The Year Ahead 2023

 The Year Ahead conference, which started before the CDSN came into existence, has become a flagship event for both the Carleton research center, Centre for Security, Intelligence, and Defence Studies, and the CDSN.  It provides NPSIA-based scholars with a chance to interact with experts we bring to town and folks from in and around government who attend the event.  We consult our partners in government to see what is on their radar screen for the next year, and try to have panels that are relevant to them.  This year, we had panels on:

• learning from Ukraine's successes and Russia's aggressive failures
• the state of Canadian civil-military relations
• xenophobia and national security, organized by our collaborator Women of Colour Advancing Peace and Security.

We also had a fourth session that was a little different.  We started with a Q&A between myself and Colonel Cathy Blue, our visiting Defence Fellow.  An Air Force officer, she is spending the year with us, auditing a few classes, working on a research project, advising us, providing us with a military point of view, engaging the students, and continuing her professional military education program that comes out of the Canadian Forces College.  She has been an incredible asset this year, a great sounding board.  

After that, we launched the CDSN Podcast Network!  We decided to build our own network so that we could provide opportunities to new podcasts across the country to be heard.  In addition to BattleRhythm, the CDSN's podcast for the past 3.5 years and Conseils de Sécurité, our partnered podcast with RAS/NAS en français, we will have SecurityScape and NATO Field Report.  SecurityScape is a podcast by graduate students at Calgary's Centre for Military, Security, and Strategic Studies, a partner of the CDSN.  They have had one season thus far, and they will drop six episodes of season two in 2023.  NATO Field Report will be a completely new podcast, run by the students and professions involved in the NATO Field School, which brings students to Vancouver for classwork and then onto Europe to various NATO facilities and headquarters.  They will be be dropping episodes episodically--as the field school approaches and then have interviews and reports during the field school's trips to Brussels, Latvia, and wherever else they go.  That we include a podcast that is a different model from the original ones helps to open our imagination for future additions to our network.

Along the way, we fixed a problem with had with our Apple feed. While we have consistently been producing episodes of BattleRhythm, those that relied on our Apple field were not getting automatic downloads of episodes.  Our stuff has always been available at the other outlets (Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, etc.), but now we fixed this problem.  Folks just have to go to the Apple podcast app and search for CDSN and subscribe to get all of our podcasts.  

At the conference, we did a Q&A with the producers and hosts of the various podcasts.  We are very excited about all of this.  If you have an idea for a podcast on defense/security broadly defined, let us know, as we are looking to connect and amplify--the basic CDSN mission.

Nina Tannenwald

Back to the panels, we had Brown University Professor Nina Tannenwald, who discussed the nuclear weapon issues related to the war, retired LGen Mike Day who delineated the lessons from the war itself, and, via zoom, U of Texas Professor Sheena Greitens, who analyzed China's responses to the conflict.  It was a fascinating discussion.  

I moderated the Civil-Military Relations panel where Calgary Prof. Jean-Christophe Boucher and Charlotte Duval-Lantoine of Women in Defence and Security presented a survey they (and me and Lynne Gouliquer) are working on whether the various scandals are affecting Canadians' trust in the military, Andrea Lane of Defence Research and Development Canada presented the challenges posed to the Canadian Armed Forces by political polarization, and Alexandra Richards of Simon Fraser U. analyzed differences among the various generations and their attitudes.  

The final panel on Redefining National Security, organized by WCAPS-C, included Dr. Nadia Abu-Zahra of both Carleton and U of Ottawa, Azeezah Kanji of the Noor Cultural Centre, Jillian Sunderland and Aaron Francis of U of Toronto.  They presented critiques of the defence and security apparatus and community, especially the treatment of historically excluded communities.

We streamed the event, and it will appear on our youtube channels (CDSN and CSIDS) once we get things cleaned up. We will also be circulating a report and related policy notes in January.

I am very grateful for Team CDSN, especially Melissa Jennings, Sherry Laplante, Cathy Blue, Carelove Doreus, Racheal Wallace, Robyn Lalecheur, David Le, Duncan Herd, and Daniel Kholodar, and to the presenters and moderators.  It was great meeting both presenters and audience members, as the event is also a great networking opportunity.  We will do a "hot wash" to figure out what worked best and what could use improvement.  We are open to feedback so if you have suggestions, let us know.

And, yes, we do this stuff so we can eat food and hang out.  

Indeed it was.

