VIEWPOINT / CRITIQUE: HOW TO REWRITE HISTORY WITHOUT REALLY TRYING
How Bret Stephens got it all wrong in his New York Times opinion piece.
By Timothy Weaver, Ph.D.
New York Times
BRET STEPHENS
The Case for Trump … by Someone Who Wants Him to Lose
Jan. 11, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/…/donald-trump-election.html
“Trump got three big things right — or at least more right than wrong.
“Arguably the single most important geopolitical fact of the century is the mass migration of people from south to north and east to west, causing tectonic demographic, cultural, economic, and ultimately political shifts.”
“Many of Trump’s opponents refuse to see virtually unchecked migration as a problem for the West at all. Some of them see it as an opportunity to demonstrate their humanitarianism. Others look at it as an inexhaustible source of cheap labor. They also have the habit of denouncing those who disagree with them as racists. But enforcing control at the border — whether through a wall, a fence, or some other mechanism — isn’t racism. It’s a basic requirement of statehood and peoplehood, which any nation has an obligation to protect and cherish.”
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FACT CHECK 1. “Many of Trump’s opponents refuse to see virtually unchecked migration as a problem for the West at all.” This is incorrect, as a matter of fact, and Trump’s opponents, such as the Senate Leader, the President, the Secretary of State, the Democratic House leadership, and the DNC, see it as a problem and have addressed it publicly many times. Biden has been successful in maneuvering a bi-partisan immigration bill through the Senate. For purely political reasons the House is refusing to take it up. What Stephens seems to imply is that if everyone does not see rapists, murderers, and hardened criminals streaming across the border, they have failed to see the problem. Immigration into Europe and the US is not unchecked. That is a matter of fact, and Stephens has it wrong. He also fails to see the nuances of the problems and how they differ. The mostly African diaspora ending in Europe over the past 25 years is the result of warfare, climate change, and desertification in the Sahel area. The southern border of the US is seeing an upsurge after three years of decline due to COVID-19 and Section 42. These migrants are best termed economic migrants and refugees from government oppression or failure to maintain minimum levels of public security.
On scale, there is no comparison between the two patterns of migration. For example, Germany has absorbed 16 million refugees, mostly from North Africa, while America has absorbed 21 million, mostly from South America. That’s 20% vs. 6% of the total population of the two countries. In the US, the majority of non-legal migrants are here because they’ve overstayed their visas, not by crossing the southern border. Stephens does not mention this fact. However, he does offer this: “They also have the habit of denouncing those who disagree with them as racists.” Trump, for whom Stephens is an apologist and claims is right on the three most pressing issues of the day, made clear his racial bias the very day he announced he was running for office by denouncing refugees from Latin and South America as rapists, murderers, criminals, and thugs. Then, he managed to top this by attempting to institute a border policy that excluded migrants from “asshole” countries and eventually all migrants from Muslim countries. The liberal “habit” of which Stephens speaks is well justified. By rhetoric and action, Trump has repeatedly demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is a racist.
FACT CHECK 2. Trump did not “discover” or “become aware of'” this problem on his own. Worldwide news coverage made this abundantly clear to every person over the age of 8 on the planet. Nor did his opponents fail to see this or treat it as a purely humanitarian crisis. Trump did not see something no one else saw. Instead, he saw exactly what Viktor Orban saw–a chance to spread hate and misinformation for political gain. Trump saw a chance to rile up the working class, the lower middle classes, with more threats to their upward mobility. He turned the diaspora impacting Europe into a means of appealing to the base instincts of working-class Americans who were already suffering the pain of downward mobility. If there is fault to go around, blame Obama for not following John Kerry’s advice to create a no-fly zone over Northern Syria. As for Obama and Biden, their administrations have returned more asylum seekers at the Southern border than all the Presidents before them going back to Eisenhower. They have not ignored the angst of the working class. Both passed several landmark bills to ease the growing financial burden between upper and lower incomes, the prime cause of the angst. The Affordable Care Act would fall into that category. Biden’s American Rescue Plan, Deficit Reduction Act, and Infrastructure Program are other examples. What they did not do was follow the brutal, inhumane instincts of Trump and Stephen Miller and rip babies from their mothers at the border as a deterrent.
REMEMBER. On scale, America’s problem is minuscule compared to Europe when it comes to refugees. Trump merely saw it as a wedge issue he could use to solidify his already disgruntled base. The right would have you believe it is a massive problem in America. The only thing massive about it is the lie itself. Middle-class and working-class workers are experiencing downward mobility. Their parents could afford to buy a house, own a new car and send their children to college. That is not possible today without going into serious debt.
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“It said something about the self-deluded state of Western politics when Trump came on the scene that his assertion of the obvious was treated as a moral scandal, at least by the stratum of society that had the least to lose from mass migration.”
FACT CHECK 3. Trump’s assertion was not treated as a moral scandal. His characterization of the issue (rapists and murderers) and his rhetoric were so treated along with his “final solution”–separating families, in some cases permanently, at the border as a deterrent. These actions were treated as moral scandals because they were morally offensive. If there were justice in international affairs, Jack Smith would be prosecuting Trump right now, not in DC and Florida, but in the Hague. Trump and Miller perpetuated a scheme forbidden by our own Constitution–cruel and unusual punishment.
