Disagreeing is not enough. De-legitimize!

Small tent politics.

If Democrats cannot talk about issues, then they will be the party of small tents and electoral failure.

 "I want to be clear: Pete Buttigieg is a lying motherfucker. This is not a misunderstanding. . . . he—more than anyone on the goddamned planet—knows that everything he just said is a baldfaced lie."

          Michael Harriot, The Root
    

"Lying motherfucker."  Those are words that dispose of an argument, defining them as unacceptable on their face. They shut down debate. 

Click: The Root

What did Mayor Pete say to get arouse Harriot's ire? Ten years ago Buttigieg said that black students in America were injured, in part, by the reality that there were fewer role models of black people who had gone to school and gotten jobs that rewarded their hard work. It is harder to inspire kids to take school seriously, he said, if they don't have tangible examples of people who did so and thrived because of it.

Buttigieg got noticed for telephoning Harriot a few days after the article made its predictable splash. He then wrote a second article about the phone call. Central to the explanation for his article was that Buttigieg is white, his parents have good jobs teaching at Notre Dame, he got a great education, and he benefited from white privilege. He said Buttigieg could not understand the full black experience. The author described his own disadvantaged educational experiences and their challenges. That was the reality of the black experience.

Was Pete Buttigieg wrong? Or lying? In my judgement, no. His wasn't an attempt to make a universal description of the role of race in America. It was an observation about an element of it. It was called a "bald faced lie" because his critic said he lacked the standing to opine on it.  (As, of course, do I, as a white observer of the dustup.)

This is another iteration of a phenomenon that is common around leftist discussions. Don't disagree, denounce. Don't challenge the argument, challenge the standing of the person to make it. It is what the current media environment wants, both cable news and social media. Buttigieg isn't just wrong; he is a lying MF. 

Democrats are a coalition of identity groups and policy advocates. The coalition is leaky, but real. This complicated coalition may not nominate the candidate with the best arguments and the widest appeal. Complicating the search for a strong nominee is the incentive of each policy and identity group to preserve the purity of that group, and do so with the tactic of delegitimizing the arguments of people outside their group.

     Only a black person can really understand and therefore represent blacks, and to say differently is a bald face lie.

     Only a woman can really understand misogyny or advocate for reproductive rights and a man is appropriating that special form of identity victimhood if he presumes to speak about it.

     Only a Latino, a gay, a lesbian, and so on. Only a person whose first priority is climate is legitimate on climate, and anything less than the most socialist position is a "right wing" sellout. 

To be successful Democrats need to be a big tent party, but participants in the big tent  condemn diversity for its failure to understand particularity. It pushes others out of the tent and it silences debate. 

It also leaves it to Donald Trump to claim to be the candidate who speaks for all Americans. 

War on Thanksgiving

     "They don't want to use the term 'Thanksgiving.' That was true also with 'Christmas.' But now everybody's using 'Christmas' again. . . . Everybody in this room loves the name 'Thanksgiving' and we're not changing it."

                 Trump, at Florida rally

Donald Trump: This land is our land, and we are the good guys.

Trump's popularity with his base has a premise: that people like you, and our way of life, are under siege.

Your values are under attack. Your language is under attack. Your job is under attack. Your race is under attack. 

Your way of life is under attack

The Republican party was not ready for Pat Buchanon's message of Culture War when he spoke it back at the 2000 convention. They were ready when Trump voiced it in 2015. 

Trump said things are bad and getting worse for white, Christian, native born Americans, and that we are approaching a tipping point because the country is being invaded by a flood of people who are not "good people." These strangers, he said, are being courted by Democrats because Democrats have a long term agenda of changing America out from under us.

Trump was going to reverse the tide, starting with a wall on the southern border. As a candidate he would add a travel bans on Muslims, and then when elected president he put limits on "asylum" claims he called phony, instituted tough conditions like cages and family separation to discourage arrivals, and posited that 14th Amendment citizenship by birth was mistaken law.

Trump: Enemy of the People

Some political messages are dead easy, slam dunks for Trump. His base dislikes Hillary, Nancy Pelosi, Obama and Biden, and now Hunter Biden, so criticism of them is a "gimme."  So, too, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who he calls a crazy Socialist. Better yet, Ilhan Omar, a Muslim, a woman, born in Somalia, and wears hair covering. Weird, huh? 

