In an article today in the New York Times, Helene Cooper discusses a group of questions the Trump transition team delivered to the State Department regarding U.S. policy towards Africa. The questions have aroused concern, but perhaps the tone of the questions have been worse than the questions themselves.
For example:
“With so much corruption in Africa, how much of our funding is stolen? Why should we spend these funds on Africa when we are suffering here in the U.S.?”
It’s not unreasonable to ask how corruption is impacting our foreign aid efforts. It’s also a core job responsibility to determine how much aid should be delivered. But the way these questions are posed calls into question whether we should provide any aid at all. They even seem inclined to destroy the program President George W. Bush implemented to combat HIV in Africa.
Rex W. Tillerson, Mr. Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, complimented the program, calling Pepfar “one of the most extraordinarily successful programs in Africa” during his Senate nomination hearing.
But, in contrast, the Trump transition questionnaire asks, “Is PEPFAR worth the massive investment when there are so many security concerns in Africa? Is PEPFAR becoming a massive, international entitlement program?”
Considering how many lives are at stake, calling PEPFAR an entitlement program is morally offensive. And the excuse that the money would be spent better on security concerns is undermined by other parts of the questionnaire where they doubt the need or effectiveness of our counterterrorism efforts against al-Shabaab and our hunt for Joseph Kony.
To be clear, I welcome skepticism about these “security” issues. At the least, I think a new administration should take a fresh look. But if they don’t think we need to focus on them, then they can’t really be used as an excuse to deny people aid that will keep them from getting tuberculosis or HIV.
The overall tenor of the questions is that Africa is a swamp of corruption and that we should not help them. It seems the only valid interests we have in Africa are commercial.
“How does U.S. business compete with other nations in Africa? Are we losing out to the Chinese?” asks one of the first questions in the unclassified document provided to The New York Times.
It’s hard to believe that they expect some expert in the State Department to answer a question so lacking in specificity that it’s almost rhetorical. It also betrays a childlike innocence, as if they can’t imagine that foreign aid and security arrangements aren’t somehow the American way of getting a leg up for American businesses in the developing world. Take away all our money and our intelligence and military support and then expect these governments to be more accommodating to U.S. companies seeking to extract their diamonds and oil?
This is the wrong kind of skepticism, because it retains all the worst elements of U.S. commercial imperialism without providing any of the benefits, and it expects to do it in a way that relies on ponies and rainbows. It’s actually a recipe to force one African government after another into the arms of an alternate benefactor, which would harm both U.S. businesses and the health and human rights of the citizens. It also would make it much more difficult to prevent havens for terrorists from emerging, although that doesn’t mean I’m endorsing our current model. In this case, though, it’s inconsistent with Trump’s promise to smash ISIS and like-minded groups.
Overall, the questionnaire betrays a racist view of Africa that’s consistent with everything else about the messages that Trump is sending on this Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend.
J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the questions showed an “overwhelmingly negative and disparaging outlook” on the continent.
“A strange attitude runs through this,” he said. “There’s a sort of recurrent skepticism that Africa matters to U.S. interests at all. It’s entirely negative in orientation.”
I can’t think of a worse occasion than MLK Day to attack John Lewis for example, and to inaccurately suggest that the congressman represents a crime-ridden district that is literally “burning,” demonstrates the same “overwhelmingly negative and disparaging” attitude about our urban black neighborhoods that the incoming administration shows towards Africa.
It’s no wonder that anti-black, anti-Africa leaders like France’s Marine Le Pen are flocking to Trump Tower to meet with Trump supporters like George G. Lombardi.
The political operative she went to meet at Trump Tower, George G. Lombardi, is a businessman who has made a career as a liaison between two right-wing Italian political parties — the Northern League and Forza Italia — and like-minded people in the United States. He has also worked with the National Front since 2012, Mr. Franceskin said.
And, of course Lombardi wanted to facilitate a meeting with the Trump team.
Then on Thursday, Mr. Lombardi said Ms. Le Pen suggested they meet for coffee, which led to her appearance in Trump Tower. Beforehand, Mr. Lombardi said he reached out to Mr. Trump’s team, without naming any names. “Before she came, I informed two or three people that I know, and I said, ‘Listen, I just want you to know Ms. Le Pen is coming here. I just want you to be prepared in case anything happens.’”
