World Press on Liberation War of East Pakistan and US Elections: New Age Islam's Selection, 7 November 2020
By New Age Islam Edit
Desk
7 November
2020
• Liberation War Of East Pakistan
By Naadir Junaid
• Is America Becoming A Failed State?
By Paul Krugman
• Donald Trump's Malignant Spell Could Soon Be
Broken
By Jonathan Freedland
• US Elections: Understanding Its Hidden
Message
By Mahfuz Anam
• Truth And De-Trumpification
By Jan-Werner Mueller
• The People Versus Donald Trump
By Roger Cohen
-----
Liberation War of East Pakistan
By Naadir Junaid
November
06, 2020
In 1971,
the Pakistani military junta wanted to prevent Bengalis of then East Pakistan from
pursuing their just demands by using brute force. When the Pakistani army
unleashed a genocidal attack on unarmed civilians on March 25, the people rose
up against them, and after a nine-month war that resulted in a great deal of
bloodshed and suffering, Bangladesh emerged as an independent nation. The
ideals of our Liberation War thus entail, among other things, resistance to
unjust display of power, tyrannical and exploitative rule, sexual violence,
religious intolerance, and racial hatred. Those who fought for freedom in 1971
hoped that the oppression and prejudices they had experienced before would
cease to exist in the independent nation. Our freedom fighters also deeply
valued our shared identity as Bengalis that bound people of all religions in the
country.
The
importance of "upholding the ideals of Liberation War" is often
stressed in speeches and remarks by politicians and intellectuals and even
ordinary people. But as we near the 50 years of our independence, one may
wonder how many people today really understand what constitutes the ideals of
Liberation War or what it means to respect them. If people really understood
and believed in those ideals, how could there still be such prevalence of
problems such as corruption, brazen display of power, repression of women,
religious intolerance, etc.—which are totally antithetical to the values of the
Liberation War?
Hatred of
non-Muslims was one of the common attributes of the Pakistani army. The
Pakistani rulers did not like Bengalis' fondness for songs composed by
Rabindranath Tagore because he was not a Muslim. It is extremely frustrating to
see that religious bigotry still plagues our society. In 2016, some young men
occupied the Holy Artisan restaurant in Gulshan and mercilessly killed a number
of innocent and unarmed persons in the name of religion. Although those
extremists were Bangladeshis, it seems they were not at all aware of the
history of the emergence of Bangladesh. Did they know about the Pakistani
atrocities against Bengali civilians in 1971? Did they know how the members of
Al-Badr abducted Bengali intellectuals and murdered them in order to debilitate
the diffusion of progressive ideas in post-independence Bangladesh?
Instead of
being inspired by Rumi, Bodi, Jewel, Azad and numerous other young freedom
fighters who fought the oppressive Pakistani army for the independence of their
motherland, these young men embraced religious zealotry. Their blind belief and
intolerance turned them into cruel, cold-blooded zealots and, like the Pakistani
occupying army and their local collaborators, they murdered innocent civilians.
Al-Badr and Al-Shams were formed with Bengali religious fanatics who, like the
Pakistanis, used to loathe ideas concerning Bengali nationalism, religious
harmony, and a secularist society.
Freedom
fighter Ziauddin Tariq Ali once said that he felt very sad that the Bengalis
had all but forgotten the genocide committed in 1971. It seems many
Bangladeshis have also forgotten that in 1971, the Pakistani army raped
thousands of Bengali women. When we hear that between January and September
this year, more than three rape incidents on average took place every day, we
see in them a grotesque display of the same immorality shown by Pakistani
perpetrators all those years back. It is a shame that despite there being such
a well-documented history of sexual violence being perpetrated in 1971, many
still do not despise or protest it as strongly as they should.
Our
politicians often declare their adherence to the values of 1971. At the same time,
we witness brazen abuse of power by politically influential people in our
society. It is disconcerting to see the "ideals of Liberation War"
being reduced to a buzz phrase used for political advantage. In different
decades after independence, individuals known for their anti-liberation role
were made ministers. Even in those days, parties in power did talk about
upholding the ideals of Liberation War. But when a party turns a blind eye to
the increasing influence of anti-liberation forces, its professed devotion to
the spirit of Liberation War becomes questionable.