Trump defends America from them.

The most important to defend is the culture itself, which faces the overwhelming tide of progress and change.  Americans of all political persuasions see it, and some dislike and fear it. The country is becoming more diverse, more brown, and the traditional culture in the Norman Rockwell painting is changing. E pluribus unum is being redefined, with the many becoming one in its diversity, not the many dissolving in a melting pot into the one true dominant culture.

This displacement from the default is an implied attack on sacred and traditional symbols of the culture. Of course, there was no war on Christmas, but in fact Christmas was being repositioned in the public mind, from the assumed celebration of every American to a celebration chosen by most Americans. Christmas was being repositioned from centrality.

Schoolboy myth: Pilgrims feed local Indians

Thanksgiving is not being attacked either, but it, too, is being re-understood. The Thanksgiving story the Boomer generation learned as schoolchildren--that peace loving pilgrims, in search of religious freedom for everyone, made friends by feeding the starving Indians turkey and pumpkin pie--was not just myth, but profoundly in error.

Trump is being mocked as laughable in creating a straw man opponent in a made up "War on Thanksgiving" but his argument has political power for people who resist the changes they are experiencing. He is signaling that the traditional view of Thanksgiving, and therefore the implied right of European settlers to come to America and displace the native people, is OK. That we, his base--the dominant, white, Christian--people are here by right.  

That resonates with his base: We are the good guys. This land is our land. You are the guests at our table.

Big win for Trump, the populist hero.

Trump in Florida

He pardoned three Navy Seals.

Elites disapprove. 

Big political win. 

     

"Just this week I stuck up for three great warriors against the Deep State. I had so many people say, 'Sir, I don't think you should do that.' People can sit in air conditioned offices and complain, but it doesn't matter to me."

Donald Trump spoke at a rally in Sunrise, Florida and he proudly announced that he had overruled the Navy brass. There was predictable objection from military experts, editorial writers, mainstream news people, and Democrats. It disrupted the chain of command, it diminished military discipline, it set a bad precedent. There were good reasons for the established order to defend the established order. 

Of course, Trump did it anyway.

It is a big, public gesture that confirms his brand as a rule breaker and shaker-upper who sticks up for the little guy against political correctness and rigged systems. His critics call the sailors "war criminals. Trump called them "great warriors" snagged by punctilious rules written by people who don't understand the realities on the ground, the people in air conditioned offices, the Monday morning quarterbacks, the tyrants of political correctness.

His pardon is a political winner for Trump.Trump is in competition with Democrats to be understood as the populist hero. There is a huge political market for shaking things up, and this gesture is bigger and easier to understand than is a tax act that helps the wealthy, or cutbacks to Medicaid. Legislation is complicated. In the simple optics of politics Trump reconfirmed that he fights for the little guy, notwithstanding what the military brass, the lying Democrats, or fake news media say about him. 

CLICK: 4 minutes. See what Democrats are up against.

He also is re-stating his understanding of how the world works. It is dog-eat-dog in business, in foreign trade, in statecraft. Life doesn't follow Marquis of Queensbury rules of gentlemen, with rules of dos and don'ts. It only pretends to do that, and people or countries who believe the pretend--like his predecessor Obama--are saps. Losers.

Fight to win, because the other guy is, even if he doesn't admit it. Rules are a veneer written by hypocrites trying to pretty up a corrupt system. (It is why, to Trump and his supporters, Hunter Biden is relevant in the impeachment case. See! Everybody cheats in politics, so whatever Trump was doing in Ukraine was simply business as usual.)

Trump's gesture is a rebuke of political correctness. Trump said that fighters on the ground are facing hard, real life uncertainties. They should not be looking over their shoulders, tiptoeing around rules, worrying about being second guessed.

     "Right now, with the world the way it is, we are rebuilding the awesome power of the United States military. . . . People have to be able to fight. They can't say 'gee wizz if i make a mistake. . . . I will always stick up for our great fighters."

Democrats tell themselves Donald Trump won't be re-elected because his multiple errors and crimes will catch up to him. This is yet another instance; the navy brass is unhappy with Trump, and that has to hurt, right?

No. It helps Trump.

