronged by Donald Trump, but a Sharia Law proponent and a supporting player in the criminal outfit known as the Clinton Global Initiative. Moreover, Donald Trump’s racist attacks on a Mexican judge presiding over a lawsuit involving Trump University are deceitfully substantiated and his absurd claim that “thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11 is accepted. Most importantly, Donald Trump’s fundamental inability to articulate a substantive policy on any issue is ignored, while the various shortcomings of Hillary Clinton are scrutinized and imagined scandals are contrived. Trump-friendly outfits like Breitbart would never expose the confidence scheme their favored candidate has been orchestrating because they are cashing in on it.

But make no mistake: Donald Trump is a charlatan. He is an aggressively ignorant buffoon who erroneously believes he can conceal his lack of fitness for the office he seeks by speaking loudly and audaciously.

And yet, Donald Trump will garner a significant portion of the popular vote. Nate Silver’s reputable 538 blog projects 45% of voters will cast their ballots for Mr. Trump in the general election. Judging by previous cycles, this percentage should translate into somewhere around 60 million votes.

Of these tens of millions of citizens, the overwhelming majority would not fit into what Hillary Clinton infamously labeled a “basket of deplorables.” Taking into account the high unfavorable ratings of the two major party candidates, one might safely assume that a significant portion of Trump voters will be motivated more by a disregard for Hillary Clinton than an affinity for the Republican candidate. Undoubtedly, many pro-life voters will reject Hillary Clinton on principle. A large number will support Donald Trump because he is the Republican candidate and, no matter their personal feelings about the man, he best represents the conservative values that they believe are most suitable for the country. Furthermore, economic anxieties that are driven by problems like the soaring cost of health care premiums and long-term unemployment will push voters to the Republican banner.

It is this last issue of economic angst that I believe has driven much of Trump’s support among the “non-college educated white male” portion of the electorate. It has provided the fertile soil needed for the seeds of xenophobia and racism that Trump has sown to bloom. We saw a similar historical pattern with the rise of the Native American Party from the ashes of the Panic of 1837. Back then, the Irish were pegged as the source of the country’s woes. They allegedly committed crimes at outsized rates and took work away from “native-born” Americans. According to these proto-Know Nothings, the Irish Catholic presence constituted an existential threat to the established Protestant identity of the country. Does any of this sound remotely familiar?

We can dismiss the Trump campaign as an historical aberration. We can pretend that Trump is the disease and not merely a symptom of an ailing system. But we would do so in error. Trump has exploited a tumor on the body politic that we assumed was shrinking as our society progressed. Our negligence has caused a metastasis.

Deindustrialization and globalization have ravaged the economic stability our nation enjoyed in the postwar period of the 1950s. One need look no further than Kensington, an industrial powerhouse that has been reduced to an abandoned slum teeming with drugs and despair, to witness the erosion these forces have caused. Though the American economy has generally recovered by transitioning to a services-oriented model and relying on technological innovation, we have not addressed the vast displacement these changes have caused. Even if Donald Trump’s chimerical promise to “Make America Great Again” by repatriating long-lost industrial jobs could hypothetically be realized, the sad truth that machines would replace much of the workforce seems lost on his fan base.

The jobs of the 1950s are leaving; they have been for a time that long predates NAFTA. The ability to carve out a middle-class existence and earn a pension with a blue-collar job is disappearing. American labor has priced itself out of the industrial sector. High tariffs and protectionist policies will not save us from the efficient machines that are rapidly taking the place of humans in the job market.

We have choices to make. When the Democrats are finished congratulating themselves for their historic nomination of Hillary Clinton, they can choose to ignore or reckon with their selection of a flawed candidate. Yes, Hillary Clinton will be the first woman to assume the office of president. Yes, this is an historic accomplishment that was long overdue. We can grant these points while also acknowledging that Hillary Clinton and her political team represent much of what has plagued the culture of Washington, DC: the cozy relationships with Wall Street; the monetization of government service through the creation of a revolving door from public service to private enterprise (the money-for-access deals struck by the Clinton Foundation only reinforce the perception of self-dealing); the formulation of policy that caters more to special interest groups than the general public; the advancement of rhetoric about Republicans “shipping jobs overseas” in order to win elections, but the seeming indifference to the concerns of union workers when international free trade deals are initiated; and the quixotic desire to pursue an interventionist foreign policy without drawing any lessons from our painful experiences of the past decade in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.

On the Republican side, the GOP must purge itself of Trumpism. General elections cannot be won by alienating huge swaths of minority voters. The tent must expand lest the party fade into irrelevance. Simple solutions to complex problems must be rejected in favor of a more comprehensive approach. A blanket acceptance of charter schools will not fix our education system; a wall will not stem the flow of drugs into our country or curb the desire of Hispanic migrants seeking work and refuge from the gang violence that plagues parts of Mexico and Central America. Panaceas do not exist. The Party must work with its Democratic colleagues in Congress to find actual solutions for these matters. To that end, obstructionism can no longer be embraced as an operating philosophy. Self-serving ideologues like Ted Cruz who attempt to hold the business of government hostage until their demands are met must be relegated to the back bench, not empowered.

We need to talk to one another. We must resist the urge to yell and instead try to listen. Empathy and charity need to take on a greater role in our public discourse.

The folks who have complained about the two choices with which we have been presented today must consider how we arrived at this point. Our widespread apathy toward politics has amplified the voices of the most extreme elements. We have allowed them to dominate the conversation. If you want to change the tone of said conversation, you need to participate in it.

To that end, we need to stop rewarding with our viewership television networks that cover politics in a way that prioritizes personality conflicts over substantive discussion. The talking-point robots that argue for our entertainment do not advance the debate. They poison it.

We must demand more from our candidates for local and state offices. Television commercials touting a state representative’s position on various third rail issues should have little impact. An aspiring state legislator’s position on sanctuary cities, for example, does not matter a great deal; rather, he should tell us how he plans to plug the hole in the state’s pension system. A more informed and engaged electorate will produce better candidates for office and a healthier political dialogue.

We must realize that though we have differences, we are not all that different. There is more common ground on seemingly intractable issues than we might realize.

On Tuesday, the election ends. The show, thankfully, will be over.

On Wednesday, the real work of healing this nation and bridging partisan divides begins.

What kind of country do we want to be?

-30-