Trump at Sea

I admit this is me being nit-picky, but...here we go.   

To explain why emergency aid has been seen as arriving more slowly to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria than it did to the similarly affected areas of Texas and Florida, Trump said this: 

“It’s an island, sitting in the middle of the ocean. And it’s a big ocean. It’s a very big ocean.” 

Now it must be said, Trump is correct, at least in his first three words. Being an island means Puerto Rico is much harder to reach. The logistics are completely different from sending aid to Houston. 

But rather than just stating this simple fact, Trump couldn’t resist adding a rhetorical flourish that is so characteristic of him: unnecessary exaggeration, hyperbole that puts Trump in the best possible light, or explains away his shortcomings. It’s something I find so infuriating about him. 

Puerto Rico is not in the middle of the ocean. It’s not Bora Bora. It’s about 1000 miles from Mar-a-Lago, about the same distance as between Mar-a-Lago and Manhattan, a distance I’m sure Trump can easily grasp. Trump probably really does understand Puerto Rico is in America’s backyard, but it suits him to downplay that fact. 

By informing the American public how incredibly remote Puerto Rico supposedly is (“I can tell you, it’s remote, so remote. You won’t believe how remote it is. Nobody knows how the hell to even get there. Believe me. It’s so far away that everyone speaks Spanish!”), Trump hopes to get a pass for making Puerto Ricans wait so long for some presidential attention. 

Of course, this is Trump's go-to tactic of distorting facts (or making them up out of whole cloth) to fit a narrative in some way positive to himself. Some may call it "being disingenuous". Others may call it lying. He does it all the time. 

If Trump thinks exaggerating the “remoteness” of Puerto Rico lets him off the hook (somewhat) for a slow relief effort, God help the folks in Hawaii (2300 miles from the US mainland) if they ever need help. Or consider poor Guam, now in the nuclear crosshairs of Kim Jong-un. That tiny US territory really does sit in the middle of a very big ocean, 5500 miles from the West Coast (though a bit closer to Alaska). 

In the world according to Trump, those places might as well be on Mars.

Allegiance

Funny what you do and don’t remember from your childhood.

As someone who grew up in Georgia in the 1960s, I have no concrete memory of ever pledging allegiance to the American flag in school. Maybe we did it every day, and did it so routinely and mechanically that there was nothing memorable about doing it. 

(In the same vein, I don’t remember putting on my pants every morning before school – except the one morning when there was a scorpion in my jeans, something which I remember very well indeed – yet, I’m confident I never went to school pantsless. Despite all those dreams.)

It makes me wonder whether we actually ever did recite the pledge, as many conservative friends so often fondly recollect doing, if their Facebook comments are to be believed. I really do wonder.

What I do remember very plainly from those days was the glorification of a different flag.

Regularly, we students at Southwestern Elementary would gather in the cafeteria to watch educational films. These are the kinds of seriously earnest films that many might be considered hokey today. I remember only a couple.

One was “A Desk for Billie”, a story about a bright, young girl named Billie from a migrant family (in this case a family of Depression-era agricultural workers constantly on the move from place to place across the country) and how a sympathetic teacher helped her adjust to yet another new school and unfamiliar classmates. At least, that’s how I remember it. Another film was about a man who failed to heed his own wise and fatherly advice to his children about safe driving habits and got himself killed.

In any case, every one of these edifying little movies we watched began with a few seconds giving credit to the Georgia Department of Education for providing the film. These few seconds consisted of the image of the state flag of Georgia suddenly filling the screen, while the blackface minstrel tune “Dixie” blared from the speakers.

It is one thing I clearly remember from my school days. It’s as if it was seared into my brain. Which, of course, was the purpose. Keep in mind that, at the time, the Georgia state flag mostly consisted of the Confederate battle flag, a favorite symbol, then as now, among white supremacist groups.

That symbol had been added to the state flag just a few years before I started school, during a time of increased agitation over segregation (the American version of apartheid). The US government was in the process of trying to end segregation. The Georgia government was trying to keep it intact and resented any interference from Washington in the matter.

By prominently exposing (you might say “subjecting”) school kids to the new, segregationist flag – all to the accompanist of “Dixie” – the state government no doubt hoped to drive home a certain message. And it was not that “all men are created equal”. 

The fact that I don’t remember a morning ritual of pledging allegiance to the American flag, but can still vividly recall the propagandization of a symbol of racism makes me wonder:  where exactly were we impressible kids being taught our allegiance should lie. 

Old MacDonald Had a Farm

This seems like a case of counting your chickens before they hatch.  

