reflectivepundit

NATO and EU should enlist Ex-Chancellor Merkel as Peace-Maker

By Brigitte L. Nacos

As the Ukrainian military and civil defense units fight the invading Russian military effectively, Vladimir Putin’s decision to place his military’s nuclear forces on high alert heightens the threat of his use of nuclear weapons in the Ukrainian theater of war—and perhaps beyond. In this critical situation, all efforts must be made to find a peaceful solution. And the best person to enlist for what seems a mission impossible is in my view Germany’s ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel, She  speaks Russian fluently und knows Putin better than any other Western politician. Her ability to reason like the trained scientist she is would be a good basis of discussions with the usually rational but more recently highly emotional Russian leader.  

The unity displayed by NATO and EU and allies in other parts of the globe in their swift opposition to Russia’s war against Ukraine must have come as an unprecedented shock to Putin. The Russian president must have underestimated how effective President Biden’s repair of the U.S.-European relationship has been. He reversed his predecessor’s efforts to destroy NATO as we know it and weaken the EU and thereby strengthened Western democracies so that they now can resist Russian expansionism forcefully without direct participation in the military hostilities.

Two weeks into this war, the Ukrainian military and civilian Territorial Defense Forces have stalled Russia’s plan to occupy its neighbor. The unprecedented sanctions against Russia have isolated the country cutting it mostly off the global markets. This has already resulted in hardship for the Russian public.

As Thomas Friedman writes in today’s New York Times, “Russia has no good way out [of this war]…” And that is the problem. Not only for Putin but for the Western alliance against him. Strongman do not want to accept defeat, cannot accept a loss. That’s bad enough, as we learned following the 2020 presidential election in the U.S., in a country in which the institutions of government still work as supposed. But in an autocracy with a sole ruler on top there are no built-in restrains. Thus, the danger of Putin’s end game that may include the deployment to weapons of mass destruction.

The frequent and long phone conversations between Putin and various Western leaders are signs that there may be room for actual negotiations. But that would need a most skilled negotiator.

Ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel would be the best possible choice!

The goal must be to find a solution that guarantees Ukraine’s independence but at the same time offers Putin a way out with the ability of justifying the war and its end result as something positive to his people  

One Picture Says More Than a Thousand Words

Mr. Putin and his Advisors in Monday (Feb 29^th) Meeting

Source: Alexey Nikolsky/Sputnik, via Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: The first World Wide Web War Is a Double-Edged Sword

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Since Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press, every generation has utilized well-established and often brand-new communication technologies.

In the last fifty years or so, the breakthrough of live TV coverage over long distances resulted in news coverage of dramatic events that the whole world could watch. The horrific assault on members of Israel’s national team at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich was watched by an estimated audience of 500 million people around the world. The satellite coverage of the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square catapulted CNN into a premier international all-news network. Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11 Al Qaeda’s leadership boasted that the size of the global news audience had set a new record. Carefully orchestrated by the Pentagon, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was reported “live” by news teams embedded in military units.

And now, as Thomas L. Friedman writes in today’s column in the New York Times, people around the world watch “World War Wired — the first war in a totally interconnected world. This will be the Cossacks meet the World Wide Web.”

Friedman is right, individuals with smartphones capture the cruelty of war, upload images of horror and bravery on TikTok and other social media platforms, and make all of this available to people around the globe. The gatekeepers of traditional news organization or the censors of authoritarian regimes are being bypassed in the social media world.

But whereas the pure multitude of pictures and video clips captured by Ukrainians on their smartphones writes a new chapter in war reporting, the same platforms are available to professional propagandists. In the current conflict, Russian propagandists spin the news in both traditional and social media in carefully tailored narratives that counter the episodic images of smartphone photography. And the Ukrainian authorities may spin as well.

In sharp contrast, the uploaded images and sounds of smartphone owners present brutality and violence in multi millions of snippets in social media. It is a double-edged sword: raw and unfiltered images on the one hand and one the other hand a complete lack of contextual information that would allow  assessments of the snippets on the screen.

I have been told in the last several days repeatedly that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is a “media war” or was asked whether that is the case.

