It's Time to Get Beyond the Politics and Take Action to End the Police Killings of African-Americans

[This article also appears on Huffington Post. You can access it from my author page: www.huffingtonpost.com/mitchell-bard ]

Exploding defective airbags have killed 10 Americans, resulting in the costly recall of “many millions” of cars.

One American died from a Zika virus infection, and Congress is considering legislation to spend over $1 billion to help combat it.

A few hundred people who ate at Chipotle were victims of an e. coli outbreak, and the CDC sprung into action, as Chipotle’s stock price nearly dropped in half.

However, police have killed at least 136 black people in 2016 so far (sadly, I have to write “so far”), and the reaction by governmental bodies and those in power has been ... nothing. And there has not been enough of an outcry by Americans to move their leaders to action.

We watch on video after video after video as police officers shoot defenseless black people, and while an occasional indictment might result, nothing is done by cities, states or the federal government to address the larger, systemic problem.

Innocent people are dying, and we do nothing.

Now, sadly, in the current hyper-ideological, hyper-partisan atmosphere, everything is politicized. Some conservatives reacted to Black Lives Matter with All Lives Matter (even as the implication of Black Lives Matter is that Black Lives Matter ALSO, since white lives already matter as the police do not regularly shoot unarmed white people). These conservatives can’t even admit there is a problem ― it must be the fault of those shot ― because to do so would (big inhale): show disrespect for police officers, show disrespect for the Second Amendment, show a lack of support for tough crime enforcement, require agreement with terrible liberals who are always wrong ... I could go on. And that is without wading into the obvious racism at play.

But the total denial of the existence of this problem is insane. It takes someone watching these videos, watching an innocent man be shot for no reason, and somehow see the victim as wrong. It requires someone to ignore the avalanche of these killings of innocent people and pretend it’s somehow just some isolated incidents, not a systemic problem.

Now, of course, to keep the argument from shifting into accusations that I am attacking the police, I am forced to state some patently obvious things:

• The overwhelming majority of police officers do good and honorable work.
• Police officers have a difficult job, as they have to make potentially life-and-death decisions in a split second.
• Police lives matter, and sometimes police officers have to use force to defend themselves and the members of the communities they serve, and sometimes they are the victims of horrible violence.

But here is the thing: None of those things has anything to do with the epidemic of police killings of African Americans in this country. Zero. All of these things can be true, and there can still be a massive, tragic problem we should be addressing head-on in this country.

To say that there is a problem is not disrespectful to police officers. This epidemic of killing innocent people is the result of damaged systems and poisonous cultures, not a problem of individuals. A fantastic New York Times Magazine profile of an African-American New York Police Department officer who tried to help change the culture in the department relating to race showed at the individual level how deeply ingrained the problem is.

Given the geographic range of places where these killings are taking place ― North and South, East and West and in-between ― this is a systemic national problem. Something has gone horribly wrong that allows these killings of innocents to happen again and again.

Can’t we get past the ridiculous my-side-your-side politics of this issue and just address the unnecessarily dead bodies on the videos in front of us? Can’t we look at the hundreds of deaths of black people at the hands of the police, year after year, and say, hey, something is wrong here and we should try and fix it?

It’s time we stand up as a country and say, “Enough. Not a single other black person should be needlessly killed by the police.”

It’s time for government action. It’s time for every mayor and city counsel, every governor and state legislature, and the president and Congress to take measures to end the killings. Whether it’s changes of leadership, training and/or practices, changes have to be made.

And it’s time for every American to stand up and demand these actions.

As a country, we have moved quickly to address defective airbags, the Zika virus and e. coli outbreaks, none of which killed as many people as the number of African-American people killed by the police.

It’s time for a national change in approach to the issue. If you watch a police officer shoot and kill Philandro Castile in cold blood for no reason at all and think anything else but, “We have to do something about this,” you’ve lost your soul to your ideology, party or, dare I say it, your racism.

No, every American ― right and left, blue and red, North and South, white and black ― who sees that video should be outraged and demand that their representatives ― Democrat or Republican ― do something about this.

It’s enough. We can’t expect to hold ourselves out to the world ― or even to ourselves ― as a country of freedom and the rule of law if we allow the regular, systematic slaughter of innocent people because of their race.

I’m tired of the politics on an issue that shouldn’t be political. It’s time for consensus (killing innocent people is wrong) and government action. Will the Republican leaders have the guts to stand up for what is right and lead? Will Democratic leaders have the guts to move from rhetoric to action? It’s time.

Donald Trump: The First TV Character to Win a Presidential Primary

[This article also appears on Huffingtonpost.com. You can access it from my author page here.]


If you are angry about Donald Trump's position as the leader of the Republican presidential race and winner of the New Hampshire primary, just remember this: It's all Stephen Colbert's fault. Well, Colbert and the takeover of the Republican party by its extreme right flank.