The white supremacist fascists are flocking together under the tutelage of Vladimir Putin.
I have very high confidence that Trump will work hard to do the same to policies that benefit minorities, elderly and poor right here in the USA. It will not be done alone the Republican enablers will gleefully join in to destroy those policies with drooling delightful anticipation.
You get what you vote for, many that voted for Republicans and Trump will be shocked at what the cost was to themselves and numerous others of their families. I wonder if they then will start their howling of 2nd Amendment rights to solve the issue?
The GOP has been doing this since at least 1964 and for the most part getting away with bc white people (and a not insignificant portion of people of color) more often than not haven’t noticed all the ways that their financial stability and security has also been eroded. In part because Democrats having been doing the same thing except for offering some small means of support for the poorest.
I disagree quite strongly with this broadly stated claim that the Parties and their leaders are essentially the same. Repeating propaganda over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again does not make that propaganda true. It just makes the propagandist particularly outlandish.
The Parties and their leaders are not the same, as is clear to anyone who honestly looks at the work product of the 111th Congress in comparison to subsequent Congresses, the actions of Obama’s Administration in comparison to Administrative actions of recent (and, quite apparently, future) Presidents from the Republican Party, and the vast differences in governance between Republican-controlled States like Kansas and Democratic-controlled States like California.
The liberal/progressive movement will have to come together in order to fight the Trump agenda. This will require those who are more and those who are less happy with the progress of the Democratic party in recent decades to come together. This is the priority before us. That does not mean that those who are less happy with the progress in the Democratic party in recent decades will be able to impose fictionalizations of history and bad faith interpretations of the motivations and actions of Democratic Party officials and voters upon others in the liberal/progressive movement.
Bernie-or-Busters, Green Party supporters and others who have failed to win elections in recent years need to figure out ways to persuade others within the liberal/progressive movement before they can grasp the power to influence policy in the ways they want. I want them to do that. I want them to become better at the art of persuasion. It requires exhibiting leadership and the willingness to compromise within our Movement. These necessary traits can be paired with revolutionary rhetoric and strong demands to create wholesale policy changes in governance.
The TEA Party has managed to pull this off, to our dismay. Bernie-or-Busters and Green Party supporters would be well advised to consider how they might match the TEA Party’s success. In that consideration, they will have to confront the fact that major portions of the TEA Party are extremely well-funded astroturf spinoffs of ALEC, the Heritage Society, the Republican Party and other previously existing conservative leaders and institutions. It is going to be difficult to hold together our own revolutionary political movement without a lot of money to help organize and publicize that movement. Even Bernie understands this.
Fighting the Trump agenda is the priority before us. Deciding whether Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton should take the most responsibility for negative outcomes from the passage of the 1994 crime bill is not.
The Tea Party is relentless in primary-ing insufficiently wingnutty candidates and relentless in turning out for the nominee in the general, whoever it is. The purity faction on the left is OK, but not great at the first part. And as a whole they’re so utterly useless at the second part it makes it incredibly difficult for us on the non-purity left to move the party in our direction.
We can’t bring the votes because the slightest deviation from complete pacifist socialist revolution is rewarded just as much as being a DINO. Purity brigade takes their ball and goes home, and the party is forced to look for votes elsewhere.
The 2010 shellacking is the perfect example, where we got the ACA and ARRA and Dodd-Frank and the CFPB and it was all just too dirty and imperfect and impure to bother to keep the wingers out of congress. And then still, thanks to Obama and Warren and Sanders and yes, Hillary herself, we are able to push the party further to the economic left and adopt the most liberal policy platform since the New Deal, and we reward the party by wailing about “Shillary” and staying home.
All it takes is a little bit of voting discipline for a small group to move a party. The Teatards are proof of concept. But you have to practice politics in the real world, not in the platonic ideal you carry around in your dreams. Electing Trump because Hillary isn’t your perfect candidate doesn’t keep you pure. It just makes you a naif.
to each have his/her own individual vision of what constitutes purity; i.e., to each be a sort of “purity brigade” unto her/himself. So such a minutely splintered “purity brigade” isn’t even effectual in promoting any sort of shared vision of the purity sought.