Donald Trump has given the public a way to dismiss their reservations about his various misbehaviors, and indeed to make them into positive. Real life is rough. It takes a rough guy like Trump to fix things and to win. Trump defines this as him getting criticized because air conditioned second guessers and hypocrites (like Hunter and Joe Biden) act all upset when eggs are broken to make the omelette. Trump gets that criticism because he is doing his job, shaking up the system everyone agrees is rigged, defending little guys like you against the elite oppressors.

It is populist political gold.

Check your privilege

Americans get to choose who they resent and blame for America's ills.

Sanders to Bloomberg: "Not going to fly!"

Right populism resents the influence of cultural elites and foreigners.

Left populism resents the influence of domestic financial elites and corporations.

Right populism

Viewers of Fox got the message of insult and the sweet feeling of righteous resentment that is the staple of right populism. Students interrupted the Harvard-Yale football football game on Saturday to protest in favor of climate action.

How dare they, the Fox guests asked?

On the show "Outnumbered" four female guests and one male were indignant. The group did not engage the issue of climate or the universities' investments in fossil fuels.  That was the message intended by the protesters. The message examined was one of insult. 

Fox: How dare those spoiled elitists!

They considered the students presumptuous. The students were privileged kids kicking sand in the faces of people they inconvenienced, showing disrespect to the public. The bottom third of the screen summarized their view: "Check your privilege."

This message fuels Fox and it works for Trump. His enemies are your enemies, including snobby limousine liberals, young and old, who treat them with contempt. 

Left populism

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are critics of corporations and billionaires, financial elites, not cultural ones. Michael Bloomberg is a target. Bloomberg is a classic example of urban, sophisticated, woke culture. He even banned the sale of large size soft drinks in New York City on health grounds, something no other Democrat endorses. He advocates gun registration. He apologizes for his former policy of stop-and-frisk, which profiled black and brown people for public humiliation.

Their attacks ignore that. Instead, they attack unjust financial privilege, demonstrated by his presuming to enter the campaign without fully paying his dues as a candidate.

Click: Politico

This week Sanders said, "I’m disgusted by the idea that Michael Bloomberg or any other billionaire thinks they can circumvent the political process and spend tens of millions of dollars to buy our elections."

Not just disagree. "Disgusted."

This week Elizabeth Warren said, "He only needs bags and bags of money … His view is that he doesn’t need people who knock on doors. He doesn’t need to get out and campaign with people … And if you get out and knock on 1,000 doors, he’ll just spend another $37 million to flood the airways. And that’s how he plans to buy a nomination in the Democratic Party.”

She attributes motive and attitude to Bloomberg, "his view," and it is one of contempt.

The real critique of left populism is not that the rich are snobs, or prejudiced, or un-woke, but that the rich are too powerful and they stack the deck in their favor. They criticize economic injustice and its corruption of the political system.  

But resentment over wealth disparity is not as emotionally salient as resentment over perceived snobbery. Americans are accustomed to some people having more money than others. Every American voter has more money than someone they know. So Warren and Sanders are working to make Bloomberg not just rich, but contemptuous. Look how he can just come in here like a steamroller, and not pay his dues talking to small groups.

The presumed cultural sneer embedded in a social hierarchy is more emotionally potent than is the disparity of power embedded in financial inequality. Most Americans would like to have ample money. Most don't hate the rich. People buy lottery tickets for a reason. 

Americans attribute neutral values to rich people having and spending their money. There is no neutral value to a perceived sneer.

Guest Post: Putin has something on Trump

Otherwise, it defies explanation.

     "People came to me and said it was Russia. President Putin said to me 'it's not Russia.' I will say this: I don't see any reason why it would be."

               Donald Trump in Helsinki.

We watched Donald Trump in Helsinki. He looked and sounded like the prisoner in a hostage video. 

We watch Trump risk impeachment and removal to try to blame Ukraine, not Russia, for hacking the 2016 election. We watch him openly side with Russia against the combined opinions of his own intelligence services, led by people he appointed. We watch Trump desperate to keep secret records of his real estate and tax transactions.

Weird facts need explanations. Herbert Rothschild offers one. Trump is not a free man, not really. Putin has something on Trump.

