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At the first virtual Democratic National Convention, three former presidents, social justice activists, farmers, small business owners, survivors of violence, teachers, immigrants, and a whole lot of disgruntled Republicans declared that this nation cant afford four more years of President Trump in the White House.

When the first virtual Republican National Convention begins Monday, no one will punctuate that point more emphatically than the president himself.

Expect a GOP horror show with Trump as the ringleader of what will likely be an ugly spectacle of white grievance and culture wars. That Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the white St. Louis couple who brandished guns at Black Lives Matter protesters, have been invited to speak at the RNC lays bare the path Trump has chosen for the bell lap of his reelection campaign.

It is, of course, what Trump has done every second of his presidency, the most corrupt and ruinous in modern American history. He has rolled away every rock and allowed this nations worst impulses to crawl into the light, as he dismantles democracy faster than Postmaster General Louis DeJoy can destroy the United States Postal Service.

During a recent CNN appearance, Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security official in the Trump administration, said: If weve learned one lesson about Donald Trump, its that if he thinks something aligns with his personal interests, it is good; if it doesnt align with his personal interests, it is bad. In the case of things like QAnon and conspiracy theories, as long as they support and reinforce the presidents world view, he will embrace them with a full hug.

QAnon, a loosely affiliated far-right conspiracy group deemed a terrorist threat by the FBI, claims that anyone opposed to Trump is a cannibal, pedophile, or Satanist fomenting a deep-state overthrow of his administration. Or something.

This president isnt interested in truth, Taylor said. Hes interested in his truth.

That truth chooses authoritarianism over democracy, baseless conspiracy theories over verifiable facts, and the will of Russian President Vladimir Putin, even when his actions reportedly endanger American troops.

As former President Barack Obama said in his DNC speech, This administration has shown it will tear our democracy down if thats what it takes to win. That includes the ongoing sabotage of the November election, less than 75 days away.

Trump will do nothing at the RNC to address the concerns of his critics, from former First Lady Michelle Obamas vivisection of his failures to Democratic vice presidential nominee Senator Kamala Harriss pointed I know a predator when I see one. Hell look only to his base, speaking to those who like him, no matter how dangerous or deluded they may be.

Racism, of course, will play no small part here. Its Trumps Free Bird, with tiki torches instead of lighters. Because racism deliberately benefits some while methodically working against others, it will always be this nations biggest threat to a true democracy. Count on Trump to use it as he presents himself as the last best hope for the uninterrupted centuries-long reign of white supremacy.

Trumps playbook of prejudice is well-worn and thin, but since it helped get him to the White House in 2016, he will again make it the centerpiece of his argument for a second term. Thats what drives his pitch to suburban housewives read white women about his elimination of an Obama-era anti-discrimination housing rule. Low income housing in the suburbs, as Trump calls it, is his new migrant caravan, which he evoked in the months leading up to the 2018 midterms.

With the RNC limited by the COVID-19 pandemic that Trump has lethally mishandled, he wont have the adoring audience his ego so desperately craves. (Although I wouldnt put it past him to find enough sycophants willing to shun masks and social distancing protocols to cram into some space when he makes his acceptance speech.)

In his anti-immigration rhetoric, Trump has often said, Without borders, we dont have a country. With a second Trump presidency, we wont have a democracy. In this troubled national moment, a president should allay his countrys fears. Instead, peddling disunity and despair, Trump will magnify his possible reelection as a clear and present threat.

Rene Graham can be reached at renee.graham@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @reneeygraham.

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At the RNC, Trump will offer the strongest case against his reelection - The Boston Globe

The culture wars show no sign of abating. The latest to be condemned by hardline progressive youth is Adolph Reed, a black, Marxist professor who was due to give a speech to the New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, but was disinvited because he believes that left-wingers currently concentrate too much on race at the expense of class.

This prompted outrage from a group within the chapter, who said that to give Mr Reed a platform would be reactionary, class reductionist and at best tone deaf. And that was that, for a man whom the Harvard academic Cornel West who is also black describes as the greatest democratic theorist of his generation.

We have to do better than this. We have to continue to be able to speak to each other. It is surely not beyond us to agree with the prominent black British educator Katharine Birbalsingh, who insists that there is a middle way.