This perspective is partially informed by my own involvement in Occupy, which had enough shared vision to achieve massively consequential successes, but was also limited by self-imposed strictures like radical participatory democracy and eschewing individual leadership roles or any kind of formal organizational structure, etc.
So you get something kinda like this (referring more to the current lefty “purity brigade”, not Occupy):
And what was obvious to any honest observer….Sanders got that we live in a real world..with real issues, and against people who REALLY want to take us back to the days of household help costing 20 dollars per DAY. At the end he was practically pleading. So was Warren. Their reward was to be called sell outs to the oligarchs and neoliberals.
It makes one wonder what the real objectives are.
My apologies if my comment enrages someone and causes them to vote for republicans in 2018.
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Democrat bashing from the leftists. At least you didn’t mention Hillary this time. Watch, folks. The Leftists will bash Democrats and defend Russia. It’s a tell.
Leftists? When you hold all these positions at the same time?
You ain’t no leftist when you hold all those positions. One? OK.
But all 5?
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Technically (i.e., literally), everyone politically to the left of some hypothetical ideologically median voter is a leftist, and part of The Left.
Any attempt to define it more narrowly (including to use it as a slur as you did here) is problematic, not least because there will be endless disagreement over any narrower definition’s validity, making it useless for honest communication/discussion/debate.
I’m a “leftist”. The vast majority of registered Democrats are “leftists”. I reject all attempts to deny that on the grounds that my leftiness is not pure or thorough or far enough “left” to satisfy the one narrowly defining it to exclude me.
I equally reject its intentionally (groundlessly) pejorative definition in order to attach it to me (or anyone!) as a slur.
If you wanna go after leftier-than-thou purism, yer gonna need a better slur.
It’s easy to fixate on what a Trump administration will do to Americans. But far more disheartening is what it can do internationally.
The world is on the cusp of several break through in disease eradication
Two massive successes are Guinea Worm disease and Rinderpest. But progress has been made with Polio, Yaws, Measles, and even Malaria(!!!), with each of those debases being completely eliminated in large parts of the world…sometimes with something as simple as wide use of bed nets and educating a population on what causes a decease.
We are talking about hundreds of millions of saved lives…and because much of them are among children…the ability to save cultures.
I strongly suggest everyone educate themselves on this issue. It turns out it’s not hard to eradicate diseases that have killed or disabled millions…it just takes time, dedicated volunteers, and….money. And usually to take the final step…..it takes peace, because the technicians needed to help populations can’t go into death zones.
Trump endangers all this. These are international efforts. He hurts the international order.
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This is an excellent point. That and other significant and worthy global programs of the UN, NGOs, and various alliances of nations are indeed put at risk by those who do not (or will not) understand what these programs have been doing.
But the world order has already changed. Trump is not cause but symptom. W sacrificed the mystique of the US as the sole superpower by acting if it was true in reality and actually setting up to fight two major wars on the Asian continent, which was only in the Clinton-era strategic assessment a worst-case scenario. The world saw what our actual power and wisdom were. The McConnell political strategy of Just Say No limited the range of Obama’s options to redress this, and the inertia in the military to keep going (remember Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus?) were too much for a President with politically induced legitimacy issues to risk too dramatic a change in policy. Think that Michelle Obama’s and Jill Biden’s looking after the families of the troops was just a matter of compassion? It was that but it also served to win over rank-and-file military and act as a brake against politically-drummed-up mutiny.
Although it doesn’t look like it at the moment, Trump will need to do the same winning of the rank-and-file military, especially those who did not vote for him. They are not his personal enforcers. Watch how that unfolds especially in view of Trump’s racism. Really, the only way he can defang that check on his power is to get out of wars, downsize the military, and use discrimination to muster out the troops he doesn’t want serving. I don’t see that happening; someone in the chain of command (Mattis?) will have to tell Trump Donald I the realities of the situation.
Where he is likely to hurt the international order is by following the current Republican tendencies in policy with the United Nations and other international organizations that were the outgrowth of FDR’s post-war policy or by not paying attention to what is happening in Africa because it is not exploitable by his friends and supporters. The canary in the coal mine on this one will be what shifts he makes in Africom’s mission or in the organization of the US military commands. Will he do it the right way, the wrong way, the Army way, or Trump Donald’s way?
