Category Archives: Comment

Black women should rule

Stacey Abrams, a Democrat from Georgia, is the first black female nominee in U.S. history to run for governor for a major party. She lost the 2018 midterm election amid claims of voter suppression.

by Dell Franklin

Nobody has had it tougher than black women in this country, and nobody is tougher.

In 1969, in New Orleans, as a 25-year-old, I got hired off the street as ship’s storekeeper on the Delta Queen Riverboat—the last sternwheeler to ply the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers as a passenger-carrying vessel. I was the only white face to hold a job other than the officers and two engineers. Porters, deck hands, bartenders, waiters, the kitchen crew and maids were all black, and were the backbone of the majestic Queen of the river.

The maids all seemed in their forties, and when I ran into any of them in my comings and goings they always smiled and said, “Hi, mistah sto’keepah, how y’all doing today?” And I always answered, “Just fine, ma’am. How are you?” As time went on, they seemed to find humor in my bearded sloppy appearance, and giggled in a fond motherly way, nodding, making eye contact, and I found them sensuous and earthy and felt a natural nurturing from them, a comfort that put me at ease and allowed me to actually like myself at such a discontented time in my life. They looked at me like I was somebody of value, and counted.

There were five of them, all from Memphis, and when we docked in Memphis for a layover their grown sons and daughters picked them up and toted their suitcases; and the ship’s chef, who was also from Memphis, told me about all the maids who came onto the Queen had grown up down in Mississippi sharecropping cotton and later moved to Memphis to do domestic work while at the same time raising their children. Some times as single mothers.

At night the crew dining room became the place to listen to music and visit, and the maids always sat at a table together and endured the wise cracks from cocky porters, and once, a lady named Dolores slapped one in the face so hard the sound reverberated throughout the cramped dining room. And that was that. These same churchgoing ladies, who sent most of their paychecks home but dressed up to go to lunch when we hit New Orleans, were nobody to mess with.

A waiter named Davis, a former Pullman porter in his fifties who’d played baseball in the Negro Leagues and was still as spry as a 25-year-old, and knew how to dress, put me under his wing as a sort of mentor, properly dressed me, and took me to a blues club in Memphis where he promised to show me the “real blues,” something I knew nothing about, being the typical whitey raised on pablum rock ‘n roll in Los Angeles.

Black women have emerged as the bedrock of the Democratic Party, and the single last hope for this country

Three of the maids and three of the waiters came along and we brought in our own bottles and sat at a long table in a dim, packed blues club and listened to the grating shiver of guitars, the groaning of a harmonica, the constant beat of drums, the deep rasp of a singer, the melding of down-home blues from the Delta, the saddest music I’ve ever listened to, and I’d never seen people so happy partying to it. Dolores forced me to get out on the floor and dance with all these black folks who made me feel lame and awkward as they moved about so easily to the music.

“Don’t y’all be shy now, mistah sto’keepah, jes’ follow mah lead, chile.”

She got me to dance. She got me moving and into the swing of things, forgetting my self-consciousness, without saying a word, but merely nodding and smiling and encouraging me, and at one point I said, “Dolores, I’ve never seen people have so much fun dancing to such sad music, it’s all about heartbreak and betrayal and suffering and misery….” She lifted her face and looked me in the eye and said, “Baby, us black folks jes’ got to celebrate our bad times or they kill us.”

This statement could be an anthem to most black women in this country, and now, in the year 2019, they have emerged, to me, as the bedrock of the Democratic Party, and the single last hope for this country. The bad times that have nearly killed all of them have also made them ten times tougher than the old pasty-faced, saggy jowled white Republicans disgracing themselves and the country in the Senate and House of Representatives.

Bad times that nearly killed them have made them ten times tougher than a droopy billionaire like the vacant cipher who owns Starbucks, or the young techie nerds and super macho blowhards coming up out of the white suburbs and those icky prep schools and Ivy League colleges that have produced smug stooges like our latest entry onto the Supreme Court.

