World Press on Injustice of Slavery, Islamophobia and Islamic Sectarianism: New Age Islam's Selection, 8 October 2020
By New Age Islam Edit
Bureau
8 October
2020
• The Injustice of Slavery Is Not Over: The
Graves of the Enslaved Are Still Being Desecrated
By Afua Hirsch
• The Tories Aren't Ashamed Of Their
Islamophobia. They're Proud of It
By Nesrine Malik
• Emmanuel Macron on A Crusade Against Islamic
Sectarianism
By Brussels Morning
• Will We Ever End Violence Against Women?
By Anjali Sen and Jamshed M. Kazi
• The Myth of Trump’s Political Genius, Exposed
By Jamelle Bouie
-----
The Injustice of Slavery Is Not Over: The
Graves of the Enslaved Are Still Being Desecrated
By Afua Hirsch
8 Oct 2020
Illustration by Eva Bee
----
It should
come as no surprise that centuries of amnesia towards Britain’s own history has
left us with a lot to learn. My personal school education during the 1990s
contained a gaping hole between the Tudors and the Second World War. If you
wanted to surgically remove the period of colonial expansion and transatlantic
enslavement, you’d struggle to beat it.
So those of
us with time, resources and motivation are left to bridge the void through
self-education, which often involves grappling with significant facts and
figures.
The numbers
of Africans estimated to have been trafficked by Europeans to their American
and Caribbean colonies: 12 million-plus. Deaths on the Middle Passage alone,
across the Atlantic: 1.5 million at a highly conservative estimate. The cumulative
individual tragedies on slave trails to the coast, in the barracoons, and on
the beaches: no one can even count.
So the four
centuries of African enslavement by Europeans remains an abstract story. The
need to make it real, to find things that you can see, touch and feel is what
most motivated me to participate in the ambitious documentary series Enslaved
with Samuel L Jackson, to be broadcast on the BBC starting on Sunday. It’s an
attempt to get away from the numbers and statistics and instead focus on the
real people who endured this era – their flesh and bone, dreams and legacies.
In Brazil, for example, you can see the remains of men, women and children who
survived the Middle Passage, only to die on arrival in Rio de Janeiro: I found
myself kneeling before their bodies.
The
Cemetery of the New Blacks, as it’s known, was only discovered when the
Guimarães dos Anjos family wanted to renovate their house and found what they
thought was evidence of a serial killer having operated there. It turned out to
be a mass grave from the transatlantic slave trade. As is so often the case,
it’s the details that stay with you. Among the bodies – estimated at up to
30,000 – archaeologists also found the remnants of contemporary domestic waste.
When Africans died, they were dumped into mass graves, into which people also
flung their household rubbish.
Nearby, a
laboratory has categorised the objects found on their bodies – pipes, amulets,
rings – the things they carried all through the Middle Passage into this new
world. These little objects affected me deeply. It had never occurred to me
that enslaved people might have imagined themselves smoking, or being able to
protect themselves with a charm. These minuscule traces of home crystallised
just how much had been taken away.
Many of
these artefacts turned up during the 2016 Olympics. Building work for the Rio
games – a new light rail system, fancy glass office buildings – unearthed
Valongo, a wharf which had a monumental role in the slave trade but had been
long forgotten. Four million enslaved Africans were trafficked to Brazil – 10
times the number taken to what is now the US. Many arrived through this port.
The African-American historian Sadakne Baroudi, who has dedicated much of her
life to educating people about what happened there, told me its name should be
known and understood to the same extent as those of Hiroshima and Auschwitz.
When it
comes to the transatlantic slave trade, forgetting is the final, ongoing wrong.
Everywhere we travelled, it was the same story. In Portugal – the first country
to commoditise Africans, in the 1440s – bodies were also tossed into a rubbish
dump in the Algarve coastal town of Lagos. Many of the skeletons discovered had
signs of violent trauma, of having been shackled and bound. A third were
children. The site is now an underground car park with a putting golf garden on
its roof.
These
discoveries are particularly egregious from an African perspective. In so many
cultures across the continent, the only thing worse than being abused in life
is being abused in death – without proper burial rites or the dignity befitting
of ancestors.
But most of
what we sought was beneath the water, because of a little known but
bone-chilling fact. The Atlantic, like many bodies of water crossed in the
slave trade, is littered with the wreckages of slave ships.
