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Showing posts with label Conservatives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Conservatives. Show all posts

Monday, August 24, 2020

The Case to Fire Donald Trump

                                                                (Image: YellowHammer.com)

 “Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.”
-Theodore Roosevelt

In mid-March, America and South Korea had the same number of Covid-19 deaths; around 90. Now, in late August, South Korea had a total of 306 deaths, while America has crossed 170,000 deaths. It is true that United States has a larger population, but the fact is that with 6 times the population of South Korea our Covid-19 deaths are more than 15 times higher.

Nobody can blame Donald Trump for Covid-19, or for being caught flat-footed like every other global leader. Even President Moon Jae of Korea admitted that his government had a poor early response and apologised to Koreans, but then swung into action and did what was necessary to save lives. That America continues to have 40,000+ new cases and around 500 deaths every day, six months into this crisis, can only be attributed to a failure of leadership.

In February this year, I put Mr. Trump’s chances of re-election at 95% because the economy was strong. We may never settle the argument on whether Mr. Trump’s policies led to the last few years of economic expansion, low unemployment and historic wage growth or if they were a result of President Obama’s policies, but we cannot deny Mr. Trump credit for not messing it up.

However, the economic picture now is starkly different from February of this year. In the second quarter US GDP shrank 32.9% on an annualized basis, making it the worst contraction since record-keeping began in 1947. The economy is in freefall, small businesses are shuttering in record numbers and we are facing the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression.

I hold no grudge against people who voted for Mr. Trump and agree that Hillary Clinton was a horrible alternative. The Democratic Party in 2016 offered no vision for Americans hurting from the job loss and chronic unemployment which contributed to the opioid epidemic that devastated working class families across the country.

I have also spent time listening to people who felt that they needed to vote for Mr. Trump in 2016. Many independent voters say they liked the fact that he was unscripted and did not sound like every other Stepford politician, even though none liked his lack of civility. This is also why many two-time Obama voters held their nose and voted for Trump in swing states. The fact remains that he was the only politician who spoke to Americans feeling forgotten by both parties.  It is a group Mrs. Clinton chose to ignore. Many of these voters were tired of out-of-touch political elites in both parties, and they decided that Mr. Trump was a risk worth taking. In 2016 Mr. Trump was an unknown quantity in politics, albeit a larger than life reality TV personality, but three years on he has a track record in Washington.

Democrats too have shown a lack of maturity. Many prominent Democrats made it clear after their election defeat that they were going to do everything in their power remove President Trump from office. Since then the opposition has cried wolf numerous times, claiming Mr. Trump was about to start a nuclear war with North Korea and then a conventional one with Iran. Many Democrats have spent much energy looking for reasons to impeach him.

I am not excusing Mr. Trump’s behaviour or actions. I expected the opposition to spend less time expressing outrage at every tweet, acting like the moral police and focus instead on holding the President accountable for tangible actions that have been damaging to Americans. It does not help that Democrats operate in a perpetual state of hysteria, often coming across more like brats, kicking and screaming every time something does not go their way - for instance, the Speaker of the House, ripping up the president’s State of the Union speech, on live TV.

I am a liberal but one who has always called things like I see them, on both sides. We are now in the midst of a global crisis of the magnitude we have not seen since WWII. It no longer matters if you hate Democrats or love President Trump; this election is not about politics as usual. Our livelihoods, the lives of your family, my neighbours and the future of our children are at stake.

Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Oman and Singapore have contained the virus and re-opened their economies. America is the wealthiest nation on earth. We have the foremost scientific minds, coupled with access to unrivaled technology and resources. Why have we failed to contain the virus, continuing to see the highest cases and deaths in the world?

As long as America relies on a patchwork of responses cobbled together at the state level, we lose. As long as states are forced to bid against each other for PPE and test kits, we lose. As long as we travel across state lines and refuse to obey quarantine rules, we lose. As long as we continue to flout the advice of health experts, we lose. The longer we allow this virus to run rampant through our divisions, the longer our children suffer social isolation, the more likely they are to fall behind academically in ways that will negatively impact them for life.