I love Charlotte's expression as she realizes
that I am taking a mid-meal pic

Anti-Woke as Vice-Signaling

Last week's awful speech set me on edge immediately.  The first words about handouts were a signal, but the thing that confirmed that the talk would be awful was Maisonneuve invocation of "woke."  Whenever I hear anyone tossing around that word contemptuously, I immediately code that person as not worth listening to.  Why?

To be clear, woke refers to folks who have become aware of the historical legacies of discrimination and the present-day implications.  That's pretty much it, that woke people understand that there is and has been significant discrimination.   That's it.  

To be anti-woke, which many folks on the right are now so proud of, means denying that discrimination happened and/or it has made an impact on today.  Of course, it is more complicated than that--it can mean being opposed to the measures used to address the remedial efforts aimed at reducing discrimination and compensating for its impact.  The classic case of this maybe opposing affirmative action as it may be seen as unfair to white men, and the opponents usually say that such measures are unfair as it means that those who are more meritorious are being denied opportunities due to the sins of their fathers.  There is a lot built into that including the notion that today's procedures would be otherwise focused entirely on merit if not for considerations of race, ethnicity, gender, etc.

The reality of today's politics is that when one loudly proclaims that one is anti-woke, one is doing one of two things (or both):

a) one is signaling to one's white, male, "Christian" supporters that one is with them, an enthusiastic supporter of some past status quo (real or imagined) where the woke folks were kept in their place;  folks, including myself, refer to this as vice-signaling. 

b) one is actually one of these folks who are actually an enthusiastic supporter of some past reality (fake or real) where the uppity folks knew better and that one could discriminate, harass and do more without being called out for it.

I tend to think Ted Cruz, for instance, is in the first category--that he does not really believe anything but wants power and signals being anti-woke to appeal to his racist, homophobic, xenophobic, misogynist supporters.  That does not make these folks better even if they don't believe in the hate they are inciting--it makes them just as bad as the genuine article as they are inciting and providing comfort for them.  Vice signaling is dangerous and awful and should be called out.

Is this cancellation?  No, free speech means one has the right to engage in vice-signaling, but it also means that others have the right to call it out for what it is. 

Maisonneuve got more than just a right to speak last week--he got to have a platform to do it.  And he abused it.  And I have the right to call him out as does everyone else who considers his speech to be awful, intolerant, and retrograde. 

 

 

Religious Discrimination in Quebec? Not Shocked At All

Quebec has passed legislation that will forbid government workers in positions of authority from wearing religious stuff--well, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh stuff.  Why?  What is the problem here?  The problem is that each party competing for the xenophobic vote in Quebec ended up supporting something like this.  Sure, the anti-immigrant party, Coalition Avenir Québec, is the one who won, but the Liberal Party was pandering in this direction before. 

There is no crisis or problem here in terms of a real public policy problem to be addressed.  The folks who support this would argue that having those in authority wear religious symbols might make it seem like the government is promoting a particular religion.  And that might be sincere if they were worried about crosses.  But they are not.

Instead, as Jacob Levy said wisely years ago, this issue allows two distinct groups of Quebeckers to form an alliance: those that hate all religions and those who are Catholic and thus want to see rivals expelled from the public space.  So, of course, politicians pander to this, but that is on them.  Discriminating against minority religious groups is a bad look for a government and a province that complains about tyranny of the majority.

How would an independent Quebec government treat minorities?  Well, this particular legislation suggests: not great, Jean!  Maybe the nationalists are hoping for a fight to rouse the separatist sentiment. 

One thing to keep in mind--Quebec has far more public employees in authority as they not only own the courts and the buses but also the universities, public school teachers, and the cops.  Maybe professors are too Jewy for the CAQ? 

Given how past discussions about this stuff has gone, it may be that some folks are not being anti-semitic or Islamophobic or anti-Sikh on purpose, but there are those who are very deliberately so.  And those who support this law but don't think they are doing anything wrong should maybe pay attention to how discrimination like this sends signals both to those who want to commit violence and those who are likely to be targets.  Because this essentially creates a permission structure whereby those who hate more passionately are given the signal to go ahead since the provincial government has said that these people are less worthy. 

Canadians in Quebec and across the country should be outraged.  But Islamophobia is not just a Quebec thing.  It is just very Quebecky to worry about discrimination while dealing it out.  I do miss many things about Quebec, but this?  Nope.  Don't miss it at all.

Ignore or Respond: When A Crank Appears at Academic Event

Today, I was at an event at Carleton that I did not organize.  I was on a panel on European security issues, with my role being the Canadian defence guy, more or less.  We had a member of the audience criticize us for being critical of Trump and then he went into the threat Muslims pose to Europe and North America.  The idea is that they will be a majority, yada, yada.