One such is
the infamous ship the London, in which the bodies of enslaved Africans are
believed to lie beneath the sea off Ilfracombe in Devon.
So much of
this is a British story. The oldest slave ship ever discovered, which lies in
the Channel, still contains artefacts that were exchanged for human lives. It’s
hard to believe that this Royal Africa Company vessel – dubbed 35F – lies in
one of the busiest waterways in the world, unknown by almost everyone outside
the marine archeology community, and completely unprotected.
Then there
is the Douro, an 1843 wreck found off the coast of the Isles of Scilly –
another green and pleasant part of England in no way associated in the popular
imagination with the brutal traffic of slavery. Those who already know about
this history will notice something strange about the date. The slave trade was
abolished by Britain in 1807; slavery itself was outlawed years later, in 1834.
That the
Douro, whose cargo of textiles, munitions and manillas – bronze bracelets that
were used as currency for purchasing African people – was wrecked 36 years
after British ships were banned from the slave trade, speaks to a different
story. That story is of the one million people or more who continued to be
enslaved late into the 19th century.
The divers
who found these artefacts were for many years free to sell them to the highest
bidder, some even trading them on eBay. In the absence of sufficient
institutions to protect these finds for future generations, we are still
reliant on their discoverers’ individual goodwill to store them in their
basements and garages: incredibly, this is still where much of this precious
history remains.
There is a
reason why most of us have not seen these things for ourselves. The
documentary’s team of divers risked their lives exploring some of these
wreckage sites – they are treacherous, deep and dangerous. Anyone wondering at
the anger towards prominent memorials of slavers such as Edward Colston, might
understand it better having seen how the enslaved are, by contrast, still
disrespected and dishonoured.
Because the
reality is that, having been content to ignore these stories for so long, our
societies still seem relaxed about seeing the remains of these brutalised
people being debased, their graves turned into mini-golf, the remnants of their
lives and experiences washed away. To the list of historic wrongs we are
already grappling with, in this year above all, this injustice is ongoing and
renewed every day.
----
Afua Hirsch is a Guardian columnist
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/08/injustice-slavery-not-over-graves-desecrated-black-history
-----
The Tories Aren't Ashamed Of Their
Islamophobia. They're Proud Of It
By Nesrine Malik
7 Oct 2020
‘Whatever
seeds of Islamophobia have been planted in the past few years are flourishing
under Boris Johnson’s premiership.’ Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters
-----
Remember
Islamophobia? More specifically, remember Islamophobia in the Conservative
party? I cannot blame you if you don’t. A few things have happened since the
Tories committed to launching an inquiry last year. On the list of concerns
about the party in government – after a year in which a pandemic stripped bare
its incompetence and dishonesty – prejudice towards Muslims is nowhere near the
top. Even in stable times, attempting to get some attention, some media
scrutiny, some outrage about the scourge of Islamophobia in the Conservative
party was to be stonewalled by indifference at best, hostility at worst.
Given that
the party appointed a woman who does not believe in structural racism to the
government commission on racial inequalities, the Tories’ investigation into
their issues with race and Islam is unlikely to be a rigorous affair.
But there
has been one insightful submission to the now watered-down inquiry, by Hope Not
Hate. Published last week, it makes for bleak reading. Almost 60% of
Conservative members believe poisonous myths about “no-go areas in Britain
where sharia law dominates and non-Muslims cannot enter”. Another 57% expressed
negative views about Muslims, of which 21% registered very negative attitudes.
An
overwhelming majority of party members, according to this YouGov polling, are
very open about their antipathy towards Muslims. This has intensified under
Boris Johnson – those who backed him in the leadership election are much more
likely to believe in conspiracy theories about Muslims taking over the country
and destroying Britain’s way of life. Whatever seeds of Islamophobia have been
planted in the past few years are flourishing under Johnson’s premiership.
But few
will be shocked by that. It takes a lot these days, I find, to really shake
people with accounts of Islamophobia in general, and in the Conservative party
in particular. I could use up more column inches detailing incidents where MPs
questioned Muslims’ loyalty to Britain, or of councillors who were reinstated
despite calling Saudis “sand peasants” and posting material comparing Asian
people to dogs. I could retread the still shocking ground of Johnson’s own
comments about Muslims and their “letterbox” burqas, which still did not get in
the way of his election to head the party.