Perhaps
inspired by the problematic notion that politics makes strange bedfellows,
pro-liberation parties of our country sometimes liaised with the
anti-liberation forces. May be such decisions were deemed practical by some
politicians. But in their blind pursuit of political mileage, those
pro-liberation forces ignored the fact that such alliances helped
anti-liberation forces gain a firm footing in the realm of politics. It is also
necessary to remember that any attempt to appease the forces that have no
interest in espousing liberal and progressive ideas would contribute to the
strengthening of extremist elements in society. Providing reactionary forces
with concessions would make them stronger and eventually their influence would
serve to weaken the spirit of the Liberation War.
The ideals
of Liberation War started to lose ground as a discourse because of the gradual
decline in power of the freedom fighters. After independence, freedom fighters
could not remain united, whether in political parties or in the armed forces.
Many eminent freedom fighters were killed due to factional divisions and
sometimes executed by controversial and unfair military trials. For many years
now, articles, documentaries, and discussions concerning Liberation War have
appeared in the mass media only on specific days such as March 26 and December
16. How can we expect the current generation to develop a broader understanding
of the ideals of Liberation War if their knowledge about the sufferings,
sacrifices, and struggles of the Bengalis in 1971 remains scant? Our Liberation
War needs to be discussed in the media and in academic institutions in such a
way that would help people gain valuable insights about the brutal genocide and
sexual violence committed by the Pakistanis in 1971, the systematic liquidation
of our leading intellectuals, intense suffering of common people, and the
valour and supreme sacrifices of our freedom fighters.
Would it be
too difficult to create libraries in rural areas and small towns and inspire
young people to read books on Liberation War? The MPs and local politicians can
easily lead these initiatives. Television channels should screen Zahir Raihan's
Stop Genocide, Vanya Kewley's Major Khaled's War, Alamgir Kabir's Liberation
Fighters, Tareque Masud and Catherine Masud's Muktir Gaan, Tanvir Mokammel's
1971, Sukhdev's Nine Months to Freedom and such Liberation War-based
documentaries more regularly. I think footage used in these documentaries would
lead to a deeper engagement of the spectators with the realities of 1971.
The ideals
of Liberation War would be revered highly when people from different
socioeconomic backgrounds and students studying in Bangla and English medium
institutions and madrasas understand why the freedom fighters deserve our
utmost respect—and why those Pakistani perpetrators and their collaborators,
and those who carry their legacy today, deserve severe condemnation. If we
can't convince our people to reject reactionary ideology and resist all forms
of oppression, we will be guilty of betraying the ideals of our Liberation War.
-----
Dr Naadir Junaid is Professor, Department of
Mass Communication and Journalism, Dhaka University.
https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/news/how-respectful-are-we-the-ideals-liberation-war-1990057
-----
Is America Becoming a Failed State?
By Paul Krugman
Nov. 5,
2020
Democratic
presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden and US President
Donald Trump. Credit: AFP Photo
------
As I write
this, it seems extremely likely that Joe Biden has won the presidency. And he
clearly received millions more votes than his opponent. He can and should claim
that he has been given a strong mandate to govern the nation.
But there
are real questions about whether he will, in fact, be able to govern. At the
moment, it seems likely that the Senate — which is wildly unrepresentative of
the American people — will remain in the hands of an extremist party that will
sabotage Biden in every way it can.
Before I
get into the problems this confrontation is likely to cause, let’s talk about
just how unrepresentative the Senate is.
Every
state, of course, has two senators — which means that Wyoming’s 579,000
residents have as much weight as California’s 39 million. The overweighted
states tend to be much less urbanized than the nation as a whole. And given the
growing political divide between metropolitan and rural areas, this gives the
Senate a strong rightward tilt.
An analysis
by the website FiveThirtyEight.com found that the Senate in effect represents
an electorate almost seven percentage points more Republican than the average
voter. Cases like Susan Collins, who held on in a Democratic state, are
exceptions; the underlying right-wing skew of the Senate is the main reason the
G.O.P. will probably retain control despite a substantial Democratic victory in
the presidential popular vote.