As he rambled, I had a very loud conversation in my ahead between two teams: TeamMarginalize and TeamEngage.  The former argued that we should just tune this guy out--we are not going to convince him of anything and we don't want to give him and his comments attention and time.  The latter argued that if we don't respond, it will appear that we condone his abhorrent views. 

Knowing me, you could guess that I would side with TeamEngage.  Well, it was not just me.  Each of the panelists took issue with various elements of this guy's rants.  One panelist made it quite clear our job as academics is to be critical, and that Trump has done things that are quite worthy of criticism.  Another responded that the problem is authoritarian rule, not religion. 

My basic take: all fundamentalisms suck, that Christian theocracy is just as problematic as Islamic theocracy, and Islam is not a threat to North America--white supremacy is.  I didn't go into the why's of that, although I would have argued that Islam and democracy are compatible, that there are plenty of Muslims in North America that support the values of the US and Canada, that more folks are being killed by white supremacists than Muslims, and on and on.

I would rather this guy never get the mic, but there is no way to make that happen.  So, instead, when he says something objectionable, I object.  I don't mind folks disagreeing with me from the left or the right--it happens all the time.  But I will push back against hate, and I was proud to see my co-panelists do so as well. 

Of course, we will never convince this guy of anything--as one Congressperson put it, it is like talking to a dining room table--but we need to stand up and say that these utterances are wrong.  Silence, in my mind, is complicity. 

Of course, I could just be rationalizing my
own tendency to spew... 

Move to Canada? Still More Complicated But A Bit More Realistic

The Washington Post had a piece on folks moving to Canada due to the Trump Administration, and, at first, I was like, no, not again.  As someone who moved to Canada, I have long pushed back at the whole "I hate who won this election, I am moving to Canada" thing as immigration is hard.  This piece had four distinct differences from ye olde silly stories:

1. twas focused not on just dissatisfied liberals (or conservatives in 2008/12 if you can imagine that) but on immigrants to the US, so folks who didn't have deep ties and face significant risks
2. due to a xenophobic regime.  Trump's presidency is not ordinary, so the idea of leaving it makes more sense--escape the fascist hellscape while you can.
3. that these people are valued--the programs discussed are for those with tech skills.  Canada is not seeking to get any and all immigrants in the US--just those in science/tech areas.  I remember back when I moved to Canada, I could have gotten five years of no Quebec taxes (a significant hunk of money) had I been a hard scientist.  Social science?  Nope, doesn't count.'
4. there are private actors setting up firms to facilitate the transitions.

This last thing is key, as it is not easy to move.  Mrs. Spew remembers the first few years in Canada as being rather difficult--that Canada is not simply a colder version of the US.  My favorite story is of having difficulties driving across the border since I owed money to Honda-America on my car.  It took me eight weeks or so to get it imported--it was stuck on my driveway (Customs thought of that as a generous exception--they preferred that I had parked the car on the US side of the border).  Oh, I couldn't simply transfer the loan to Honda-Canada because the two Honda entities do not work with each other.  I couldn't get a car loan since I was seen as a flight risk and had worse credit as a temporary resident than a high school kid.  So, it is not easy.

The article mentions the cold.  That can be an issue, but mostly not.  As it suggests, if you get the right clothes and get your commute sorted, you will be ok.  The problem is really the length of winter, not how cold it gets.  Well, in Ottawa and Montreal.  I have no idea how cold it gets in Edmonton, but I imagine most of these folks are moving to Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto or maybe Montreal.  Of course, if they are moving to Vancouver or Toronto, they will be saving some money as they are probably a bit cheaper than Silicon Valley but not much.

The taxes are higher, but that is probably a wash when you consider the cost of health care insurance in the US.  And with higher taxes come not just health care that will not bankrupt you, but maternity leave (and paternity leave in many cases) and other stuff.

Lastly, as my dissertation advisor reminds me, there is xenophobia in Canada.  Quebecois politicians have competed with each other to alienate Muslims and Jews with laws about wearing religious apparel.  A former Minister of Foreign Affairs is starting up a xenophobic (and transphobic) party, and the more mainstream Conservative Party is dancing with xenophobes as well.  Given the diversity of Canada combined with the existing parties and electoral system, I think that xenophobia will not win.  Then again, I was wrong about Trump.  So, this place is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. 