It's not really Colbert's fault, of course, but I do believe that like Colbert on his old Comedy Central program, Trump is playing a character who shares his name.

Which is something that we should take into account when evaluating what is going on with Trump's campaign for the presidency. On Vox.com, Ezra Klein argues:

Trump is the most dangerous major candidate for president in memory. He pairs terrible ideas with an alarming temperament; he's a racist, a sexist, and a demagogue, but he's also a narcissist, a bully, and a dilettante. He lies so constantly and so fluently that it's hard to know if he even realizes he's lying. He delights in schoolyard taunts and luxuriates in backlash.

It's hard to argue with Klein if you are not a Trump supporter. At the same time, though, who is the "he" in Klein's description? Is it Trump the man or Trump the character?

Yes, I am arguing in this piece that the Donald Trump, who has been running for president since July, is a fictional character, and we really don't know what the real Donald Trump would do if he was elected president.

To make my argument, let's take a step back and look at Trump's career in the spotlight. Trump was never a stranger to publicity seeking and self-advertisement. He always struck a confident -- many would say arrogant -- pose. But as his business evolved, so did his public persona. He went from being a real estate magnate to someone in the business of licensing his name and brand. At the same time, he went from being primarily a real estate developer to primarily an entertainer.

As entertainment became his primary business, Trump started playing a character named Donald Trump, a bombastic real estate mogul who is a walking symbol of opulence and a modern, garish appropriation of the notion of class. He bellowed, "You're fired!" week after week on a network reality show, like a 21st century version of the Fonz's, "Ayyyyy!" or Urkel's, "Did I do that?" I mean, he has literally played the Trump character in the epitome of false-reality entertainment: the WWE.

Trump wasn't always as unhinged as his current character. For example, look at Trump's 1988 appearance on "Oprah," in which he has praise for George H.W. Bush, Michael Dukakis and Jesse Jackson (yes, Jesse Jackson) as presidential candidates. In the clip, Trump is confident -- even arrogant to some eyes, I'm sure -- and emits the familiar air that he thinks he knows better than anyone else. But his voice is quieter, and he speaks with more restraint.

Similarly, promoting his book The Art of the Deal on David Letterman's show in 1987, Trump downplayed his net worth and the amount of money he earned from his casino and real estate investments, preferring to talk about how great his properties are. Letterman hammered away at Trump trying to get him to talk about how much he's worth, but Trump refused to give in. Again, the confidence -- or arrogance -- is there, but, also again, Trump's voice is restrained, and he is not quick to brag. When Letterman asks him if he is a driven person, Trump responds:

I don't think of myself as driven ... I would say I am somebody that enjoys what I do, and I enjoy it so much that, perhaps, I do it well.

Perhaps!

Trump later tells Letterman:

I don't look at failures as failures. I think a failure is something that you really want to learn by.

The word loser was never uttered. If the 2016 Donald Trump character watched this clip, I bet he'd scream "loser" at the guy on the screen talking to Letterman.

Watching those late-1980s clips is eye-opening. Trump was a divisive personality even back then, but he was more human. I don't pretend to know what Donald Trump really believes. I am not convinced, though, that any of Trump's positions in the 2016 campaign are, necessarily, what he believes. Colbert (the real one this time) showed in a clever Trump v. Trump debate bit how often Trump has contradicted himself.

It seems clear to me that beginning with his birther attacks on Obama in 2011, Trump decided to create an extension of his entertainment character that would be geared toward running for president, using the rightward tilt of the Republican party as his vehicle. The character would be the raging id of the Republican party.

After all, doesn't "Make America Great Again" seem as on the nose and oversimplified as one of Colbert's declarations on the Colbert Report?

In the way that Colbert created the character of Colbert, a thinly veiled parody of Bill O'Reilly, Trump created the character of Trump, who is, as the Huffington Post puts it in an editor's note at the base of its stories about Trump:

A serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.

It's like Trump watched the Republican fringe get more and more doctrinal and unhinged and said to himself, "If I go nuts and pretend to be one of them, I'll get endless press coverage, and these idiots will vote for me. The crazier the stuff I say, the more I'll be beloved." Or maybe it's more like he thought he would retain support even if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue.

Donald Trump is punking us. Every last one of us. He is extremely skilled at manipulating the news media, and he clearly has an eye and ear for what has become of the Republican party. Now he is pretending to be a crazy person AND winning the Republican presidential nomination in the process.

Colbert played the character Colbert to be funny and to comment on the ridiculousness of right-wing pundits like O'Reilly. Why is Trump playing the character of Trump? Is he secretly the business-friendly but socially liberal real estate developer with a xenophobic streak he appeared to be in the 1980s and 1990s? Or has he become a power-hungry proto-fascist looking to turn the United States into 1930s Germany? Or is he looking to parlay his character's run for the presidency into the biggest reality television show of all time, the first one based in the White House and following the first family? Sadly, don't all three of those seem equally plausible?