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“The second big thing Trump got right was about the broad direction of the country. Trump rode a wave of pessimism to the White House — pessimism his detractors did not share because he was speaking about, and to, an America they either didn’t see or understood only as a caricature. But just as with this year, when liberal elites insist that things are going well while overwhelming majorities of Americans say they are not, Trump’s unflattering view captured the mood of the country.”
In 2017, the demographer Nicholas Eberstadt joined this pessimistic perception with comprehensive data in an influential essay for Commentary. He noted persistently sluggish economic growth and a plunging labor-force participation rate that had never recovered from the 2008 financial crisis.
FACT CHECK 4. Stephens completely fails to understand the real cause of the pessimism among the working classes. The gap between upper- and lower-income quintiles has now reached a level not seen since the Robber Baron Age. The income of the working class and lower middle class has forced two wage earners in a family to work in order to have less than their parents with one wage earner. Today’s average wage of $23 is the same in constant dollars as the average wage in 1970. The average schoolteacher could save enough money to make a down payment on the house in the 1960s and live a middle-class lifestyle. That is not true today. The numbers prove wage earners today have lost ground compared to their parent’s generation. In the 1960s, the average hourly wage was $2.75 an hour, while the cost of a median house was $11,900. Today the average wage is $33.88 an hour (around $70,000 a year), while the median house costs $405,020 (2.75/11,900 = 33.88/146,608). $146,606 is what the cost of a median house should be if the ratio of wages/housing cost equaled the ratio of the ’60s, or hourly wages should be 93.59. Is this solely a result of housing costs skyrocketing faster than other costs? No. It is the result of housing costs keeping pace with inflation while wages have stagnated and, relative to the cost of living, have gone down.
All the while, incomes at the top have accelerated, creating a coefficient of variation between the two that exceeds any other period in history except for the early 1900s before the federal income tax was imposed. By any definition, this spells downward mobility for middle-class and blue-collar workers. These conditions have been brought about by five major corporate and personal income tax cuts, by right-to-work laws in most southern and border states, and by state tax cuts resulting in underfunding education at all levels, but especially at the college level. The consequence is a debt bubble imposed on families and students, removing trillions of dollars from the economy that would otherwise be available for consumer spending and savings. These are all Republican policies that Bret Stephens is chafing at the bit to continue under Trump and his followers in Congress and state legislatures.
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“Far too little has changed since then. Labor-force participation remains essentially where it was in the last days of the Obama administration. Deaths of despair keep rising. The cost of living has risen sharply, and while the price of ordinary goods may finally be coming down, rents haven’t.
But we should be more honest with ourselves and admit that those institutions did their own work in squandering, through partisanship or incompetence, the esteem in which they had once been widely held.”
FACT CHECK 5. Bret seems to have fallen asleep the past 18 months. Economic data show exactly the opposite with robust job growth. Inflation is falling at the fastest pace in 50 years and is on a slope to meet the Fed target of 2% without further tightening. As for institutions squandering their esteem, Biden has done a remarkable job in restoring stability in the economy which tanked in Trump’s last quarter in office. Biden has restored faith in public health and the science of medicine by dumping the incompetent Trump appointees, placing a strong emphasis on science not voodoo for making health related policy decisions, kept in place at the Feb a team that Trump constantly railed against and demeaned, made the roll out of millions of shots of vaccine seem routine compared to Trump’s incompetent handling of same, restored dignity and honor to the traditional relationships we have abroad, including especially NATO after Trump shredded American standing in Europe with his nutty fawning of Putin and attacks on NATO countries. Biden, to chagrin of the Uber rich has started a real crackdown on tax cheats and loophole dodgers that haven’t been challenged in decades. The Post Office, the venerable old institution of delivering the mail, that Trump sabotaged with his Moronic appointments, has re-established its reputation for delivering the mail on time. The FBI that Trump trashed constantly and had his followers believing was corrupt to the core has been supported by Biden and his team and returned to their rightful place as America’s top cops. Cities that were blowing up under Trump with protests and shutting down commerce are no longer the hot spots of the country waiting to explode. Squandering their esteem? Bret needs to actually read the newspaper he works for. Things have changed in measurable and observable ways under Biden’s calming and stable hand.
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“How so? Much of the elite media, mostly liberal, became openly partisan in the 2016 election — and, in doing so, not only failed to understand why Trump won, but probably unwittingly contributed to his victory. Academia, also mostly liberal, became increasingly illiberal, inhospitable not just to conservatives but to anyone pushing back even modestly against progressive orthodoxy. The F.B.I. abused its authority with dubious investigations and salacious leaks that led to sensational headlines but not to criminal prosecutions, much less convictions.”