Donald Trump has been making a lot of hay (farming metaphor #2) over the fact that the Q2 GDP growth was recently revised up to 3.0% (from 2.6%). He, and sycophants like Sean Hannity, go on and on and on about how Obama was the only president never to reach a GDP increase of that level.  

Of course, he’s trying to make an apples and oranges comparison here (fruit metaphor, so kinda farming-related). What Trump is referring to is the fact that, during the Obama years, GDP growth never rose above 2.9%. This is true. Growth for a full calendar never reached 3% under Obama. But that hasn’t happened under Trump either. Not yet. If it ever does.  

But that’s talking about annual GDP growth. What Trump has presided over is 3% GDP growth in a single quarter. Obama did the same in eight different quarters during his two terms. In fact, in Q3 2015 GDP grew by 4.6%, a much bigger number than 3.0%.  

Trump may well see the kind of growth numbers he’s been promising – though somehow lately it seems he’s forgotten how during the campaign he swore he’d conjure up a GDP growth of FOUR percent, not a measly three percent.  

Anyway, seems to me that excessive crowing (barnyard fowl metaphor) about one discrete quarter of 3% growth involves a risk of backfiring. What goes up can come down. 

After the unemployment rate for May was announced (4.3%), Trump bragged about how it was the lowest jobless rate in 16 years and was unexpectedly robust. (Keep in mind that while Obama was president, Trump claimed such statistics were “fake”.) The next month, the rate ticked back up to 4.4%.  What comes down can also go up. 

Rushing to take credit for good outcomes you have dubious influence over can come back to bite you on the ass (the tender body part, not the farmer’s beast of burden), if those outcomes start to sour further down the road.  On the other hand, if that happens maybe you can just start shoveling more horseshit – which, as we all know, is one chore Farmer Don excels at.

Harvey, Irma and the GOP

Irma has now developed into a category 5 hurricane and is almost certainly going to hit somewhere in the US. Hopefully, it will weaken before it gets there and won't be as devastating as Harvey was for Houston. Still, it's a worrisome weather event, which brings to mind a couple of things.  

Republicans basically have one of three approaches to climate change.  

1. It's not real. Trump himself said it was a Chinese hoax. Ergo, no need to reduce carbon emissions.  

2. It's real, but it's not man-made. In other words, we puny humans can't do anything about it. Again, no need to reduce carbon emissions.  

3. It's real, and it may be (partly) caused by human activity, but trying to reduce carbon emissions would hurt the American economy. It's better to mitigate the effects of climate change. Be re-active, not pro-active. Don't worry if it breaks -- just pay for it later.  

If increase levels of carbon start to cause more extreme weather and rising sea levels, so the GOP would say, it's better for the economy to build things like sea walls (make the hurricanes pay for it!) to protect coastal cities.  

Now, with Harvey and maybe with Irma we may start to see what that third approach looks like in practice.  

The recovery from Harvey is estimated to cost taxpayers at least $150 billion, beyond the human costs, which are heartbreaking in themselves. That's not even talking about the cost of building "mitigation" infrastructure against future storms and rising sea levels (though that could be a good works program -- put the 4% of unemployed Americans to work!).  

In any case, this hurricane season may unfortunately give Republicans a chance to put their money where their mouth is regarding climate change.  

I'm sure they'll be happy to spend the money.  

The Limitation of Statues

All the crazy news Donald Trump has generated over the past year or so has, until recently, overshadowed a long-simmering political issue that is extremely topical, though it has stayed a bit under the radar. It only occasionally broke the surface of my Twitter feed. And it got practically no media attention outside the States. Now, that’s all changed.

This is the controversy over the removal of Confederate statues. A controversy that was already heated this spring, but is now red-hot. Even before the tragedy in Charlottesville this past weekend, there was the potential back in May for violence in New Orleans -- that torpid city on the languid Mississippi I have not visited now for many years -- all because of the removal of four public statues or monuments.

I think folks in Finland would be shocked to hear that the removal of these statues had to be carried out mostly at night, by workmen wearing bullet-proof vests and face coverings to hide their identities. There were justifiable concerns that someone would shoot them, so irrational was the passion swirling around this simple public-works task, a fact that reveals some deep divisions in America, as we saw this week.

