David K. Shipler's Blog

By David K. Shipler 

            In theunlikely event that I ever have a chance for a conversation with an agent afterhe has dragged a half-dressed middle-aged citizen from his own house, wrencheda husband from his weeping wife and children, taken a five-year-old boy into custody,or shot into the innocent face of a mother of three, here is what I would ask: 

1.      Doyou realize that the person’s face will haunt you for the rest of your life?(A former NKVD secret police agent under Stalin, writing in a letter to theSoviet magazine Ogonyok decades later, described his torment: “Now thepeople in the cases I investigated visit me at night, and instead of fear intheir eyes I see that they despise me. How can I tell these people I tortured,how can I explain that my damned life was a tragedy, too?”)

2.      Whenyour children and grandchildren ask what you were doing during the assault on America’sdemocracy, how will you answer? (Many young Germans, coming of age afterWorld War II, questioned their elders closely about what they had done during theNazi era; searing conversations often followed.)

3.      Whatdid your parents do to you? (A line from a Seinfeld episode.)

By David K. Shipler 

            My earliestpolitical memory is watching television film of Southern segregationistsscreaming epithets at Black children as they integrated schools in the 1950s,and police attacking peaceful civil rights demonstrators with truncheons, dogs,and fire hoses. I remember not only my own revulsion but my grandmother’s. 

            Shehad been raised in rural Maryland and had her streak of racial prejudice. Butas she sat upright in her straight-backed chair, she seethed with indignationat the crude inhumanity unfolding on the screen. Her disgust became my firstlesson in the power of decency to honor nonviolence against violence, and togenerate reform.

The scenes eventually mobilized theconscience of much of white America. A question is whether it can happen again.

This year’s holiday marking thebirthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the architect of nonviolence in theCivil Rights Movement, is a fitting moment to wonder if the furious episodes ofmasked ICE agents shooting and brutalizing protesting Americans can activate—broadlyenough—whatever conscience has not been snuffed out by President Trump and hiscollaborators.

 We saw a moral uprising after a long history ofpolice killings of unarmed Blacks culminated in the videoed 2020 suffocation ofGeorge Floyd in Minneapolis. That and other murders propelled demonstrationsacross the country by millions of Americans—most of them white, significantly. Andsince Trump’s inauguration a year ago, citizens not vulnerable to deportationhave rallied against the inhumane practices by ICE agents, especially inMinneapolis, once again the center of conflict after an agent wantonly shot andkilled Renee Good, a US citizen and a mother of three; she posed no threat, videosshow, contrary to slanderous assertions by Trump and his subordinates.

In a current CBS poll,61 percent of those surveyed said that ICE was being “too tough,” up from 56percent in November. Among independents, 65 percent thought that protesterswere either doing things “about right” (33 percent) or had not gone far enough (32percent). The remaining 35 percent blamed demonstrators for going “too far.” Asone might expect, Republicans and Democrats were heavily skewed in oppositedirections, but overall, 52 percent said that ICE was making their communities “lesssafe.”

The numbers appear to show agathering storm of resentment. But how that might translate into the kind of moralmobilization that produced the civil rights laws is a question. The parallels withtoday are far from precise.

Civil rights demonstrators were trainedin the discipline of nonviolence, never fighting back when attacked as they marchedpeacefully, illegally rode segregated buses, helped Blacks register to vote, orsat in at segregated lunch counters. King, a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi, calledthis the “love ethic.” He and others bet correctly that the Southern powerstructure, through white thugs and cops, would play its role in the pageant,revealing a cruelty that did, in the end, galvanize onlookers across thecountry.

Anti-ICE protesters have no suchcoherent training and no resonant voice of leadership, and while most arepeaceful, clashes with agents draw the most vivid videos. Those taken anddoctored by right-wing activists circulate on social media, which did not existsixty years ago, and influence policy-making in the White House, which had notbeen captured back then by an authoritarian ideology of white supremacy.

Before the internet and cable news,television was dominated by the three broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, whichgenerally kept opinion out of their reporting. Today’s opinionated newscoverage, particularly on the right, has distorted much of the public’sperceptions of reality. A side effect has been the erosion of public trust innews organizations that strive for fairness and accuracy, including The NewYork Times, The Washington Post, and National Public Radio. Opinion,it seems, is alluring enough to attract people who want their views upheld—confirmationbias, it’s called.

Right-wing “news” outlets have unquestioninglyconveyed Trump’s effort to discredit protesters as being paid by nefarious domesticenemies, a smear from the top. In the fifties and sixties, that rhetoric came largelyfrom the bottom as local and state officials dismissed civil rightsdemonstrators as “outsider agitators.”

The dynamic today has beeninverted, with Washington the enemy of peaceful protest and some state andlocal governments defending that right, which is enshrined in the FirstAmendment.

In 1957, for example, after ArkansasGovernor Orval Faubus calledout the state national guard to prevent nine Black students from entering LittleRock’s Central High School, President Dwight D. Eisenhower acted. He pressedFaubus to use the guard to assure peaceful integration, as the Supreme Courthad ordered in Brown v. Board of Education three years earlier. But whenFaubus withdrew the guard instead and rioting erupted, Eisenhower federalizedthe guard and sent 101st Airborne troops to restore order andprotect the students.

Today, it is the federal governmentthat is trying to crush demonstrators and the state and local governments inMinnesota that are trying to protect them. It is the White House that issuppressing an investigation into the Minneapolis shooting and the state thatwants to hold the agent accountable.

The inversion of righteousness istelling. America is a different country now. The threshold at which outrage istriggered has risen very high as Trump and company have numbed us to violationsof ethics, laws, social norms, democratic processes, racial respect, and other featuresof a pluralistic and orderly culture. He has created, in ICE, a national, paramilitaryforce unlike anything seen before in the United States, unaccountable to thelaw or to the norms of decency.

Seared in my memory is thephotograph, from Little Rock, of a white girl’s face twisted in hatred as she screamedat a Black girl seeking to go to Central High. The country came to see itself inthis mirror.

My grandmother did not become aflaming liberal, but she loved Eisenhower, and I think his actions affected herviews on race. She did not object on principle when my mother and I went to the1963 March on Washington, where King declared, “I have a dream.” She was worriedfor us, because violence was ridiculously predicted by J. Edgar Hoover, the FBIdirector. But in the end, the crowd was a sweep of massive friendliness anduplifting harmony, a tribute to the conscience of America.

By David K. Shipler 

For we mustconsider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people areupon us.

--John Winthrop, 1630

            The stirringphrase “city upon a hill” was coined not as a description of the United Statesbut as an aspiration, a challenge, applied to the Massachusetts Bay Colony by JohnWinthrop in a sermon probably delivered at sea, before arriving in New England.Since then, as quoted by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, it hasmorphed into a mirage of self-adulation—not a hope but a supposed achievement.