Canada is a great place to live, but it is not a colder version of the US--it is a different place.  And the provinces are different from each other, and there are other complexities.  I am happy that Canada is smart to try to lure smart people who face potential problems due to the awful xenophobia coming out of the White House, but I am also sad that the US is losing the next generation of talent because it elected Trump.  That incredibly bad decision will continue to have ramifications not just for the next couple of years but for a generation or more.  The movement of smart people to Canada to avoid Trump makes clear the costs will be enduring.  

When the Canadian Conservatives Become Lemmings

For the past year or two, the Conservative Party of Canada have been struggling how to deal with populism, Trumpism, and xenophobia.  This is not that new, as the Harper campaign resisted and then embraced xenophobia, which was tricky since Harper had done well appealing to the immigrants of Toronto.  Still, with the rise of Rebel Media, which is kind of like Breitbart and its ilk, the CPC has been tempted and pushed to take stances on immigration.

The CPC has had strains within it playing up the challenge of the "illegal immigration crisis" which is mostly not illegal but irregular (it is not illegal to be a refugee in search of asylum) and not a crisis (the numbers are still quite small, easily absorb-able with the usual burden-sharing wrangling).  A new party may emerge, if Max Bernier is successful, who plays this up and challenges Canada's multiculturalism (acceptance of different peoples). Still, when Bernier started this push, there was pushback, because multiculturalism is a key part of Canadian identity, and going too far would alienate many voters. So, there was some hope that the CPC would avoid Trumpism and xenophobia and racism.

And then this happened:

Scheer defends Tories’ birthright policy, says ending ‘birth tourism’ is objective https://t.co/EUfEhKUEl3

— Globe Politics (@globepolitics) August 27, 2018

The CPC, at its recent convention, decided to take a stance against birthright citizenship--that anyone born is Canada is a citizen. What is the crisis to which the CPC is responding?  How many people are coming to Canada pregnant in hopes that their kid is born Canadian?  If this sounds familiar to you, it is because of the anchor baby debate in the US, where xenophobic politicians, mostly but not entirely Republicans, argued that those in Mexico and the rest of Latin America were coming to the US to establish the fact of citizenship by birthing babies in the US. 

I am not an expert on the history of Canadian immigration policies, but I know "identity politics" and xenophobia when I see it. There is no crisis of "birth tourism"--this is simply a way for the CPC to pander to the racists of Canada (yes, there are racists here).  This may seem more subtle than trashing multiculturalism, but it is not.  It is the first step to the abyss--of the CPC selling its soul and its electability to chase after the far right. Perhaps Rebel media is more influential than we thought.  Making this the big headline, rather than CPC unity against Bernier, seems like a dumb thing to do, like lemmings jumping off a cliff because the first one does. 

Let Confirmation Bias Be Your Guide: Irregular Immigration Edition

Two dynamics are combining to make Canadian politics unpleasant:

1. Trump's unleashing of ICE and other agencies against immigrants has created a trickle or a flood (more on that below) of people crossing into Canada from the United States.
2. There are some on the right wing of Canadian politics that seek to emulate Trump, Fox/Breitbart, and various folks in Europe--focusing more on mostly imaginary threats and using various images to provoke racial animus and xenophobia.

So I tweeted thusly:

This is utter crap. There is not a flood of refugees crossing into Canada. It is a small trickle that is making no dent on Ontario expenses. Just demagoguing by someone who wants to appeal to racists. https://t.co/zI6Vrv63Hk

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) July 20, 2018

I got some pushback, which made me realize that the trickle is not a flood, but a smidge more than than a trickle.  The official statistics indicate that 47k folks have crossed the border to seek asylum in Canada.  Oh wait, that is from 2011-2018.  This year, the number is 9,500 and last year was 11,400.  Is that a trickle or a flood?

It obviously depends on one's priors--those who think that any irregular immigration (illegal is a term that opponents use to demonize these folks, irregular is the government term) is bad will see 9.5k and get most upset.  For those who think that Canada should be haven for those who are oppressed, then 9.5 is not that bad.  To be clear, this is for Canada--1.6k for Ontario where Doug Ford is making a stink.  Can Ontario absorb 1.6k (this year) or 6k (last year) refugees?  Yeah. If they all came to Ottawa or Oshawa, that would be quite significant.  If they all went to Toronto?  A blip. 

While Canada is not a big country population-wise, its current population is roughly the same as California.  California faced much bigger flows of immigrants, and it did spark some xenophobia.  The stances the Republican Party took back in the late 1980s and early 1990s still hurt the party in the state today. 

