SYDNEY WILLIAMS: THE MONTH THAT WAS- AUGUST 2017
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August 14, 1945 – the day Japan surrendered unconditionally – will always be etched in my mind. It was the day my father returned home from overseas. He had fought with the 10th Mountain Division in Italy. My mother, brother, two sisters and I ran to him and hugged him, as he de-trained in Nashua, New Hampshire.
The world, this August, is a different place. While it may seem hard to believe, with the month’s mayhem so fresh in our minds, we are better off than seventy-two years ago. We were more unified then, because of the War and, perhaps, more respectful of one another’s political leanings. Economic inequality was not as stretched as it is today. But social equality is greater; there is less bigotry, and standards of living are higher; there is less poverty and less hunger. History is a work in progress, and the elusive Grail of peace and understanding, which moves deliberately, remains out of reach.
Charlottesville, Virginia, its ramifications and repercussions, dominated a month that began with a war of words between North Korea and the U.S. – words that threatened a maelstrom – and ended with devastating floods in Texas. Kim Jong-un backed off firing a missile into the sea off Guam, but he did, provocatively, fire one over Japan. The situation remains tenuous. Accommodating bad guys rarely works. An op-ed by Susan Rice in The Wall Street Journal, was a reminder that policy makers would be wise to re-read Aesop’s Fables’ tale of “The Scorpion and The Frog.”
Charlottesville reflected the dissonance between extremists, and the desire of politicians to seek crises to exploit. A march in Charlottesville, to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, was the excuse. A group of right-wing extremists – white supremacists, members of the KKK and Neo-Nazis – received city permission for a march. They were met by protestors, mostly members of Antifa (antifascist action), who wear masks to shield their identity. Both sides came armed, with fists, pepper spray, bricks, clubs, shields, tear gas and, in the case of at least one Antifa protestor, a flame thrower. Blows were exchanged. The police, apparently, had been asked to stand back, as though they wanted both sides to destroy one another, or perhaps it was the “Ferguson effect”? The demonstration ended with the death of an Antifa demonstrator, as a deranged white supremacist, James Alex Fields, Jr., allegedly drove his car into a crowd of protestors. Thirty-two-year-old Heather Heyer was killed and nineteen were injured.
What gave this demonstration media-legs was when President Trump, in comments that same day, did not specifically, and solely, condemn neo-Nazis or white supremacists by name. He implied that blame belonged on both sides. “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides.” It was his words “on many sides” that drove the Left nuts. It was, after all, an Antifa demonstrator who was killed, not a Neo-Nazi. Yet, violence was not one-sided. The New York Daily News reported that Taylor Lorenz of The Hill was punched in the face by an Antifa for recording a fight between the two groups: she was told not to “snitch, media bitch.” Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The New York Times tweeted at the time – something she surely now regrets – “The hard-left seemed as hate-filled as [the] alt-right. I saw club wielding ‘antifa’ beating white nationalists being led out of the park.” Hatred and violence are pretty evenly dispersed among extremists on both sides – something that will have to be recognized, acknowledged and condemned before reconciliation can begin.
We can all agree that the KKK and neo-Nazis are evil, and Mr. Trump, in this era of hypersensitivity, should have singled them out for blame, (which he did two days later). But, there is no question that his depiction of hate-filled extremists being on both sides was accurate.[1] Who can forget Missouri state senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal saying on social media: “I hope Trump is assassinated”? Antifa has not received the media attention it deserves. While they have their origins as opponents (including Communists) to Germany’s Nazis of the 1920s and early 1930s, in the U.S. they rose to prominence and militancy during the punk rock-scene of the 1980s. They claim to stand for equality and freedom. But that is specious. Their tactics are as fascist as those they oppose. They disapprove of “bourgeois” behavior: raising children within marriage, civility, hard work, thrift, self-discipline, respect for authority and tolerance of those whose ideas are different. They believe speech they deem racist to be violence, so must be countered physically. They were behind the groups forcibly disrupting conservative speakers on college campuses, from Berkley to Middlebury, and interrupting right-wing rallies, from Portland, Oregon to Charlottesville. Peter Beinart questions, in the September 2017 issue of left-leaning The Atlantic: “The antifa activists say they are battling burgeoning authoritarianism on the American right. Are they fueling it instead?” He concludes: “…they are its unlikeliest allies.”
One consequence has been lemming-like mob decisions to tear down Confederate statues, and erase all reminders of that aspect of our history. The destruction of our past is not limited to statues of Confederate generals. Where do we stop? Will Washington, Jefferson and Madison be next? A bust of Lincoln was defaced in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago’s south side. It has been urged, and is being considered by Mayor de Blasio, that the 76-foot monument to Christopher Columbus in New York City be taken down. “How,” asks Victor Davis Hanson, in an article in right-leaning National Review, “did those obsessed with the past know so little of history?” A sliver of society that controls a community’s culture can prevail. Consider George Orwell’s slogans in 1984: “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.”