             “I've spoken of the shining city all mypolitical life,” Reagan declared in his farewelladdress: “In my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger thanoceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living inharmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce andcreativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and thedoors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how Isaw it, and see it still. . . . And she's still a beacon, still a magnet forall who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places whoare hurtling through the darkness, toward home.”

            You want toweep when you read these words today. Even putting aside Reagan’s own failuresto keep that beacon bright (he opposed the monumental civil rights acts, forexample, and slandered the poor on welfare), the metaphor imagined the best of acomplicated America. It was accepted globally, though not unanimously, as modelingdemocratic freedom and economic opportunity. Millions from around the world havestruggled to climb up to this shining city on a hill.

Now it is becoming a fortress. Inmerely one year, President Trump and his minions have recast the model. It isno longer a robust democracy but a semi-dictatorship fueled by a cult ofpersonality supported by a critical mass of Americans. No longer is the rule oflaw its bedrock. No longer can the public’s discontent be reliably translatedinto political change. No longer does free speech flourish under a governmentthat regards dissent as punishable. No longer do its officials or many of itsprivate institutions embrace that essential American idea: the din of manyideas. No longer is it entirely safe for “the people peaceably to assemble . .. for a redress of grievances,” as the First Amendment provides. Whateverharmony the country enjoyed among “people of all kinds” has dissolved intodiscord under a government driven by the ideology of white supremacy.    

No longer are the doors open. Nolonger will America be the world’s leader in medical and other scientificresearch, whose grants Trumpists have summarily shredded, and whose foreignresearchers are increasingly afraid to enter the United States. No longer is ita benefactor of assistance to the suffering populations of poorer countries. Nolonger does it hold membership in scores of critical internationalorganizations that do good globally. No longer is it a champion of democracyand human rights worldwide. No longer is it faithful to facts and truth andrespect for the power of pure knowledge.

The country is being walled offfrom an outside world it seeks to dominate, a peculiar paradox. It is bothisolationist and imperialist, retreating from humanitarian interactions and relyingon brute force for its foreign policy, trashing its treaties and alliances, andprojecting warfare into countries of Trump’s choosing—restrained only by “my ownmorality, my own mind,” he toldThe New York Times. Trump’s disregard for international law andnorms in his seizure of Venezuela’s president; his unilateral declaration ofownership of its oil; and his designs on Greenland, the Panama Canal, and evenCanada, reinforce Russian and Chinese propaganda, which has long cast the US asa neocolonial power. That propaganda has had traction in many developingcountries; now it cannot be denied.

So, the United States can no longerbe counted on to uphold the peaceful order that has prevailed since World WarII. It cannot be seen reliably as a global power, for Trump favors carving upthe world into spheres of influence, apparently ready to concentrate on theWestern Hemisphere and leaving Europe to Russia, and Asia to China. The world,and America itself, is a much more dangerous place under Trumpism, and America willbe much less great.

 Of course, as honest history knows—not the sanitizedhistory that Trumpist authoritarianism is trying to impose—John Winthrop’s exaltedhilltop was eventually tainted by great crimes: the displacement and slaughterof Native Americans, the enslavement of Africans, the indentured servitude thathelped lay the foundations of the country’s prosperity.  

Myths can be stubborn, though, soit remains to be seen how soon the uplifting mirage of America will dissipate,how quickly it will be replaced by the menacing fortress being constructed.Some overseas express sympathy for Americans living in a dying democracy; some expressfear and disgust. Some at home and abroad see merely a temporary aberration ina society that has proved self-correcting; others see an embedded, authoritarianrestructuring designed to survive Trump. And some who do not regard the oldAmerica as divinely given see the new America as the inevitable turning of history’swheel: Nothing is permanent, not even a shining city upon a hill.

By David K. Shipler 

            Havingdemolished much of the best scientific research supported by the federalgovernment, ignored congressional acts that created and funded agencies,harassed the private sector into accepting racial discrimination, bullied mediacorporations into self-censorship, erased historical truths, distortedgovernment fact-gathering, sent masked agents to grab immigrants, deployedhapless national guard onto peaceful streets, and severely damaged the rule oflaw and the constitutional separation of powers, Donald Trump and hiscollaborators now turn their draconian radicalism against the country’s systemof free elections.

            This is PhaseThree in the demise of democracy. Whether the Trumpists succeed remains an openquestion, but they are laying the groundwork for what experts who have studieddictatorships term “competitive authoritarianism.” It means that elections areheld but are manipulated so the opposition party has little or no chance ofcoming to power, as in Hungary and Turkey.

            Theelements of the effort are these:

Political prosecutions ofopposition (Democratic) figures. Trump is mobilizing a complicit Justice Department to take revenge on critics byinflating minor or imagined infractions into criminal charges. The efforts againstformer FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia Jameshave been blocked so far by a federal district court judge and two grand juriesof citizens honest enough to refuse to indict James, who won a major businessfraud case against Trump. But the James case might be revived, and otherprosecutions are in the offing.

            In what TheNew York Times calls “a nebulous and far-reaching” federal investigation,former officials involved in bringing criminal cases against Trump are beingsubpoenaed, with a grand jury empaneled in southern Florida to considerconspiracy charges. Prosecutors of the January 6 rioters are also injeopardy. Democratic Senator Adam Schiff of California, who led the firstimpeachment prosecution of Trump, is under investigation. Senator Mark Kelly ofArizona, a retired Navy captain, is being investigated by the Pentagon for hispart in a video by six Democratic lawmakers reminding military personnel thatthey can and must refuse illegal orders. He could theoretically be recalled toactive duty and court-martialed under Article 88 of the Uniform Code ofMilitary Justice, which prohibits “contemptuous words against the President,the Vice President,” and other officials.

            Low-levelskirmishes involving elected Democrats have been magnified. Senator AlexPadilla of California, who tried repeatedly to ask a question during a pressconference by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, was handcuffed andpushed out of the room by FBI agents. Representative LaMonica McIver, who wasjostled in a scuffle with ICE agents as Democratic officials tried to inspectan immigration detention facility in New Jersey, has been charged withassaulting an officer—an accusation ridiculous to anyone who watches the video.And so on.

             The question is how far Trump will go inordering arrests and prosecutions, particularly of Democratic candidates whohave a chance of winning in key districts in November. The American atmosphereis being contaminated by a miasma of concocted crimes fabricated by Trump,Attorney General Pam Bondi, and other zealots. They are poised to use theirauthority to indict and arrest whenever politically convenient. America’straditional rule of law is being shredded, barely held together by lower-courtjudges and by Democratic politicians brave enough to endure threats to theirliberties and physical safety.