Out of this ongoing morass came the likes of Oprah, Kamala Harris, Michelle Obama, Stacey Abrams, Maxine Waters, to name a few; and only a fool would want to tangle with any of them on an intellectual level, or a common sense level. These spirited women are spawn of a world where black mothers, in many cases, were saddled with men humiliated by the system that offered them little compared to the white man and beat them down further when they were rejected for the color of their skin and only the color of their skin. Crappy schools that offered them little but crappy jobs, crappy wages, or no jobs, especially during the worst of times.

In most cases, the women held everything together. They raised their children in blighted projects and gave them the only thing that enabled them to survive—food, clothing, love, warmth, encouragement, and hope. They were treated as chattel, destined to drudge work for the lowest wages, and as distilleries of reproduction. In movies, they were doting nannies or servile maids humored by wealthy white people. They were seen as background objects, never in the forefront, always in support, and surely never groomed for greatness, unless they were entertainers or athletes.

Not now. Now there is burgeoning pride among these gals, led by the likes of powerful black women who have been through it all, are tougher than anybody in this country, know how to talk to people eloquently on a human level, literally shimmer with pride at who they are and what they’ve accomplished; and behind them, in a massive show of genuine black pride are all the black women in this country who have come so far and have these dynamic leaders to look up to and follow.

Give me Kamala Harris on this ticket any day, and she’ll carry whomever else is on it. It’s time.

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif. Visit his website: dellfranklin.com

Wading through “news” overload

Where do we find truth when inundated with bots and falsehoods?

by Stacey Warde

The way we get information about our world today has changed radically since 1984 when I first entered the news business as a reporter. No one then could have imagined the daily flood of “news” (and “fake “news”) that overwhelms us today.

News was distributed mostly through newspapers, TV and radio, and was handled by people trained to gather and report their findings in trusted outlets.

Today, with the pervasiveness of the web, and access to endless data provided by both human and automated sources (also known as “bots”), we’re inundated with more news and information than we can possibly handle, some trustworthy, some not.

News will always be hard to define but we seem to have a hunger for it in the US, where, it is argued, a free press keeps the government in check, helps to inform the citizenry and sheds light on whether the republic is in good working order. News can also serve as a launching point for discussion, the public forum, where a variety of opinions and views can be shared.

Once, the newspaper’s editorial/opinion pages served as a safe forum for these discussions. Now, on the internet, where a majority (some 67 percent) of Americans get their news, it’s hard to find a safe forum, unless it’s moderated.

As a young journalist in 1984, my idea of news was, as a mentor once told me, information essential for a community to function.

A reporter’s job was to find and report the facts about subjects vital to that community, and to report them “without fear or favor.” Facts were not hard to find. With a little leg work and care, a reporter could paint a fairly accurate picture of the way things were—or were not—working in the community.

News was considered by most to be reliable data and information gathered, verified, organized and written by qualified journalists, able to give honest, accurate accounts of an event, industry, idea, person or issue that was deemed important for the community to know.

Truth in reporting, especially in government reporting, mattered most. A common and popular refrain from editors was: “Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy!”

If a journalist got it wrong and reported what today might be called “fake news,” he or she risked losing their credibility—and their job—as reporters. A false or misleading news report usually meant termination, and a new career. Truth mattered.

Today, in the blogosphere, it’s easy to clutter the information highway with lies and falsehoods, or what lately we refer to as “fake news.”

Fake news existed long before President Trump made it part of the American vernacular. Fake news was anything that slipped into the news page unverified or weakly sourced, or proved false and misleading. Corrections were made.

Journalists are still duped into reporting stories that come from questionable sources or they unwittingly pass on as “news” public relations ploys and marketing gimmicks. Other times, business/ad managers may try to bully or con journalists into promoting as “news” a potential advertising client’s business or services.

Overall, though, journalists still fight hard to give honest reporting and take pride in being considered trustworthy, reliable, credible sources of news and information.

Nonetheless, we find an insurmountable amount of questionable data in circulation today, mostly from the internet. Today, there are bots and hackers not just biased, sloppy journalists who muddy the waters, spreading false information.

A recent Pew Research Center study found that some two-thirds of links tweeted to popular websites are posted by automated Twitter accounts or bots, not humans. Some of the data proves worthy, other data is misleading. That makes finding reliable information more difficult than ever.