But, you
may ask, why is divided control of government such a problem? After all,
Republicans controlled one or both chambers of Congress for three-quarters of
Barack Obama’s presidency, and we survived, didn’t we?
Yes, but.
In fact,
G.O.P. obstruction did a lot of damage even during the Obama years. Republicans
used hardball tactics, including threats to cause a default on the national
debt, to force a premature withdrawal of fiscal support that slowed the pace of
economic recovery. I’ve estimated that without this de facto sabotage, the
unemployment rate in 2014 might have been about two percentage points lower
than it actually was.
And the
need for more spending is even more acute now than it was in 2011, when
Republicans took control of the House.
Most
immediately, the coronavirus is running wild, with new cases exceeding 100,000
a day and rising rapidly. This is going to hit the economy hard, even if state
and local governments don’t impose new lockdowns.
We
desperately need a new round of federal spending on health care, aid to the
unemployed and businesses, and support for strapped state and local
governments. Reasonable estimates suggest that we should spend $200 billion or
more each month until a vaccine brings the pandemic to an end. I’d be shocked
if a Senate still controlled by Mitch McConnell would agree to anything like
this.
Even after
the pandemic is over, we’re likely to face both persistent economic weakness
and a desperate need for more public investment. But McConnell effectively
blocked infrastructure spending even with Donald Trump in the White House. Why
would he become more amenable with Biden in office?
Now, spending
isn’t the only form of policy. Normally, there are many things a president can
achieve for good (Obama) or evil (Trump) through executive action. In fact,
during the summer a Democratic task force identified hundreds of things a
President Biden could do without having to go through Congress.
But here’s
where I worry about the role of a heavily partisan Supreme Court — a court
shaped by McConnell’s norm-breaking behaviour, including the rushed
confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett just days before the election.
Six of nine
justices were chosen by a party that has won the popular vote only once in the
past eight elections. And I think there’s a substantial chance that this court
may behave like the Supreme Court in the 1930s, which kept blocking New Deal
programs until F.D.R. threatened to add seats — something Biden wouldn’t be
able to do with a Republican-controlled Senate.
So we are
in big trouble. Trump’s defeat would mean that we have, for the moment, avoided
a plunge into authoritarianism — and yes, the stakes are that high, not just
because of who Trump is, but also because the modern G.O.P. is so extremist and
anti-democratic. But our skewed electoral system means that Trump’s party is
still in a position to hobble, perhaps cripple, the next president’s ability to
deal with the huge epidemiological, economic and environmental problems we
face.
Put it this
way: If we were looking at a foreign country with America’s level of political
dysfunction, we would probably consider it on the edge of becoming a failed
state — that is, a state whose government is no longer able to exert effective
control.
Runoff
elections in Georgia may yet give Democrats Senate control; barring that, Biden
might be able to find a few reasonable Republicans willing to pull us back from
that brink. But despite his apparent victory, the Republic remains in great
danger.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/opinion/joe-biden-senate-mitch-mcconnell.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
----
Donald Trump's Malignant Spell Could Soon Be
Broken
By Jonathan Freedland
6 Nov 2020
Barring a
twist inconceivable even by the standards of 2020, we will soon know the result
of the US presidential election – and it will almost certainly be a cause for
rejoicing. Donald Trump, the man who has haunted the world’s dreams and sparked
a thousand nightmares, has all but lost. On 20 January 2021, he will probably
leave the White House – or be removed if necessary. The Trump presidency, a
shameful chapter in the history of the republic, will soon be over.
True, it is
taking longer than we might have liked. There was to be no swift moment of
euphoria and elation, an unambiguous landslide announced on election night with
a drumroll and fireworks display. Instead, thanks to a pandemic that meant two
in three Democrats voted by slower-to-count mail-in ballots, it’s set to be a
win in increments, a verdict delivered in slow motion. Nor was there the
hoped-for “blue wave” that might have carried the Democrats to a majority in
the US Senate (though there is, just, a way that could yet happen). As a
result, it will be hard for Joe Biden to do what so urgently needs to be done,
whether that’s tackling the climate crisis, racial injustice, economic
inequality, America’s parlous infrastructure or its dysfunctional and
vulnerable electoral machinery. And it is glumly true that even if Trump is
banished from the Oval Office, Trumpism will live on in the United States.