Ezra Klein is right to point out how dangerous Trump is as a presidential candidate. That says a lot about where we are as a country in multiple ways. But, of course, odious people finding success in politics is not really a new story. Just look at Wisconsin, Maine or the guy who beat Trump in Iowa, just to name a few.

To me, what is truly scary about Trump's success is that, somehow, a big chunk of our country wants to elect as president a fictional character, with its creator using the campaign as a giant piece of entertainment. That may be the most American thing ever.

Colbert's transition from character to real person hosting Letterman's old "Late Show" has been a little rocky. What would Donald Trump's transition be like from character candidate to real person president? Or would he even make that transition? Maybe we would have the first television character president. Take that, Jed Bartlet!

Let's hope we never have to find out what a President Trump -- person or character -- would be like.

Correction: In the original version, I referenced a Trump appearance on Letterman's "Late Show." In fact, it was Letterman's NBC show, "Late Night With David Letterman."

Lesson from the House Debt Ceiling Vote: The GOP Is the Tea Party

[This article also appears on Huffingtonpost.com. You can access it from my author page here.]

The U.S. House voted Tuesday to raise the debt ceiling, likely allowing the country to avoid defaulting on its bills as soon as Feb. 27.

For the first time since Republicans took control of the House in the 2010 elections, the bill was "clean," which is a euphemism for "extortion-free." That is, there were no spending cuts or other GOP-friendly items tacked on to the legislation.

What is striking, though, is that while Republican House Speaker John Boehner brought the bill to the floor and voted for it, only 27 other Republicans in the House voted with him.

Let's let that sink in for a second ... 201 of 229 Republicans who voted opted not to raise the debt ceiling. Which, to me, begs this question: Why do we even talk about a Tea Party and a Republican Party anymore? Clearly, they are one in the same, at the very least in the House. Voting against the debt ceiling isn't "conservative," it's reckless, ideological, irresponsible and not something anyone charged with governing the nation should consider. John Boehner knew that, and so did most of the House GOP leadership. But the rank and file went full Tea Party on the vote.

Raising the debt ceiling is not spending or borrowing more money. Rather, the action merely allows the country to fulfill its already agreed-to obligations, which the government committed to when Congress passed a budget and appropriation bills and the president signed them into law.

In fact, raising the debt limit was, for decades, a bipartisan, pro forma action. The debt ceiling has been raised 42 times since 1980, with Ronald Reagan agreeing to it 18 times and George W. Bush signing off on it on seven occasions.

Why? Because it is not "conservative" or "liberal" to support the legally enacted commitments of the country. Conservatives are usually quick to preach personal responsibility. Conservatives opposed bailing out home owners who got in over their heads with bad mortgages in the 2000s, arguing the borrowers made an agreement and had to stand by it. Why is the country any different? In fact, given how much we rely on the country's word to do business (it's the basis of our currency), it is way more important that the country live up to its financial obligations than any individual homeowner.

Essentially, the 201 Republicans voting against raising the debt ceiling could be doing so for one of two reasons (putting aside electoral strategy, which, while probably the most compelling reason to the voters, can't be the public justification for the vote and doesn't absolve House members of their duty to govern):

1) The House member opposes making good on the obligations the country already made in legislation.

2) The House member wanted to use the possibility of a default as a tool to extort other favorable policy changes.

The first explanation is irresponsible on its face, but the second is more troubling. Who are these House members extorting? It's not some third party "over there." It's us. It's me, it's you and it's everyone who lives in the United States. Defaulting on the country's financial obligations is so distasteful, opposition goes across party lines, with business groups, including the traditionally conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce, strongly calling for the debt ceiling to be raised.

How does someone like Rep. Paul Ryan justify voting for the budget but against raising the debt ceiling? It has to be explanation 2, which means he is taking you, me and all of his constituents hostage to get what he wants. How is that responsible governing? It's not.

That is the difference between the Tea Party and traditional conservatives and Republicans: The John Boehners and U.S. Chamber of Commerces of the country know that raising the debt ceiling is not ideological, it's governing. The place to fight over deficits and taxes is the budget process, not after those decisions have already been made in legislation that is passed and signed. It's common sense, especially to any business person, that if you contract to pay certain bills, you have to pay them.

But, again, 201 Republicans voted against the clean bill, while 28 GOP members voted for it. Who is the fringe and who is the mainstream of the party?

What this vote demonstrates, most of all, is how off the rails the modern Republican party has run, especially in the House. I'm tired of hearing about a battle for the Republican party between mainstream business interests and the Tea Party. The battle is over and the Tea Party has won, at least in Congress (and probably beyond, but that is a topic for another post). And the final score was 201-28, a pasting worse than the one the Broncos suffered in the Super Bowl.