His African-American Cousin

First, some explanation.

The kinship alluded to in the title is sociopolitical, not biological. For something more in the way of an ancestral conspiracy theory, you might have a look at a playfully doctored photograph of Ghana's new president (which, however, was not intended as a hoax). This will be a comparison between Donald Trump and a certain American politician of the past as regards behavior and popularity.

The parallels to be noted here are, alas, not uncannily numerous and exact, but few and approximate. The devil is indeed in the details, which differ and thus distract. There is no mischievous intent in what follows. There never should be in political commentary, but our times are full of things that should not be and yet are. Hence all the explanation. Now our little story can begin.

In the bosom of one of those crowded concrete enclaves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, some miles below that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, there lies a devout but swinging neighborhood which is known by the name of Harlem.

Though the river and the concrete have remained admirably constant over the years, the neighborhood has found itself first in one congressional district and then another. At any rate, its residents have long been instrumental in choosing a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. The member they chose for a quarter of a century starting in 1944, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., had star quality. He also had an excellent mind, a firm grasp of politics and government, a record of accomplishment, and a legitimate sense of grievance on behalf of his constituency and millions of others, but those facts do not advance the comparison at hand. Here are the ones that do:

Like Donald Trump, Adam Clayton Powell was wealthy from birth and yet enjoyed the intense loyalty of poor people. The sight of any other politician at the wheel of an expensive convertible might have filled Powell's supporters with resentment, but when it was their own star and champion they loved it. They might go home to spartan tenements while he went home to luxury, but his luxury was their pride. It meant having a Big Man working for them, and not some threadbare saint. Trumpites would identify with those people in spite of themselves, if reminded of their existence.

Like Trump, Powell seemed inclined to throw off the common yokes of ethics and responsibilities. In his case, that brought an indictment for tax evasion, notoriety for chronic absence from the House, and criticism for taking trips abroad at the taxpayers' expense, at least once accompanied by two young women.

Like Trump, Powell responded to criticism with unrepentant arrogance bolstered by alternative facts. Instead of either denying wrongdoing or expressing remorse for it, he dismissed it as doing what "every other congressman" did.

The kinship, though, is less between the politicians themselves than between their core constituencies: poor people who lionize a rich one, people with the odds stacked against them in the game of life who look to beat the house vicariously through an impudent rule-breaker. Of course Trump's mostly white working-class supporters have the advantage of being free from racial discrimination, slightly offset by the indignity of going unrecognized as downtrodden people. This parallel, too, is imperfect.

As for the two men, they must not be left standing here on anything like an equal footing. There are some crucial differences:

Long before running for public office, Adam Clayton Powell began striving to right a monumental wrong and to secure equality of opportunity for the most oppressed members of American society. Donald Trump, at a comparable age, was keeping blacks out of the family's rental properties. If he has ever striven to do anything but increase his wealth or feed his vanity, he has been uncharacteristically reticent about mentioning it.

In office, Powell worked effectively within a Congress rife with antagonism to his aims, even from members of his own party. He did not wield the power of the presidency, though he had fruitful relations with Democratic presidents and congressional leaders, and yet he succeeded in doing much good. At present it remains to be seen whether President Trump will succeed in doing anything at all. However, he shows neither the ability nor the will to be an effective political leader.

Powell retained the approval of his constituents for many years. This champion of poor black people was at last brought low by the hubris of a personality formed in the lap of almost-white privilege. Trump, who displays a spoiled rich boy's hubris like no one else, entered office with an approval rating of only 40%, compared with 84% for Barack Obama. Now his administration is twenty-six days into a breathtaking career of blunders and misdeeds (the capital is reeling from Michael Flynn's resignation and watching Kellyanne Conway teeter on the brink). What degree of approval President Trump might enjoy four years in the future defies imagination if not arithmetic itself.

Powell arguably comes out ahead on the score of absenteeism as well. True, he should not have said, "You don’t have to be there if you know which calls to make, which buttons to push, which favors to call in." But Trump is absent even when he's there.

Demagoguery in America

For Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, here’s a piece that was written ten days after the US election of 2016. It appeared first on The Stringer, a blog that punts around in its own little backwater with no outlets to social media.

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Let's hope this is wrong. It would be a pleasure to re-read these lines in mid-November of 2020 knowing that the American ship of state had righted itself after all and was on course to inaugurate a normal president.

Already, people have begun hoping against hope that Donald Trump's presidency will not do great harm to America and the world — not necessarily catastrophic harm, certainly not overnight, at least not if —. But it's another matter to hope that Trump's election will not prove to have done great harm already. Let's review how that came about, in three stages.

1) Trump publicized himself without spending much money by being "good copy" of the worst kind for the mass media, by rewarding cameras and microphones with spectacle and verbal violence.

