Follow the money, goes the Watergate-era bromide. It still describes today’s Washington.
Large corporate donors are stepping away in droves from Donald Trump and the 147 Republicans who, on Jan. 6, opposed President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
Their decision not to accept the certified election results came only hours after a mob, egged on by President Trump himself, stormed the Capitol building and attempted unsuccessfully to …
Well, it’s hard to say what these wannabe insurrectionists hoped to achieve.
A few, armed with handcuffs and zip ties, appeared intent on taking lawmakers hostage or perhaps even executing them. Some seemed bent on mindless destruction. Many acted like misbehaving students bored with a tour, perching on the dais in the Senate chambers, putting their feet up on desks, taking selfies.
Now there are concerns about far-right insurgents within the Capitol Police and allegations by Democrats that some unnamed Republican members of Congress may have given tours to insurgents ahead of the riot. The fallout culminated in Wednesday’s historic — in all the wrong ways — second impeachment of President Trump.
All this after weeks of haranguing by Trump and others about widespread election fraud, unsubstantiated and unproven, with 60 losses or dismissals of cases in various courtrooms across the country.
Is it any wonder corporate America is abandoning those members of Congress who chose to stand on the wrong side of the election-certification issue? Especially because many seemed less intent on ferreting out alleged fraud than with securing the loyalty of Trump’s base for their own political futures?
Walmart’s political action committee and its millions of dollars are gone. Ditto American Express, Disney, General Electric, Mastercard and others.
While it would be wonderful if these corporate behemoths have grown a moral spine, it’s just as likely they are acting out of self-preservation, distancing themselves from negative press and guilt by association.
For some, it may be too little, too late. Walmart gave large sums of money to Donald Trump in 2019, more than it gave to any other individual candidate, possibly because his supporters’ demographics are so similar to the company’s. Executives were less concerned then with his multiple conflicts of interest, his racist dog whistles, and his environmental disdain.
Companies aren’t the only ones following the money. It’s not too much of a stretch to suppose at least a few of the ten House Republicans who voted along with Democrats to impeach the president were thinking of their own political fortunes — in the literal sense — as the Trump brand becomes more tarnished.
Ohio’s own Rep. Jim Jordan insists this second impeachment is a byproduct of so-called “cancel culture.” Let’s be honest: Trump richly deserves to be cancelled. He has earned his lifetime block on Twitter, his indefinite ban on Facebook, and any other moves to mute his ongoing lies and provocations.
But the reality is that Trump is not being cancelled, not now or in the future.
While the First Amendment does not guarantee him — or anybody — the right to a vast audience of Twitter followers or a YouTube channel to post videos that repeat the same baseless conspiracies, the president still has many options.
For a few more days at least, he can call a news conference whenever he wants. After next Wednesday, he can feel free to hold rallies, likely to substantial, adoring crowds.
Companies, likewise, have the freedom to take their money elsewhere, especially when customers urge them to support candidates who, at the very least, have not displayed a flagrant disregard for the rule of law and who respect the sanctity of our election system. Consumers can use their First Amendment rights to pressure these companies to make the right call.
And our money can follow the businesses that do.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Saturday, January 16, 2021
What would parallel Trump do?
It didn’t have to be this way.
Instead of exiting under a tsunami of violence and a flurry of lies, Donald Trump could have left office with a semblance of dignity.
In some alternate reality, maybe he did.
In a parallel universe, vibrating at a frequency just different enough to be invisible to us, President Trump quickly exhausted any legal remedies for contesting November’s election, as was his right. But once it became obvious no evidence of widespread fraud existed, he conceded with grace, commended his followers for damming a blue wave down the ballot, and maybe promised to return in four years.
He instructed his people to smooth the way for a new administration. Subsequently, he turned his full attention to the virus ravaging our nation and world.
This other Trump went to the American people and, with an eye roll, noted how guidance in the early days of the pandemic was contradictory and confusing. There was so much we didn’t know. However, he said masks — as imperfect as they are — are now endorsed by the vast majority of epidemiologists and other medical professionals to decrease viral transmission.