We need one plan, not fifty, along with a national Covid task force that ensures medical equipment, testing kits, lab capacity, medical personnel and other resources are deployed when and where they are needed. This is the only way to contain the spread until we have a vaccine; which is still 18-24 months away. We also need continuous monitoring to catch and stop new outbreaks; we know these will continue to occur until there is herd immunity.

President Trump has shown that he is incapable of doing the two things that will help us navigate this crisis: listen to experts and develop a cohesive national plan.

Any president, who abhors details, believes he is smarter than experts and claims that this virus will simply “disappear”, is either not competent or worse, does not care enough to lead us. Waiting for a vaccine is also not an option. The fastest the world has developed a stable vaccine is in four years. Even the most optimistic scenarios suggesting vaccine availability early next year do not consider the additional time it will take to test safety and then to immunise at least 80% of our population to achieve herd immunity.

Consider that the majority of small businesses have less than one month of cash reserves on hand. Small businesses are not just the fabric of our local communities but they form the heart of America’s economic engine. They account for almost 50% of jobs in the private sector, and for the majority of job creation in the country. Some estimates say that up to 43% will close permanently if we are unable to help them survive the next few months.

The knock-on effect of small business closures will devastate America from county to coast. If we fail to save them, and allow the most apocalyptic predictions to occur, we will look back on 2020 as a good year. The unemployment, homelessness and food insecurity that will result from this failure will make the Great Depression seem like a minor hardship. We can prevent and ensure businesses stay open, but this is not possible as long as we remain in a perpetual state of crisis that forces them to keep shutting every few weeks due to preventable local surges.

We can all agree that Joe Biden does not light a zoom on fire, and he even ambles into a room. If he wins, he will enter office at the age that Ronald Regan left, and at 78 years will become our oldest president. But few people have a deeper understanding of the mechanics of our government, or experience working with both sides of the aisle to get things done. Now more than ever we need to find bi-partisan compromise that leads to action.

The stalemate in Congress is not an option at a time when our economy is falling off a cliff. Millions of Americans are facing the prospect of long-term unemployment, eviction from their homes and are unable to feed their families. President Trump has had ample time to show us his legendary deal making abilities and has failed to do so. The businessman who declared bankruptcy six times, frankly, seems bankrupt on ideas for how to deal with this crisis.

 Mr. Biden was the man responsible for cajoling Republican votes to pass the 2009 Recovery Act, and was entrusted by President Obama to supervise its implementation. Those who fear the Bernie wing of the party’s undue influence in a Biden administration should keep in mind that Mr. Biden is not a progressive, and failed all their inane purity tests. He recently also shut out the progressive wing of the party during the DNC convention, and has re-iterated this with his moderate VP pick of Kamala Harris. Further, Mr. Biden is wise enough to understand that there is no question of implementing ambitious plans like the Green New Deal or an overhaul of our healthcare system, if there is no US economy to overhaul. Joe Biden understands that now is not time for revolution. Right now our country needs steady, sturdy and consistent.

Mr. Biden does not have a fancy Ivy League degree. He spent thirty years commuting by local train, was a single father and has suffered tremendous personal loss. He genuinely seems to empathise with the plight of average Americans in ways that his party’s elite cannot, and that President Trump is incapable of. Politicians can fake almost everything but not empathy. So while he may not be anybody’s ideal candidate, no rational person can deny that even with his perceived limitations and human faults, he is far better suited to navigate this health and economic crisis than the incumbent in the Oval Office. At least he cares.

Americans have always managed to rise above political differences and come together to defeat a common enemy. Even politicians cross party lines to do the right thing for the country. President Johnson, a Democrat, counted on support from senate Republicans to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act, after Democrats tried to filibuster and block its passage. Republicans joined Democrats to draft articles of impeachment against President Nixon. Al Gore disagreed with the Supreme Court verdict but still conceded to George W. Bush, “for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy.” In past elections too we have seen Americans cross party lines, like the Reagan Democrats and Republicans who voted for Obama in 2008.