Strive to have a complex understanding of race, the state, education etc. Think outside the box! she tweeted recently. That would be both possible and positive.

For older liberals who value free speech more than the right to be safe from offensive or hurtful ideas can acknowledge that it is useful to talk much more about institutional racism and unconscious bias, the long-term effects of the Atlantic slave trade, and police actions that disproportionately affect black people. And the woke side could think a bit more about the gains we all make by being confronted with opinions we disagree with and possibly find objectionable or even distressing; not least in challenging, and in the process maybe strengthening, our convictions.

But for any progress to be made I believe we need the return of two concepts that have gone curiously missing in the increasingly divisive arguments: forgiveness and redemption.

Here it is instructive to look at the case of Dr David Starkey. An eminent scholar of English Tudor history, Dr Starkey also long had a lucrative sideline as a professional provocateur on TV and radio that led him to be known as the rudest man in Britain. Both careers came to an abrupt halt, however, after he gave an online interview last month. While discussing the Black Lives Matter movement with his host, Dr Starkey, who is white, said: Slavery was not genocide, otherwise there wouldnt be so many damn blacks in Africa or in Britain, would there?

Dr Starkey was arguably correct that, however abominable it was, the slave trade did not meet traditional definitions of genocide. The damn blacks, though, well and truly sunk him. Almost immediately he was dropped by both his past and present publishers, and he resigned or was sacked from positions at Cambridge and Canterbury Christ Church universities, from fellowships and board positions, had an honorary degree revoked and had a medal from a historical society withdrawn.

Since then he has been almost literally cancelled. He has, as he said, lost every distinction and honour acquired in a long career". I have not read one word of sympathy not defence for a man who was a household name for at least 20 years. He has apologised abjectly, of course, but it appears that no one wants to hear from him ever again. Dr David Starkey has become a non-person.

I find this deeply troubling for a number of reasons. Firstly, if he is a racist and Ms Birbalsingh, who knows him, thinks he is (she still likes him) we ought to ask why. Dr Starkey is not some asinine thug. He is highly intelligent. On purely rational grounds, how could he hold such a prejudice? He could not possibly defend it intellectually if debated by his peers. Wouldnt exposing racism for the groundless bigotry that it is be a worthwhile exercise?

In the Stalinist era, Dmitri Shostakovich at least had a concert. There will be no lecture or TV programme from David Starkey

Secondly, and more importantly, how have we reached a point at which a sitting US President has boasted of committing crimes sexually harassing women and suffer no consequences from his own party, yet an admired historian and famous pundit can destroy his whole role in public life with two words? They were extremely abhorrent, yes: but is there no possibility for Dr Starkey to be forgiven? I have met and interviewed him, and do not think he is evil. Have we become so cruel that there can be no path to repentance and redemption for him?

The white British thinker Douglas Murray wrote about this issue in his 2019 book The Madness of Crowds : What is a decent interval of time between an error and forgiveness? Does anybody know? Is anybody interested in working it out?

There are as yet no answers, and if we have discarded these concepts entirely, that does not strike me as either a Christian or a Muslim response to sin: for both are religions of mercy. This is the judgement of the communist commissar; or actually even worse. It reminds me of the ostracism experienced by one Russian composer during the Stalinist terror in the 1930s, during which the following notice appeared in a newspaper: Today there will be a concert by enemy of the people Dmitri Shostakovich." The musician was near suicidal with fear at the time; but at least he had a concert. There will be no lecture or TV programme from enemy of the people David Starkey.

This cannot be right. There has to be a road back. We have to allow people to change, and we must be able to disagree in a more civil manner. There is a way, which was expressed movingly by the white conservative New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, after the death of the great black American civil rights leader and congressman John Lewis last month.

Mr Lewis received heartfelt tributes from both left and right, wrote Mr Stephens, because he operated from convictions of radical love. He saw humanity even in those who refused to see humanity in him".

Radical love: we could do with some of that. And if that is too much to ask, we must at least try to see the humanity in one another, our ideological foes as well as our friends. If we cannot do that, then I'm afraid all hope is lost.