2) He became a major political commodity without submitting to any broker by means of grassroots activism, which was dramatically amplified and elaborated into fanciful forms by social media. Again, the mainstream media retailed his directly-marketed messages for free.

3) He exploited a demand for change without telling how he'd supply it by whistling up a host of demons: racism, bigotry, generalized anger and fear, fascination with the grotesque, and the fugitive urge to poke a hole in the membrane of civilization and see what happens.

This is the story of a demagogue. The harm in demagoguery is not limited to that which is done in office by the knave or fool who used it to get there. The individual may be an efficient tyrant or an inefficient one or no tyrant at all, but only an infant politician who recklessly used the tricks of demagoguery for political gain. Those differences are not trivial. But in any case the demagogue has done unforgivable harm, possibly epoch-making harm, in the process.

The ten days following Donald Trump's victory have brought hundreds of reports of hate crimes, some actually invoking his name. His demons seem to think the witching hour is come. Though they're probably mistaken if they believe that the federal authorities will be on their side now, it's all too likely that the electoral process will be. After this, what incentive will produce a field of candidates who soberly vie to prove themselves the best prepared and most level-headed? What hope is there that Trump's proven formula for success won't become the new standard and send the Republic spiralling downward until a very painful lesson has been learned, or until it's too late?

There is hope, but the way ahead can't be painless in any case. The best hope of a speedy recovery lies in finding President Trump to be neither more nor less than a harmful charlatan. It would be foolish to hope and work for disaster, but it would be less than wise to hope and work for a largely tolerable Trump Era. In order for America to get demagogues out of its system in short order, people who reluctantly chose Trump must come to rue the day. It's those people, precisely because they are not fanatics or zombies, who bear the heaviest moral burden and also hold the power to restore their country to political health. They must not come through this with any sense of vindication.

Two days after the election, Senator Elizabeth Warren (Democrat) addressed the AFL-CIO Executive Council. Many people had wished that Warren herself would run for president. No doubt she is worthy of that wish, but in her speech she made an ill-considered start on retrieving the souls of marginal Trump supporters before they're ready. She said they "did not vote for Donald Trump because of the bigotry and hate that fueled his campaign rallies. They voted for him despite the hate." The apparent idea here is to let those people save face as a first step back from the choice they made last week. But the fact remains that they voted for a man whom they knew to be an agent of hate and bigotry. They bartered acceptance of those things for change. In other words, they sold their souls. Good people who wish to remain good people will not do that. They'll accept any amount of stagnation rather than accept bigotry and hate. By all means, let those Americans who chose to follow in the dust of Trump's army turn their steps toward home. But let them do so when they've had enough, in a spirit of revulsion and eager self-redemption. These are adults. They should be allowed to shoulder full responsibility for what they have done.

Trump's legions can boast that their prince has won the presidency barring a mass revolt of swing-state electors, which would throw the country into chaos and exalt the powers of evil all the more. The boast they cannot make to their anti-Trump compatriots is, "There are more of us than there are of you." It's clear now that Hillary Clinton has a plurality of popular votes. The ballot-counting is still going on, albeit in the context of a definite electoral victory for Trump. At this writing, Clinton's margin is more than one million votes and growing. Trump won the election because his smaller number of votes was spread across state lines more advantageously. Still, these must be trying times for liberals who grew up thinking of the People as a reliable wellspring of wisdom, goodness, and votes.

When the defeated Hillary Clinton spoke to the nation, she unwittingly turned a spotlight on the greatest error of her long quest for the presidency (as distinct from the errors of a lifetime). She urged women and girls, as women and girls, to pursue their dreams and to shatter "that highest and hardest glass ceiling" which has historically kept women from becoming president. There's nothing wrong with that except that it's irrelevant to the subject of Clinton's defeat. From the beginning, the attempt to sell her candidacy to women as the Making of the First Woman President was an insult to their intelligence. Women were expected to keep their eyes on this political Nativity star and raptly follow it as a bloc — an unbeatable biological bloc, if one assumes that human beings will consent to behave like mere organisms. In the event, many women looked at Clinton herself. They noted her character traits. They noted a relentlessly self-seeking, issue-harnessing go-getter in contrast with Bernie Sanders, who clearly was motivated by the will to right wrongs and make the world a better place. They noted ties to Wall Street bankers and noted what the FBI called "extremely careless" handling of classified information in email. On election day, exit polls revealed that 42% of women and a majority of white women with college degrees, whom Clinton and other marshals of women-as-women tend to mistake for their own shadows, preferred Donald Trump. One wishes they had swallowed Hillary Clinton in spite of everything, but they must have found her too big a pill.

And so the world, through no fault of its own, and America, through various faults of its own, are to see how things change after an ignorant, lazy, irresponsible blowhard goes to Washington and straight into the president's office. More troubling still is the change that's already afoot because of his demagoguery. If Donald Trump were given to reflection, a habit which he explicitly scorns, the thought of it might trouble even him. Surely it must trouble his running mate, Mike Pence, a deeply religious man who should know his Bible. He stood by, smiling through a grim visage and mechanically clapping, while Trump sowed the wind. Now they and we will reap a whirlwind of unknown force and duration.