The conflict is a real war on real land and in real airspace. In spite of the attention to the compelling images on TikTok and other social media platforms, I prefer the war coverage by the well-trained journalists of the best traditional news organizations. They provide the context that TikTok and YouTube do not.

The un-American former President and his Idol in Moscow

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Miffed about the lack of applause from Democrats during his 2018 State of the Union Address, then President Donald Trump complained,

“They [the Democrats] were like death and un-American. Un-American. Somebody said, ‘treasonous.’ I mean, Yeah, I guess why not? Can we call that treason? Why not? I mean they certainly didn’t seem to love our country that much.”

Un-American, treasonous, and unpatriotic. Serious charges against political opponents who sat on their hands during another Orwellian speech by the narcissistic liar-in-chief.

And now, after his idol Vladimir Putin has started his unholy war against neighboring Ukraine, the twice impeached former president showed once again that he is America’s most un-American and most unpatriotic actor. How else can one interpret Trump’s praise for strongman Putin whom he called a genius for invading a democratic country next to his Russian autocracy?

 What else can one make of Trump’s simultaneous attacks on the crisis-managing President Joe Biden who managed to pull all NATO countries together after his predecessor’s disastrous transatlantic politics. Worse, yet, the vast majority of Trump’s Republican Party is blindly following a self-obsessed emperor without clothes: no moral compass, no shame, no concern for the fate of this county and its long-time allies.

In Russia, Trump’s buddy Putin is for more than two decades in complete control because he achieved long ago what Trump and his party are trying to putting in place now: a rigged electoral system designed to return King Trump to the throne for another term and guarantee one party rule in Washington, D.C. and a bunch of states as well.

Imagine the unthinkable: Putin and Trump becoming ruling partners again—the would-be Czar and would-be King.

Perhaps, though, there may be a brewing threat to Putin’s power. The large number and the significant size of Russia’s peace movement in response to the war against Ukraine are not the norm in Putin’s Russia. Add to that the huge demonstrations in democracies around the globe. Even strongman like Orban and Erdogan are not siding with Putin.

The unexpected strong resistance by the Ukrainian military and by civilians does not bode well for Putin and his quest for the resurrection of a greater Russian empire. Surely not as long as NATO sticks to its coda that an attack on one member is an attack on all of NATO’s members.

The greatest problem right now may well be the uncertainty. Not only in Ukraine but in Europe and the whole world. Especially, in view of Putin’s explicit and implicit nuclear threats.

For Trump’s GOP Violence is “Political Discourse”

When it comes to violence, we know for a long time that Donald Trump is like the emperor without cloths: he does not hide his love of brutal force for the sake of his own power. He does not hide most of his illegal actions but describes and celebrates them in public. He is naked, when it comes to any shame. He is an empty vessel, when it comes to a moral compass.  

And now, the Republican Party, already on bended knees, has revealed its complete surrender to its fascist leader and his complete disregard of the legal anchor of this nation: The Republican National Committee censored their members Rep. Liz Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger for participating in the congressional investigation of the January 6^th events. They charged the only two Republicans courageous enough to stand up for democracy for taking part in the “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

However incredible it is: One of the two major political parties in the oldest continuous democracy declared today openly that terrorist and insurgent violence is “legitimate political discourse” among “ordinary citizens.” Obviously, the leading GOP party hacks felt the urgent need to second Donald Trump’s promise to January 6^th terrorists, insurgents, and fellow-plotters in the White House and elsewhere that he might pardon them all, when back in power.

50 years ago, Hannah Arendt wrote about violent movements,

If goals are not achieved rapidly, the result will be not merely defeat but the introduction of the practice of violence into the whole body politic. …The practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is to a more violent world.

That’s exactly what we are experiencing now: When Trump and his MAGA movement failed to overturn the election and keep him in office on January 6^th, 2021, violence became part of body politic in America.

Neo-Nazis march now openly in American streets, display swastikas, and attack Jewish Americans. The violent Far Right and its organized groups have friends in high places claiming to provide security.

Violence as political discourse has no place in democracy. Embracing violence as is a giant step to fascism.