Sholto Byrnes is a commentator and consultant in Kuala Lumpur and a corresponding fellow of the Erasmus Forum

Updated: August 19, 2020 03:55 PM

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Know your culture war enemy, but try not to hate them - The National

In our monthly book club, we discuss whatever we happen to be reading and ask everyone in the comments to do the same. What Are You Reading This Month?

One could argue the culture wars are never-ending, but some battles are undoubtedly fiercer than others. Kevin Mattsons absorbing Were Not Here To Entertain chronicles one such era, drawing upon a wealth of archival research to unpack a culture war from below, specifically in the form of punk music, zines, literature, and movies that flew beneath MTVs radar during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. It begins with the crash of influential publications Search And Destroy and Punk in the late 70s, then pivots to the rise of bands like The Minutemen, who bristled at the glitzy aesthetic of West Coast rock, and visual artists who rebelled against the dominant air of 60s nostalgia. From there, Mattson digs into punks national influence on art, exploring its impact in areas beyond New York and L.A. Ultimately, the book posits the DIY culture of 80s punks as much more than just reactionary, an attitude that would behoove us to act as were confronted in 2020 with a monopolized media landscape and a pair of political parties that want nothing more than to own each other. [Randall Colburn]

Cartoonist John Allison has been writing and drawing about the residents, past and present, of the bizarre little hamlet of Tackleford for 22 years now, most prominently in his Eisner-winning Boom! Box series Giant Days. Allisons latest project, Wicked Things, takes one of the very best characters from that entire two-decade periodteen detective and force of nature Charlotte Lottie Groteand places her on a collision course with the adult world. You dont have to be familiar with Allisons past work to get a kick out of Wicked Things, which sees Lottie face off with the international teen detective community (and pretty much immediately get embroiled in a murder, natch)although seeing Lottie and her pal Claire on the big screen of a published, non-web-based comic does carry an undeniable thrill. Drawn by Max Sarin, all three extant issues offer up Allisons signature blend of absurdist dialogue layered over real young people feelings, as Lottie tries to work out her place in the world as she ages out of the teen detective demographic. (And also tries to clear her name, of course.) [William Hughes]

I loved The Royal We, the first non-YA novel from Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, the creators of red carpet blog Go Fug Yourself, so it makes perfect sense that Im eating up its sequel, The Heir Affair. When we last left Nick and Bexthe future heir to the British throne and his Chicago Cubs-loving American bridethey were fleeing the scene after their own wedding, chased away by a tabloid journalist and a seedy-seeming scandal. The Heir Affair finds the lovebirds dealing with the aftermath and coming once again to terms with what it means to be in the public eye. Theres palace intrigue aplenty, romance that feels real and enviable, yet another scandal, and even a little baseball drama. Its simultaneously witty and fluffy, and I tore through it faster than you can say Meghan Markle. Its the perfect posh summer read. [Marah Eakin]

Link:
What are you reading in August? - The A.V. Club

I thought we were over all this stuff.

If Jose Bautista's home run and bat flip in the 2015 playoffs was the zenith of baseball's culture wars and "play the game the right way" zealots, it seemed we had come around on the issue. Starting in the 2018 postseason and continuing into 2019, MLB even ran an advertising campaign featuring Ken Griffey Jr. imploring to "Let the kids play."

Two incidents from Monday night, however, suggest that what might be termed an old-school belief retains a strong footprint in the game. In the eighth inning of the Padres-Rangers game, Fernando Tatis Jr. swung at a 3-0 cookie with a 10-3 lead and belted a grand slam off Rangers reliever Juan Nicasio. Tatis had missed a take sign, but the Rangers clearly didn't like the swing with the Padres holding such a big lead. Ian Gibaut, a pitcher with all of 24 career innings in the majors, replaced Nicasio and threw his first pitch behind Manny Machado's head.

Since he was a child, Fernando Tatis Jr. has lived to play. This year, the game needs him just as much as he needs it. Jeff Passan

"I didn't like it, personally," Rangers manager Chris Woodward said of Tatis' 3-0 swing. "But, like I said, the norms are being challenged on a daily basis. So just because I don't like it doesn't mean it's not right. I don't think we liked it as a group."