And yet
none of that should obscure the main event that has taken place this week. It’s
a form of progressive masochism to search for the defeat contained in a
victory. Because a victory is what this will be.
Recall the
shock and disgust that millions – perhaps billions – have felt these past four
years, as Trump sank to ever lower depths. When he was ripping children from
their parents and keeping them in cages; when he was blithely exchanging “love
letters” with the murderous thug that rules the slave state of North Korea;
when he was coercing Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden, or else lose the funds it
needed to defend itself against Vladimir Putin, the high crime for which he was
impeached; when he was denying the reality of the coronavirus, insisting it
would just melt away, thereby leaving more than 235,000 Americans to their fate
and their deaths – when he was doing all that, what did his opponents long for?
The wish, sometimes uttered to the heavens, was not complicated: they wanted
Trump’s defeat and ejection from power. Few attached the rider that it would
only count if the Democrats could also pick up a Senate seat in North Carolina.
Nor does it
seem as though any defeat for Trump will be tentative or partial, even if the
delayed result might make it feel that way. Joe Biden crushed him in this
contest. He beat him in the popular vote by a huge margin, four million at last
count, with that figure only growing as the final result is tallied. Yes, in a
high-turnout election, Trump got more votes than he did in 2016 – but Biden got
more votes than any presidential candidate in history, more even than the
once-in-a-generation phenomenon that was Barack Obama.
What’s
more, Biden looks to have done something extremely difficult and vanishingly
rare, taking on and defeating a first-term president. That would ensure that
Donald Trump becomes only the third elected president since Herbert Hoover in
1932 to try and fail to win re-election. Trump would take his place alongside
Jimmy Carter and George Bush the elder in the small club of rejected, one-term
presidents. As it happens, both those men were gracious in defeat and admirable
in retirement, but Trump won’t see them that way. He’ll regard them as
stone-cold losers. And he’s about to be one of them, his place taken by a
decent, empathic man with the first ever female vice-president at his side.
It’s worth
bearing all that in mind when you hear the predictable complaints that Biden
was too “centrist”, or that Bernie Sanders would have done better. It could be
argued that Biden outperformed the rest of his party, pulling ahead even as
Democrats lost seats in the House and failed to make great gains in the Senate.
Note that Trump’s prime attack line – that “far left” Democrats were itching to
impose “socialism” on America – cut through in this campaign, clearly alarming
Cuban and Venezuelan voters in Florida, for example. But it was a hard label to
stick on a lifelong pragmatist like Joe Biden: most Americans just didn’t buy
it.
What it
adds up to is not perhaps the across-the-board repudiation of Trump and the
congressional Republicans who enabled him these past four years. But it does
count as an emphatic rejection of what Trump did as a first-term president –
and, if it holds, the prevention of all the horror he would have unleashed if
he had won a second.
It means
that a majority of Americans have said no to the constant stream of insults,
abuse and lies – more than 22,000 since Trump took office, according to the
Washington Post. They have said no to a man who was a misinformation
super-spreader, who called journalists “enemies of the people” and denounced inconvenient
truths as “fake news”. They have said no to a man who suggested people should
guard against Covid by injecting themselves with disinfectant; who dismissed
science in favour of Fox News; who dismissed the word of his own intelligence
agencies, preferring conspiracy theories picked up on Twitter.
They have
said no to a president who saw white supremacists and neo-Nazis march in
Charlottesville in 2017, and declared that they included some “very fine
people”. They have said no to a man who referred to one black congresswoman as
“low IQ” and suggested four others, all US citizens, should “go back home”.
They have said no to the man who refused to disavow the far-right groups who
worship him, telling those racist extremists instead to “stand back and stand
by”. They have said no to the man who trashed America’s allies, who withdrew
the US from the Paris climate agreement, and who grovelled to every strongman
and dictator on the planet.