But all
these incidents were relegated to background noise in British politics – the
sort that is turned slightly up in moments such as this, when a report is
released or a media organisation reveals dossiers full of incidents. The quiet
normalisation of prejudice towards Muslims in the Conservative party and in
wider British society is one of the most shameful chapters in recent British
history.
Contrary to
the popular view that one is no longer allowed to offend minorities without
swift retribution, there is in reality a lot you need to do before you get into
trouble for bashing Muslims.
Alongside
the normalisation of Islamophobia came a hobbling of the opposition’s ability
to call it out, with the problem of antisemitism on the left used to dismiss Labour’s
critiques on the basis that it had no moral authority to lecture anyone. The
Conservatives’ election triumph, even as Islamophobia ravaged its ranks, was a
national endorsement for its intolerance of Muslims.
And as part
of its agenda for power, for years the Conservative party has continued to fold
Islamophobia into a wider intolerance that encompassed migrants, asylum
seekers, citizens of nowhere, and racial minorities who would not even be
afforded the respect of unconscious bias training. Tory MPs resisted the
exercise, calling it “snake oil crap” that should be rejected by a
party“unabashed in our cultural conservatism”.
And
unabashed it is. One way to read the new report into Islamophobia is to see the
problem not as something the party wishes would go away, but one that is a
proud expression of its values. As a group of people who embody much of what
the right dislikes, Muslims could not be a better scapegoat. Racially they are
mostly brown and black, easily distinguishable as alien. Culturally, whether
they are practising or not, all Muslims are seen as fair game to attack because
of the terrorist actions of a tiny minority. The result is a synthetically
tribalised group of people who are used to make the case for closing borders
and reclaiming British identity.
What could
be more elemental to Conservatism today, with Brexit providing a looming moment
of peak Britishness, than the raising of barricades against the rest of the
world? Naval patrols in the channel, and dystopian proposals for floating iron
walls or for flying refugees to remote islands, are not earnest technical
suggestions to a problem. They are the brainstorms of a party that wishes to
create a stark hierarchy of humanity.
Unaddressed
Islamophobia among Conservative members is not about Muslims as such: it’s
about a vision of the world in which it is acceptable to sort people on this
British group of islands into categories of indigenous and alien, and affording
them rights and respect along those lines. Judging by how little interest there
is in challenging entrenched Islamophobia in Britain’s dominant party, we may
already live in that world.
-----
Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/07/tories-islamophobia-proud-muslims-scapegoat
-----
Emmanuel Macron On A Crusade Against Islamic
Sectarianism
By Brussels Morning
7 October
2020
The debate
on the influence of Islam in France took another turn last week when the French
president announced the government’s intention of putting forward legislation
on monitoring the financing of mosques, as well as Islamic cultural
associations and even sports clubs. The intent is to ensure they don’t become
fronts for spreading radical ideas.
The
envisaged measures would restrict entry into France by imams from overseas and
would also put limits on home-schooling. These, in President Macron’s view,
constituted risk factors that could contribute to the establishment of a
parallel Muslim society in France. The proposal builds on the principle of secularism,
a concept institutionalised at the time of the French Revolution, which still
serves as the constitutional foundation in the French Republic.
Given that
France is the country with Europe’s largest Muslim population, the proposed
legislation, which is due to go before the French Assemblée Nationale this
year, is likely to prove hugely controversial. Many see it as a means of
targeting the Muslim community specifically and as a sop by Macron to
right-wing voters. By claiming that there is a phenomenon of “Islamist
separatism”, Macron has taken a decidedly different position in the public
debate on the role of Islam that to date had centred on whether and to what
degree women can be veiled in public.
On previous
occasions, the French President has shown himself to favour greater awareness
and understanding of Islamic culture while he has condemned comments that link
the religion directly with terrorism. Having been seen as sympathetic and
protective of the Muslim community’s special characteristics, he has now
weighed in with an opinion that is seen as legitimising the repression of Islam
in France. Constitutional secularism states that practitioners of all religions
and beliefs are equal before the law.
Yet by
taking aim at France’s six million Muslims, Macron, who claims to be promoting
social mobility, has stepped into a potential minefield by drawing parallels
between Islam and the social problems and poverty experienced in many French
suburbs.