Meanwhile, in the Nationals-Braves game, Juan Soto clubbed a 445-foot ninth-inning home run off Braves reliever Will Smith to give the Nationals a 6-3 lead at the time (the Braves would rally to win in the bottom of the ninth). Soto admired his home run for a second or two -- certainly not as long as he has admired some of his other blasts -- and Smith then barked an expletive at Soto, which only led to an even slower trot around the bases.

Nationals manager Dave Martinez defended his young superstar after the game. "Will Smith said something to Soto that I didn't really appreciate," Martinez said. "So I just want to let him know, hey, it wasn't Juan who threw the ball. His job is to hit so just be quiet and get on the mound. You threw the pitch, make a better pitch."

As Buster Olney and I discussed on the Baseball Tonight podcast this morning, that's the bottom line here: Throw a better pitch. Just because you're down seven runs doesn't give you the right to throw a 3-0 fastball down the middle and expect an easy strike. Tatis' job is to beat you -- no matter the score, no matter the count. Soto's job is to beat you -- and if, god forbid, he has some fun in the process and you don't like it, take Martinez's advice.

Former Astros pitcher Collin McHugh, who opted out of playing in 2020, had a good tweet on Tatis' home run:

Tatis was conciliatory after the game. "I've been in this game since I was a kid," he said. "I know a lot of unwritten rules. I was kind of lost on this. Those experiences, you have to learn. Probably next time, I'll take a pitch."

As Woodward alluded to, however, those unwritten rules are changing. In 2019, players swung at a 3-0 pitch 11.1% of the time. As McHugh said, you'd better be aware of potential consequences if you throw a 3-0 pitch down the middle. Even when ahead by five or more runs, players swung at a 3-0 pitch 5.2% of the time. Those rates are nearly double from what they were in 2009, when players swung on 3-0 5.3% of the time and just 2.2% of the time when ahead by five-plus runs. The game evolves -- even if the unwritten rules sometimes don't.

2 Related

Former big league pitcher Ron Darling, now an analyst for the Mets and MLB Network, addressed the trouble with the unwritten rules on MLB Network and defended Tatis. "I'm old enough that I grew up in a game that a lot of older guys had all the power and they would tell you how to act, what to do, and you did what they told you to do because that's how it was," he said. "Unwritten rules only work if everyone knows the unwritten rules. By their very definition, nobody knows an unwritten rule, so what you have now is you're trying to make a decision that a 3-0 count in a seven-run game is off limits. I'm just not with that at all."

It is all kind of silly. If Tatis had crushed a first-pitch fastball or even a 2-0 fastball, nobody would raise an eyebrow. But because it was 3-0 he has somehow, what, destroyed the integrity of the game? Hurt Juan Nicasio's feelings? This isn't Little League. He's trying to compete, to drive in runs, to hit home runs. Sure, a seven-run lead with two innings to go is pretty safe, but you never know. The Giants just blew a five-run lead in the ninth inning the other night.

ESPN's Buster Olney leads the discussion of the latest news and notes around baseball with the game's top analysts. Listen

The argument might be that Tatis endangered his own teammate. That only gets back to the circle of beanball baseball. Gibaut may have endangered his teammates by throwing behind Machado. What if the Padres had retaliated by throwing at a Rangers hitter? As for Soto, obviously some of his antics at the plate rub opponents the wrong way -- the shuffle, the cup adjustments, the air of confidence that does admittedly border on cockiness. It's important to understand the cultural aspects here, however. Tatis and Soto are both Dominican, and Latin players often do play the game with more flair -- no different than, say, the Korea Baseball Organization, where bat flips are almost an artistic aspect of the game.

"He means nothing by what he does," Martinez said of Soto after Monday's game. "When he does his shuffle, it's just to get him to the next pitch. He doesn't do it to show anybody up, he doesn't do it -- when pitchers start acting the way they're acting, it does bother me. But he doesn't do anything back. He stands up there and he gets a good pitch to hit and he hits the ball really hard. That's what you're supposed to do."