“But if they can’t be charged,” pledgedEd Martin, a powerful Justice Department official, “we will name them. And wewill name them, and in a culture that respects shame, they should be peoplethat are ashamed.”

            An obviousflaw in this plan is that American culture no longer respects shame, as demonstratedby the ho-hum reaction to Trump’s crude cruelty and blatant corruption. On theother hand, millions of Americans have been so inured to the Trumpists’perpetual lying that    Martin’s approach could backfire into highervoter turnout for the targeted candidate. In a tight election, you might evenwish to be accused by an administration reviled by your potential voters.

Yet there is an unseen impact thatcan damage the future of democracy: the uncounted number of honest, decentAmericans who become unwilling to face the fear of running for office, ofprosecuting crime, of overseeing elections. A dictatorship seeks not merely topunish precisely but to generate fear and aversion, a method of self-policingthat is already being felt as many Americans hesitate to demonstrate, tocriticize, or to resist through their institutions.

The November elections are likelyto suffer from other well-known methods of manipulation.

            Disqualification of pro-Democraticvoters. Accomplished through purges of voter registration roles and voterID requirements that discriminate against low-income citizens who don’t havedriver’s licenses or other acceptable credentials.

Partisan and racialgerrymandering. Mid-decade redistricting in Texas, while rejected

as race-based by a federal judge after days of extensivetestimony, was approved by the right-wing radicals on the Supreme Court. Theyalso seem poised, in a separate case from Louisiana, to deal a fatal blow tothe momentous 1965 Voting Rights Act by interpreting racial gerrymandering aspartisan. Under precedent, disfavoring a race is banned by the act but favoringa party is not, even though race is often a proxy for party preferences. Wehave a Supreme Court of Sophistry.

Democrats are likely to reply, asthey have by redistricting in California, which would provoke a race by bothparties to the bottom, landing well below good government. Republican-ledstates will have a numerical advantage in tilting the House in their direction.But there is some Republican resistance, as in Indiana recently, whereredrawing lines to put some pro-Democratic voters in solid Republican districtswould have forced comfortable Republican legislators to actually work to getreelected.

            Distortions in counting andcertifying votes. Newly empowered local officials in some states, includingGeorgia, can refuse or delay their obligation to certify votes based on littlemore than vague assertions of discrepancies. Pro-Trump election deniers havepopulated a number of county boards in various states, raising the risk ofcertification becoming optional and effectively erasing Democratic votes. Howwidely this danger spreads, against the legions of honest election workerscourageous enough to stomach threats, is a question to be answered in November.

            Courtchallenges. Over time, the rigor of lower court judges in upholding the lawmay be eroded by highly partisan nominees to the bench, a hallmark of Trump’ssecond term. While the Republicans lost some 65 lawsuits aimed at overturningthe 2020 election results, a Trumpist strategy of remaking the federaljudiciary, which already succeeded at the Supreme Court level, is likely todiminish the integrity of the lower courts as well.

            Besides,Trump operates mostly outside the constitutional system, while Americans whoresist still act within it—through the courts, through the ballot box, throughthe street protests designed to raise consciousness about the dying democracy.

The patchwork of Americanresistance combines with the patchwork of acquiescence to Trump’s accumulationof semi-dictatorial powers. That gives no assurance that the democracy can besaved. Voting, which has always been the most effective means of protest, willbe tested as a method of preservation in November and, more dramatically, in thepresidential election 2028. Welcome to Phase Three. 

You can watch my more detaileddiscussion of the fate of American democracy here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uohhPd04b4g&t=272s

                                                         By David K. Shipler 

            The man whocraves a Nobel Peace Prize is looking for ways to play with his soldiers. Hedeclares great swaths of the American citizenry the enemy from within and sendsbefuddled National Guard troops into cities governed by his politicalopposition. He threatens to go "guns-a-blazing" into Nigeria to stop murdersof Christians. He labels occupants of small boats “terrorists” when he imagines,with no proof, that they they might be transporting drugs. He launches amilitary buildup led by the largest US aircraft carrier to waters nearVenezuela in preparation for a possible military assault to overturn thegovernment of the socialist president, Nicolas Maduro.

            This isDonald Trump the peacemaker who did manage to get a shaky end to Israel’s warin Gaza, but who blustered ineffectually about ending Russia’s war in Ukraineand renamed the Department of Defense the Department of War. And this is DonaldTrump the strongman who undermines his military’s combat expertise by lettinghis defective “War Secretary,” Pete Hegseth, purge the senior ranks of the mostcompetent officers, a likely step toward politicizing the armed forces withright-wing, white Christian nationalists.

            If thisarray of odd behavior appears contradictory and hypocritical, let’s look again.It contains significant consistencies of personality and method.

            PresidentTrump thrives on conflict and confrontation, as if his brain chemistry neededthe fix. He enhances his power by tough-guy unpredictability, trying for fear,flattery, and capitulation in both warmaking and peacemaking scenarios. Thissometimes succeeds, but not always.

If no conflict or crisis exists, hecreates or imagines one, then reimagines it as disappearing because of his boldacts. He’s already practices this sleight of hand by thanking himself forrestoring order in US cities where no disorder prevailed, and by curtailingdrug smuggling via routes where it barely existed. Sadly, his pattern ofimagining and reimagining is not just a frivolous magician’s act. It hurts andkills people.

            Another constantin Trump’s disjointed military policies is theatrical. He is a showman, and theWhite House is his stage. The set on which he performs may or may not resemblereality—usually not. But no matter. Once created, it becomes the defininglandscape of his policies, and woe to the underling who disbelieves.

            Therefore,according to Trump, peaceful demonstrators are violent if they oppose hispolicies. Cities’ falling crime rates disappear from his portrayalof “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse,” as he describedWashington, DC. His National Guard have supposedly rescued cities by standing aroundlooking awkward or picking up trash. His bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites was nofantasy, of course, but he brought the curtain down a bit too soon as heimmediately declared the facilities “obliterated.”After the Defense Intelligence Agency submitted a contradictory, preliminary assessment,Hegseth firedits commander, Lieut. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, along with two other seniorofficials. So much for reporting accurately up the chain of command.

            Trump’s performativestyle doesn’t often work well in the real world of complexity. It might grabinitial acquiescence from weaker players, but the grand posturing of adealmaker usually needs follow-up. Trump likes to stop the play mid-act when itreaches a positive turn, an illusory happy ending. But military matters don’tobey the impresario. Wars impart suffering, not glory, and a big mouth can’tend them.