The
proposed measures include compulsory school enrolment for children from age
three onwards, with home-schooling allowed only for health reasons. There would
be stricter rules on private schools, with Arabic language instruction being
introduced into the public school system. Research into Islam as a religion
would be furthered within a state institution (the Scientific Institute of
Islamology) and there would be more research positions for Islamic studies in
French higher education.
In fact,
some of the measures flagged by Macron in his speech last week had been planned
by fthe government of former President Hollande. The timing of Macron’s
announcement has been interpreted as strategic positioning ahead of the 2022
presidential elections.
Mixed Welcome for Macron’s Proposals
The
“Rassemblement National” (RN) party, formerly known as Front National, which is
headed by Marine Le Pen, acknowledges that the programme reflects some “good
intentions” but is doubtful about the role of the French Council of Muslim
Faith in the context of French public institutions. The RN remains concerned
with the issue of migration, an issue it believes is the “breeding ground of
all factionalism”.
The
Republican Party (LR) also wants the new measures to address migration.
The
Socialist Party advocates tackling integration through improved economic and
social policies. Meanwhile, leading left-wing politician Jean-Luc Melanchon of
the “France Insoumise” movement forthrightly criticised the proposed programme
for its hypocrisy and the outright damage he asserted it would inflict on
sectarian relations. Only the “Mouvement Democrate” welcomed the draft, which
they described as offering realistic concrete solutions.
Critics,
academics and NGOs alike criticised the president’s narrative, with many
wondering whether he was attacking separatism as a whole or the Muslim religion
in particular. While some lambasted the continuous “obsession” of French
politicians with the French Muslim community, others worried that political
initiatives such as the proposed measures risked deepening societal divisions
and stigmatising members of this community, especially young women who are
already vulnerable to discrimination.
Gilles
Kepel, an expert on the Middle East, favours a stricter framework for
home-schooling and restricting the influence of foreign imams. The latter are
widely seen as promoting their own agendas and of being insufficiently critical
of certain Islamist ideologies iat varience with French values. On the other
hand, Francois Burgat, professor emeritus at the National Council of Scientific
Research, defends the Macron administration’s use of the term separatism and
equating it with Islam, saying that it is courageous to point to the wider
community when identifying a cultural environment that enables acts of violence
towards French society at large.
The human
rights organisation “Ligue de Droits de l’Homme” took issue with Macron’s use
of terminology similar to the language of the extreme right, in singling out
“Muslim extremists” as the culprits.
The draft
proposals will be put to vote early next year.
https://brusselsmorning.com/2020/10/07/emmanuel-macron-on-a-crusade-against-islamic-sectarianism/
-----
Will We Ever End Violence Against Women?
By Anjali Sen and
Jamshed M. Kazi
October 7,
2020
AF was
raped by a stranger who broke into her house in Bintaro, Tangerang, last year
(The Jakarta Post, Aug. 9). Although she filed a report immediately afterward,
providing significant evidence, her case has just been processed by the police
only after her posts on Instagram went viral in early August. In the end, the
perpetrator was charged under Articles 285 and 365 of the Criminal Code (KUHP)
for rape and theft, even though he also allegedly threatened the victim through
social media.
The
definitions of gender-based violence (GBV) and violence against women (VAW),
which encompass different types of violence — from domestic violence and forced
marriage, to online violence, to emotional violence — have become more
diversified. However, without comprehensive systematically enforced
legislation, survivors often have a hard time reporting such incidents and
accessing justice. As a result, impunity for acts of GBV increases and it gets
harder to eliminate this scourge. For the past 12 years, the Annual Report of
the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) has
recorded a 792 percent or nearly eightfold increase in cases of sexual violence
since 2007. Throughout 2019, Komnas Perempuan reported 431,471 cases of VAW,
which was 6 percent higher than the previous year.
And we know
that for every case reported, many more remain hidden—not only in Indonesia but
globally. In “normal” times, women in Indonesia already experience high levels
of violence. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated the situation. The
home is not always a safe space for women. At the outset of the pandemic, the
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) forecast that there would be up to 31
million more incidents of GBV around the world if lockdowns lasted for six
months or longer. According to a UN Women series of reports on VAW, amid the
pandemic, domestic violence has indeed increased worldwide under the cramped
and confined living conditions of quarantines and lockdowns, as already tenuous
situations intensify, compounded further by tensions and strains stemming from
security, health, and financial concerns. According to Komnas Perempuan, during
January-May 2020, the Commission received more than 900 reports of violence
against women compared to only 100 per month the previous year. The Legal Aid
Foundation of the Indonesian Women’s Association for Justice (LBH Apik) has
also noted a threefold increase in the number of monthly reported cases since
the beginning of the pandemic, from 60 to 90 reports. Out of those 90 reports,
domestic violence is the largest category with 33 cases, followed by online GBV
with 30 cases. The pandemic situation has also made reporting all the more
difficult due to limitations in movement and availability of services.