The question today is whether playing up a minor challenge into a provincial priority will pay off for Doug Ford and pay off for the Conservative Party [CPC] as they ramp up the efforts to defeat Trudeau in 2019.  I don't know enough about Canadian politics to hazard a bad prediction.  I would say that the last election in part turned on the CPC's desperate effort at the end to play up xenophobia.  It worked to hurt the NDP, but that gave Trudeau and the Liberals more room to run in Quebec.  The question this time is where will the xenophobes go?  By picking a Sikh to lead the NDP, the NDP may have given those fearful of any non-Catholic symbols cause to vote elsewhere.  But I am not sure they will go Liberal.  Trudeau has broken promises that mattered to some of those folks--electoral reform being one of them.  However, Andrew Scheer and the CPC right now are not that good at making appeals of their own.  Hmmm.

The larger question is this: will Doug Ford, Rebel media (think Breitbart married Fox and produced a less intelligent kid), and the CPC gain traction via white supremacy?  Given that Ontario is very multiethnic and multiculturalism is something that still has some weight across Canada AND being smugly different from the US is a key to Canadian identity, trying to be Trumpian may produce a backlash.  That is my guess and it might be wishful thinking. 

Being Properly Appalled

There has been a lot of bad stuff over the past year and a half--failing to prepare and then help Puerto Rico recover from a hurricane, corruption here, there and everyPruitt, the racism, xenophobia and misogyny, but I guess I have reached my limit.  Until now, I was angry and ruthlessly pessimistic, but now I can't even describe how I feel, and my attempt to come up with a way to describe the worst set of policies possible will have to be tossed aside.

That policy and that description was: kiddieconcentrationcamp.  I thought it might do a decent job of reflecting the horror that is the mass separation of parents from kids, including infants, and putting them into dead walmarts and eventually tent cities, but my twitter followers found it problematic.

This entire story starting with this is just appalling:

.@jacobsoboroff on Texas immigrant child detention center: "Effectively, these kids are incarcerated" #inners pic.twitter.com/ou7dT6hLU9

— All In w/Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) June 14, 2018

The pictures are more than a thousand words--they reflect an effort to destroy families.  Is this going to be a deterrent? Who the hell cares?  It is simply inhumane.  Taking infants in the middle of breast-feeding?  This is what happens when you call all immigrants animals (or at least the non-white ones).  This is the outcome of electing a white supremacist president with a majority party that has been beholden to white supremacists.  The virulent xenophobia has had consequences--people are being hurt and the kids will be scarred.  Those who survived American concentration camps during WWII are still affected by that experience 70 years later.

No, this is not the first time that we have people of color being separated from their parents.  Watching the reboot of Roots reminded me that perhaps the most painful scenes were when slaves were separated from their families, often capriciously.

Sure, it could get worse--right now, the policies are not aimed at deliberately killing these people.  So far, only immigrants that the US has sent back to the desperate situations from which they have fled have been killed.  But when you start telling parents that their kids are going to the showers so that you can separate them without violence or resistance, we are already far, far down the road to doing even more abhorrent things.

I haven't blogged for the past several days partly because I was at a conference and partly because I had no words for this.  My attempt of #kiddieconcentrationcamp showed me that any shorthand for this is awful, just like the set of policies that are producing mass child incarceration.  Call it whatever you want, but be clear that it is perhaps not unprecedented (slavery, Japanese internment) but it is inhumane, it is the product of white supremacy, it is the deliberate policy of this government, and it should be unacceptable.  Maybe attacks on pre-existing conditions coverage will help more next fall, but I do hope the Democrats take a stand on this because they need to be on the right side of this, whether it is politically convenient or not.

As for the pro-family party, well, we know that they have no values except tax cuts and supreme court seats.

How to Deal with Racism and Xenophobia? Damned If I Know

In the past day or so, I* have seen two very different ways to deal with racism and xenophobia:

with love and courage:

This is how you deal with a racist heckler.