Especially, when it becomes the doctrine of a major political party.

Our Greatest Problem is Not Covid but the Imminent Threat to Our Democracy

This week’s first anniversary of the breach of the Capitol by Trump supporters will be another shocking display of the fragile state of our democratic system of governance. Whereas President in a speech and congressional Democrats in a vigil plan to honor the defenders of our democracy and their elected representatives, the former president and his sycophants are reported to plan a strong defense of the violence of January 6, 2021 and its perpetrators. Nothing displays the political divide in America more shockingly than those two opposing views about the assault on Congress a year ago—one based on reality and truth, the other on “alternative reality” and lies.

Political polarization is what serves authoritarian politicians best. As Ruth Ben-Ghiat writes in her book Strongmen: Mussolini to Present, “authoritarians hold appeal when society is polarized, or divided into two opposing ideological camps, which is why they do all they can to exacerbate strife.” This helps to explain the rise and continuing appeal of Donald Trump among many millions of Americans.

The starting point was the Tea Party movement that arose in early 2009 in response to the election of Barack Obama and sharpened the partisan and ideological divergences of political elites and the public at large. When Trump became the public face of the birther conspiracy theory that had massive support among Tea Partiers, he won over what became his core support in his run for the presidency—Tea Party supporters and evangelical Christians, many of whom sympathized with the reactionary Tea Party agenda.

During his candidacy and presidency, Trump appealed relentlessly to the emotions of his base and possible converts to his MAGA movement. It is highly revealing what the then GOP candidate Trump told Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in an interview in March 2016 about two powerful emotions he recognized,  

• “Real power is—I don’t even want to use the word—fear.”
• “I bring rage out. I do bring rage out. I always have.”

Thus, the titles of two Woodward books on Trump (FEAR and RAGE); the third book, co-written with Costa is titled PERIL (perhaps meant to be the result of stirring fear and rage in the MAGA movement?).

Ultimately, emotions, not rational choices are the main drivers of political and policy preferences. And fear and anger/rage are among the most potent ones.

President Biden and Democrats Must Wake Up and Defend Democracy

By Brigitte L. Nacos

President Joe Biden has yet another talk with Senator Joe Manchin. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer tries to keep the Before-Christmas deadline to hold a vote on the Build Back Better bill. The House Select Committee on January 6 digs deep into the horrific facts of that day.

As important as all of the above may be, everything pales in comparison to the existential threat that President Biden and congressional democrats fail to deal with aggressively—even at the expense of other items on their agenda.

I cannot get a recent column by Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times and a recent article by Barton Gellman of The Atlantic out of my mind. Goldberg in “The Problem of Political Despair” and Barton in “January 6 was Practice” lay out the clear and present danger to our democratic values and American democracy itself.

The insurrection attempt by domestic terrorist groups and Trump supporters as well as the coup attempt by the former president and his clique of enablers inside and outside the White House failed nearly a year ago. But there are plenty of signposts that the Trumpian Big Lie about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election results has a good chance to prevail in 2024.

The mid-term elections next year will preview the effectiveness of GOP majority states to destroy fair elections as we know them.

Whether the former president decides to run again in 2024—or not, the one-time Grand Old Party does no longer exist. The Trump Party has become the theater of the absurd in which would-be performers deliver shock messages and threaten political opponents.

A recent podcast performance by “War Room” host Steve Bannon and his guest Congressman Matt Gaetz was a case in point. They talked about  an “army of patriots” and “shock troops” as they previewed a future in which Trump was president again.

Bannon: “This is Trumpism in power. That's when we went to the 4,000 shock troops we have to have that's going to man the government. Get them ready now. Right? We're going to hit the beach with the landing teams and the beachhead teams and all that nomenclature they use when President Trump wins in 2024 — or before."

Gaetz: “And we're going to go after this administrative state and we're going to start at the Department of Justice and the FBI. That's the job I want. You know, send me over to the Judiciary Committee and their sphincters will tighten because they have been doing a lot of corrupt things over there."