FACT CHECK 6. Is Bret referring to the Mueller probe and the investigations leading up to it which provided the basis for Trump’s first impeachment? The FBI had an adequate predicate for investigating the role played by Russia in the 2016 election. They did not need the infamous Steele dossier. Trump openly called for the Russians to hack into Hilary’s computer in an effort to dig up dirt. He sent poor old Rudy to the Ukraine to stir up dirt on the Bidens which wasn’t there to be found and forced out one of our topnotch ambassadors at a crucial time. Flynn lied to the FBI in a complete dereliction of duty, an action unbecoming an officer. It was not the FBI that abused its authority but rather Trump and his henchmen such as Rudy and Flynn.
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“The C.D.C. and other public-health bureaucracies flubbed the pandemic reaction, with (mostly) good intentions but frequently devastating consequences: “If you’re a public-health person and you’re trying to make a decision, you have this very narrow view of what the right decision is, and that is something that will save a life,” the former National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins acknowledged last month. “You attach zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way they never quite recovered.”
“Trump and his supporters called all this out. For this they were called idiots, liars and bigots by people who think of themselves as enlightened and empathetic and hold the commanding heights in the national culture. The scorn only served to harden the sense among millions of Americans that liberal elites are self-infatuated, imperious, hysterical, and hopelessly out of touch — or, to use one of Trump’s favorite words, “disgusting.”
FACT CHECK 7. How does one begin to untangle this thicket of misunderstandings, misstatements, and inaccuracies? Trump did his best to sabotage the CDC, NIH, and medical community in America because they would not confirm or agree with his co0ckamamy ideas about COVID-19, first saying it was no more than the common cold and would not spread beyond a few cases and ending with recommending Clorox injections. Bret, please wake up at least once in a while. It was Trump and his incompetents at CDC who recommended shutting down the schools in the Spring of 2020. While it had negative impacts on families and student achievements, how many lives were saved? The final chapter has not been written, but suffice it to say, it was Trump and his team at CDC who engineered the shutdown because by that time, COVID-19 had been allowed to get totally out of control in Red States and eventually all states—but first due to morons for governors making political points by banning mandatory masking, rejecting simple health guards like separation, not mandating shots, and keeping large gathering places open. These inactions and wrong actions helped the rapid spread of virus. No, Bret, the liberals didn’t get it wrong. The Republican governors and Red States had the highest deaths per 100,000 in the country. Literally tens of thousands died unnecessarily in these states.
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“A few readers might nod their heads in (partial) agreement. Then they’ll ask: What about the election denialism? What about Jan. 6? What about the threat Trump poses to the very foundations of our democracy? All disqualifying — in my view. But it’s also important to stretch one’s mind a little and try to understand why so many voters are unimpressed about the “end of democracy” argument.”
“For one thing, haven’t they heard it before — and with the same apocalyptic intensity?”
“In 2016, Trump was frequently compared to Benito Mussolini and other dictators (including by me). The comparison might have proved more persuasive if Trump’s presidency had been replete with jailed and assassinated political opponents, rigged or canceled elections, a muzzled or captured press — and Trump still holding office today, rather than running to get his old job back. The election denialism is surely ugly, but it isn’t quite unique: Prominent Democrats also denied the legitimacy of George W. Bush’s two elections — the second one no less than the first.”
“Many rank-and-file Republicans regard the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol as a disgrace and the lowest point of Trump’s presidency. But they also believe that it wasn’t so much an insurrection as it was an ugly temper tantrum by Trump and his most rabid supporters, which never had a chance of succeeding. One reason for that is that the judges Trump appointed to the federal bench and the Supreme Court rebuffed his legal efforts — and he had no choice but to accept the rulings. An American version of Vladimir Putin he simply is not.”
“That’s why warnings from Biden and others about the risk Trump poses to democracy are likely to fall flat even with many moderate voters. If there’s any serious threat to democracy, doesn’t it also come from Democratic judges and state officials who are using never-before-used legal theories — which even liberal law professors like Harvard’s Lawrence Lessig regard as dangerous and absurd — to try to kick Trump’s name off ballots in Maine and Colorado? When liberal partisans try to suppress democracy in the name of saving democracy, they aren’t helping their cause politically or legally. They are merely confirming the worst stereotypes about their own hypocrisy.”
FACT CHECK 8. Bret really must start proofing his work before he hits the send button. Doesn’t he realize the saliency of the “threat to democracy?” It was one of the most important campaign issues to defeat Trump in 2020. Ignoring and dismissing it will lead to the same outcome. If apologists like Bret Stephens ignore this simple truth, Trump will go down hard again. Voters cited this factor as one reason for voting against Trump the last time. Trump has done nothing to persuade those same voters to change their minds.
“But they also believe that it wasn’t so much an insurrection as it was an ugly temper tantrum by Trump and his most rabid supporters.”
OMG, Bret. Are you delirious? January 6 was and will be a decisive factor in the 2024 election. Temper tantrum? Ask the heads of the Oak Keepers and Proud Boys and the hundreds of their followers sitting in jail whether they think it was just a temper tantrum. This one has to be the silliest point made in the Stephens opinion piece. I have to assume he was pressured to write a column to stir up the left readers of the New York Times. That seems to be his only role. This column and most of his others are not going to win him a Pulitzer any time soon.
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