            Thetwenty-point Gaza peace plan is an example of a set of good ideas and a hopefulbeginning that will tax Trump’s ability to follow through. With more pressurethan practically any other president has exerted, Trump leaned on PrimeMinister Benjamin Netanyahu to win a ceasefire that is mostly holding, an exchangeof hostages and prisoners, a restoration of humanitarian aid, and a partialpullback of Israel troops. It was no small achievement: a good first act.

If the audience went home at theintermission, Trump would surely be delighted. But we’re still watching. Thelong-term plan to rebuild Gaza and build peace with international military andcivilian involvement requires nitty-gritty bargaining with Arab states, Turkey,Israel, and a fractured Palestinian leadership. If it requires intricate ongoingmanagement by Trump himself, far beyond a capability that he has demonstrated,it is likely to falter in the morass of Middle East grievance and radicalism.So, will the applause he enjoyed for the first act satisfy him? Is his showover? Will he now lose interest?

            Anotherconstant in warmaking and peacemaking is Trump’s willingness to threaten justabout anything to cow countries that stand in his way. It is the syndrome of amafia boss, which  can be useful againstweaker adversaries who are scared of his impulsive craziness. He is obviously willingto do bad things to people who don’t obey his commands, a practice that is defeatingdemocracy at home as too many American institutions avoid standing up to him.

That bludgeon is also a burden,though. The bully in him, which sees others as susceptible to both his threatsand his flattery, can lead to misjudgments of character. The most dangerous casehas been his hot-and-cold relationship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who hasbeen both admired and reviled by Trump. Indeed, Trump’s insensitivity to shadesof gray, his binary approach to people, actually makes him a lousy negotiatorwhere hard work is needed to reach the end of a difficult road.

He praised Putin, and Putin praisedhim, and nothing came of it. Campaigning on the promise to end the Ukraine warin 24 hours, Trump in office gave up his two major bargaining chips withouteven starting talks: He offered Russia some Ukrainian territory and a pledgenot to accept Ukraine into NATO. He staged an unseemly row with UkrainianPresident Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office and mouthed some of Putin’stalking points, asserting that Ukraine started the war.

All that made Trump look too eagerto deliver on his loud boast, an obvious effort to win that coveted Nobel PeacePrize. So, no surprise, Putin continued the war as usual. Perhaps he missed achance to take advantage of that moment to fashion some form of agreement. Andhe denied Trump the applause he treasures. So, climbing the steep learningcurve, an annoyed Trump flipped on the Russian leader. “We get a lot ofbullshit thrown at us by Putin,” he saidin July. “He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”(This would not have been news to him if he had longtime Putin-watchers on hisstaff, or if he’d watched Putin himself.)

How do Trump’s showmanship, crisiscreation, and tough tactics inform his military policies? We are seeing themunfold around Venezuela. First, his imagination conflates criminal and militarythreats, using the wartime label “armed conflict” to describe the US vs. thedrug cartels. Second, he portrays Venezuela as a source of life-threateningnarcotics when it actually producesor smuggles none of the fentanyl bound for the US and hardly any of thecocaine. Although some drug-laden flights depart from Venezuela, the majorsmuggling routes are not through the Caribbean, but via the Pacific and intothe US over land.

It is hard to see what a coming warwould be about. It might unseat and seize Maduro, who has been indicted as acartel head, and is commonly regarded as having stolen the last election. Itmight open Venezuela’s vast oil reserves to American exploitation, although Madurooffered as much in talks that Trump called off. A senior official told TheNew York Times that the military deployment is designed as pressure onMaduro over oil.

What a war would definitely not beabout is what Trump has consistently touted as the issue, one that mostAmericans can grasp with strong concern: the drug trade.

By David K. Shipler 

In nearly two years since the Gazawar began, the world has learned what Israel does when it feels its veryexistence is threatened. It invades, bombs, maims, starves, blockades, sickens,dislocates, and traumatizes an entire population of innocents whose mostradical leaders and their followers have committed intimate atrocities againstinnocents inside Israel: Sacrifice innocents for innocents. It attacksthroughout the Middle East, in Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, and Qatar. It defiesinternational condemnation. It dismisses evidence of its victims’ suffering as antisemiticpropaganda.

            What it hasnot done, obviously, is use its nuclear weapons, which Moshe Dayan revealedto me in 1981 could be quickly assembled. As Defense Minister, he reportedlyurged consideration of their use when Israel was attacked by Arab countriesin the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Whether the possibility came up this year, asIsrael bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, is not yet known publicly.

            The lessoncouldn’t be clearer: Born as a refuge for Jews after the Holocaust, Israelinherits a legacy of anxiety and persecution, and therefore treasures itsmilitary strength. It feels risk beyond what hard-headed securityexperts might assess. Nevertheless, as Henry Kissinger once said about theJewish state, even paranoids can have real enemies.

And so, when its own intelligenceand military hierarchy grew so complacent that Hamas terrorists could easilyflow in from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023 to slaughter, rape, and kidnap, a traumatizedIsrael sensed doom and replied with terrorism of its own, which aninternational commission of the UN Human Rights Council hasnow defined as genocide.

No more terrible accusation couldbe leveled against a state that rose from the ashes of genocide. The label,which carries consequences under international law, is a conversation-stopper. Whilecritics of Israel can disagree about its accuracy, the “g-word” debate hascreated an odd sense of abstraction. It has become shorthand for a panoply ofatrocities, which, when listed, make an indictment even more telling. That iswhat the UN commission has tried to do.

Israel has generally blockedinternational journalists from Gaza, thereby preventing independent, neutralreporting. But the commission’s 72-page condemnation assembles in one documenta detailed picture from international medical and aid workers, humanitarianagencies, individual Palestinians, and others.

The report gives particularattention to the fate of future generations of Palestinians, charging Israelwith deliberately targeting maternity hospitals and clinics, and in one case a facilityproviding in vitro fertilization. The commission argues that Israel has “destroyedin part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group.”

As early as November 2023, “Oxfamreported that newborns up to three months old were dying of hypothermia,dehydration and infection as mothers had little to no medical support and wereliving in appalling conditions without water, sanitation, heat or food,” thecommission writes.

Children have suffered gunshot wounds,suggesting that they were targeted. Hundreds have had limbs amputated, somewithout anasthesia, due to Israel’s blockade of medical supplies, thecommission says. “Gaza is home to the largest cohort of child amputees inmodern history,” according to a representative of the United Nations Office forthe Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The famine induced by Israel’speriodic blockade and limits on food shipments have caused deaths, but will alsohave lifelong consequences for children who survive, given the damage done bymalnutrition during critical periods of brain development. As of this month,the report says, acute malnutrition is being experienced by 70,000 childrenunder the age of five and 17,000 pregnant or lactating women.