Full video: https://t.co/tfuyoCEFM6 pic.twitter.com/GsXLVrChbp

— VICE Canada (@vicecanada) September 8, 2017

and with outrage:

Cop pulls over a black man for failure to signal, walks to his car with his gun drawn... Black dude is my fucking hero💯💯💯💯💯🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆😂😂😂😂👍👍👍👍👍👍👍 pic.twitter.com/S8ef8Mx4Kk

— SIX_FOOT_5 (@Choco_Optimus) September 10, 2017

And, of course, there are other ways to deal with it as well.  I admire both responses.  The first because it took discipline and because Jagmeet Singh avoided the easy response: duh, Sikhs are not Muslims (the first iron law of bigotry).  The second because it took a heap of guts to confront a cop since, as the man notes,  the cop had his gun drawn moments ago.  Both demonstrated how wrong the other person was, and shamed them for their behavior.  Will the provocative xenophobe in the first video change their behavior and outlet?  Probably not.  Will the cop?  I don't know, but he seemed more capable of shame than the woman in the first video.  That the driver in the second video seemed to do ok in the encounter--was not pulled out of the car, was allowed to harang the cop--is promising (thanks to our low expectations of police behavior). 


Of course, both moments were recorded and then posted online.  Lots of confrontations with racism are not.  So, we need to be careful about generalizing about how to respond to racism.  Which is my main point: that there is no one best way to respond to these types of encounters.  We can celebrate individuals and groups when we see how they thwart or confront racism--our celebration should not mean that the particular examples are the only ways to do it.  

We live in trying times, so we need to appreciate resistance to racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia and all the other hatreds that are being stirred up. 

* It could be mighty white of me to enter this conversation, except the Nazis at Charlottesville and elsewhere remind us all that few folks fit into their conception of white.   

Points? F No

No, this is not a post to regret the demise of @Midnight, which I will surely miss.  It is a very short post about the immigration law being bandied about.

As I have been traveling, I have only seen glimpses, but the general idea is to adopt an Aussie or Canadian style system where applicants are rated by various attributes and those scoring high get to be admitted. I have seen folks quibble with the point system--liberal arts degrees count for bumpkus.

My quick take is: it is fine for other countries to do this, but it betrays the history, identity and essence of the US to say that folks who don't speak English, who don't have a lot of skills and don't have a lot of money can't be admitted.  I would bet that most Americans (except Native Americans) have relatively poor ancestors who didn't speak English make the journey to the US way back when.  Immigration was and remains one of the things that makes the US truly exceptional (there are other immigration nations but few of them). 

Bouts of xenophobia and restrictions on immigration are regular occurrences, which often lead to much regret.  I know that Stephen Miller  and the rest of the Trumpsters want to betray pretty much all American ideals, but we don't have to go along with it.  This law is being generated by white supremacists, who may be disguising their hate for non-whites with details, but the objectives are clear.  So, let's focus on the intent and not the specifics, shall we?

Kreminology/Tea-Reading: Is Mattis Relevant?

I am sure someone else has said this, but the fact that the Immigration/Muslim Ban Executive Order no longer includes Iraq suggests that SecDef Mattis might have had some influence on Trump.  How so? 

The Iraqis were mighty miffed after the first EO, and threatened to kick out American contractors and perhaps other civilians in response. These folks are critical for supporting the US troops in the counter-ISIS campaign, and are one of the key military equities that Trump blithely ignored when excluding Mattis from the making of the previous EO. 

So, we can glean from the new EO perhaps some Mattis influence.  Before we get our hopes up that there are now adults in the room, we need to remember that the EO still harms American interests--antagonizing our allies, giving ISIS a propaganda tool, hurting green card veterans (those who have fought and perhaps are still fighting for the US but come from the wrong countries), etc. DHS and others have indicated that the US has not been hit by terrorists from these six or seven countries.  No, those would be either white supremacists or extremists from countries where, coincidentally, Trump has major investments (Egypt, Saudi Arabia). 

Oh, and let's not have too much faith in our retired generals.  John Kelly, head of DHS, has not been any kind of moderating force on those underneath him at ICE or CBP. 

Still, I guess in this darkest timeline we have to look for glimmers of hope, and Mattis potentially squelching a piece of this is a tiny glimmer, I suppose.

Fake Nazi or Real Nazi?

I have been reluctant to call Trump a fascist or a Nazi during this campaign.  Why?  For many reasons, but mostly because I was never really sure whether much of his braggadociousness was a put on or real.  That is, I was not sure whether he was just a con artist, using white supremacy and xenophobia to appeal to some voters, or whether he was a true believer.  Sure, I always thought he was a racist, given his long history of racism from housing discrimination to his statements about wanting Jews and not African-Americans to be his accountants to his more recent stuff, but Nazi?