The next
few weeks will be perilous. Trump will not concede; he will continue to deny
the legitimacy of this result. His performance on Thursday night was perhaps
his lowest and darkest yet, groundlessly telling Americans they could have no
faith in their most solemn democratic rite: the election of a president. As he
leaves, he will scorch the earth and poison the soil.
But all of
that is to remind us why it was so essential, for America and the world, that
he be defeated. And why, even though it may have arrived slowly and without the
fanfare so many of us wanted, this will be a moment to savour. A dark force is
being expelled from the most powerful office in the world – and at long last,
we can glimpse the light.
-----
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/06/donald-trump-joe-biden-popular-vote-electoral-college
-----
US Elections: Understanding Its Hidden Message
By Mahfuz Anam
November
06, 2020
By the time
this article goes to print, Joe Biden, the Democratic Party candidate, may have
scraped through the race for the White House. However, for those of us watching
the US elections from the outside, who eventually wins is, of course, crucial
but the message that the election process has revealed is equally, if not more,
important. The election has revealed, far more intensely than ever before, that
the US is an ideologically divided country, and dangerously so. The danger is
that the division is not on policies but on principles and ideals that this
country should stand for. A division that sees the world so differently that it
is bound to impact, and in fact dismantle, the world order that has sustained
so far.
Millions of
votes that Trump got point towards a vision of the US that is radically
different from what its constitution proclaims, especially as regards racial
equality. There is a rising and vicious racist and white supremacist streak
that appears to be endorsed by about 48 percent of Americans. These voters
believe that democracy—the US's trademark selling point in the world—is not for
all. It also revealed an inexplicable refusal to accept science and fact-based
reasoning; it brought out a corruption of politics where partisanship overrides
public welfare and where open demonisation of the "other" has become
the norm, regardless of how much it harms the country. Republicans crossed no
legal line in appointing the latest supreme court judge but it was not lost to
anyone that partisan political consideration superseded every other factor. It
revealed the dangerous risks that the US is willing to take by destroying the
global order that has ensured, in however flawed a manner, a relative peace in
the post-World War II period. It has also revealed that the US cannot be
counted on as a reliable partner for global collaboration unless American
interest is given the highest consideration.
In 2016,
Donald Trump was the new kid on the block, the Washington outsider, the
non-politician promising to "clean the swamp". His candidacy could
easily be considered a "fresh start". Of course, those who really
knew him and were familiar with his ways greatly doubted that anything good
could come from such a man.
But in this
election, he was the incumbent with four years of performance record, of
leadership, of policies, of supporting causes, of taking position and of
handling crises to judge him by—not to mention, the four years of outrageous
tweeting. He was a one-man demolition squad for many American institutions and
did everything to create doubt in the vaunted US election process by presenting
it as full of fraud.
Yet so many
American voters chose him. They chose him in spite of the fact that nearly
240,000 people have already died of Covid-19—which is twice the total US
casualties in WW I, half of those who died in WW II, and four and a half times
the number of those who died in the Vietnam war. Health experts have repeatedly
said that more than half of them could have been saved through better
management of the crisis.
One of the
maddening things about the US elections is that it draws us all in, citizens
and outsiders alike, with the latter sometimes being more involved because we
understand the implications of the outcome more acutely than perhaps many
others. We follow the trends, try to fathom the issues, learn all about the
swing states, and attempt to understand how the citizens of the biggest
military power, the biggest economy, and the country that has the capacity to
do a lot of good and harm to the world, will vote. What was a curiosity became
a worldwide concern after the reckless invasions of countries in the Middle
East, destroying whatever state structure they had to govern themselves. Now we
observe the US elections deeply perturbed about whether or not one of the
architects of the present-day international order will resume to play a
constructive role or be hell-bent on dismantling it.
My own
fascination with the US elections started with Richard Nixon and the Watergate
affair in the late sixties and early seventies. The more I saw how the US
system held its elected officials, especially its president,
accountable—through the myriad committees at state and federal levels, special
prosecutor, endless hearings, etc.—and the role of the media, especially the
newspapers (those days were far different from today's digital and social
media), the more my admiration for the American system grew. It was a welcome
antidote to my rising disillusionment due to the US's role in Vietnam. I stood
astounded by what one single newspaper—The Washington Post, and its editor and two
reporters with the firm backing of its illustrious publisher, Catherine
Graham—could do when their head of state violated the law. Ultimately, Nixon
had to quit office not so much for the break-in at the Democratic Party's
office in the Watergate Apartment complex (from which the incident acquires its
name) but for the cover-up that he initiated.