That's what both Tatis and Soto have been doing. Both are just 21 years old and yet emerging alongside Mike Trout as two of the best hitters in the game and as generational-type players. Tatis is hitting .305/.383/.726 and leads the majors in home runs (11), RBIs (28), runs (22) and total bases (69). If the MVP vote were held today, he'd likely be the landslide winner. Soto missed the start of the season with a positive COVID test, but in his 12 games he's hitting an absurd .409/.490/.955 with seven home runs and more walks than strikeouts. When he debuted in 2018 at 19 with a .406 OBP, his approach and plate discipline led to Ted Williams comparisons. With this start, he's showing that's not a crazy proposition.

So, yes, let the kids play. Let them swing 3-0. Let them admire their home runs. And opponents had better get to used to it because they're going to hit a lot more of them.

See the original post:
Fernando Tatis Jr. and Juan Soto are breaking baseball's unwritten rules. Isn't it great? - ESPN

The Republican National Conventions speaker lineup is the sign of a party that knows itself well: First theres Abby Johnson, the former Planned Parenthood clinic director who had a very lucrative anti-abortion epiphany and has since created an entire persona and career as a repentant abortion convert. Then theres Patricia and Mark McCloskey, the gun-toting couple from Missouri who were charged for threatening peaceful police brutality protestors with their firearms. Theres also Nick Sandmann, the teen from the 2019 viral video in which he and a group of fellow students from Covington Catholic High School stood smirking in front of Omaha elder Nathan Phillips as one of his classmates opined, Land gets stolen; thats how it works. Its the modern Republican Party, preserved in amber: Wealthy grievance warriors living the double mandate around top-down class war and white identity politics.

As it has since its national rise in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, the Republican Party recognizes that the most effective and efficient way to galvanize its base is to consistently cast itself as a collective of aggrieved, put-upon, mostly white citizens. Sandmann, Johnson, and the McCloskeyseach the self-described victims of the out-of-control Communists running roughshod in our streets and in the halls of powerare the same basic blueprint. Republicans, a collective in desperate need of proving that its bedrock of imagined white grievance will be maintained and emboldened by a dwindling number of young conservatives, know what it has been, what it is, and what it needs to be to survive enough to keep those tax cuts and corporate giveaways flowing.

On Wednesday, my colleague Alex Pareene, writing on the rise of Madison Cawthorns brand of Nazi-cozy conservatives, made the assessment that the Republican Party, right now, is recruiting its future leaders from a pool of people attracted to the furthest fringes of far-right thought simply because those are the only young people currently interested in being associated with organized Republican Party politics under Donald Trump. The party has chosen this tactic because it recognizes that it is standing on wet sand, ideologically speaking. A quarter of the conservative base is already on board with single-payer health care, with roughly 63 percent of all voters leaning toward universal health care. A majority of all registered voters approve of the statewide mask mandates that just a few months ago were the target of the rights inane, self-defeating culture wars. On police reform, the country is in wide agreement that chokeholds, no-knock warrants, qualified immunity, local police militarization, and inaction by police witnessing abuse by fellow officers all need to go. Two-thirds of the countrys voters believe that the federal government is currently doing too little to combat climate change. This isnt a country of radicals. Many of these changes are the lowest possible bars of a democratic society and, at least on climate change, one that wants to stave off mass extinction.

There is no unwinding any of this, not by the current champions the Republican Party has dealt itself. So instead, it dedicated the last decade to perfecting minority rule. Right-leaning state legislaturesvoted in by a wave of reactionary racism responding to the election of Barack Obamagerrymandered state electoral maps so badly that, until the courts finally stepped in, winning was their only option. From there, they took on the Democratic Partys social agenda on a state level, enacting bans on abortion and gay marriage, drafting a political agenda of overt discrimination against transgender people, and stripping away any rights and protections that non-citizens previously held. Few of these measures were particularly popular on a statewide level and, in cases like that of North Carolinas anti-trans legislation, actually led to serious electoral losses.

The past three-and-a-half years under the Trump administration took this approach and applied it nationally, redirecting every major federal agency to work with only obedient political allies and industry cronies. Little of the subsequent horrors pursued and enacted by this administration has proven to be popular in a democratic sense. Then again, enacting the will of the people was never the end goal; it was power, by any and all means necessary.

Read more here:
The McCloskeys, Nick Sandmann, and the RNC's Carnival of White Grievance - The New Republic