He then urged Americans to stop politicizing the practice and to embrace it for the duration. He put on a mask himself whenever he was in public.
Instead of exiting under a tsunami of violence and a flurry of lies, Donald Trump could have left office with a semblance of dignity.
In some alternate reality, maybe he did.
In a parallel universe, vibrating at a frequency just different enough to be invisible to us, President Trump quickly exhausted any legal remedies for contesting November’s election, as was his right. But once it became obvious no evidence of widespread fraud existed, he conceded with grace, commended his followers for damming a blue wave down the ballot, and maybe promised to return in four years.
He instructed his people to smooth the way for a new administration. Subsequently, he turned his full attention to the virus ravaging our nation and world.
This other Trump went to the American people and, with an eye roll, noted how guidance in the early days of the pandemic was contradictory and confusing. There was so much we didn’t know. However, he said masks — as imperfect as they are — are now endorsed by the vast majority of epidemiologists and other medical professionals to decrease viral transmission.
He then urged Americans to stop politicizing the practice and to embrace it for the duration. He put on a mask himself whenever he was in public.
Then, this counter-Trump in a different universe worked with Congress to come up with a second stimulus plan to address the economic peril of so many Americans. He instructed his people to collaborate with states to ensure the incredible gift of Operation Warp Speed — a vaccine far faster than many pundits predicted — would just as quickly find its way into the arms of Americans.
This parallel Trump is not so different from our own president in temperament. He still picks fights with the media. He still crows about his accomplishments — hundreds of judicial appointments across all levels, including three Supreme Court justices whose conservative leanings will impact the court for decades; the aforementioned Operation Warp Speed; and a resurgence of conservatism in America.
(Hey, just because many people don’t agree with these accomplishments — or that Trump has a right to take credit for some or all — doesn’t make them less valid.)
Yeah, people like the alternate-reality me would still criticize him, calling any about-face an example of too little, too late, especially when we look at the staggering loss of life under this president, much of it preventable if he had listened more to science and less to sycophants.
But at least it would have been something, a soothing coda to a four-year symphony of discord.
Instead, in this reality, President Trump has been obsessed with overturning the will of the people, amplifying conspiracy theories, pondering military intervention in the election, making the infamous phone call to Georgia’s secretary of state, and helping to thwart his own party’s chance to retain control of the Senate.
And, of course, needling his followers on Wednesday to march on the Capitol.
Subsequently, these deluded acolytes invaded the building, disrupted a completely ceremonial proceeding, forced legislators into hiding, and sacrificed their own, all of it initiated by Trump himself.
It’s hard to point to a definitive nadir of Trump’s presidency, as the man keeps finding creative ways to set the bar lower, but Wednesday has to be it.
In the end, this reality’s Trump has been revealed as the malignant narcissist so many of us feared, a petty grifter Mitch McConnell and many other Republicans hoped to control as a useful fool, but who came far closer to destroying democracy than anybody ever dreamed.
Trump may soon be gone, and if there were any justice in the system, his removal would come from a second impeachment and a final walk of shame following a conviction in the Senate.
Regardless, his fetid legacy will live on in the distrust of democracy he leaves behind, the undeserved pall of illegitimacy he casts on his successor, and the pain and suffering he did nothing to alleviate.
This is our reality, more’s the pity.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
This parallel Trump is not so different from our own president in temperament. He still picks fights with the media. He still crows about his accomplishments — hundreds of judicial appointments across all levels, including three Supreme Court justices whose conservative leanings will impact the court for decades; the aforementioned Operation Warp Speed; and a resurgence of conservatism in America.
(Hey, just because many people don’t agree with these accomplishments — or that Trump has a right to take credit for some or all — doesn’t make them less valid.)
Yeah, people like the alternate-reality me would still criticize him, calling any about-face an example of too little, too late, especially when we look at the staggering loss of life under this president, much of it preventable if he had listened more to science and less to sycophants.