While the US is very good at starting wars, it is not a good at cleaning up after the war is finally over. Some $3-$5 trillion dollars of military effort has destroyed a lot of needed infrastructure in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Pakistan. There are areas seeded with unexploded ordnance and cluster munitions, not to mention the unexploded mines and IEDs from both sides.
Will the Trump administration pay attention to this clean-up or just move on to his next venture?
Don’t think that his racism will not bias his plans on these areas of foreign affairs and national security.
At the national level, I’ve yet to see that attacking those at or near the top of the political ladder as racists is effective to discredit them.
Some, and perhaps a majority, of Trump/GOP voters consider nothing but race when they make their voting decision. If we ignore the fact that an AA man has been twice elected to the office of the presidency and that Tim Scott received 61% of the SC vote in 2014 and 2016 (Lindsey Graham only got 55% in 2014), attacking politicians/business people as racists might have more resonance. Unfortunately, it’s no longer as black and white as it once was.
“George Bush doesn’t care about black people” was undermined by the fact that Colin Powell and Condi Rice were in his administration. Ben Carson, more ignorant as to public policies and US history than Trump, and with zero qualifications for POTUS was a leading 2016 GOP primary candidate. It will not compute, or worse anger, those that supported Carson and ended up voting for Trump to hear == psst, haven’t you noticed that Trump is a racist? Sure, they noticed Trump’s great wall to keep immigrants out of the country but in their eyes that was about protecting their jobs from lower wage immigrants. They also noticed that Trump and Dr. Ben got along very well.
I’m inclined to agree that racism isn’t effective as political messaging.
But I’m not concerned with raising awareness of anti-minority sentiment. I’m trying to raise awareness of a fascist movement led by Putin to divide and weaken secular Europe and the West, and to bring the hammer down on everyone of a pluralistic and ecumenical view.
Racism is very effective in political messaging. The GOP has mastered it.
What hasn’t been effective thus far is using race to counter it.
Right.
But it should not be a shock who does not think it is effective as a weapon. The same people who do not think lovin’ Putin is a weapon, the same that think both sides are equally corrupt, the same that think it’s a mistake to orient to the democratic base…African Americans.
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Yep, and the 2020 Democratic nomination is still likely to hinge on the sunbelt and the voters who live there. You can win back some of the Trump voters but you can’t afford to lose minorities. Unfortunately, this may be mutually exclusive to some degree.
Clinton lost Georgia by 200,000 votes and Arizona by 100,000 votes.
While the Moon of Alabama clowns suck their thumbs…
Oh, I don’t know about sucking thumbs. It’s probably a sure way to relieve anxiety anyway. MoB helped me clarify a lot about the US and Russian activities in Syria, among other outside actors, the questionable allegiancies/mission/authenticity of the White Helmets, etc. Or is Booman referring to the theory of a brewing Soros Purple Revolution in the Homeland discussed on that site? Whatever, it is striking that the Clintons and Kaines all wore purple at the defeat speech, where I don’t believe Mrs. Clinton ceded to Mr. Trump, though I may be wrong. Will the Clintons wear purple to the inauguration?
The suspense is killing me.
Don’t worry, you have the strength to process and survive your suspense. I suggest a purple. pill.
I had an exchange with Oui some weeks ago on this very topic. These efforts will intensify this year with aims to swing the French and German elections.
There is an element of the global left that buys into the need to weaken and destroy NATO. However, they don’t realize that this will also weaken the EU. The order that we helped put into place has kept Europe at peace since WW2.
Meanwhile.. the useful idiots will plug their ears and move on to the next shiny object.
As LBJ related to his aide, Bill Moyers:
“I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it,” he said. “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
And during the Obama years they proceeded to target lower to middle class white voters with the implicit but not so subtle message that any one of them were “better” than President Obama, by waging a concerted campaign to undermine his legitimacy, by virtue of his “not being a US citizen,” and in their view, a “Muslim,” and a myriad torrent of other attacks and insults over the years. Remember Rep. Joe Wilson yelling out during the SOTU, calling Obama a liar? They simultaneously portrayed Obama as an evil, diabolical genius, and an educated but “incompetent” elitist, who didn’t have the common sense of these salt of the earth, hard working “real Americans.”