A second consequence has been verbal outbursts that border on the inane: Nancy Pelosi joined the chorus, by proclaiming that Confederate statues in the Capitol “have always been reprehensible.” Ms. Pelosi has been in Congress for thirty years. She was Speaker for four years. Did she just notice the statutes? Then there was the decision by ESPN to relieve an Asian-American sports broadcaster from covering UVA football games because his name is Robert Lee. And Maxine Waters (D-CA), in a non-sequitur, called Dr. Ben Carson, an African-American Secretary of HUD, a white nationalist. Absent accusations of racism, Progressives are at a loss for issues.
Extremists are not illustrative of America, though. They are tiny segments. The media has accorded them outsized roles. A sense of perspective is wanted. The U.S. is a nation of 330 million people, and 130 million voted in last year’s election, with 63 million voting for Donald Trump. The number of extremists is difficult to quantify, but estimates are that the KKK has between 5,000 and 8,000 members. (Keep in mind, in 1925, when the Country had one third today’s population, there were an estimated four million KKK members.) There are, according to the Southern Party Law Center (SPLC – a far-Left outfit), about 90 far-Right groups, with the largest being the National Socialist Movement (Neo-Nazis), with about 400 members and the second largest, Vanguard America, with about 100 members. No matter how one cuts it, the numbers are small. As for Antifa, the numbers are harder to get. The alt-Left website “It’s Going Down” claims between 10,000 and 40,000 hits a day. Mr. Beinart, in the article quoted above, wrote that Antifa growth, in recent months, had been explosive, with their Twitter following exceeding 15,000 by early summer. If combined there are 200,000 extremists, that would be about 0.006% of the population. They are not representative of America. They should be treated as the radicals they are, but with the irrelevance they deserve.
As Peggy Noonan recently noted, all governments are struggles, and none are without sin. It is knowledge of our past and what we learn from that past that allow civilizations to advance. Statues of those with whom we disagree can be teaching moments for a fairer and more equitable society. Think of them as reflecting free speech – monuments to our differences, but ones by which and through which we forge a single people. Censoring ideas does not make them go away; it only makes us ignorant of their existence.
However, leaders of the march (Richard Spencer, David Duke and Brad Griffin), along with Antifa leaders like Daryle Lamont Jenkins and others, should be held accountable. Mr. Fields should be tried for murder. An investigation should ask: why did the police stand aside? And Mr. Trump should use the moral authority of the Presidency to help bind our severed ties.
Elsewhere, Hurricane Harvey hit the Texas coast as a category 4 storm. The winds dropped, but it stuck around, with downpours creating catastrophic flooding in Houston, the nation’s fourth largest city, and surrounding areas. In terms of total rainfall, Harvey has exceeded any previous storm. But we should not forget the Johnstown Flood of 1889 that killed over 2,000. It’s too early to assess total damage, but it will be significant, with over 30 dead so far. James Damore of Google was fired for exposing the hypocrisy that passes for diversity at his company. Diversity, at businesses like Google and educational institutions, is what can be readily seen: race or sex. What it does not demand is diversity of ideas, or forums for debate and exchange of ideas. It is the natural outgrowth of identity politics. Was Mr. Damore right to speak out? Consider Martin Luther King: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
West Virginia Governor Jim Justice switched parties from Democrat to Republican, giving Republicans 34 governorships. Robert Mueller impaneled a Grand Jury for the Russian probe. In the August 15th Alabama primary, Senator Luther Strange, a favorite of the establishment, failed to get 50% of the vote. He will face former State Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore in December. Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, both with ties to the alt-right, left the White House. Like his predecessors who pardoned the unpardonable, President Trump did likewise with Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The USS John S. McCain, a guided-missile destroyer, collided with a Liberian-flagged tanker in the Strait of Malacca, leaving ten sailors dead. This was the fourth such accident this year for the 7th Fleet. Admiral Joseph P. Aucoin, Commander of the 7th Fleet, was dismissed. The U.S. witnessed its first total eclipse in 100 years across the breadth of the Country, with the viewing going diagonally from Oregon to North Carolina. News about Debby Wasserman Schultz and the Pakistani IT scanners began to emerge. Stay tuned.