Rothschild is a retired professor and lifelong activist for civil rights and peace. He lives in Southern Oregon. The photo is from the Peace House Peacemaker Award ceremony, one of several areas of Rothchild's activism. (Photo by Allen Hallmark.) 

Guest Post by Herbert Rothschild

"Under Duress."

     "Below is a rewritten and updated version of my last weekly column in the Daily Tidings, which I titled, 'Say it: Trump is a Russian agent.'

Herb Rothschild 

     I wrote and submitted it two days before Dr. Fiona Hill, until very recently the Russia Director for the U.S. National Security Council, testified in an open hearing before the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment inquiry. Dr. Hill’s testimony reinforced my belief that Russian Premiere Vladimir Putin has a hold on our president, and that consequently Trump has been acting in Russia’s interest since he entered the White House.

     What I appreciated about Hill is that she hasn’t bought into the New Cold War attitude toward Russia. As she testified, “I do not think long-term conflict with Russia is either desirable or inevitable. I continue to believe that we need to seek ways of stabilizing our relationship with Moscow even as we counter their efforts to harm us.” That’s my position. As I asserted in the column, Russia’s hostility to us is almost entirely of our doing. In 1990, to induce Mikhail Gorbachev to begin talks that led to the reunification of Germany, the U.S. assured him that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.” We broke that pledge and ringed Russia with bases. I would have rejoiced had Trump acted openly and skillfully to reset the relationship. 

     But that’s not what Trump has done. Without explanation he did the following: Tried (unsuccessfully) to loosen the economic sanctions imposed by Congress on certain Russian oligarchs and their companies. Tried (unsuccessfully) to get the G-8 to readmit Russia. Insisted from the start that Russia didn’t interfere in the 2016 election. Regarding that last behavior, lately he’s been peddling what Hill called a “fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services” that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the disinformation campaign. And it’s come out in the impeachment inquiry that Trump is uninterested in supporting Ukraine’s effort to end the insurrection, supported militarily by Russia, in its eastern provinces.

          What finally led me to assert that Trump was acting as Putin’s agent was his abrupt decision, made without consultation, to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria. He ordered the withdrawal after Turkey’s president requested U.S. permission to assault the Syrian Kurds and occupy the borderlands. I couldn’t discern that Trump had anything to gain by betraying our only reliable ally in Syria. Indeed, it upset Congressional Republicans at the very time he most needs their unwavering support. For me the answer came when Russia became the main power broker in Syria and its troops occupied abandoned U.S. bases.

Putin’s hold on Trump probably originated in Trump’s reliance on Russian money to save his sinking real estate business. The best explanation for his fierce resistance to the release of his tax returns is that they may reveal his complicity in the crimes of corrupt oligarchs. 

     The only way to shake the loyalty of Trump’s base, and thus persuade Senate Republicans to convict him of the articles of impeachment, is to accuse him publicly of treason. The lack of proof beyond a reasonable doubt shouldn’t prevent prominent Democrats from doing so. In regard to such allegations, Trump has set a bar well below even probability." 

     

Cory Booker

"I happen to be the other Rhodes Scholar on this stage."

        Cory Booker, at the Democratic Debate

     "We can't beat Donald Trump by being like Donald Trump, a guy who divides us, pits us against each other, demeans and degrades. That's not who we are. That's not what we're called to do."

     Cory Booker, in New Hampshire Town Meeting

Worried about Pete Buttigieg? Cory Booker is available and ready.

I hear it from voters often. They are intrigued by Pete Buttigieg. They like that he is a Rhodes Scholar, that he is articulate and persuasive, that he talks about heartland values and social unity, that he wants to expand opportunities for the poor and middle class but doesn't seem too disruptive.

If only:

  *** He were 50 and not 37.  (Older would be better.)

  

   *** He held higher office, like mayor of a bigger place or US senator. (We want someone qualified and tested.)

   *** He had a better connection to black voters. (Democrats need a black turnout.)

   *** He weren't married to a guy. (Americans don't really care if maybe he is gay, but it might not be ready for a two guys dancing at the inaugural ball. Not yet.)

Cory Booker is running for president. 

He bridges a divide that Pete Buttigieg does not.