All this in preparation for picking their pockets. Enter Trump, and the pocket-picking of these white voters begins in earnest. Some say Trump will be in trouble when these angry white voters realize they’ve been had, but don’t count on it. As Johnson said, “as long as they have someone to look down on,” and Trump has given them plenty.
The GOP has been doing this successfully for years, targeting white voters for their support for policies that don’t benefit them, with subtle, dog-whistles on race. Trump is doing the same thing, but without the whistling. He’s using a megaphone ad calling it his push back against “political correctness.” They are, as LBJ said, all but “emptying their pockets.”
During Obama, many white voters said, “we want our country back.” “Make America Great Again,” was a promise in response to that. The racism the Trump campaign is exhibiting here is just part and parcel of the whole sordid affair.
(to booman’s) take re: the John Lewis attack tweets and how they underscore Trump’s racism:
Duncan:
Hell St.
And that’s the problem. Trump doesn’t know, much less care, about people that don’t inhabit his tiny world of penthouses, private golf clubs, and “reality” TV.
Important advice as we face what is before us:
John Lewis ✔ @repjohnlewis
Be hopeful. Be optimistic. Don’t get lost in a sea of despair. Love is a better way. #goodtrouble
9:43 AM – 10 Jul 2016
The Daily Beast, 5/28/16 – Draft Dodger Donald Trump Gets Hero’s Welcome at Rolling Thunder
These bikers — mostly white — have been assholes for like forever.
FoxNews (of course) – ‘Bikers for Trump’ to Form ‘Wall of Meat’ If Inauguration Protests Get Out of Hand
As good a reason for others to stay away from the inauguration as it was for others to stay away from the Altamont Free Concert. Maybe better because the bikers today are likely better armed than they were in ’69.
For someone different, Vanity Fair — Will Mark Zuckerberg Be Our Next President?
It’s a serious question. “He wants to be emperor,” several people have told me.
Are we ready for the next presidential lollapalooza?
Would a smart and informed “king of the world” aspirant before less or more dangerous than an ignorant king of the world wannabe?
He’s already bought into the 50-state strategy. Obama convinced him of its efficacy.
So let’s just say Zuckerberg decides to run. If you’re Elizabeth Warren, Paul Ryan, or Kanye West (who also aspires to be president–God help us all) what’s your attack on Zuckerberg?
Is the person asking this question for real? We all know what Warren would say. Is he’s going around the country now, that means he’s looking at 2020. I guess. Is he going to run as an Indy? Good luck getting Democrats to take him seriously after the 2016 election. Also, he won’t be taken seriously if he’s not on the ballot in all 50 states because he’d be seen as a spoiler.
Yeah, that was quite the sycophantic piece on Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg’s views regarding workers and their right to organize collectively are notoriously bad. He has also engaged in the financing of issue and candidate campaigns with the explicit intent of privatizing the public school system across the country. Zuckerberg also opposes regulations of businesses, and he wants to lower business and personal taxes for himself and his fellow billionaires. He takes many direct actions intended to increase national economic inequality.
He would be a target-rich environment for opponents in a Democratic primary. Liberals don’t like people who tell their friends and associates that they aspire to be an Emperor. Finally, he seems to lack the charisma in public settings to be an appealing national candidate. Many liberals are complaining that we need to avoid tossing our hats in with unlikable candidates. For all these reasons and more I can’t imagine pluralities or majorities of voters in our movement finding Zuckerberg appealing. And ee’s such an apostate from the conservative movement’s take on social issues that he’d be an equally unlikely GOP nominee.
It’s the sign of an overall foreign relations and national security policy that has not been integrated among the different views of the Trump transition team and the incoming Trump cabinet.
It not only bodes ill for Africa, but also for any non-European nation. (For these purposes Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are European nations.
China is preferable to many Africans. But they are quite aware of its economic colonialism. It just has less baggage, politically, at this time. And doesn’t tell them how to structure themselves to make looting easier…
Aid in reverse: how poor countries develop rich countries
China also makes no pretense of caring about general corruption that puts quite a bit of Western govt and NGO funding into private accounts of the elites. Africans have no problem with hierarchies.
To me the reason to engage in Africa is simple. If we don’t something will come out of there and kill us all. Disease, radical movement whatever. Example: Ebola situation got much worse than it would have if we hadn’t ignored it.
It’s in our self interest to be involved to empower Africans to make their lives better.