Still, we turn daily to the internet or our favorite news outlets to get the latest word on developments in the state and world. We’re drawn to the heroes and villains of the day’s biggest “news” events. We shudder at the most recent catastrophes and natural disasters.

We have plenty of outlets to choose from but usually go with the few that are most familiar. Often, they give views that reflect our personal biases rather than provide helpful or useful information about our world.

The Pew Research Center claims that 45 percent of adults in the U.S. get news from Facebook, where they are more likely to find sources that confirm their personal biases rather than provide vetted and fully sourced and truthful information that may or may not suit their views.

Social media have increasingly become the go-to source for news and information but also create bubbles where we see only what we want to see.

News is both a commodity and a resource. We sell it, buy it, and need it to get through the day for some reason. Yet, it’s become a Herculean task in today’s information ecosystem to distinguish fact from fiction, to know fake from real.

All of it is colored by the people (or bots) who spin it, and the notion of what constitutes “news” seems to get cloudier by the day.

Before the internet, reporters and editors were the information highway’s “gatekeepers.” They decided what got covered and how it got played. They kept the public discourse mostly civil and opened their pages to readers who knew how to put up a decent argument. It wasn’t a perfect public forum but it seemed to work.

That’s not to say propaganda (or fake news—read “disinformation”) didn’t proliferate, there was plenty of it, but it seemed easier to spot. In today’s partisan push to dominate the news and control the spin on events, and with the inundation of baseless information coming from who-knows-where, it appears that most news is propaganda and most propaganda is news.

You really have to work hard to get good information.

The internet was supposed to level the playing field and give citizen journalists the same power to dispense news and information as traditional or professional editors and reporters, who were often criticized for having limited or elitist views and unfairly dominating the public forum.

With the rise of citizen journalists—essentially anyone with a cellphone—and web-based news, all voices would have a platform from which to share their experiences and stories and observations, bypassing the gatekeepers, who seemed interested only in controlling and restricting access.

Gatekeepers would become unnecessary, eventually obsolete, a noisy hindrance to the free flow of useful (and worthless) data that virtually anyone can “publish” or post on social media, the new drivers and platforms for today’s news and information.

Today’s public forum, controlled mostly through social media outlets, seems to have devolved into a bot-driven wasteland of disinformation and propaganda.

The gatekeepers have given way to algorithms, bots and charlatans, whose purpose is to offer up the most clicks or views to questionable, unreliable or worthless data and websites. The internet was supposed to level the playing field and give everyone a voice, as well as provide easy access to useful information and public forums. What it did was eliminate the quaint beauty of civil discourse that gatekeepers attempted to provide.

Gatekeepers—reporters and editors—I would argue, whose role is perhaps outmoded in today’s information free-for-all, kept public discourse on a mostly healthy, dignified and lively trajectory. They determined whose voices got to be heard and avoided the spread of drivel that so often gets mistaken as news or information today.

Good editors and reporters knew their communities better than anyone, knew where the dead bodies were, kept close watch on the movers and shakers, the crooks and cons, and could put a spotlight on virtually any one of them. Editors had power because “sunlight is the best disinfectant,” especially when it comes to maintaining healthful and well-informed communities.

Some critics complained that this was too limiting and elitist; others saw this as a necessary guarantee against chicanery, provincialism, ignorance and animalistic bullying. Both views were correct.

Today, consumers of news must be more wary than ever before, they must be their own gatekeepers, sorting the good from the bad, trusting their instincts to know the difference between fact and fiction, between fake and real.

It’s a daunting but not impossible task. §

Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice. He can be reached at roguewarde@gmail.com.

 

Food safety and security

The not-so-super Cayucos Supermarket

SLO County Environmental Health Services shuttered the Cayucos Supermarket late December because of significant code violations, including a rodent infestation.

by Stacey Warde

A county health inspector shuttered the Cayucos Supermarket in late December because of a number of “significant code violations,” including an infestation of mice and rats.