Both Buttigieg and Cory Booker fulfill the highest demands of the meritocratic social order. Buttigieg has credentialed himself with Harvard and Oxford, then McKinsey and military service. Booker with Stanford and Oxford, then Yale Law, then moving to black projects to do poverty law.

The meritocratic social order is a mixed-bag credential for each of them. On one hand, Americans value it. On the other hand, by having jumped through the highest of meritocracy hoops they signal, through body language of biography, that they participate in the winner-take-all social order that validates privilege. 

They are the biographical versions of billionaires--the top of the top. There are 32 Rhodes Scholars per year, one in 130,000 people in their generation. It is elite, therefore a rebuke of the Democratic populist impulse.

Pete Buttigieg is stuck with that. Cory Booker is not. Cory Booker had a middle class upbringing, the son of IBM employees, but his origin story speech describes his family's problem as a black family steered away from "white" neighborhoods. After finishing at Yale, Booker describes a move to Newark to move into black projects and work in poverty law. 

Bookers story is not one of escaping blackness, but embracing it.

Click: 90 second clip

His stump speech is about uplift. "WE RISE," he says. His stump speech is more about values and social unity than specific policy. Detractors mock it, saying he is the kumbaya candidate. It is a fair criticism.

Booker is the direct alternative to Biden, whose shares the sentiment of white working class struggle. Booker's is the sentiment of a nation reunited, red and yellow, black and white, all precious in the sight of God and the nation. Can't we all get along?

Buttigieg got to the wizz-kid niche before Booker did, and he plugs that category. Joe Biden plugs the bigger hole, the place in the Democratic voter mind where they want an experienced, liberal, reformer whose tasks include bringing the country together. 

The Hunter Biden business may well prove a fatal wound to Biden, but so far it is a slow bleed and Biden still plugs the hole. Booker remains near invisible.

In fifteen years, if Buttigieg were a senator from Indiana and had a home in a black neighborhood in Indianapolis, Buttigieg would be a stronger candidate. Booker is there now, if people noticed.

Alpha female. A sound we can trust

     "Her voice did not, after all, sound like Walter Cronkite’s. Hers was the precise, measured tone of a polite 61-year-old woman."

     Washington Post, on Fiona Hill and her testimony

Fiona Hill

Fiona Hill has the tone and manner of authority. It contrasts with Elizabeth Warren, which may be a problem for Warren.

An ongoing theme of this blog is that the marginal voters--the ones who actually decide elections--attach to personality and character, not to policies. 

On election day voters are choosing a leader they generally trust to protect their interests, doing so by getting a "feel" for the candidate.

(Not everyone, of course. There are strong partisans who vote party, and there are activists, especially in the primary, who, vote based on policy and infer from issue positions who the candidate "really" is.)

Americans got a sampler of some archetype characters among the impeachment witnesses. Most relevant to the presidential campaign of 2020 is that we saw a kind of feminine power in the form of witness Fiona Hill, an archetype alpha female.

Fiona Hill was decisive and unflappable. She had command of the facts and command of the moral high ground. She told the Republican committee members that they were tools of Russian policy and told them to stop it. She didn't shout it or pound her fist. She just said it.

Particularly interesting is the way she dealt with the issue of feminine emotions. The Republican attorney was doing the questioning. He had the prior testimony of Gordon Sondland, who had described her as a bundle of emotions, with Sondland calling himself the big strong shoulder for the little woman to lean on.

The Republican council thought he had her in a trap. Weren't you upset with Gordon Sondland, perhaps in near tears, perhaps mired in feminine emotion, and therefore perhaps a prejudiced, untrustworthy witness?  

It was ugly gender politics as played by Republicans in this Trump era. 

CLICK: 3 minutes. Alpha female. One very sorry attorney.

She leaned in. She didn't deny emotions. She coldly observed that she was indeed, unhappy and for the simple reason that she realized that he had a different assignment from hers. She had not understood that he was assigned a secret and improper political mission by the President, one of undermining American security interests with an ultimatum to assist in a corrupt act, while she had a very different one, that of carrying out American security interests. She owed him an apology, she said. She had not known he was carrying out the President's corrupt intention.

Pow. Watch the video.