Pessimists will say that this was in the past, and that we are too divided to come together. They might be surprised to learn that Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, negotiated a deal in the absence of a national testing strategy, with three Republican and four Democrat Governors to develop and deploy a rapid testing strategy across their seven states.

We will have many more elections to indulge in our petty bickering and partisan fights, but right now, we need to elect a president who will make a genuine effort to bring us together, not one who relishes stoking divisions and takes pleasure in pitting us against each other. If we choose to re-elect a man who refuses to listen to experts and is incapable of empathy, then the coronavirus will win and we will all lose.

Before you walk into a voting booth or mail your ballot, ask yourself if E pluribus unum is merely a phrase on a seal, or a motto that still reflects our national character and shared values.

 

Monday, September 30, 2019

Why I disagree with Howard Schultz’s Decision Not To Run in 2020

 
Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz speaking at an event. (Image: John Hanna/AP)
"When nothing is sure, everything is possible." 
Margaret Atwood 

I have always admired and respected Howard Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks, for the way in which he built a great global company. One that espouses purpose and giving back as things that are not just words in some corporate manifesto, but in tangible ways that impact lives of employees and people within the communities they serve. Starbucks under his leadership has never just talked the talk. 

So I was excited when he announced that he was exploring running as an independent candidate for President United Sates of America. I have written why I believe that an independent candidate running in 2020 is not just a good idea to help re-invigorate liberalism but also necessary to save our democracy from extremists on both sides who currently dominate and drive the conversation. I believe it is necessary to awaken the silent majority. 

So I was saddened to get his email explaining his decision to give up, even before he started this important fight. I understand that in the interim Mr. Schultz suffered a serious back injury and had to undergo multiple surgeries which have prevented him from travelling, and limited his outreach, but he does not cite the injury as the reason for not moving forward.

On the contrary, throughout his email he talks about the reasons an independent candidate should be running. He talks about the fact that we currently have a situation where Democrats and Republicans have consistently put party over country, perpetuated divisiveness and gridlock, failed to solve big problems and the “American people are more united than our leaders, and we deserve better.” 

A CBS news poll finds that by margins of more than two to one, Democrats are looking for someone who will unite the country, rather than push for more liberal policies. This 70% of democratic voters is a whopping majority, and not a small number. The same poll found that, contrary to the angry voices who dominate social media, eighty-two percent of democratic voters want someone “who expresses a hopeful tone about the potential of the country” to counter Trump’s vitriol and divisiveness, not someone who will offer more of the same but on the left. Further, it finds that in early primary states, “a notable two-thirds said they want a nominee who would work with Republicans to get things done once in office.” 

There is much data that shows that Mr. Schultz is correct about the fact that our country is more united than the hopelessly divided picture that is painted in the mainstream media, through the narrow prism of social media and by divisive politicians in both parties. 

Consider that even on the most polarising issues, there is overwhelming consensus on both sides of the aisle when it comes to voters. A Yale University study that has been tracking beliefs about climate changes for the last five years finds that 73% of Americans believe that global warming is real, 69% are worried about it and 62% believe it is being caused by human activity.

Another Quinnipiac University poll found that a majority of respondents (66%) support stricter gun laws and 97% support universal background checks. Further, 83% agree with a mandatory waiting period before someone is able to purchase a firearm and 67% support an all-out assault weapons ban. This commanding majority also agrees that it is too easy to buy a gun (67%) and three-quarters believe that “Congress needs to do more to reduce gun violence.” 

There is already common ground on which practical and sensible solutions can be built, even on the most divisive and polarising issues. Unfortunately common sense and unity do not make for stories that drive great ratings, clicks or create drama in a field of twenty-plus candidates. 

More in Common, a nonprofit that reaches across political divides, has found that even though we hold dissimilar views on numerous issues, more than three in four Americans believe that “our differences aren’t so great that we can’t work together.”  