An official from SLO county’s environmental health services, according to the Tribune, investigated a complaint from a customer and found signs of “bite marks,” “droppings,” and “contaminated surfaces” throughout the store. The inspector gave the owner a few days to clean up the mess.

When the official returned, however, he found nothing had been done to fix the problem and new evidence of rodent activity in the store. So he ordered the place closed, leaving Cayucos without a local grocery. For how long, we don’t know.

Days before the closure, we visited the store and detected a strong and repugnant odor of urine. It’s not the first time we’ve noticed foul odors in the market. At times, the place has smelled of rotting carcass. Not the best environment in which to make food purchases.

Once, as noted in “Obsolesence and doing business,” we observed the owner spraying the fresh produce section with a can of RAID. We since limited our purchases to packaged items like beer, thinking we’d be safe. It goes without saying, wipe off your cans and bottles before drinking.

We’re not the only patrons who have noticed the decrepit conditions of the Cayucos Supermarket, which has been in operation since 1960 and doesn’t appear to have had any upgrades since. The cold storage units are run down, inefficient and often leak water onto the floors. The odors, we’ve been told, are caused by clogged drainage traps.

As the community adjusts to the closure, other long-term issues and complaints about the market have surfaced.

Corrie S. from Fresno, for example, had this to say in her one-star Yelp review: “So smelly. I couldn’t even stay long enough to buy food. Needs a total overhaul. The produce had flies around it. The shelves were dusty. I would rather travel to the next town to buy food.”

Overall, reviews of the market seem positive but it’s worth noting that they speak more of the warm staff and the sandwiches sold in the back deli than about the quality of the food or the appearance and cleanliness of the place.

We know also that locals love the market for its convenience, selection, reasonable prices and helpful and familiar staff. They love the deli, a separate business located in the back of the store, which offers unique home-style sausages in addition to delicious sandwiches.

Yet, in light of all the good that can be said about the market, we’d like to suggest that the shutdown demonstrates a failure of responsibility to provide food that is safe and secure to our visitors and local community.

Food safety and security are fundamental—as a basic human right—and paramount to the health of any community, large or small. We have a right, as enumerated by the World Health Organization, the United Nations, as well as by San Luis Obispo County’s Environmental Health Services, to food that is free from disease, contamination and sabotage.

Additionally, the closure runs the risk of creating a food desert for a community that already struggles to make sure all of its citizens are adequately and safely fed. The Cayucos Community Church serves weekly many familiar friends and faces with donated food.

The senior center also provides food items for those who are unable to afford groceries.

The closure is one more block in the stream of healthy food options to consumers who receive assistance or who are unable to drive to neighboring communities to shop for groceries.

As a purveyor of “healthy food,” however, our market failed to deliver. It did not meet the basic requirement of providing safe, wholesome, fresh fruits and vegetables, grains and other food items to visiting and local buyers.

The closure also affects employees who now find themselves without a job. We lament their loss and hope they will not be long without work.

We have no idea if or when the store will reopen. The owner must sanitize the entire market and seal all the openings through which rodents might find their way. That seems like a vast undertaking, given the condition of the building and the store’s outdated storage. We wish them luck, and hope that, if they do reopen, they will be more mindful of the safety and security of the food they sell.

Meanwhile, BizBuySell.com has the place listed for sale at $3 million. Perhaps we can lure a buyer who values providing a safe, clean and healthy food environment to the local community and the many travelers who pass through here. §

Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice. Daniella Magnano contributed to this article. She runs Spumoni Egg Farm where she keeps chickens and delivers fresh, healthy eggs to friends and people in need in the community.

Stop the malignant use of US military

U.S. Army Rangers, assigned to 2nd Battalion 75th Ranger Regiment, prepare for extraction during Task Force Training on Fort Hunter Liggett, Calif. Rangers constantly train to maintain their tactical proficiency. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Steven Hitchcock/Not Reviewed)

Last month, Secretary of Defense James Mattis warned that if Congress doesn’t “remove the defense caps,” he said, “then we’re questioning whether or not America has the ability to survive.” This claim that insufficient increases in Pentagon spending threatens American security is flatly wrong. The real and present danger to our national security is the unecessary use of U.S. military power abroad.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis

There are two key ways the faulty use of combat power abroad continues to deteriorate our security. The first is the purpose for which the military is used. The preamble to the Constitution explains that the military is intended to “provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Further, it decrees that Congress alone has the power to declare war. Today, Congress has fully ceded its responsibilities; the Executive branch has assumed virtually sole discretion for the deployment of the military.