Nixon's
case was a severe jolt for the US system where its highest office bearer was
caught breaking the law. From this low in its history, the US emerged, in my
view, stronger by showing that it could cleanse itself, even at the very top,
and move on because institutions were stronger than individuals.
While Nixon
jolted the system, George W. Bush, as the 43rd president, practically destroyed
it. He made lying—about the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), to justify
invading Iraq—patriotic. While Nixon had to suffer the indignity of being
forced to resign—with impending impeachment hanging over his head—for abusing
the power of the presidency, perverting institutions of governance and lying to
the American people, President Bush was hailed as a hero for upholding
"American values" for his ill-conceived war on terror. Trump picked
up from where Bush Jr. left off and made misrepresenting facts and distorting
information a regular practice, thereby destroying the system that runs on
facts rather than fiction.
The reason
I delve into the past is to bring out the contrast between the political values
of the past US administrations and that of the present. It is not to say that
past US administrations did not lie—the Pentagon Papers prove it
convincingly—but only to differentiate that what was rare then is regular now.
What
triggered rejection 50 years ago now generates embrace, what made voters stand
up in disgust now provokes amusement, what was a no-no in US politics—like
white supremacy and racialism—is now a common yes-yes, what would have once
caused total outrage—the failure of leadership in the health sector—is now a
fact that appears easily acceptable. Whatever sobriety there was in US politics
is now replaced by breast-thumping, unabashed and self-defeating
ultra-nationalism. The US appears to now live in a world of alternative facts
and post-truth.
The biggest
lesson from this election for those of us looking in from the outside is the
fact that millions of Americans voted for President Trump and wanted four more
years of his rule in spite of what he did, stood for and proposed to do. It is
now clear that we don't know and understand this new US that may be emerging, a
US that does not want to know and understand the world but is totally enwrapped
in its own vainglory.
-----
Mahfuz Anam is Editor and Publisher, The Daily
Star.
https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/the-third-view/news/us-elections-understanding-its-hidden-message-1990061
-----
Truth and De-Trumpification
By Jan-Werner Mueller
November
07, 2020
Among
Democrats and many Republicans, there is a great temptation to dismiss US
President Donald Trump's administration as a bizarre aberration. Just as
Republicans may try to blame the many transgressions of the past four years on
Trump, hoping that their enabling role is quickly forgotten, Democrats might
want to make a show of observing democratic norms, by graciously refraining
from litigating the past. If so, should Joe Biden prevail when all votes in the
November 3 election are counted, Trump and his administration are unlikely to
be held accountable for their egregious record of corruption, cruelty and
violations of basic constitutional principles.
Quite apart
from political calculations, many observers—from former Democratic presidential
contender Andrew Yang to distinguished jurists and historians—have argued that
only tin-pot dictatorships pursue their vanquished opponents. With
all-too-obvious motives of his own, US Attorney General Bill Barr has also
opined that "the political winners ritually prosecuting the political
losers is not the stuff of a mature democracy." Yet these generalisations
are too hasty. Trump's "lock her up" slogan, directed against Hillary
Clinton in 2016, should not be answered with "lock him up"; but
"forgive and forget" is not the only alternative.
Americans
need to distinguish among three issues: crimes Trump may have committed before
assuming office; corruption and cruelty committed by him and his cronies while
in office; and behaviour that has exposed structural weaknesses within the
broader US political system. Each requires a somewhat different response.
Historically,
plenty of other countries' transitions from authoritarianism—or recovery from
democratic degradation—have been characterised by a willingness to leave former
power-holders unpunished. As the political scientist Erica Frantz observes, 59
percent of authoritarian leaders who have been removed from power have simply
gone "on to live their normal lives." Nonetheless, in cases where new
or restored democracies did not prosecute former officials, they often
established truth commissions, offering amnesty in exchange for truthful
information and confessions by the perpetrators of crimes. This approach was
most famously pursued by post-apartheid South Africa.