They have also found clear evidence of an "exhausted majority” that Mr. Schultz refers to in his email. This majority is sick and tired of the political polarisation and constant focus on our divisions versus on the values that unite us. Their report states that people share a deep sense of gratitude that they are citizens of the United States. They want to move past our differences.”

Amanda Ripley writes in the Washington post about research showing that the ideal candidate that voters are looking for is not a person with all the answers and policy solutions. The fact is that most people are pragmatic and understand that no one person, or party, can provide all the answers. Also, they don’t trust politicians to follow through on their promises. 

They are looking for a candidate who understands their realities. “When people feel understood, they become more willing to hear different ideas”. The research finds that people are more willing to listen to a person who can recognize and acknowledge their struggles, even if they disagree with a candidate’s specific policies and solution.

Given this I truly believe that it will be nearly impossible for a candidate from either party to appeal to this important silent majority that has the power to break the will of the vociferous minority. At a time when Congress’s approval rating hovers in the high teens and disapproval remains steady at 79% according to the latest Gallup poll, and more than two-thirds of Americans have little or no confidence in the federal governmentwe will need someone who can break this status quo. I believe that someone needs to be an independent candidate. 

Barack Obama was such a candidate. The fact that he was an unknown and political novice made his appeal cut across partisan divides and gave people the hope that neither Senator McCain nor Senator Clinton was able to offer. Once again in 2016 voters rejected ALL the establishment candidates and chose another outsider, albeit of a very different stripe. 

Another reason it is important for an independent candidate to run is because the presidential primary process is flawed. By only allowing registered voters to participate, versus the entire electorate, it allows a small, vociferous minority in the base to dictate terms and drive the outcomes. Historically, voter participation in the primaries hovers at less than 20%. 

Hamstrung by this reality, candidates are unable to speak to the broader electorate, or posit solutions that break with their party’s positions on issues. They must pander to their extremes. We saw the disastrous results of this strategy unfold in the 2016 Republican primaries that enabled Donald Trump to lead a hostile takeover of the party of Abraham Lincoln. I fear the same will thing will happen to Democrats by time the field of twenty candidates is winnowed. 

Irrespective, the damage with the silent majority is already done because candidates cannot unsay and undo the partisan, polarising and extreme views and positions they have taken during the primaries and suddenly transform into people who can cut across political divides. Mr. Schultz identifies this danger and says he is worried about “far-left policy ideas being advanced by several Democratic candidates” and rightly believes it will serve to further alienate voters.”  

The irony is that he closes by saying that the silent majority has been drowned out by vitriolic extremes and “has largely tuned out of political life online and in the news, leaving the extreme voices to define the debate.” Yet, rather than offer a reason for this majority re-engage and lead the charge in taking back control of our national debate, he chooses to step out of the arena and makes a plea for us to find “the best of ourselves on the national stage, and to the world”. 

I understand that running for President is not an easy decision and it is a deeply personal one that will involve dragging oneself and one’s family though the mud of modern day media. So I do not think less of him or judge Mr. Shultz for choosing not to proceed.

Given where we are today in our one-sided political debates and with the dearth of leadership in both parties, I believe the risk of an independent candidate running at the cost of re-electing President Trump, is one worth taking.

As long as private citizens like Mr. Schultz and Mr. Bloomberg who have the means to finance national campaigns, unlike the rest of us, choose not to be the “man (or woman) who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood” we will not be able to break the two-party stranglehold on our democracy.


Tuesday, July 31, 2018

The Ideological Racism of the Left

“One of the problems with defending free speech is you often have to defend people that you find to be outrageous and unpleasant and disgusting,” 
-Salman Rushdie

As a lifelong liberal I am sad to say that I no longer recognise this new strain of liberalism, one that seems infected by close-mindedness, intolerance and a severely judgmental view of everyone that does not conform to some inane and thin-skinned acid test.