The second and more troubling misuse of the military are the missions they are given to execute. For decades, the armed forces have been routinely employed, not for the “common defense,” but for the benefit of other nations or for purposes with no apparent connection to the security of our country.

The armed forces should only be used to defend American vital national interests—our territorial integrity and prosperity—and only committed when genuine diplomatic efforts have been fully exhausted.

Congress and the American people should debate and decide whether there is a legitimate threat to our vital interests, if the crisis is solvable by military means with clear and attainable objectives, if the resources to succeed are affordable, and if we have a sound strategy to achieve the desired political end state to safely extricate ourselves within a reasonable period of time.

With Congress on the sidelines, the Trump Administration and its two predecessors have egregiously failed on all three points. There is little wonder, then, that the use of the military has not enhanced American security or prosperity.

Presently, the Trump Administration publicly employs the military on active combat missions of one type or another in Niger, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Libya, Djibouti, and Nigeria (there are also scores of classified combat missions for Special Operations Forces about which the public knows nothing). Most of these missions have no relation to U.S. national security whatsoever; others have thread-bare associations at best.

These operations consume tens of billions of dollars each year, cost the lives of U.S. service personnel, and divert resources and manpower away from preparation to defend against potential threats which could pose a legitimate threat to U.S. security.

Moreover, even in operations that were tactically successful, we sometimes have perversely inflicted strategic defeats on U.S. interests. For example, the famed Iraqi surge of 2007 did result in a dramatic decrease in U.S. casualties, but enabled then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to systematically purge his army of rival Sunni officers. That led in 2014 to his army disintegrating in the face of ISIS attacks.

In restoring Iraqi sovereignty over ISIS, Baghdad enlisted the use of U.S. air power, ground controllers, and Iranian-backed militias––including the actual use of Iranian troops in Iraq. Iranian military advisors and troops also helped Baghdad crush recent Kurdish attempts at independence ––after the U.S. military helped the Kurds defeat ISIS in Mosul. Iranian influence over Iraq is today pervasive. None of that would have been possible without U.S. military operations since 2003.

The time has come for a major overhaul of American foreign and defense policies. We must abandon nation-building and meddling in the internal affairs of other countries. Our national security objectives in the Middle East can be more effectively accomplished via active and robust intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance efforts.

American affairs abroad should be redirected away from an obsessive attempt to solve problems using lethal combat power and instead focus on expanding U.S. economic opportunity and beneficial trade policies. Core functions of the U.S. government are to defend our population and facilitate a healthy economy. Misusing the military is counter to both objectives. §

Daniel Davis, a former Army lieutenant colonel with four combat deployments, is a defense expert at Defense Priorities, the Washington think tank. Follow him @DanielLDavis1. This article is published with permission from Breaking Defense.

Winning at all costs

Americans of all stripes applaud nefarious political acts

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When offered intelligence from a foreign government, Donald Trump Jr. said ‘I love it.’
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

 

by Daniel M. Shea, Colby College

To many, the revelation that Donald Trump Jr. was anxious to get dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russians will not come as a surprise. It is but the latest example of the take-no-prisoners, anything-goes politics of our day. Sure, soliciting help from a hostile foreign power is exceptional, and it is certainly true that the Trumps have taken “unconventional” politics to new heights. But how we do politics in the United States, the boundaries of acceptable behavior, has been shifting for two decades.

The real surprise – the part of the story that we should be gravely concerned about – is that this disclosure will not matter to a great many American voters. After thinking and writing about politics for two decades, I have come to the conclusion that the real issue we face is not the conduct of public officials or their surrogates, but how nefarious acts are now sanctioned, and even applauded, by so many on both sides of the partisan fence.