The problem for Elizabeth Warren. Fiona Hill presents a different kind of female strength than does Elizabeth Warren, and the difference reveals a dilemma for a candidate attempting to show charisma, crowd appeal, and sincerity. Warren gets her crowds (while Klobuchar, Booker, Bennet,and others do not) through high energy and emotionally engaged presentations. She is excited. She wants to do things, change things and says it with arms waving. 

CLICK: 36 seconds. High intensity.

A great many people, men in particular, tell me they find Warren off-putting. (I do not.) 

There is something about female emotions that people find frightening. Every husband knows a woman's tears can dissolve steel. A sulking wife or a short answer from a girlfriend signals trouble. What is "strong" for a man is read as "excitable" for a woman. What is "resolute" for a man is "shrill" for a woman.

It isn't fair or just. 

I consider it an unfortunate reality in the world of women in the workplace and in the arena of seeking and exercising power. As Amy Klobuchar put it in the most recent Democratic debate, it is harder for women. They have to do more and be better. Who is your favorite woman president, she asked?

The Republican counsel attempted to trap Fiona Hill with the histrionic-female label. Her response was the perfect one. It was to coldly acknowledge she was unhappy, of course. Cold worked.

Warren is not "cold" in her emotional intensity. She is "hot." It makes her interesting--charismatic even--but it may, simultaneously, make her come across as less commanding, less emotionally stable. It is a dilemma. Damned if you do. Damned if you don't.

We have an emotionally volatile person in the White House already, and it wears poorly. Warren has the disadvantage of gender prejudice. It may wear even more poorly.

Warren is a smart woman, and she is already adjusting her policies in light of evolving information on Medicare For All. She may adjust and negotiate this dilemma, too. It is a problem a man would not have.

Athens came to grief. Trump, too.

Athens gave the neutral city of Melos the ultimatum: join us or die. 

Thucydides

Melos said: The gods will be offended by so unjust an act against a small state trying to be neutral. 

In twelve years Athens lost the war to Sparta. The smaller states like Melos argued that everyone in Athens should be executed.

Karma.

Trump's political operation gave Ukraine an ultimatum. Ukraine had new leadership, elected on an anti-corruption platform. It wanted to stay out of American domestic politics. Trump wanted them to announce, publicly, they were investigating Joe Biden. The effort got exposed as a political operation directly contrary to American policy. Career foreign service officers gave persuasive testimony.

No analogy is perfect, including this one between the Athenian ultimatum to the neutral island-state of Melos and the Trump ultimatum to Ukraine. But there are some parallels.

In the famous "Melian Dialog," historian Thucydides' report of the supposed back and forth between Athens and Melos, Athens famously argued that might made right, and that in the real world of states and warfare there were no rules. The strong does what it will and the weak suffer what they must. This is, in effect, the primary position being taken by GOP defenders of Trump, that the Trump ultimatum is no big deal because it is the way of the world. As Mulvaney put it, "get over it."

Melos said that the gods would be offended by the injustice and would favor them. Athens said the gods favor the strong. 

The loop widens

It is turning out the gods are angry. The ultimatum created an impeachable offense against Trump and it is pulling more and more people into the mess. Gordon Sondland said "everyone is in the loop" and the loop is growing. Lev Parnas, the indicted Ukrainian-American associate of Rudy Giuliani, wants to come to Congress to testify that Devin Nunes went to Vienna to meet with the prosecutor that American and European officials all agreed was corrupt, in an effort to get dirt on Biden. Nunes has explaining to do, since his public position had been that the investigation of Ukraine corruption had nothing to do with Biden. 

Lindsey Graham is exposed as a dutiful lickspittle, noteworthy for his loyalty rather than his integrity, a disappointment to many.

Joe Biden is pulled in. The sentimental and loving father ignored the obviously terrible optics of his son, Hunter, getting the job with Burisma. What was he thinking?

The country as a whole is a victim. In defending Trump--as Republicans must, politically--they are arguing in effect that they cannot see the evidence before their eyes, or that that see it and don't care. It is setting a new standard, that a president can do anything he or she wants, so long as 34 members of the Senate are OK with it. That is the new status quo.

The consequences in America are playing out now. In a century we will know more.

It took twelve years for Athens to come to grief by losing to Sparta, but when Sparta defeated them other city-states like Melos argued to Sparta that every citizen of Athens be executed. They were all guilty, they said.

