August 29, 2017--Trump's Trap
Democratic strategist and CNN contributor Paul Begala got it right--President Trump set a political trap and Democrats stepped right into it.
The ugly demonstration in Charlottesville more than two weeks ago was about plans to remove statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson The white supremacist thugs rallied there to protest plans for their relocation.
Sensing this would be an effective wedge issue that would pander to his alt-right base, Trump generalized efforts to move, even teardown forcefully, what he referred to as "our beautiful statues and monuments."
Trump's call to keep in place these statues were dog-whistle references to those memorials primarily honoring leaders of the Confederacy. All supporters of slavery. This Trump knew would be red meat for his core constituency, including the K.K.K. and neo-Nazis.
Trump tweaked the situation by mocking those in favor of removing these memorials by speculating that to be consistent liberals should also call for the removal of statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson since they were slave holders.
Good point, many on the left felt, not noticing the trap set for them.
On the right, Trump supporters, tongue-in-cheek, suggested that perhaps while we're busy taking down memorials we should also give serious consideration to, say, getting rid of the statue of Christopher Columbus that graces New York City's Columbus Circle.
As preposterous as this may sound--though Columbus' "discovery" of America ultimately meant that European settlers would over a few centuries "remove" "Indians" from their ancestral lands--as extreme as this might seem, it is reported that NYC mayor Bill de Blasio is giving this idea serious consideration.
Columbus Circle, you may also know, is also the location of Donald Trump's tasteless International Hotel and Tower. A blight on the Central Park landscape, which, in a better world, would be what we would be thinking about taking down.
So we are descending into a paroxysm of political correctness, this time about statues.
Thus the wedge issue calculated to deepen the division between Trump's people and the rest of Americans, thus the trap to which Begala alerted Democrats.
In Philadelphia there are moves to remove the statue of Frank Rizzo, who in the late 60s was the tough-cop mayor. He was best known, as was Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio who was just pardoned by President Trump, for his heavy-handed, even brutal treatment of the city's minority population.
Instead of talking about Trump's racist comments after the Charlottesville riots and murder, those on the left are in a swivet about all memorials to the Confederacy and anything in any way associated with racism and slavery.
There were failed attempts to rename buildings and academic programs at Princeton University because Woodrow Wilson was a white supremacist and there is a movement afoot to rename Faneuil Hall in Boston since Peter Faneuil was a slave owner.
George W. Bush's brain, Karl Rove was a genius at thrusting wedge issues into political contests. Rather than talking about the state of the economy or the hollowing out of the middle class, he got Americans to fight with each other about same-sex marriage, support for Planned Parenthood, prayer in school, and evolution.
Trump is employing the same strategy. When he senses political trouble as after Charlottesville or revelations about his possible complicity in encouraging Russians to intervene in the 2016 election, he riles folks up by bashing the media, inflaming feelings about immigrants, and more recently raising the issue of transgender members of the military.
But most effective, surprisingly, is the hot-button ability to get Americans agitated about statuary.
Trump already figured out that millions of Americans--his base and many more--are affronted by the political correctness and identity politics they feel Democrats promulgate, particularly on college and university campuses.
Things such as costume codes for on-campus Halloween parties and forbidding people from referring to brown paper bags as brown paper bags since that might offend some people of color. Knowing that pointing to faux issues of this kind quickly enflames people who feel looked down upon and directly affected by the self-righteousness of coastal elites, the president keeps picking away at them in an attempt to make things more contentious and distracting.
While struggling to make ends meet, they see spoiled college kids imposing speech codes and driving conservative speakers such as Ann Coulter off campus, as they did recently in Berkeley.
To some this feels like good citizenship. To me it sounds a little too much like the Taliban.
The ugly demonstration in Charlottesville more than two weeks ago was about plans to remove statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson The white supremacist thugs rallied there to protest plans for their relocation.
Sensing this would be an effective wedge issue that would pander to his alt-right base, Trump generalized efforts to move, even teardown forcefully, what he referred to as "our beautiful statues and monuments."
Trump's call to keep in place these statues were dog-whistle references to those memorials primarily honoring leaders of the Confederacy. All supporters of slavery. This Trump knew would be red meat for his core constituency, including the K.K.K. and neo-Nazis.
Trump tweaked the situation by mocking those in favor of removing these memorials by speculating that to be consistent liberals should also call for the removal of statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson since they were slave holders.
Good point, many on the left felt, not noticing the trap set for them.
On the right, Trump supporters, tongue-in-cheek, suggested that perhaps while we're busy taking down memorials we should also give serious consideration to, say, getting rid of the statue of Christopher Columbus that graces New York City's Columbus Circle.
As preposterous as this may sound--though Columbus' "discovery" of America ultimately meant that European settlers would over a few centuries "remove" "Indians" from their ancestral lands--as extreme as this might seem, it is reported that NYC mayor Bill de Blasio is giving this idea serious consideration.
Columbus Circle, you may also know, is also the location of Donald Trump's tasteless International Hotel and Tower. A blight on the Central Park landscape, which, in a better world, would be what we would be thinking about taking down.
So we are descending into a paroxysm of political correctness, this time about statues.
Thus the wedge issue calculated to deepen the division between Trump's people and the rest of Americans, thus the trap to which Begala alerted Democrats.
In Philadelphia there are moves to remove the statue of Frank Rizzo, who in the late 60s was the tough-cop mayor. He was best known, as was Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio who was just pardoned by President Trump, for his heavy-handed, even brutal treatment of the city's minority population.
Instead of talking about Trump's racist comments after the Charlottesville riots and murder, those on the left are in a swivet about all memorials to the Confederacy and anything in any way associated with racism and slavery.
There were failed attempts to rename buildings and academic programs at Princeton University because Woodrow Wilson was a white supremacist and there is a movement afoot to rename Faneuil Hall in Boston since Peter Faneuil was a slave owner.
George W. Bush's brain, Karl Rove was a genius at thrusting wedge issues into political contests. Rather than talking about the state of the economy or the hollowing out of the middle class, he got Americans to fight with each other about same-sex marriage, support for Planned Parenthood, prayer in school, and evolution.
Trump is employing the same strategy. When he senses political trouble as after Charlottesville or revelations about his possible complicity in encouraging Russians to intervene in the 2016 election, he riles folks up by bashing the media, inflaming feelings about immigrants, and more recently raising the issue of transgender members of the military.
But most effective, surprisingly, is the hot-button ability to get Americans agitated about statuary.
Trump already figured out that millions of Americans--his base and many more--are affronted by the political correctness and identity politics they feel Democrats promulgate, particularly on college and university campuses.
Things such as costume codes for on-campus Halloween parties and forbidding people from referring to brown paper bags as brown paper bags since that might offend some people of color. Knowing that pointing to faux issues of this kind quickly enflames people who feel looked down upon and directly affected by the self-righteousness of coastal elites, the president keeps picking away at them in an attempt to make things more contentious and distracting.
While struggling to make ends meet, they see spoiled college kids imposing speech codes and driving conservative speakers such as Ann Coulter off campus, as they did recently in Berkeley.
To some this feels like good citizenship. To me it sounds a little too much like the Taliban.
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| Columbus Circle |
Labels: Ann Coulter, Bill de Blasio, Charlottesville, Columbus Circle, Frank Rizzo, Joe Arpaio, Karl Rove, Paul Begala, Political Correctness, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Taliban, Wedge Issues
posted by Steven Zwerling at
4:08 AM
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