It seems that as the liberal world order began to thrive across the globe in the seventies and eighties, the liberal mind grew smaller. Rather than embrace diversity of thought, the left today seems to take pride in chastising, publicly shaming and tearing down anyone whose thinking diverges even slightly from the liberal mob.

As a result, liberals come across as closed-minded, parochial and so thin skinned that they seem unable or unwilling to recognise that protecting free speech means that everyone is entitled to his or her views, no matter how vehemently we might disagree.

In 2014, Brendan Eich, Co-Founder of non-profit browser Firefox and inventor of the programming language JavaScript, was forced to step down of CEO of his company after a popular dating site called for the boycott of the browser. Mr. Eich’s unforgivable crime: he had made a single donation of $1,000 to a group that opposed gay marriage six years earlier.

Seems it did not matter that Mr. Eich was a highly qualified technology executive who had also been part of creating a company that had a history of an open and inclusive workplace, nor did it matter that there was no charge against him of discriminating against gays by bringing his political views into the workplace. He was punished simply because he had a different opinion. I disagree with his view, but I also respect that he has the right to have it.

More recently, Google, which claims to be a champion of free speech, quashed and censored the freedom for one of their employees. By firing James Damore, Google basically proved his point. His memo titled the ‘Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber’ was arguing that Google's, and more broadly, Silicon Valley’s corporate culture is wholly intolerant of conservative views. Forget the merits of Mr. Danmore’s argument in his memo. The point is that he not only has the right to hold such views, but also to openly share them without fear of persecution or prosecution, provided doing so does not break any laws or violate the first amendment, which he did not.

I have no doubt that Google’s lawyers found sound legal grounds to fire him based on some violation of their corporate policy, but a wiser course for Google, as the Economist argued, would have been for Larry Page to have written a full-throated and detailed rebuttal of Mr Damore’s argument. Google would have shown that it respects free speech, especially when it disagrees, and using data and scientific evidence could have eloquently debunked Mr. Danmore’s contention that women are inferior software engineers and programmers.

The whole point of free speech is not that bad or insensitive views and ideas will cease to exist, but that when we encounter ideas like Mr. Danmore’s, we can use more speech to defeat them with better ideas and actual evidence.

If we shut down opinions simply because we find them unkind or hurtful, we will kill free speech. We need to look at actions and not views alone; this is why expressing even the most heinous ideas or opinions publicly is protected under the first amendment. We can draw a line when such views trample on someone else’s rights, discriminate against a group or break laws.

This ideological censorship based on some group deeming something “offensive” is happening even in the media. A conservative writer, Daniella Greenbaum, resigned from Business Insider (BI) after being censored. She wrote a piece defending Scarlett Johansson playing a transgender man, arguing that the main challenge of acting is to portray someone other than oneself and that “Johansson's identity off the screen is irrelevant to the identities she plays on the screen.

Her article went through the publication’s editorial review process before it was published, but the moment it met with resistance, BI took it down. They claimed it was suddenly in violation of their editorial standards, which the article had passed earlier. Rather than take it down to placate the mob, BI should have encouraged everyone who disagreed with her to pen a rebuttal.

I call this disturbing trend, one that shuts down various points of view, ideological racism and it has become even more pervasive in the age of social media mobs. I decided to do research to try and understand how, liberals, once open-minded, thick-skinned and valiant defenders of free speech, had suddenly become so sensitive, plaintive and censorship-happy.

Over the last generation, a dangerous idea has started to take hold among students and faculty on college campuses across the country, one that suggests that speech is violence.

We are not talking about verbal threats against individuals, which are illegal and not protected by the first amendment. No, this idea of words inflicting violence refers to speech that is deemed by members of an identity group to be critical of the group, or speech that simply ‘upsets’ people. Basically, saying that if I were to give a speech on a college campus criticising Indians for not wearing deodorant (a fact), it would be considered violence against Indian students.