“Short-term complications couldinclude infants not meeting motor developmental milestones within the firstyear of life,” the commission says. “In the medium term, children would beunable to develop speech and meet language milestones, and their cognitiveabilities could potentially be impaired in the long-term.”

There are many more charges:torture and sexual abuse of prisoners; trauma intentionally induced by threatsof killings; widespread destruction of agriculture that curbs food production;the repeatedly forced displacement of some 1.9 million Palestinians; and thetargeting of civilian homes, schools, and hospitals.

Israel contends that Hamas has beenstealing food from shipments, but of course if there were sufficient food, nonewould have to be stolen. It is the shortage itself that creates the conditionsripe for theft and black markets.

Israel also argues correctly thatHamas located itself among civilians. That goes unmentioned in the commission’sreport, which is a missed opportunity to discuss the ethics of killingcivilians in large numbers when they are being used by the enemy as humanshields.

A finding of genocide requires afinding of intent, which is hard to prove. The commission cites statements bythree top officials: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu likening thePalestinians to the Old Testament enemy Amalek, whose men, women, children, andinfants God ordered the Israelites to annihilate. President Isaac Herzog, who announcedabsurdly, “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible.” And DefenseMinister Yoav Gallant, who ordered “a complete siege,” declaring: “noelectricity, no water, no food, no fuel. We are fighting human animals, and weact accordingly.”

In addition, the commission findsgenocidal intent supported by the “circumstantial evidence” of a repeatedpattern of conduct that persisted even after its devastating effects on thecivilian population were documented.

It’s hard to see any motivationother than to remove Palestinians from Israel’s security landscape.

Although the country’s physical survivalwas not truly in jeopardy, despite the rhetoric of Israeli leaders, the attackby Hamas, a beneficiary of Iran, was amplified by attacks from Iran itself andits proxies—Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthis in Yemen—raising the specter ofhostile encirclement. Israeli communities near the borders with Gaza andLebanon were ghost towns after tens of thousands of Israelis fled and becameinternal refugees.

In response, Israel redrew theregion’s military map by obliterating Hamas’s armed capacity, decimatingHezbollah, and, with American help, seriously damaging Iran’s nuclear-weaponsprogram.

But the Israelis have also inflictedone of modern history’s most devastating, sustained assaults on a civilianpopulation, which continues in Gaza far beyond military necessity. Combinedwith officially permitted vigilante and army assaults in the West Bank, Israel ismaking life unlivable for many Palestinians in those territories, apparently hopingthat most will flee—somewhere—and that Palestinian statehood will evaporate asa realistic prospect.

Israel has a longstanding practiceof multiplying the harm it suffers with brutal retaliation a thousand-fold ormore. The Gaza war is Israel’s most extreme exercise of that strategy in itshistory, and history will judge. It will also judge the two weak Americanpresidents who enabled these crimes against humanity: Joe Biden, who merelywrung his hands, and Donald Trump, who is blind to people and sees Gaza as a realestate opportunity.

The supreme irony is this: Insecuring its physical existence, Israel has lost its existence as a moralenterprise, the basis on which it was founded. Its moral authority is buried inthe rubble of Gaza, where it is indeed fighting that existential war—and losing.

                                                            By David K. Shipler 

            If you gainaltitude higher than the daily run of the news and look down from, say, 30,000feet, you see a logical progression in the demise of American democracy. Stepby step, the constitutional structure is being dismantled, and the limits ofthe public’s acceptance are being tested. In seven months, in the first phaseof his project, Donald Trump has caused remarkable damage without encounteringsuccessful resistance. Now, a new phase has begun. Let’s call it Phase Two. Itcontains three main elements:

1)    GettingAmericans used to seeing camouflage on the streets by ostentatiously postingnational guard troops in the nation’s capital and allowing police to “dowhatever the hell they want,” inTrump’s words, with threats of the same in other cities. This is a steptoward the militarized state that Trumpists favor.

2)    Hiringright-wing ideologues to fill key mid-level vacancies created by the massfirings from federal agencies. The purge was not so much to save money—little wassaved—as to open opportunities for zealots to weaponize government and stifleexpertise and debate. Recruitment by the Heritage Foundation has been going onfor years. New hires will remake federal law enforcement into a tool of Trumpby expanding ICE with politically-vetted agents, possibly from the ranks ofwhite nationalists. The FBI will nolonger require a college degree and extensive training for its agents, whowill also be subjected to ideological screening.

3)    Subvertingelections. Trump has prepared the ground for arrests of Democratic candidatesin close races or, at the least, having the Justice Department publicize unprovenallegations to damage their reputations. Several elected Democrats, havealready been arrested on exaggerated charges during altercations. “Weare arresting the mayor right now, per the deputy attorney general,” afederal agent on the phone with Washington said of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, whowas attempting an oversight visit to an immigration center in New Jersey. DemocraticRepresentative LaMonica McIver was also arrested while jostled; she was chargedexcessively with assaulting a federal officer. In addition, Trump wants to controlelections, saying he’s going to ban mail-in ballots, citing advice from thatchampion of democracy, Vladimir Putin. (So far, that power rests with Congress,not the president alone.)

Underlying these and other measuresis Trump’s constant stream of hyped-up declarations of emergencies, as if theUnited States faced perpetual crises: at the border, in energy, in its cities.No doubt his extreme rhetoric falsely picturing bloodthirsty gangs maraudingthrough his country’s significantly nonwhite cities strikes a chord with hiswhite rural base. But, as usual, he manufactures a problem for which the onlysolution—also fictitious—is his tough hand at the top.

Phase One, initiated immediatelyafter his inauguration January 20, overcame the checks and balances among thethree branches of government that the Framers of the Constitution had soingeniously created to avoid the scenario that is now unfolding 238 yearslater.

Trump and his comrades swept asidefunding duly authorized and appropriated by the legislative branch. Theyignored and evaded some orders from the judicial branch restoring governmentgrants and immigrants’ constitutional rights to due process. They took thefirst steps in imposing their ideological doctrine on civil society byweaponizing federal funding and law enforcement against independent thinking,speech, teaching, and advocacy in universities, museums, theaters, law firms,and corporations.

            TheTrumpists have normalized breaches of legal and ethical standards to the pointof danger—the danger that the outrages will no longer seem outrageous. Thethreshold at which shock and opposition are triggered has been raised higherand higher.

Some citizens complain and mobilizeto fight back, of course, but not as a broad movement. Americans have grownaccustomed to masked ICE agents hauling off peaceful international students andessential foreign workers, locking them up without recourse. Americans are nolonger surprised by the purges of websites and archives of historical facts,the removal of books on race and gender from military libraries, the subjectionof data to political filtering, the screening of government workers forideological conformity.