So what’s changed in our politics?

Fear and loathing

For one, the nature of partisanship is different. Until about a decade ago, one’s attachment to a party was centered around policy disputes or cues from groups and associations. But today’s version is grounded in the fear and loathing of the other side. Trunkloads of data, much of it from the Pew Research Center, suggest each side sees the other party as crazy and certainly dangerous. So it does not matter what your side does so long as it keeps the nut jobs on the other side at bay.

A new volume by political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels further helps to fine-tune our understanding how people vote and which party they identify with. Their book, “Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government,” suggests “issue congruence [between voters and parties], in so far as it exists, is mostly a byproduct of other connections, most of them lacking policy content.” In other words, we don’t think through issues, policies and candidate characteristics, but instead see elections as “us versus them.” These scholars argue voters tie themselves with racial, ethnic, occupational, religious, recreational and other groups, with partisanship as the byproduct. Our group identity, not policy concerns or ideology, determines vote choice. That is to say, we gather comfortably with our tribe and tune out other points of view.

A central force propelling hostility toward the “other” party is the partisan media. Many such outlets have figured out a sustainable business model. Smaller audiences can be profitable, so long as they remain loyal. Loyalty springs from “crisis” and, of course, “menace.” This leads to treating every issue as a true threat to our existence or a usurpation of fundamental “rights.” The other party is always the villain, and your side can do no wrong – so long as it is for the grand struggle.

And then there is the online world. Voters rarely explore new ideas and perspectives, but share, like and retweet concordant ones. We fence in and we fence out. As recently noted by journalist and author Megan McArdle, “Social media, of course, makes this problem worse. Even if we are not deliberately blocking people who disagree with us, Facebook curates our feeds so that we get more of the stuff we ‘like.’ What do we ‘like’? People and posts that agree with us.”

Sorting and filtering

Is the filtering of information really a new development? It is not at all clear that voters have ever absorbed a broad range of information or shifted though competing evidence. It is likely party bosses, elected officials, candidates and even media elites have always been able to manipulate mass opinion to a degree. Cognitive time-saving cues, especially party identification, have always been used to sort and filter.

But something very different is happening today. In the recent past, news was more widely viewed as objective, leading to a high degree of accepted facts and authority. When the news media unraveled the story of Watergate, for example, citizens of all partisan stripes accepted it as fact. What scholars dubbed “short-term influences” could override partisan leanings.

Which leads us to “alternative facts,” the aggressive spinning of policies and arguments regardless of contrary verifiable information. This may be a game-changer in our politics. The barrier for evidence has, it seems, evaporated, and emotion-rich information is used to draw more viewers, readers and listeners. If we add the continual drive for fresh “news” and the high costs of creating traditional journalism, we are left with little consensus or authority. New York Times blogger Farhad Manjoo put it this way: “We are roiled by preconceptions and biases, and we usually do what feels easiest – we gorge on information that confirms our ideas, and we shun what does not.”

Finally, popular culture has also probably contributed to our growing indifference to nefarious acts. We pick our reality show contestant and applaud every backhanded, despicable move that gets him across the finish line. There can’t be two winners or a collective good, only a sole survivor. Or shall we say that only one apprentice can get the job? And the best part of the show – the segment that really gets the producers juiced – is when things get truly ugly.

Democratic accountability

The latest Trump team revelation is a shocker, but even more stunning is the meager impact it will likely have on his supporters. As noted in a recent USA Today story, in Trump country the Russia disclosure is no big deal.

As voters, citizens are called to judge those in power. But there must be an objective standard for the assessment, which is why the framers of the Constitution put so much stock in a free press. The governed in a democracy must be willing and able to fairly judge the acts of the governors. But today “your side” has always done a good job and the “other” party has always failed. Any contrary revelation can be explained away as fake news.

The ConversationThe key ingredient in the democratic accountability process – objectivity – is disappearing, and the foundation of our limited government has been shaken. In Federalist #51 and elsewhere, James Madison wrote, “A dependence upon the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government…” Many are starting to wonder if Americans are up to the job – and whether the fate of the grand experiment is at risk.