Thus, it is important to reiterate that in
reality the numbers are likely higher as many cases go unreported thanks to
barriers to access, lack of information regarding reporting mechanisms,
sociocultural norms that normalize violence, and stigma that prevents survivors
from reporting. It may sound obvious, but GBV is a genuine health crisis. It
negatively affects women’s physical health, including sexual and reproductive
health, as well as mental or psychological health — with consequences that
include posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression. In July, a
woman in Bangkalan, East Java, and committed suicide linked to depression after
being raped by seven young men (the Post July 9). Already traumatized by the
attack, she received threats from the perpetrators afterward.
The
combination of sexual, verbal and psychological violence prompted her to take
her own life. In GBV cases, women often suffer severe physical injuries, or are
even killed. They also face other risks like unintended pregnancy, pregnancy
complications and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV. When a woman
experiences violence, she suffers from multiple layers of injustice, which
includes restrictions in mobility, access to health services and education, and
opportunities to participate in public life and economic activities.
Therefore,
VAW not only has negative consequences for women but also for their families,
the community, and the nation at large. Indonesia ratified the Convention of
All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) 36 years ago. As part of its
international obligation, the Indonesian government will be presenting its
eighth periodic review to the CEDAW Committee in Geneva in February 2021,
highlighting both progress as well as challenges. Over the years, the
government has made sustained efforts to advance women’s rights including among
others, enacting the Law on Domestic Violence in 2004 and revising the Marriage
Law in 2019 to raise the minimum legal age for girls to marry from 16 to 19 so
it is the same as the minimum age for boys. These are commendable milestones by
the government, supported by tireless advocacy from civil society,
parliamentarians and other national stakeholders, consistent with Indonesia’s
international and national commitments.
However,
there is much more to be done. A genuinely comprehensive response is required
to protect all women and ensure no one is left behind, during these challenging
times and beyond. First, we need to keep essential and integrated services for
survivors of violence running and available amid the ongoing pandemic. These
include the continuum of health, police, shelter, helplines, psychological,
social, and justice services.
Ensuring
that staffing, funds, and other resources remain adequate to support GBV
survivors, even as protocols are strengthened to prevent the virus from spreading
should be the current highest priority. Second, we have to provide a more
comprehensive legal framework to ensure survivors of violence are enabled to
seek justice, such as the proposed anti-sexual violence bill. The bill broadly
regulates acts of sexual violence and recognizes other forms sexual violence
not stipulated under the Law on Domestic Violence and the Criminal Code. It
allows different types of violence cases, such as cyber GBV and other forms of
sexual violence, to be prosecuted. The bill also emphasizes the importance of
prevention, protection and recovery, which are critical aspects of a
rights-based approach to addressing GBV. Lastly, we must prioritize survivors
of violence as a fundamental part of social protection plans and of investments
for medium and longer-term recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. This is a
critical time for women and girls, and urgent action is needed as we are
quickly approaching the expiration date for achieving gender equality by 2030
as part of the Sustainable Development Goals.
To convert
rhetoric into reality, to truly transform the lives of women and girls, to end
GBV and VAW once and for all, we need to ask ourselves what we can do as human
beings to speak out and take steps to stem this crisis, as well as chart out a
collective vision as to what kind of Indonesia—and world—we want. For decades
Indonesian women, like most women around the world, have been fighting for
their rights to social justice, gender equality, and protection from violence.
They simply cannot wait any longer.
-----
Anjali Sen is United Nations Population Fund
Indonesia Representative. Jamshed M. Kazi is UN Women Indonesia Representative.
https://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2020/10/07/will-we-ever-end-violence-against-women.html
------
The Myth of Trump’s Political Genius, Exposed
By Jamelle Bouie
Oct. 7,
2020
It sounds
counterintuitive, but it’s true: Donald Trump is bad at electoral politics.