Oh, yes, one wants to laugh—just as many of us did, when Trump announced his presidential candidacy in the summer of 2015. Then, he was merely a spent reality show performer with birther conspiracy theorists on his side. Now, he controls a major party whose members are on bended knees to please their dear leader and progressing rapidly in the destruction of our electoral system—and our democracy.

Democrats in Need of Soundbite Messages

By Brigitte L. Nacos

In today’s print edition of the New York Times a full-page column by Ezra Klein is headed by the headline, “Can Democrats Find A Winning Message?” (The online version has a different title). This is a pressing question for those who still hope that Donald Trump’s handiwork in favor of illiberal democracy and authoritarian rule can be stopped. Klein’s opinion piece analyzes the dire predictions of election analyst David Shor, who foresees for the near future massive losses for Democrats in the U.S. Congress, most of all the U.S. Senate. That is not only based on the undemocratic electoral process set up by the U.S. Constitution, but also on the disability of the Democratic Party and its leaders to translate even the most attractive and most publicly supported features of their and President Biden’s agenda into compelling soundbites understood by the American public at large.

These are the terms that Americans hear from Democrats in Washington day-in and day-out—not only in their conversations in the halls of Congress and the White House but also in their appearances in television and radio, in their tweets, and in their coverage by the press: reconciliation bill, filibuster, John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and so on.

Go out and meet regular people and ask them about the purpose of the voting rights advancement act. Or the filibuster controversy and the content of the reconciliation bill that Democrats are fighting about. Or the filibuster controversy.

Compare that to Trumpian soundbites:

Stop the Steal, Save America, Make America Great Again, America First. These are simple, catchy phrases.

Go out and ask regular Americans what is meant with MAGA and the other slogans above. Most know.

It is not enough for the fighting so-called liberals and progressives within the Democratic camp to get onto the same message. Although that is a precondition at a time, when democracy is under attack from the former president, his supporters, and those who disagree but fear to say so publicly.

Democrats needs to translate their bureaucratic messages into simple words that every American can understand. Soundbites that bite.

Soundbites that speak to the hopes and fears and anger that drives red and blue America further apart yet. At Trump’s rally last night in Iowa, one of his female supporters told a reporter with emphasis that the “civil war” was coming. Must come. Just one illustration of dangerous polarization in our country.

More than two decades ago, Jeffrey Scheuer wrote in his book “Soundbite Society: Television and the American Mind” that TV news was “filtering out complex ideas in favor of blunt emotional messages that appeal to the self and to narrower moral-political impulses.”

According to Scheuer, this obvious bias in favor of simple messages was not the result of intentional slants but rather the nature of the medium—TV with limited air time.

For the Right, there was and still is typically the choice between right or wrong, good or evil. Perfect for short soundbites. For Liberal, these differences were and still are far more complex to press into a meaningful soundbite.

The TV soundbite society of then has long expanded to an overall soundbite society—and not only because of Twitter’s limited text requirement.

In the last decade, but especially since Donald Trump appeared on the political stage in a starring role, aggressive, violent, shocking, insulting, threatening soundbites have become the most-used propaganda weapons of Trump’s Republicans.

Democrats must not copy the viciousness of Trumpian soundbites. But they need to quickly translate the policies they want to enact into simple, effective messages.

That’s not an easy task.

But without making it an urgent effort and succeeding, David Shor’s disheartening predictions may well come true in 2022, 2024 and beyond.  

The Two Decades since 9/11 Changed the Country for the Worse

By Brigitte L. Nacos

The attacks of September 11, 2001, by far the worse deadly strikes on the American mainland from the outside, are rightly remembered on the 20^th anniversary as a dark day in the history of the United States. But 9/11 was also a heroic day as far as first responders were concerned many of whom lost their lives as they tried to rescue fellow-Americans from the falling Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

9/11 was also a day, when true patriotism overcame the shock of what seemed an unimaginable act of evil masterminded by Al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden and his henchmen. Yes, true patriotism. About nine months after the U.S. Supreme Court decided the outcome of the 2020 presidential election in favor of George W. Bush, a very controversial decision, partisan and ideological differences made room for unity. When members of Congress appeared jointly in front of the Capitol, there was no division. The message was clear: Leaders in Washington and elsewhere—and we, the people, were not Democrats or Republicans now, they and we were first of all Americans.