Daniel M. Shea, Professor of Government, Colby College. This article was originally published on The Conversation.

The GOP’s moral rot is the problem, not Trump & Co.

VIEW FROM THE RIGHT

by Jennifer Rubin

WASHINGTON – The key insight from a week of gobsmacking revelations is not that the Russia scandal may finally have an underlying crime but that, as The New York Times’ David Brooks suggests, “over the past few generations the Trump family built an enveloping culture that is beyond good and evil.” (Remember when the media collectively oohed and ahhed that, “Say what you will about Donald Trump, but his kids are great!” Add that to the heap of inane media narratives that helped normalize Trump to the voters.)

We now see that, sure enough, the Trump legal team (the fastest-growing segment of the economy) has trouble restraining its clients, explaining away initial, false explanations and preventing self-incriminating statements. (The biggest trouble, of course, is that the president lied that this is all “fake news” and arguably committed obstruction of justice to hide his campaign team’s misdeeds.)

We have always had in our political culture narcissists, ideologues and flimflammers, but it took the 21st-century GOP to put one in the White House.

Let me suggest the real problem is not the Trump family, but the GOP.

To paraphrase Brooks, “It takes generations to hammer ethical considerations out of a [party’s] mind and to replace them entirely with the ruthless logic of winning and losing.” Again, to borrow from Brooks, beyond partisanship the GOP evidences “no attachment to any external moral truth or ethical code.”

Let’s dispense with the “Democrats are just as bad” defense.

First, I don’t much care; we collectively face a party in charge of virtually the entire federal government and the vast majority of statehouses and governorships. It’s that party’s inner moral rot that must concern us for now.

Second, it’s simply not true, and saying so reveals the origin of the problem — a “woe is me” sense of victimhood that grossly exaggerates the opposition’s ills and in turn justifies its own egregious political judgments and rhetoric. If the GOP had not become unhinged about the Clintons, would it have rationalized Trump as the lesser of two evils? Only in the crazed bubble of right-wing hysteria does an ethically challenged, moderate Democrat become a threat to Western civilization and Trump the salvation of America.

Indeed, for decades now, demonization — of gays, immigrants, Democrats, the media, feminists, etc. — has been the animating spirit behind much of the right.

Only in the crazed bubble of right-wing hysteria does an ethically challenged, moderate Democrat become a threat to Western civilization and Trump the salvation of America.

It has distorted its assessment of reality, giving us anti-immigrant hysteria, promulgating disrespect for the law (how many “respectable” conservatives suggested disregarding the Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage?), elevating Fox News hosts’ blatantly false propaganda as the counterweight to liberal media bias and preventing serious policy debate.

For seven years, the party vilified Obamacare without an accurate assessment of its faults and feasible alternative plans. “Obama bad” or “Clinton bad” became the only credo — leaving the party, as Brooks said of the Trump clan, with “no attachment to any external moral truth or ethical code” — and no coherent policies for governing.

We have always had in our political culture narcissists, ideologues and flimflammers, but it took the 21st-century GOP to put one in the White House.

It took elected leaders such as House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and the Republican National Committee (not to mention its donors and activists) to wave off Trump’s racists attacks on a federal judge, blatant lies about everything from 9/11 to his own involvement in birtherism, replete evidence of disloyalty to America (i.e. Trump’s “Russia first” policies), misogyny, Islamophobia, ongoing potential violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause (along with a mass of conflicts of interests), firing of an FBI director, and now, evidence that the campaign was willing to enlist a foreign power to defeat Clinton in the presidential election.

Out of its collective sense of victimhood came the GOP’s disdain for not just intellectuals but also intellectualism, science, Economics 101, history and constitutional fidelity.

If the Trump children became slaves to money and to their father’s unbridled ego, then the GOP became slaves to its own demons and false narratives.

A party that has to deny climate change and insist “illegal” immigrants are creating a crime wave — because that is what “conservatives” must believe, since liberals do not — is a party that will deny Trump’s complicity in gross misconduct.