But at least it would have been something, a soothing coda to a four-year symphony of discord.
Instead, in this reality, President Trump has been obsessed with overturning the will of the people, amplifying conspiracy theories, pondering military intervention in the election, making the infamous phone call to Georgia’s secretary of state, and helping to thwart his own party’s chance to retain control of the Senate.
And, of course, needling his followers on Wednesday to march on the Capitol.
Subsequently, these deluded acolytes invaded the building, disrupted a completely ceremonial proceeding, forced legislators into hiding, and sacrificed their own, all of it initiated by Trump himself.
It’s hard to point to a definitive nadir of Trump’s presidency, as the man keeps finding creative ways to set the bar lower, but Wednesday has to be it.
In the end, this reality’s Trump has been revealed as the malignant narcissist so many of us feared, a petty grifter Mitch McConnell and many other Republicans hoped to control as a useful fool, but who came far closer to destroying democracy than anybody ever dreamed.
Trump may soon be gone, and if there were any justice in the system, his removal would come from a second impeachment and a final walk of shame following a conviction in the Senate.
Regardless, his fetid legacy will live on in the distrust of democracy he leaves behind, the undeserved pall of illegitimacy he casts on his successor, and the pain and suffering he did nothing to alleviate.
This is our reality, more’s the pity.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Monday, January 4, 2021
Celebrate diversity through 'disruption'
The Wall Street Journal’s children’s books columnist went on a tear last month.
Meghan Cox Gurdon wrote a piece excoriating Disrupt Texts, an online movement by teachers to introduce more diversity into reading curriculums. Gurdon described a situation where educators are gleefully shredding traditional reading lists, replacing classic authors with contemporary ones with alleged axes to grind about issues like sexism and racism.
The reality is far different, however.
Disrupt Texts is merely the latest in a long series of conversations about what should or should not be considered “canon” in schools. Hang around English educators for any length of time and you’re likely to hear them decry the “dead white guys” (and a select few dead white gals) whose work is often elevated to Olympian — or at least Mount Rushmore-ian — heights.
You can practically rattle off these writers’ names in your sleep: Homer, Shakespeare, Poe, Hawthorne, Twain, Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Steinbeck, Hemingway and maybe Harper Lee, if only because “To Kill a Mockingbird” is a sentimental favorite of many teachers and parents, probably because it was read at a formative time in their lives.
A big question about canonical creators in any undertaking — literature, music, interpretive macramé — is, “Who sez?” In other words, who decides these particular movers and shakers are representative? In the case of literature, at least, the answer has traditionally been other now-dead white guys, who selected from among works they knew, based on a culture that for centuries has foregrounded white males.
This being the case, movements like Disrupt Texts, which promote BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) voices, are welcome. Not to displace the “canon,” but to broaden it, to help ensure the reading lists children and young adults encounter mirror the diversity of people and perspectives they see in the world around them.
Of course, traditional authors can still be used to introduce modern social issues. Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” remains a poignant examination of racism, and Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” is practically a case study in holier-than-thou hypocrisy.
But shouldn’t the curriculum be flexible enough to include both Homer and something like Tomi Adeyemi’s “Children of Blood and Bone,” which incorporates West African mythology? Or Edgar Allan Poe’s plague-ridden “Masque of the Red Death” and Ling Ma’s “Severance,” which apparently plays with the same tropes? (Both modern authors are on my growing to-read list.)
I’m not saying either Adeyemi or Ma will still be read in fifty or one hundred years (nor am I saying they won’t), which is part of the traditionalist argument for a canon, that it provides a sturdy bedrock of shared literary experiences. Well, this and the more insidious goal of some conservatives to preserve a European-American-centric monopoly on literature. But when I think back to some of the books I read in school, I recall a blend of contemporary and classic, the former used as bait to get us to read the latter.