Yes, he is
the president, which by itself would suggest the opposite. But to look at his
conduct during the coronavirus pandemic is to see someone who doesn’t
understand his own political interests and won’t listen to anyone who does.
The past
week has been instructive in this regard. Last Tuesday, he faced off against
Joe Biden in the first presidential debate. Trump, who trailed Biden in
national polls and in most swing states, had one job: to bring wavering voters
back into the fold. With a sufficiently competent performance, Trump could stop
the bleeding and maybe even mount a small comeback. It wasn’t going to be easy,
but it should have been simple — a straightforward turn that any incumbent
president ought to have been able to make.
Of course,
Trump blew it. He barked and ranted for 90 minutes, making the
debate-that-was-not-actually-a-debate an alienating spectacle for most viewers.
He demonstrated the truth of Democratic attacks on his temperament and ability
at the same time that Biden dispelled the idea, pushed by the president and his
allies, that Biden suffers from serious cognitive decline. The result was a
rout.
The debate
— an indoor, in-person affair — was also a showcase for Trump’s handling of the
pandemic. Would he and his entourage take the situation seriously? Would they
try to model good behavior for the public? The obvious answer was no. The
venue, Case Western Reserve University, asked all attendees to wear masks. But
Trump and his team refused, acting as if the virus didn’t actually exist. The
president even mocked Biden for his dedication to wearing a mask. “I don’t wear
face masks like him,” Trump said. “Every time you see him he’s got a mask. He
could be speaking 200 feet away and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever
seen.”
Trump seems
to believe that it shows strength to flout precautions and weakness to heed
them. He seems to think the public wants this “strength” and will flock to him
in support of his performance. Yet again, his vaunted political instincts
failed him. When, in the wake of the debate, the White House announced that
Trump and much of his senior staff had contracted the virus, the public
response was something akin to “We told you so.” Sixty-three percent of
Americans said the president had acted “irresponsibly” in “handling the risk of
coronavirus infection to the people who have been around him most recently,”
according to a CNN poll.
The most
important issue right now for most voters is the pandemic, which has damaged
the economy and radically transformed life for hundreds of millions of
Americans, while killing more than 210,000 of us. They want solutions and
assistance, not ostentatious displays of so-called masculine strength. They
want the government, and the president, to be honest about the challenge. None
of this is particularly difficult. Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic governor of New
York, has had as much failure as success in handling the pandemic. His
administration’s early decision to send thousands of discharged hospital patients
back to nursing homes is arguably responsible for a significant portion of the
state’s death toll. This might have doomed Cuomo with the public. But the power
of the rallying effect is such that a serious performance of competence, as
well as concrete actions to regain New Yorkers’ lost confidence, has been
enough to keep him well above water politically.
The extent
to which leaders across the country and around the world have been able to
thrive despite high pandemic death tolls and a vicious economic downturn is a
testament to how Trump could have forged a path to re-election had he treated
the pandemic with any seriousness. Wearing a mask, pressing Congress for more
aid, rejecting Covid-19 denialism and refraining from magical thinking — this
is probably all it would have taken to spin a once-in-a-century crisis into
political gold. But Trump refused, and now, if the polls are right and the
forecasts are accurate, he’s just a few weeks away from what may well prove to
be a landslide defeat.
Trump was
the unexpected winner of the 2016 presidential election. That victory led many,
including Trump himself, to believe he had some special sauce, some superpower
that helped him defy political gravity. There’s no question he has some
political skills. A lifelong showman, he’s good with a crowd, or at least
certain kinds of crowds. He can distill an entire governing agenda into a few
simple phrases. And he’s been able to build an emotional connection with a
significant part of the American electorate.
But even
with those assets, Trump doesn’t win the 2016 election without a huge amount of
luck. Take away the WikiLeaks dump, take away the Comey letter, keep Anthony
Weiner away from a computer, and there’s a very good chance that Hillary
Clinton is elected president. Run the 2016 election a hundred times, exactly as
it was, and Trump loses most of the time.
If the
president had any appreciation for the role of luck and chance in his election,
he would have governed in ways that maximized his advantages and cleared the path
for an outright win. Instead, he embraced the myth of his political genius and
brought himself, and his party, to the brink of political disaster. It took a
fluke to put Trump into the White House, and if nothing changes, it will take
another fluke to keep him there.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/07/opinion/trump-2020-covid-politics.html?
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