Well, thanks to his own words, of course, I am now pretty sure that Trump is a Nazi.  How so?  He believes in eugenics--that some people are innately superior to others:

Of course, most of this video is him bragging about how smart he is. And, yes, we can contest that, but I think it makes a decent case for the continuities in Trump's behavior and history.  Is it worse to be a true believer than a con artist?  Actually, yes.  Because a con artist might not follow through once he achieves what he wants.  A true believer is something else entirely.

There are plenty of good reasons to oppose Trump already, but a candidate buying into the core tenets of Nazism is just so far beyond the pale that he needs to be criticized without pause, opposed with all energy, and defeated utterly.  Alas, the US is a polarized political system, so many Republicans will simply vote for their party's candidate regardless of how awful he is.  The good news is that Trump is self-destructive, lacking discipline and focus, despite being so "superior."

Fifteen Years Later: Thinking About the Lessons of 9/11

Before last fall, I had not visited the site since the spring of 2002

I did a bit of media stuff the past few days that prompted me to think a bit about 9/11 and what we have learned.  Also, as I was thinking about the annual 9/11 post, I was trying to figure out what to say that would be different or just repeat the usual story.  This year, a key part of my 9/11 story resonates more than ever before--that the officers I was with were desperate to get back into the building so that we could deposit our classified documents rather than take them home.   Thanks to this election, we are all now far more aware of classified materials and the need to be responsible.



Anyhow, over dinner a couple of days ago, I happened to talk to Mrs. Spew about an exercise I did on the first day of class when I was teaching smaller classes.  I would ask the students what their first international political memory.  You can tell how long I have been in the business by tracking the evolution of the answers:

So many first responders died, devastating NYFD and PD.

• Started with either Grenada or Falklands
• Moved on to students first memory being Iran-Contra
• The fall of the Berlin Wall lasted for a few years with the Gulf War of 1991 starting to resonate more
• Then Bosnia and Rwanda dominated the answers up until
• 9/11

And then I realized that if I taught such classes now (only grad classes these days), 9/11 would no longer be in the lived memory of the new generation of undergrads.  International events rarely impact three year olds.  Wow.


Anyhow, I have realized that as time moves us further away, the stories of that day move me more and more.  See here, here, here, here, and here.  Indeed, it gets mighty dusty in the Spew cave when I read such stuff now.  I didn't cry on 9/11.  Probably too shocked, stunned and angry.  Now, I am mostly sad when this stuff comes up.  Why?  First, the stories are very sad, about the heroes who lost their lives.

Second, they gain greater resonance as we seem to be unlearning the lessons of that day.  One of George W. Bush's greatest contributions (he had a few) was making it clear that Islamophobia was not the right response to 9/11.  Alas, politicians, not just Trump, have decided to scapegoat Muslims for the crimes of their less moderate "kin".

Part of the memorial

Third, 9/11 and the fear mongering since have created perceptions that we are more in danger now than before 9/11.  Well, it depends on your point of comparison, but Americans are not really that much more at risk--the number of Americans killed by Islamist terrorism every year is quite low and lower than the number killed by white supremacists.  For Europeans, things seem much more dangerous, but the danger is comparable to the 1970s, yet they didn't panic and seek to exclude large groups back then.  It is far more dangerous in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya.  But not in the West, so perhaps we should try not to overreact.

Fourth, speaking of the Mideast and beyond, I am sad that the US got distracted by the Iraq fixation.  I am not sure we could have been successful in Afghanistan, but I am pretty sure we would have had a better chance had we done more earlier.  Obama's surge came many years too late.  Lots of lost opportunities.

Fifth, I am sad because 9/11 facilitated Iraq (no, 9/11 was not caused by Bush, but his team took advantage of it), and Iraq was not just so very costly to Iraqis and to Americans and to our allies, but also this mistake is what caused ISIS to exist.

Sixth, we will never know what the US could have done with the political capital, the support, accumulated in the immediate aftermath of the attack.  It was wasted as the Bush Administration focused on Iraq and precious little else.  And that makes me sad.

So, I have many reasons to be sad on this day every year, as do we all.  15 years have gone by, and the impact of that day continues to reverberate.

Testing for Anti-Canadian Values

One of the contenders for leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada, Kellie Leitch, has argued that potential immigrants should be tested for anti-Canadian values.  This raises all kinds of questions, including: what is an anti-Canadian value?  Here are some ideas (with the implied conclusion that it is a good thing these were not on the citizenship test I took):

• Preferring a US-based NHL team to Canadian ones (unless Gretzy/Crosby/Howe play on the team--the Usher exception).
• Disliking Tim Horton's.
• Not being smug about the Canadian health care system relative to that in the US.
• Not wearing a toque when it is super-cold.
• Not bitter about 1994 Expos.
• Being hostile to the fur industry.
• Cutting into a lineup (breaking the queue as the Brits might say).