As Martin Luther observed,

The mad mob does not ask how it could be better, only that it be different. And when it then becomes worse, it must change again. Thus they get bees for flies, and at last hornets for bees.

At this rate, the most inspiring slogan of the next election cycle could be, "Bees or hornets. The choice is yours."

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To jump ahead three months for some observations on the way the whirlwind blows with President Trump in office, please see "Bound for Treason".

Bound for Treason

After a federal judge blocked President Trump's executive order barring entry to the United States by people from certain countries, Trump publicly wrote, "The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!"

Vice President Pence defended the president's statement by saying, "I think the American people are very accustomed to this president speaking his mind and speaking very straight with them," and "The President of the United States has every right to criticize the other two branches of government."

That kind of talk won't do for long. No one denies the president's right to speak his mind or to speak straight or even to criticize the other two branches of government, so long as he speaks and criticizes within the bounds of his rightful powers and obligations. The vice president may deflect the first warnings of constitutional crisis with words of his own choosing, but he should begin to consider what he will be compelled to say and do when the shield of oblique language fails him.

A chief executive who characterizes a member of the judiciary as a "so-called judge" has embarked on a course to treason. Such words cannot be allowed to a President of the United States on any grounds. When used with awareness of their meaning, they constitute an assault on the American system of government from within. Otherwise, they constitute evidence of mental incapacity. An aspiring tyrant with a disciplined, forward-looking mind probably would not give himself away so soon, but Donald Trump is an impetuous fantasist with a mind that scorns discipline. That is not to say that he fits any clinical definition of mental illness. Some mental health professionals have warned that he shows clear signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), which they say could have dire consequences. However, Dr. Allen Frances, author of the section on personality disorders in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders stated in June, 2016, that while Trump was "completely disqualified by habitual dishonesty, … impulsive unpredictability, … imperial ambitions, constitutional indifference, … etc.," his personality features did not constitute "anything approaching a mental disorder."

If President Trump were indeed afflicted with NPD, his mind would be not so much a man's mind as an invisible beast holding a man in thrall. The president could not submit to the humbling constraints of a system that is bigger than all of us, because the beast would not admit that anything was bigger than itself. Lacking the prospect of such a diagnosis, which would clearly justify removal from office under Section 4 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment, it seems we're faced with a beastly enough mind that must be left at large until it's discovered in some chicken coop. But must it?

Clinically sane though Donald Trump may be, he is not master of his mind. Whether his arrogance is hardwired or habitual, he's going to assert it against all comers including the U. S. Constitution. The question is whether the consequences will be limited to his self-destruction. Let us hope that those who hold crucial positions of responsibility under the Constitution will stand united and ready to do their duty at the first permissible moment. Not after a calamity, but as soon as this hopelessly unfit president delivers himself into their hands by word or deed. Has he not already done so? Nothing that is treasonable or seditious, wantonly menacing or perversely self-debilitating, should be dismissed as a harmless quirk. It should be grasped as an unconsciously outstretched hand, and the drowning man hauled in -- as humanely as possible, but promptly and with formidable unity. A medical pronouncement of incapacity is not required. Even with one, a conflict between the president and those who declare him unable to discharge his duties is sure to ensue, after which the issue must be decided by Congress. This is no job for faint hearts.

A supposedly educated mind whose thoughts nevertheless crystallize in infantile forms like "a very smart person" (the centerpiece of Trump's praise of himself and his chosen associates) is liable to be deficient for presidential purposes. A mind that publicly pleads its own intelligence in any form at all is one that either doesn't know when it's confessing stupidity or compulsively does so just the same. A mind that campaigns for the repeal of unflattering facts, letting the claims of vanity corrupt official speeches and conversations day after day, is unfit for the business of government. The question is not one of mere sanity, but of ability to discharge the duties of office. If Ronald Reagan's White House staff contemplated invoking the Twenty-fifth Amendment on grounds of sloth, then surely recklessness, intractable ignorance, and extreme self-absorption should be enough to build a case on.

Meanwhile, President Trump sails along on his course to treason or some other impeachable offense. If there is no case for saving him from himself, then there must be a case a-building for impeaching him. If he is not an addled man, then he is a man who aims to lower all barriers to his will by means of casual contempt. Even if there is no disorder compelling him on this course, he clearly can't stop himself. The guardians of the Constitution now have the offenses "so-called judge" and "If something happens blame him and court system" to weigh. How many more offenses or displays of mental unfitness will it take before they decide to tap Donald Trump on one shoulder or the other? The Republic can't afford to wait till every citizen notices something amiss. It needs courageous leadership, soon.