The
peculiarity of the current US situation is that Trump is already under investigation
for possible crimes unrelated to his presidency. Both the Manhattan district
attorney and the New York attorney general are investigating the Trump
Organization for various forms of fraud. While ostensibly apolitical, Trump's
business practices foreshowed—and overshadowed—the shameless cronyism and
corruption of his presidency. Even if he did not succeed in fully transforming
the United States into a mafia state along the lines of Viktor Orban's Hungary,
that is largely beside the point.
Moreover,
if the investigations into the Trump Organization were simply to be dropped
upon his departure from office, the charge that they were mere political
machinations would appear to be justified, especially considering that the
law-enforcement officials in question happen to be Democrats. On the other
hand, if the investigations were to result in the incarceration of a former
president, Trump's gun-toting supporters might decide to take the law into
their own hands; at a minimum, the country's political divisions would deepen
even further.
Bearing
these risks in mind, there is no reason, in principle, why a political leader
cannot be properly punished for a crime he has committed. Many leaders have
been, and some have even returned to political life. Former Italian Prime
Minister Silvio Berlusconi was forced to perform community service following
his conviction on charges of tax fraud (his age brought a more lenient
sentence). Today, he is sitting in the European Parliament, which makes it hard
for anyone to claim that liberal judges simply wanted to silence the Cavaliere.
But the point of enforcing the law was to send a clear signal that Berlusconi's
strategy of entering politics in order to gain immunity and distract from his
shady business dealings would not become a precedent.
Then there
is the question of Trump's actual record in office. One can find plenty of
deeply objectionable policies, but it would be a mistake to abandon what
President Thomas Jefferson, upon succeeding his archrival John Adams in 1801, called
"the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is
left free to combat it."
The same
cannot be said for the corruption and systematic cruelty that the Trump
administration has exhibited in its response to the Covid-19 crisis, and in
separating children from their parents at the border. As the Harvard law
professor Mark Tushnet has suggested, a commission of inquiry should be
established to investigate policies and acts that went beyond incompetence into
the realm of politically motivated malevolence. It is critical that we
establish a proper record of these events, perhaps by offering leniency in
exchange for candid accounts. The latter should help thinking about structural
reforms, making at least quid pro quo corruption and blatant human rights
abuses less likely.
Finally,
Trump has broken plenty of informal presidential norms, from the relatively
trivial—calling people names on Twitter—to the serious: hiding his tax returns.
As many US jurists have argued, a prudent response would be to establish a
separate commission to study the structural vulnerabilities of the presidency.
Such an investigation may find that many informal norms—from financial
transparency to relations with the Department of Justice—need to be codified.
There would be nothing vengeful about this particular approach. After
Watergate, Congress enacted a series of important ethics laws, which both
parties tended to accept.
This
three-pronged approach need not distract from more urgent tasks of governance.
Although it might require spending some political capital, the costs of
inaction or breezily "moving on" could be even higher, as was
arguably the case following Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon (who never
really did admit any guilt), and the leniency shown after the Iran-Contra
scandal and the George W Bush administration's extensive use of torture in
pursuing its "global war on terror."
To be sure,
plenty of Republicans might fight truth-seeking efforts tooth and nail. But
others could use a public inquiry focused on improving US institutions to
distance themselves from Trump. After all, they have already shown themselves
to be nothing if not opportunistic.
-----
Jan-Werner Mueller, a professor at Princeton
University, is a fellow at the Berlin Institute of Advanced Study and the
author of the forthcoming Democracy Rules (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021
https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/project-syndicate/news/truth-and-de-trumpification-1990569
----
The People Versus Donald Trump
By Roger Cohen
Nov. 6,
2020
The night
is darkest before the dawn.
To see that
child-man charlatan in the White House spouting lies yet again, asserting
without a trace of evidence that “If you count the legal vote I easily win,”
claiming that “I won Pennsylvania by a lot,” and Michigan and Georgia, too, was
to be reminded of the American nightmare of these past four years that the American
people seem to have brought to an end.