Trump: "This was not personal. This was a corporate deal."

Sparta said no. Athens survived, and then fought with Sparta to defend against the Persians. Maybe Athenians deserved to die, but Sparta made the right choice. Athenian ships were necessary in the war against Persia.

Donald Trump may well survive politically just as he survived financially. He went bankrupt multiple times and lenders and bondholders took the losses. He did not. People "in the loop" may well go to prison, but Trump personally will not. Indeed, he may well come out smelling like a rose, just like he has multiple times before. He may well be re-elected in 2020. A great many Americans agree that politics is simply about power, not about justice or process.

Even so, I expect few schools will bear his name.

Athens to Melos: Submit or die..

"The strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must."

          Athens to the Melians, 416 BC. 

Trump's bullying of Ukraine is not new.  Athens did the same thing to the neutral island of Melos back in 416 BC.  

CLICK: "I stand for truth, justice, and the America way." She laughs.

Trump exercises power, and Republicans like him for it. It's a dog-eat-dog world.

Trump won with a message of ethno-nationalist right populism. America first.

Embedded in Trump's message was profound rejection of the foreign policy establishment that had made the USA the center of a network of international agreements to keep the peace after World War Two.  

Trump said we were saps. We should use our power to win. The naive, polite Obama-Hillary-UN lovers of the world don't understand the reality of a dog-eat-dog world, Trump said. Republican voters liked that spirit and they were well prepared to dislike Obama. They rejected Republican candidates who talked about bipartisanship and unity. 

Democrats talk about Trump's character, and think people should be offended by him. Some are. Many are not. Yes, he stiffed contractors. He cheated bondholders. He says not paying taxes is smart. He grabs pussies. He is shameless in exaggerations. He abandoned Kurdish allies. He turns on political friends who are no longer useful. 

It doesn't hurt him at all.

Now, with impeachment, Democrats are exercised that Trump used the power of his office to force Ukraine to be an unwilling participant in American domestic politics, on behalf of Trump's election, a classic case of abuse of power.

It still doesn't hurt him.

Trump on swing state polls: "I'm going through the roof"

Republican voters--and therefore Republican Senators--are not seeing Trump's behavior and thinking "scofflaw" and "reprobate." They are seeing a guy who fights in that dog-eat-dog world. What about Hillary's emails? What about Hunter Biden?  

The debate between justice and power is an ancient one discussed by students in ethics and policy classes for 2400 years.

In 416 BC the people of the small island of Melos were neutral in the war between Athens and Sparta, the Peloponnesian War. Athenian leaders brought a delegation to Melos, and told them to pay tribute to Athens and join forces with them, or Athens would totally destroy them. Decide immediately. 

Melian leaders said this was unjust. They were peaceful and meant nobody harm. This was profoundly unethical, they said. 

Athens said this wasn't about justice; it was about power.  We do this because we can and it is in our interest. "The strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must."

The Melian leaders decided it was dishonorable to submit to such injustice, so resisted. Athens overwhelmed them, killed all the adult men, sent the women and children into slavery, and then sent Athenian colonists to take over the empty island. They could and they did.

Ukraine had elected a president on a platform of anti-corruption. Their interest was to stay out of American domestic politics. Trump wanted something from them, their announcement that they were investigating Hunter Biden. It would be a talking point in the election. See! there is an investigation!

Sondland: Of course, quid pro quo.

Trump, via Rudy Giuliani, Gordon Sondland, Rick Perry, and others in the special team, the "Three Amigos," went to Ukraine and communicated the ultimatum. Announce an investigation or don't get the military aid you desperately need to hold off the Russians. A whistleblower exposed the gambit, so aid was given without the announcement.

Americans don't like to choose between justice and power. Americans like to think we combine justice and power, not choose between them. Superman is a good guy.

Democrats think Trump did an impeachable act. It was against the rules of foreign aid. Democrats think rules matter. They don't. Republicans don't care.

The Trump "so what?" argument works because this is really about power in a dirty world. Democrats do their thing, Republicans do their thing. Democrats hate Republicans and will remove Trump if they can, so Republicans will resist because they can. 

He won't be removed from office. 

Trump was just doing what the powerful did in 416 BC and what the powerful do now. Play to win in a world without rules.