As time went by, for sure, rumors and conspiracy theories circulated. The so-called Truthers sought and claimed to have found proof for a CIA/government plot that destroyed the WTC and part of the Pentagon. But while Trutherism found many believers in the post 9/11 era, these conspiracy theorists did not violently invade the U.S. Congress and threaten Democratic governors and state legislators.

Instead, in our own communities, common sense for the good of the whole prevailed. Most of the time. Especially, when problems and issues concerned our children and grandchildren. In school board meetings, parents disagreed. But they did not threaten and physically attack each other or the teachers of their children. 

Today, twenty years after 9/11, the “Stop-the-Steal” and QAnon conspiracy theories continue to fuel political and social polarization. While Al Gore gave a gracious concession speech and pledged his full support to George W. Bush, the former president and his supporters continue to spread the Big Lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. The Big Lie motivated lawless right-wingers to attack the very foundations of our democracy.

On September 11, 2001, 3,000 innocent Americans lost their lives. Reason enough to commemorate the victims and the courageous first responders.

Twenty years later, the Covid-19 pandemic has taken so far 660,000 lives in the United States—220 times more deaths than on 9/11. Of late, close to 1,500 Covid-19 infected persons die in this country every day. One 9/11 in two days!

And yet, given the political and social polarization, there is no nation-wide pulling together as Americans first.  

On 9/11, America was attacked by foreign terrorists.

Today, America is threatened by home-grown terrorists. By White Supremacists/Neo-Nazi groups and radicalized individuals who talk about a coming civil war. They feel emboldened by one ex-president and one political party that continue to downplay the breach of the Capitol on January Sixth.

Yes, the two decades after 9/11 did change the country—change it for the worse.

Not Racial, Ethnic, and Religious Diversity but White Supremacy and Crazy Conspiracy Theories Loom as Serious Threats to U.S. Democracy

By Brigitte L. Nacos

In his 2011 book “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” the one-time presidential speechwriter, presidential GOP candidate, and to this day right-extreme pundit Patrick J. Buchanan characterized the essence of a nation as “a people of common ancestry, culture, and language, who worship the same God, revere the same heroes, cherish the same history, celebrate the same holidays, share the same music, poetry, art, literature, held together, in Lincoln’s words, ’by bonds of affection…mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriotic grave, to every living heart and heath-stone.”

Given those characteristics, Buchanan lamented, “the European and Christian core of our country is shrinking” and “the death of its [America’s] cradle faith brings social disintegration, an end to moral community, and culture war.”

 He left no doubt that the election of President Barack Obama represented the greatest threat to the survival of “his” idea of America. And in his prescriptions to save the European-Christian America included a moratorium on immigration and rolling back any progressive gains won in what Buchanan labeled the [liberal] culture war.

Not only pundits like Buchanan but also some well-known scholars have long warned of the evils of multiculturalism. In 2004, the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington chose as the lead in his article “The Hispanic Challenge” the following paragraph,

“The persistent flow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves—from Los Angeles to Miami—and rejecting Anglo-Protestant values that build the American dream. The United States ignores this challenge at its peril.”

It is ironic that President Joe Biden warned the other day in his Memorial Day that “democracy itself is in peril,” using the same term as Huntington. But the peril Biden spoke of has a very different meaning than the peril Huntington meant.  

Whereas Huntington and Buchanan saw multicultural challenges to what Isabel Wilkerson described in her recent book “Caste: The Origins of our Discontents” as a system of White caste dominance, Joe Biden invoked the beliefs and values of true Christianity and inclusive democracy, when he said, “Wherever Americans are, there — there is democracy: churches and synagogues and mosques, neighborhoods and coffee shops and diners, bleachers at kids’ baseball or soccer games, libraries and parks.  Democracy begins and grows in the open heart and the impetus to come together for a common cause…Americans of all backgrounds, races, creeds, gender identities, sexual orientations, have long spilled their blood to defend our democracy.  The diversity of our country and our arm- — and of our armed services is and always has been an incredible strength.”