It was a
nightmare in which truth died, decency was trampled, science was flouted,
division was fanned and the American idea was desecrated, as President Trump
wheedled his way into the minds of every American with an insidious cascade of
self-obsessed posturing and manipulative untruth.
In a
democracy, a beautiful idea for which so much blood has been shed over the
centuries, every vote is counted and each vote counts. That is what happened in
2016, when President Trump won Michigan by 0.2 percentage points, Pennsylvania
by 0.7 and Wisconsin by 0.8. What goes around comes around. The difference in
2020 is that the child-man cannot accept his treat being snatched away. A bully
born on third base cannot play by the rules of the game and accept the sanctity
of the electoral process and the law.
As I write,
it appears that Joe Biden will be the 46th president of the United States.
There may
be recounts. There will be legal challenges. But Trump’s attempted coup against
democracy, for it is no less than that, will be resisted. The United States is
far bigger than this little man.
It seems
almost churlish to pick apart Trump’s arguments, which in fact reflect no more
than the hysteria of a narcissist for whom the phrase “You’re fired!” is
unbearable. He cannot seem to distinguish between voting after the election,
which would be illegal, and the process of receiving and counting votes cast in
a timely manner. Or rather, he can make that distinction, but only when it comes
to Arizona, where he hopes the ballots still being counted will reverse Biden’s
lead.
Trump has
another mental problem. He cannot, it seems, distinguish between a snapshot of
a moment — when, for example, he was ahead of Biden by several hundred thousand
votes in Georgia and Pennsylvania on election night — and the eventual result
after all votes are counted. He keeps bleating that he “won” and that some vast
conspiracy by the media and a corrupt Democratic Party machine has mysteriously
“whittled down” his triumph until it takes on the hideous hew of defeat.
Another name for “whittling” is counting the votes.
Such
desperation — the antics of the sandbox transposed to the Oval Office — is
excruciating to watch, not least because it is so predictable.
Throughout
his life, when in a tight corner, having stiffed his contractors or ushered his
businesses to the brink of bankruptcy, Trump has responded with lawsuits, lies
and threats. His method was simple: attack, attack, attack. It often worked.
But until now, he has not faced the will of the American people in the opposing
corner.
An
attempted coup against democracy, I said. For months now, Trump has been
peddling the notion that, as he put it in July, “mail-in ballots will lead to
massive electoral fraud and a rigged 2020 election.” He has returned to the
theme relentlessly, without any evidence that mail ballots lead to fraud. This
was the groundwork for a power grab.
Now it is
Biden’s moment, on the eve of his 78th birthday. The moment of a man with a
deep respect for America’s institutions, its alliances and the rule of law. The
moment of a man who reached out to all Americans during the campaign. The
moment of a man who became the Democratic nominee as people turned to safe
hands to confront the coronavirus and now, it seems, will be asked to heal a
wounded nation. The moment of a man who came to a gift for empathy through the
devastating loss of his first wife and two of his four children. The moment of
an American who understands that you cannot sculpt from rotten wood, and so
every democracy requires the foundation of truth.
Trump’s
last-ditch incitement of his vast tribe — composed of tens of millions of
Americans — will cast a shadow across an eventual Biden presidency. The battles
of today will not quickly abate. But the restoration of sanity to the highest
office in the land is the prerequisite for the rebuilding that must now begin.
As Martin Luther King Jr. put it, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but
it bends toward justice.”
I think now
particularly of Georgia, where a Biden victory would be the first by a
Democratic candidate in almost three decades. With its large African-American
population, and its sharp division between diverse, fast-growing Metro Atlanta
and a mainly white conservative hinterland, Georgia was a bellwether of a
changing America reeling from a pandemic and racial tension.
“Let
Freedom Ring From Georgia” was the headline on a column I wrote from there in
June, predicting a Trump defeat.
Democracy
is messy but stubborn. It is the system that best enshrines the human desire to
be free. This massive American vote has been many things — bitter and ugly
among them — but above all, it has been a beautiful testament to the power of
each, single ballot in the world’s oldest democracy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/06/opinion/trump-election-lies.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
-----
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