The monuments that the city of New Orleans decided to remove were of three men: Jefferson Davis (a senator from Mississippi before becoming the president of the Confederate States of America), PGT Beauregard (a native of Louisiana and prominent general in the Confederate Army), and Robert E. Lee (the Virginian who led the army which eventually went down in ignominious defeat). In addition, there was a monument honoring an 1874 uprising by white supremacist paramilitaries called “The White League”, in which they overpowered the New Orleans police force and replaced the Governor of Louisiana for three days before the US Army took control. You can see why residents of NOLA, many of whom are black, might find such a monument in poor taste.

Robert E. Lee coming down in New Orleans.
(Photo: Infrogmation of New Orleans) 

You might understand New Orleans erecting a statue to native son Beauregard, but the only direct connection to Jefferson and Lee that I can see is that they were leading figures in the CSA. In other words, it’s a celebration of the fact that Louisiana was once part of a treasonous group of states that wanted to ensure their citizens continued to enjoy the freedom to own other human beings.

Is that something to celebrate? Most Americans today would (I hope) think not. At least, it's now being debated. Vigorously. 

The murder of nine black worshipers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015 reopened an earlier debate about whether the Confederate Battle Flag, used by the KKK as a symbol of hate for decades, should be part of official government iconography. The anti-flag forces won that issue in South Carolina, and the flag came down from the state capitol.

That may have prompted people to begin rethinking the issue of the hundreds of CSA monuments throughout the South. Personally, I would be fine with most being removed -- that is, unless they can be contextualized to explain their dismal role in the Jim Crow South and the perpetuation of the Lost Cause myth that was created to whitewash a disgraceful chapter of US history. Sadly, we now have someone, a young woman Heather Heyer, dying in part because a faction, and not a small one, of Southerners still cling stubbornly to that myth.

And it may only get worse. I’ve gotten the feeling that for many hard core “Southern traditionalists” in Georgia the flash point is Stone Mountain. 

Huge rock carvings on the granite side of that gigantic dome of exposed stone depict Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, all gallantly on horseback. None of these men were from Georgia, so their glorification is only meant to commemorate the traitorous CSA. Stone Mountain was also the birthplace of the second coming of the Klu Klux Klan, giving the place a special resonance with white supremacists.

I’m sure no one is seriously thinking of erasing the carvings from the side of Stone Mountain, but just the mention of the idea evokes some strong reactions from folks. You get the sense that some people would take up arms to prevent any such thing from happening, and that is scary.

It just goes to show the extraordinary meaning people often attach to representative figures in bronze or stone. Throughout history someone has erected public artworks to honor something or someone, and throughout history – at turning points in history, in fact -- someone else has chosen to bring those artworks down, if given the chance.

We probably all remember the image of Saddam Hussein’s 12-meter statue being pulled down by gleeful Iraqis in 2003 -- with the help of a US Marine armored vehicle. It was a mark of defiance and hatred toward a brutal dictator. After the Soviet Union fell, so too did many statues of Lenin as a repudiation of Communism. There must be something gratifying in that act of vandalism, though I must say that pulling down the confederate statue in Durham, North Carolina, this week was stupid, as mob actions often are.

The iconic statue toppling of our age.

Or course, not everyone welcomes such toppling of icons (there’s a word for it, “iconoclasm”), as we see with the protests over the CSA monuments. Sometimes, even simply relocating statues, no matter how carefully, can arouse dangerous passions.

A decade ago, the government of our neighbor Estonia decided to move a Soviet-era statue from the center of the capital Tallinn to a military cemetery a kilometer away. It was clearly a political move, motivated by the Estonians' long-held view of “The Bronze Soldier” as a symbol of Soviet occupation. The county's sizable Russian-speaking minority saw it differently, and as plans for the relocation went forward protests and three nights of rioting and looting ensued, resulting in one death. At the same time, Estonia came under an unprecedented cyber attack by foreign hackers (sound familiar?). Hopefully, by now everyone has come to terms with the soldier’s new home.

As far as I know, no such angry topplings have occurred in Finland. Okay, statue “topping” is practiced annually here -- when an oversized student hat is placed on the head of Helsinki’s lovely Havis Amanda statue as part of May Day celebrations. But that is a wholly different thing. 

There was a bit of ill-feelings when some perhaps overly patriotic Finns fretted that the new (“new” in 1998) Kiasma art museum would overshadow the nearby equestrian statue of Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, Finland’s George Washington in a sense.

Otherwise, the prominent statue of Alexander II* (monarch of Finland when it belonged to the Russian Empire) and the country’s two statues of Lenin have remained unmolested, as far as I know. 

I'd like to think of that as a sign that Finland has healed the wounds of its past much better than the Old South is healing its own -- even after 150 years.

Havis Amanda wearing a white cap on May Day, 2002.

* corrected from original