Which is not to insinuate the role of BIPOC authors is to lure children back to Shakespeare. Reading these contemporary authors is a laudable end in itself and likely will do more to create lifelong readers than any well-intentioned but misguided attempts to keep shoving “To Kill a Mockingbird” down students’ throats.
And while I find the Disrupt Texts website to be a little too chummy with Penguin Random House, which collaborated with the movement to produce reading guides for — surprise! — the publisher’s YA titles, I can’t fault the intent of the founders.
What Disrupt Texts seeks to do, it appears to me, is not to ban older works, but to make the curriculum more responsive to today’s readers. It also attempts to make older educators, like me, aware of the explosion in contemporary voices, the multiplicity of titles available and the need to examine critically our own attitudes and beliefs about certain social issues.
All of which sounds like something the WSJ’s children’s books columnist would want to celebrate, not criticize.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Meghan Cox Gurdon wrote a piece excoriating Disrupt Texts, an online movement by teachers to introduce more diversity into reading curriculums. Gurdon described a situation where educators are gleefully shredding traditional reading lists, replacing classic authors with contemporary ones with alleged axes to grind about issues like sexism and racism.
The reality is far different, however.
Disrupt Texts is merely the latest in a long series of conversations about what should or should not be considered “canon” in schools. Hang around English educators for any length of time and you’re likely to hear them decry the “dead white guys” (and a select few dead white gals) whose work is often elevated to Olympian — or at least Mount Rushmore-ian — heights.
You can practically rattle off these writers’ names in your sleep: Homer, Shakespeare, Poe, Hawthorne, Twain, Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Steinbeck, Hemingway and maybe Harper Lee, if only because “To Kill a Mockingbird” is a sentimental favorite of many teachers and parents, probably because it was read at a formative time in their lives.
A big question about canonical creators in any undertaking — literature, music, interpretive macramé — is, “Who sez?” In other words, who decides these particular movers and shakers are representative? In the case of literature, at least, the answer has traditionally been other now-dead white guys, who selected from among works they knew, based on a culture that for centuries has foregrounded white males.
This being the case, movements like Disrupt Texts, which promote BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) voices, are welcome. Not to displace the “canon,” but to broaden it, to help ensure the reading lists children and young adults encounter mirror the diversity of people and perspectives they see in the world around them.
Of course, traditional authors can still be used to introduce modern social issues. Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” remains a poignant examination of racism, and Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” is practically a case study in holier-than-thou hypocrisy.
But shouldn’t the curriculum be flexible enough to include both Homer and something like Tomi Adeyemi’s “Children of Blood and Bone,” which incorporates West African mythology? Or Edgar Allan Poe’s plague-ridden “Masque of the Red Death” and Ling Ma’s “Severance,” which apparently plays with the same tropes? (Both modern authors are on my growing to-read list.)
I’m not saying either Adeyemi or Ma will still be read in fifty or one hundred years (nor am I saying they won’t), which is part of the traditionalist argument for a canon, that it provides a sturdy bedrock of shared literary experiences. Well, this and the more insidious goal of some conservatives to preserve a European-American-centric monopoly on literature. But when I think back to some of the books I read in school, I recall a blend of contemporary and classic, the former used as bait to get us to read the latter.
Which is not to insinuate the role of BIPOC authors is to lure children back to Shakespeare. Reading these contemporary authors is a laudable end in itself and likely will do more to create lifelong readers than any well-intentioned but misguided attempts to keep shoving “To Kill a Mockingbird” down students’ throats.
And while I find the Disrupt Texts website to be a little too chummy with Penguin Random House, which collaborated with the movement to produce reading guides for — surprise! — the publisher’s YA titles, I can’t fault the intent of the founders.
What Disrupt Texts seeks to do, it appears to me, is not to ban older works, but to make the curriculum more responsive to today’s readers. It also attempts to make older educators, like me, aware of the explosion in contemporary voices, the multiplicity of titles available and the need to examine critically our own attitudes and beliefs about certain social issues.
All of which sounds like something the WSJ’s children’s books columnist would want to celebrate, not criticize.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
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