Experts who know their fields areridiculed and fired. That’s to be expected now. If there are objections, theyare raised increasingly in private. The Trumpists scare many Americans awayfrom dissent and into silence, for fear of retribution that could includevigilante violence, perhaps by those January 6 rioters Trump pardoned. The fearextends even to Republican members of Congress. “We are all afraid,” saidRepublican Senator Lisa Murkowski. Many fear speaking out or demonstrating.

Most leading institutions in theUnited States are also afraid and have been complacent and compliant. Congressis supine, controlled by the Republican Party that Trump hijacked and twistedaway from traditional conservatism. District federal judges have tried torestrain the administration, sometimes overreaching, but Trump appointees inappeals courts and the Supreme Court have reversed many of those restraints,unleashing Trump with extraordinary powers to usurp the role of thelegislature.

If a leftist president iseventually elected, those powers can be invoked to swing the country wildly inanother direction, creating a pendulum of instability akin to the worstauthoritarian states in the non-industrialized world.

Americans learned in Phase One howmuch of their constitutional democracy is voluntary, how much it rests in thevalues and courage and selflessness of the citizens. As Judge Learned Hand saidin 1944: “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there,no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it liesthere it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.”

Does liberty lie in the hearts ofAmericans? It is a serious question now. With notable exceptions, leadinginstitutions and citizens have failed to rally for the free society that theysay they value. Or, they have resisted only in their own parochial interests,not in the larger interest of the nation at large. Companies, universities, andmajor media conglomerates try to flatter the mercurial, narcissistic presidentand cut separate deals rather than negotiate broadly for the preservation of apluralistic system.

The victims are not uniting. EvenHarvard, which mounted a strong court case in the face of Trump’s arbitrarycutoff of funding for valuable research, is on the cusp of a deal that wouldreward the president’s dictatorial impulses. Some big law firms caved whentheir largest corporate clients were poised to abandon them, while others arefighting, and pro bono attorneys have organized to help targeted individualsand institutions. Big media conglomerates, which had strong cases againstridiculous libel suits filed by Trump, capitulated and bought him off with hugesums, while other respected news organizations persist in reporting truthfully.

Trump is dividing and conquering.That’s been Phase One.

Phase Two will almost surely seegovernment fabricating statistics or withholding negative numbers, as theSoviet Union did. Trump recently fired the head of the Bureau of LaborStatistics for the customary correction of previous job-creationnumbers—downward, as it happened. So, who’s going to tell the truth when youcan get fired for it? Dictatorships are chronically good-news systems, whereonly the positive gets passed up the chain of command until the man at the top(it’s always a man) holds power at a pinnacle of ignorance.

Steven Levitsky and other scholarsof dying democracies believe the United States is descending into “competitiveauthoritarianism,” in which elections are held but with such restraints onthe opposition that it cannot gain power. That has been the case in Turkey andHungary, for example, whose leaders have gained effusive praise from Trump.  

As the United States enters PhaseTwo, then, the question arises: Is this just a bad moment that will pass, or anew chapter in American history? What will Phases Three or Four include?

By David K. Shipler 

            In hisacerbic 1776 pamphlet Common Sense,Thomas Paine skewered the British monarchy with a broad assault: “Society isproduced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotesour happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY byrestraining our vices.” Government was a necessary evil, he thought, “a moderendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world.”

            Moralvirtue vs. imperious oppression: that was Paine’s picture. Yet those oppositepoles of the human personality represent not just a conflict between societyand government but within government itself, especially in the modern era.

On the one hand, as President Trumpis demonstrating, government can be a cruel enforcer of political and socialconformity, with punishment for dissident speech and policy differencesreaching into the distant reaches of civil society.  But government can also act as a facilitatorof the common good, mobilizing resources to channel society’s generosity and vision,with protection for the economically vulnerable and stewardship of research invast fields of science, engineering, education, and beyond.

It is precisely that second,beneficial dimension of government that is being dismantled by Trump, hisaides, his Republican members of Congress, and his like-minded Supreme Courtjustices. What remains, enhanced, is the most threatening facet of government,its absolutist power to frighten, arrest, deport, and close down space for theintricate play of ideas and debate.

In crisis, ironically, the modernsociety turns to government, either to blame for failure or to beseach forhelp, as in the aftermath of the Texas floods that swept away girls in ariverside summer camp. Rescues and searches were done by many volunteers, yes,but calls for future preventive measures were directed at government, not atprivate enterprise. It is government that has the power to pool and directfunds, and thereby amplify the caring of the community. Good government harmonizeswith people’s needs.

Trump’s government, however, ishostile to people’s needs, both immediate and long-term. He cuts funds forrescue and repair emergencies such as the Texas flood. He cuts Medicaid fundingfor the poor, which will also jeoparize health care for the rural non-poor,whose hospitals will struggle to survive without the government aid. He cutsfood subsidies for low-income children whose malnutrition will cause lifelongcognitive impairment.

He ends funding and thereby hobblesAmerica’s advantage over China in alternative energy and other fields. Heyields his country’s lead in medical advances to others and frightens talentedforeign researchers away. He forfeits his country’s affluent compassion inaddressing famine, conflict, health crises, and other suffering abroad, therebydiminishing American global influence. He disrupts the future prosperity of theUnited States, its credit rating, and the strength of its currency by toyingimpulsively with tarriffs, robbing the intricate worldwide trade mechanisms of predictability,that essential prerequisite for economic investment.

What he leaves intact are the worstelements of government: its totalitarian impulses, its arbitrariness, and itsbullying penchant for political oppression: Watch, the ground is being laid forDemocratic candidates to be arrested on trumped-up charges, as in Turkey andother semi-authoritarian systems.

Remarkably, little is being done topreserve the genius of the Framers’ constitutional system—its separation ofpowers—which is being abandoned by the legislative and judicial branches (atthe Supreme Court level), leaving Trump’s executive with exorbitant authorityto ride roughshod over the checks and balances that have kept Americandemocracy functioning for more than two centuries. That makes the Trumpists andhis acolytes in Congress and the Supreme Court anything but “conservative.”They are not conserving. They are regressionists, not revolutionaries in ThomasPaine’s meaning. In 1776, they would have been British loyalists, monarchists.They are staging a counter-revolution, and the country is letting them get awaywith it.

Perhaps understandably, mostAmericans have been slow to recognize what is happening.  Comparing the early days of Trump with theearly days of Vladimir Putin, a Russian told an American friend several fewmonths ago, “You guys are caving faster than we did.” That was probably becausethe Russians knew what was coming; they’d been there. Americans do not. They donot yet know how terrifying government can be. Immigrants are learning.Citizens are next.