Toward the end of the month, President Trump took the advice of his generals – going against his instincts and campaign promises – and agreed to increase troop strength in Afghanistan. That Country has gone from bad to worse, since Mr. Obama’s “surge” in December 2009, with a pre-announced withdrawal date. The Taliban now control about 40% of the land area. The biggest changes in policy were aimed at Pakistan, a nominal ally, but one that has harbored Islamic terrorists. Paul Kagame extended his seventeen-year rule in Rwanda, winning a third seven-year term, with 98.7% of the vote. In Kenya, President Uhuru Kenyatta won re-election, defeating former Prime Minister Raila Odinga. The UN Security Council voted 15-0 to impose $1 billion worth of sanctions on North Korea. South Korea and the U.S. proceeded with war games. Boko Haram ambushed and killed sixty-nine members of an oil exploration team in Nigeria. A deadly assault by al Qaeda on a popular café in Burkina Faso resulted in the deaths of at least eighteen. Australian security forces foiled a plot by Islamic extremists to take down a plane. In Spain, they were successful, when Younes Abou Yaaqoub drove a van into a crowd in Barcelona, killing sixteen. In the U.S., they used E-Bay to send cash to terrorists. In the first 28 days of August, according to Wikipedia, Islamists terrorists (excluding the Taliban) killed 588 people in eighteen countries. Mudslides in Sierra Leone killed 300. Riots erupted in India, killing dozens, when Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, leader of the Dera Sacha Sauda sect, was found guilty of two counts of rape. Conditions in Venezuela deteriorated further. Britain marches toward Brexit, but not in a straight line. What is needed is a Prime Minister who clearly and convincingly enunciates the benefits of a UK independent of the intoxicating effects of EU bureaucracy.
Central bankers gathered for their annual junket in the crystal-clear air of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. As they applauded their handling of the 2007-2008 financial crisis and warned against financial deregulation and protectionism, they were less than explicit as to future policy moves. One would expect they will continue the current trajectory, at least in the United States – a measured raising of interest rates, coupled with a gradual unwinding of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. Keep in mind, a failure on the part of the previous Administration and Congresses to adopt fiscal reform measures after the financial crisis placed the burden on the Federal Reserve. Congress faces a new challenge (or rather an old one they re-visit every year or so): raising the debt ceiling – something that must be done by the end of September. Overseas, Iraq issued its first standalone bonds in over a decade, raising $1 billion in six-year notes with a 6.75% coupon. Argentina paid 8% for $2.75 billion in 100-year bonds. Second quarter US GDP growth was revised from up 2.6% to up 3.0%. The Bitcoin, which has risen 375% year-to-date, rose 65% in the month of August. Markets took this in stride. U.S. stock prices (as measured by the DJIA) showed modest gains; the Dollar was essentially unchanged. The VIX rose 1.5%. Treasuries were a little stronger, and gold higher by four percent.
In other news, the pilot of a small plane was attacked when he made a forced landing on a beach on Portugal, which resulted in the death of two sunbathers. Senator Cory Booker introduced a bill to legalize pot nationwide. J.K. Rowling apologized to President Trump, after she claimed he ignored a young boy in a wheel chair. In an Archie Bunker-like decision, Norman Lear refused an invitation to the White House. A consequence of the Trump Presidency has been an increase in demand for professional cuddling, with sessions priced at $80 per hour. The first human embryo gene editing was announced – the goal, to erase inherited heart conditions. Scientists created gene-edited piglets, which, when cleansed of viruses that might infect humans, are hoped to be used for human organ transplants. India will outlaw instant Islamic divorce. A 1956 Aston Martin DBR1 racecar sold for $22.5 million. Indicative of our cultural void, Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback famous for kneeling during the playing of the National Anthem, made it into the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture’s ‘Black Lives Matter’ collection, an honor not accorded Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Canadians have a new way to identify their sex on their passports: ‘X’ will become an option for those uncomfortable with ‘Female’ or ‘Male.’ Big Ben fell silent, as a four-year refurbishment gets underway. In College Park, Maryland, a bill was presented that would allow non-citizens to vote in city elections. In England, two-thirds of the highest grades on A-level exams went to girls. (Reminding me that men risk losing the race toward gender equality, the other day I saw six joggers and one person walking two “designer” dogs. All six runners were women, while the dog walker was a man.)
The month was not without grief. At a point in our history when humor is in short supply – especially the self-deprecating kind that allows us to laugh at ourselves – we lost two of America’s funniest comedians: Jerry Lewis (91) and Dick Gregory (84). Also dying during the month were Ara Parseghian, longtime football coach at Notre Dame, at age 94, and American singer and songwriter Glen Campbell at 81.
August has come to end, and with it a return to routine: school, fall sports, cool nights and the harvesting of what we have sown. Welcome to September!
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