It’s a party as unfit to govern as Trump is unfit to occupy the White House. It’s not by accident that Trump chose to inhabit the party that has defined itself in opposition to reality and to any “external moral truth or ethical code.” §

Jennifer Rubin is a Washington Post columnist, writing from a conservative perspective. Follow NJ.com Opinion on Twitter@NJ_Opinion. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook. This article is displayed with permission from NJ.com

Sixty years after ‘The Pill,’ the war on contraception continues

by Dr. Erin Saleeby, OB-GYN

The Pill was controversial when it was approved 60 years ago and remains so today as Congress aims to roll back affordable access to contraception.

Sixty years ago, the FDA approved a medication called Enovid for treating menstrual problems and infertility. Three years later, this combination of the synthetic hormones norethynodrel and mestranol, was approved as a contraceptive. The medication, which came to be called “The Pill,” was controversial then and remains controversial today, largely because of shenanigans in the health care bills aimed at replacing the Affordable Care Act.

The pill was revolutionary. It allowed women to take charge of their sexual and reproductive health and, in turn, plan their families and their futures and define their own lives. Contraception opened doors for me and millions of other women, creating a pathway for our full participation in society and in the workforce, while also contributing to better outcomes in maternal and child health.

As an OB-GYN, I have seen firsthand the benefits of access to affordable contraception for women of all ages, races, and socioeconomic status.

From healthier pregnancies and birth spacing to economic and educational attainment, we have much to celebrate. Women’s participation in the workforce grew from 40 percent in 1950 to nearly 60 percent in 2015, improving living standards along the way. More women have been attending college since the 1970s, and last year women accounted for 57 percent of the undergraduate student body. Some of these gains can be attributed to women being in charge of their reproductive health.

Today, most women can choose the contraceptive that works best for them without facing financial barriers. The ACA requires coverage for contraception without copays in most insurance plans. Whether that method is the pill, which has been the choice for 2 out of 3 women at some point in their lives, or the newer and more effective long-acting and reversible contraceptive devices, such as IUDs and implants, women can make their own decisions about their reproductive health based on the medical evidence and their own preferences.

Within just three years of the ACA’s no cost-sharing policy for contraception taking effect, insurance claims for IUDs increased from 36.6 percent in 2010 to 87.6 percent in 2013. This shows that when there is no financial barrier and women are free to choose, utilization of contraception increases.

Expanding access to contraception and making it affordable also improves women’s health. For the first time in decades, the unplanned pregnancy rate is declining and the abortion rate is the lowest since Roe v. Wade.

Despite this clear evidence for the benefits of contraception, the fight for universal access to affordable contraception wages on. Instead of celebrating the progress we have made over the past six decades, we are fighting off policy threats that could harm women’s health. The Senate is currently debating a health care bill that would not only devastate Medicaid and the public health care delivery system that pays for nearly half of all births in the country, it would also defund Planned Parenthood and allow states to let private insurance plans deny women preventive services and maternity coverage.

Such ill-advised policy proposals would jeopardize access to affordable contraception for many of my patients in California and millions of women across the nation. The potential repeal of the ACA, plus threats to undermine the Title X federal family planning program, could roll back contraceptive coverage and endanger access to essential sexual and reproductive health care for more than 20 million women in need of publicly supported contraception.

This isn’t bad just for women’s health. It is also fiscally irresponsible. The return on investment for contraception — every dollar invested in family planning saves $7 — should be compelling to all taxpayers.

It is unconscionable for our representatives in Congress, most of them men, to play politics with access to contraception. In this time of uncertainty in health care, let’s call on our lawmakers, from both sides of the aisle, to show they are invested in the health of women from all walks of life who depend on the security of safe, effective, and accessible contraception to realize their myriad critical roles in our society. Our representatives should start by preserving access to the full range of FDA-approved contraceptive methods without cost sharing, fully funding the Title X program for 2018, and not discriminating against women’s health providers who play vital roles in the health care safety net.

We cannot afford to turn back the clock on access to contraception and threaten the progress we have made in women’s health. §

Erin Saleeby, M.D., is the medical director of Essential Access Health, the administrator of California’s Title X federal family planning program. This article is displayed with permission from STAT.