What Trump and his followers arecreating fits Thomas Paine’s characteristic of “intolerable” government, inwhich “our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means bywhich we suffer.” Under Trump and his successive followers, the United Statesis likely to become less free, less prosperous, less healthy, less safe, lesseducated, less just, less stable, less influential, less admired, lessconnected with the world, and less happy and comfortable for Americans’children and grandchildren.  

To invert Paine’s dictum, Trump’sgovernment has become an instrument of our vices, not a restraint. Itrepresents society’s worst impulses, which coexist with its generous decency.The question going forward is whether American society, by “uniting ouraffections,” can someday remake government into a collective effort of virtuethat reflects whatever caring resides in the civic culture of the country.

                                                             By David K. Shipler            

            Every November 7, the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution,the Soviet Union staged a parade of drill-perfect troops and intimidating weaponrythrough Red Square. And every November 7, the frigid breath of the comingMoscow winter made the hours there a hardship. But I went in every one of thefour years I lived in Moscow, partly because it was my job as a New YorkTimes correspondent, partly because I’m a sucker for parades, even those ofmy country’s adversary.

            I grew upwith Fourth of July parades of fire engines in my hometown. And on the Maineisland where I spend summers now, I know a lot of the folks who roll by intheir decorated pickups, plus the vegetable gardener on her riding mower. (She makesthe world’s best pickles and relish.)

So, I went to the Army’s 250thanniversary parade along Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C., partly becauseit’s my habit to be curious, partly because I’m a believer in the power ofobservation, even of killing machines. What I observed was less political and morecomplicated than generally expected, not a Moscow-style display ofmilitarization.

There at the grass roots, we couldn’tsee President Trump and could barely hear his invited guests cheer his arrival.We could not hear him swear in new recruits with an oath to the Constitutionthat he violates hourly. His move to use the military inside his own country tosmother dissent, a step toward ideological totalitarianism, operated in a distantdimension, real enough but confounded by a second dimension, the one you stillremember before the Trumpists came to power.

The mood was Fourth of July, acrowd of people friendly with those they’d never met, laid back with no sign ofjingoism, families out for a pleasant day. Around me on Constitution Avenue,they were almost entirely white—a rarity for DC—but sporting only a few MAGAhats and a few more army and veterans’ caps and T-shirts. Many seemed to bemilitary buffs, having served themselves or, as one guy put it in a small sign:

YAYARMY

F… TRUMP

HEREFOR

TANKS

Nobody bothered him, as far as Icould tell, nor did they challenge the fellow walking back and forth among theonlookers holding a big poster saying, “TRUMP IS A RAPIST.” Trump’s threat thatany protests on his big day (also his birthday) would be “met with very bigforce” turned out to be hot air, at least as far as DC police, army MPs anduniformed Secret Service agents were concerned.

Such a threat in Moscow would havebeen swiftly executed, of course, had any Russian waved a dissenting sign. Yet unlikeConstitution Avenue, where anybody could go, no ordinary Russians withoutspecial passes could get to the Red Square parade through the series ofcheckpoints. Non-credentialed people saw it only on TV.

In person, it was spectacular. WithRussians’ flair for pageantry, Moscow could surely win a theater critic’s awardover Washington, even Trump’s Washington. While the ageing Politburo was linedup on the rust-red Lenin Mausoleum (equipped with heaters, we assumed), thousandsof troops in uniform great coats and fur hats goose-stepped in preciseunanimity across the vast plaza, with not a step out of tempo or a leg offangle.

By contrast, ragged marching characterizedmost of the US Army units along Constitution, perhaps because they were actualcombat forces. The Soviet soldiers looked suspiciously like trained drill teams.Or maybe the Soviet army spent more time learning how to march than how to fight,which has carried over to Russia’s flawed military performance in Ukraine.

Whatever the case, those troops inRed Square, chins raised in a pose of haughty superiority, seemed formidable astheir chants, “Hoo-RAH! Hoo-RAH!” reverberated off the Kremlin walls. (Rumorhad it that they were recorded and amplified. But still!) On Constitution, however,American soldiers marched practically in silence, with only the occasional lonevoice of a senior sergeant’s commands, none of those semi-musical cadence calls,joined by all the troops, that you’re supposed to learn in boot camp.

The Soviet parades featured themost ominous weapons of all, various nuclear-capable rockets, includingenormous international ballistic missiles dragged through Red Square on huge vehicles.That missile-rattling show was abandoned for a while after the Soviet Unioncollapsed but was performed most recently this spring to mark the 80thanniversary of the end of World War II. As a statement of patriotic pride and internationalmenace, it gets the message across as Russia bogs down in its attempt toconquer Ukraine: Remember, we’re a nuclear power.

Washington’s parade seemed less scarybecause it contained no missiles, just a few unarmed mobile launchers. (The Armydoesn’t have ICBMs, which are controlled by the Air Force and Navy.) It feltcarefree and almost benign as drivers and gunmen waved and smiled from theturrets of their tanks and other deadly vehicles. One nearby father kept tryingto whip up enthusiastic awe in his small son,—“Buddy, look at that! That’s the101st! See that? Special Forces!”—but we won’t know for about adecade if it worked on the young man. From my grassroots post, this parade didnot live up to its ominous billing as Trump’s militarized swagger towardauthoritarianism.

It was essentially a celebration ofthe Army’s history, a retrospective of marchers and bands clad in colonial-erauniforms, then those from the Civil War and updated as helmets changed shape throughWorld War I and II, Korea and Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The evolution included humans’capacity to develop imaginative tools of death, and the crowds alongConstitution were captivated by the long succession of olive-drab armoredvehicles, including the behemoth of all—the 60-ton M1 Abrams tank—which is toobig to be very useful in much modern warfare. It’s not clear whether it damagedthe capital’s streets as predicted, but I saw no harm being caused on venerated ConstitutionAvenue. The reason, as a young fellow who’d spent eight years in the 82ndAirborne explained to me, was that the tanks were heading straight, and treadstear things up mostly when they turn. Steel plates had been installed atcorners.

            Thatguy gave me short courses on nearly every weapon that passed by, plus the bestand worst kinds of helicopters to jump from, the most and least maneuverable kindsof parachutes, and the obsolescence of most of what we were seeing. Two smallsurveillance drones flying along Constitution were the future of warfare, as weboth agreed, having watched Ukraine’s inventive use of them.

            He asked ifI’d been in uniform. I said I’d been in the Navy—one hat I wear thatestablishes an instant bond with people I might profoundly disagree with. But Ididn’t ask him about his politics. In our dimension, it didn’t feel like apolitical day. I didn’t ask him how he felt about Trump using the military for domesticpolicing. I was being a very bad reporter. I did wonder to myself, watching theranks of young troops in camouflage, how they would react to a clearly illegalorder, and what thoughts were going on inside their minds about what washappening to America’s precious democracy.