A few years ago, a group at Columbia University penned an Op-ed in the student newspaper calling on the school to start implementing “trigger” warnings in curricula to alert students about  potentially distressing material, even for classics like Greek mythology or Roman poetry. In 2014, students at the University of California urged the school to make trigger warnings mandatory on all class syllabi, which would require the school to issue advance alerts and allow students to skip those classes.

Recentlya Rutgers University sophomore suggested that alerts should be issued for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ to say, ‘TW: suicide, domestic abuse and graphic violence and a Columbia student publicly complained about her professor using the word “negro”, even though he said it in a lesson about 1960s America.

Sadly, this anti-intellectual, anti-learning and anti-free speech movement has spread well-beyond classrooms and now extends to blocking all Conservative speakers, and even Liberals who don’t spout the party line, from lecturing on campus, often using the ridiculous argument that words are weapons that can cause physical harm.

Ironically, while students complain about the ‘violence’ of words, they seem to have no issue resorting to physical violence to prevent speakers from setting foot on campuses. A talk by conservative social scientist Charles Murray was violently shut down by students who physically attacked him and in the process injured a Middlebury professor who was with him. At University of California, Berkeley, once a bastion of free speech, a group with bandannas wrapped around their faces, tore down barricades, shot projectiles at police and lit a light stand on fire, causing more than $100,000 worth of damage, and succeeded in cancelling a scheduled talk by Milo Yiannopoulos, a controversial far-right speaker.

Another trend contributing to this growing ideological racism has been the creation of ‘safe spaces’. The original purpose of a ‘safe space’ was narrowly defined and meant as a temporary physical space on campus for marginalised groups, often gay and transgender students, to discuss issues without abuse or public attacks. However, what was meant to be a temporary space is morphing into permanent ones for various aspects of campus life; from segregated study halls and libraries and some advocates have turned their attention to student housing, which they want to turn into safe spaces by segregating student living quarters.

Another factor is the lack of diversity within faculty. In 2016, the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA that has surveyed undergraduate teaching faculty for the last twenty-five years found that liberals now outnumber conservative professors, five to one. Another 2017 study by Econ Journal Watch found that faculty at the top 40 colleges, in the fields of Economics, History, Journalism/Communications, Law and Psychology were registered Democrat versus Republican by a whopping 11.5 to 1 margin. The New Yorker described this failure among our higher education institutions, now completely dominated by the left, as an unwillingness to engage with conservative thought, an aversion to debate, and a weakened commitment to free speech.

For me the main issue is that these developments defeat the main purpose of higher education, which was to open minds rather than to create conformity. Colleges are meant to challenge our thinking by introducing new ideas and exposing us to a broad spectrum of viewpoints. Instead, it seems education is now focused on creating false realities and safe echo chambers which do not prepare students for the realities of life in the real world.

Colleges are the final rite of passage between the safety and security of home and the unfairness and harshness of life.  Time there is meant to help students grow thicker skins, in part by interacting with people who have different views, backgrounds and life experiences than their own. As our world continues to shrink, having a thicker skin has become more, not less, important.

The point is not to pretend that there are no Holocaust deniers or to tell them never to engage with people with offensive views. Progress requires us to work with all types of people. We need to teach children the facts of history (good, bad and ugly) and equip them with critical thinking skills and thick skins so they can publicly debate and defeat bad ideas with better ones.

How can you change the world for the better, if you refuse to accept its ugly realities first?

Every successful democratic society requires a broad spectrum of views, thoughts and ideas to thrive and succeed. This is the point of diversity, not simply skin colour, but diverse thinking. As a brown person, I would rather someone openly hate the colour of my skin but embrace my thinking, not the other way around. If we try to mould everyone into one way of thinking, then that is the end of innovation and progress in society.

As Mr. Rushdie said, the price of free speech, and a free society, is that ugliness comes with it. If we try to close down speech we define as critical, unkind, hurtful or distasteful, then we walk away from free speech all together – there is no middle ground.

As a society we would be wise to remember that sticks and stones may break bones, but censoring words and thoughts destroys democracy.