Instead, having heard that he’dmade 45 jumps as a paratrooper, I asked him about his knees. “They’re broken,” hesaid with a wan smile, as if acknowledging fate.   

By David K. Shipler 

            Twoprominent themes of racial and ethnic antagonism have found their way intoofficial government policies under the Trump administration. One is the longstandingbelief that nonwhites are mentally inferior to whites, a stereotype dating fromslavery. The other, generated more recently, is the notion that whites are thereal victims, suffering discrimination under the banner of racial preferences.

            PresidentTrump has displayed both assumptions in personal remarks and symbolic acts, andhis aides have incorporated them into federal funding and programming. Notsince the years of legal segregation, before the civil rights movement, has governmentbeen so dominated by the ideology of white supremacy. Not in the decades ofwork toward a more open society have its leaders repudiated the progress so venomously.

            Trump hasdemonstrated skill at tapping into the ugliest attitudes in his country, givingthem voice, and cementing them in policy. Before any investigation of the fatalmidair collision of an army helicopter and a passenger jet near Washington’sNational Airport, he speculated that “it could have been” caused by diversityin the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA’s DEI program, Trump claimed inan executive order, “penalizes hard-working Americans who want to serve in theFAA but are unable to do so, as they lack a requisite disability or skin color.”

His executive orders ending DEI—thediversity, equity and inclusion programs that have opened broad opportunitiesto minorities—ride on one of the most durable stereotypes in American culture: theinsidious belief that people of color, Blacks in particular, are inherently lesscapable than whites. That age-old image, which has fostered racial bias inhiring and promotions, now finds a comfortable home in the White House.

Since victims of racial prejudice havebeen favored, it seems, some whites have been competing for that victim badge,seeing themselves as deprived of the level playing field so loudly advocated byliberals fighting discrimination. A bitter grievance is nursed by some whitesin or near poverty when they hear about the “white privilege” that frees themajority race of the burdens of prejudice. The resentment took on a sharp edgeas whites fell into economic hardship during the Great Depression of 2008. Theymight have made common cause with Blacks who suffered similarly, but racialdivides overcome class affinities in America.

 Trump is clever at exploiting the theme ofwhite victimization. It’s part of what got him elected. And now it has beenelevated to diplomacy based on fantasy. In recent days, he has used the OvalOffice to dramatize the hallucination that whites in South Africa are victimsof genocide at the hands of Blacks. He even showed a video of a ranting Blackracist politician to South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, thedistinguished lead negotiator of the end of apartheid.

The show followed Trump’s theatricalgrant of refugee status to whites from South Africa after denying it to Afghansand others who face danger, some for helping the US military.

            At the sametime, he was making American Blacks more vulnerable. His Justice Department’sCivil Rights Division announced its abandonment of an effective tool inrectifying police misconduct: lawsuits producing judge-approved consent decreesthat reduced racial profiling and brutality. Police violence against Blacks hasbeen a chronic American problem, a source of riots in the 1960s, and a featureof misery in many impoverished communities. Without federal monitoring andintervention, it is now likely to worsen.

One dropped case involvesMinneapolis, which is about to mark the fifth anniversary of its police murderof George Floyd. Officer Derek Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck sparked protestsacross the country and around the world, Black Lives Matter demonstrations thatTrump and his cohorts detested.

            Adding tothe flurry of assaults on racial justice this week, the head of the Civil RightsDivision, Harmeet Dhillon, launched an investigation of the city of Chicago forpossible hiring violations. Why? Mayor Brandon Johnson tolda church congregation proudly that unprecedented diversity had been achieved byincreasing the number of Black officials in senior positions.

The concepts of “diversity,” alongwith “equity” and “inclusion,” (DEI) might have once sounded noble, but havebeen tagged as sinful and illegal by the Trump administration’s speech police. Useof the words alone trigger retribution. Rough threats and punishments fromWashington have cowed some private universities, corporations, and foundationsinto deleting or masking their efforts to open their ranks to minorities.

The Trumpist goal is to invertcivil rights enforcement from its longstanding protection of groups that havesuffered discrimination to a novel defense of the white majority. Instead of targetedenforcement where a white might have been rejected because of race (and it doeshappen), the effort is a broad assault on proven remedies for the country’shistoric ailment of pro-white bias.

As an executor of the project, HarmeetDhillon is a paradoxical figure. Born in India, she would not obviously benefitfrom the white supremacist system that her policies are supporting. Yet in1988, she publishedand defended antisemitic satires of Dartmouth College’s Jewish president,James O. Freedman, when she was editor-in-chief of the conservative studentnewspaper, The Dartmouth Review. It was a scandalous event that drewnational attention and condemnations from the Anti-Defamation League, the Boardof Trustees, and faculty members.

A column in one issue of the paper,and a drawing in the next, likened Freedman to Hitler, using a Hitler quote toportray the Dartmouth president as an dictator bent on a “ ‘Final Solution’ ofthe Conservative Problem,” a “holocaust” in which campus conservatives were “deportedin cattle cars in the night.”

Dhillon saw nothing antisemitic in thecolumn or the caricture. She called it a comment on “liberal fascism” andblamed critics for “trying to twist the issue to their own ends.” She told TheNew York Times that she was “very surprised” by the reaction. Given herblind spot, at least then, she might have trouble detecting the antisemitismthat the Trump administration is citing as a pretext for investigating anddefunding universities (although not Dartmouth so far). If time were conflated,she would have to investigate herself.

Of course, antisemitism is afeature of the right-wing white nationalism that has mustered support for Trump.That wing of American society also finds harmony with Trump’s vilification ofswarthy immigrants as bringing violence and “poisoning the blood of our country.” He and Vice President J.D. Vance havestereotyped them as primitive. During the campaign, they repeatedly endorsed afabricated slander that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio were eating pet dogs andcats.

Vance struck the same theme a fewdays ago, in different terms, asserting that immigrant communities are rifewith “pre-modern brutality.” Ina podcast with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, he also claimedthat they undermine America’s virtuous cohesion:

“I really do think that socialsolidarity is destroyed when you have too much migration too quickly, and sothat’s not because I hate the migrants or I’m motivated by grievance. That’sbecause I’m trying to preserve something in my own country where we are aunified nation. And I don’t think that can happen if you have too muchimmigration too quickly.”

So, preserving “something” in hisown country does not mean celebrating its remarkable array of cultures, races,religions, and ethnicities. It’s too bad Douthat didn’t ask him how he reconciledthat with the background of his wife, Usha, born in the US of Indian immigrants.Well, perhaps they came here slowly.