Of course, the real anti-Canadian value is being hostile to multiculturalism since the multicultural mosiac that is Canada is so very Canadian.

If you have more anti-Canadian values that immigrants need to prove that they don't have (it is even more awkward to say than it is to do), share them here.  But only mock ones.  No barbaric cultural practices unless one is referring to Montreal driving or road construction.

The Point of No Return?

Today was a bad day for the Trump campaign and a bad day for democracy as Donnie joked/or not about the NRA fans (Second Amendment people) dealing with Hillary Clinton and/or her judges after she wins (because Donnie knows he is going to lose?).  Yep, Presidential candidate incited violence again.  So, is this the point of no return?

What does that mean?  That Trump cannot pivot back?  No, he has no discipline and not much of a learning curve, so that was never in the cards.  I think people are saying essentially that this is too far, that this is beyond the pale, that this is unacceptable.  Once you cross this line, there is no returning to decency, to a candidacy that decent people can support.  Indeed, folks are wondering if this is the point at which Paul Ryan can walk away.  No answer yet as he has mastered the five D's of dodgeball to avoid the many questions today.

But I think people are missing something--Trump crossed the point of no return last year when he announced his candidacy, when he said that Mexicans were rapists.  Ok, sure, one could say even before that since his birther fixation made Trump a racist and a conspiracy theorist and a panderer to white supremacists.  But, if we want to date the time at which his Presidential campaign became so tainted by his utterances, by his policy stances, by his awful Trump-ness, then, well, his announcement will do since it attacked Mexicans and the rest of the Hispanic community by extension.  Oh, and for the GOP, that first move also may help to kill your party for a generation since you embraced it.

That Trump kept then saying stuff and taking stances that seemed to be "new points of no return" kind of misses the point--it is not that these were now the new standards of alienating folks, but that he just went past the point of no return and then just kept going deeper into the land of awful stances, including:

• POWs are not worthy of much respect since they get caught (Hey, McCain, how could you possibly endorse this guy?)
• Megyn Kelly and the first early but inevitable misogynist outburst.
• Telling his supporters to beat up the protestors. 
• Suggesting that Cruz's dad killed Kennedy (so much for democratic discourse).
• Yada, yada, yada 
• Questioning whether a Hispanic judge could fairly adjudicate the case involving the fraudulent Trump University.
• Attacking NATO, making it seem like US should run its foreign policy like a protection racket
• Calling Elizabeth Warren Pocohantas
• Inviting Russia to release more hacked materials.
• The convention speech
• Insulting a Gold Star family--the Khans.
• Inciting violence against the opponent and/or the judges she chooses if when she wins.

I had to illustrate it thusly:

 The whole idea of the point of no return is that once you pass that point, you don't return, right?  Well, Trump passed the point of being minimally acceptable last summer and kept on going further and further down the road of hate/fear/indecency/inciting violence.  He ain't coming back.  Once one appeals to white supremacists, that should be it.  Everyone should have run away from him and never looked back.  Yet folks keep needing a new line to be drawn, a new pivot back that .... never happened.  I wonder tomorrow how the craven folks will justify sticking with Trump now that he has passed the latest point of no return.

American Politics in Two Pictures

 Why do the two parties behave so differently?  Will things change much?  Well, if these two pictures represent the present and future of the two parties, then yowza.

Okay I just had to get 'em side by side. L: GOP Capitol Hill interns. R: DNCC interns. #2016 pic.twitter.com/KCuPhWUujn

— Deen Freelon (@dfreelon) July 18, 2016

 Nearly entirely white for the GOP, incredibly diverse for the Democrats.  Sure, Trump is a friend of white supremacists, but if that pic is a semi-accurate depiction of the GOP base, then any candidate is going to play to whites.  Indeed, all of them will, and will try to compete to be the best representative of white people--ethnic outbidding.

The Democrats did have a white set of candidates, but they tried to appeal to non-whites, and the winner of the nomination was the one who was more appealing to minorities.  In future primaries, expect to see Democratic candidates continue to say "stronger together," "build bridges" and all that.  It is not just good values (yes, racism is wrong), but good politics for the Democrats.

The GOP are caught in a trap--if they start appealing for real to non-whites, they will lose significant parts of their base.  But if they do not, then they will lose elections as the country is increasingly diverse.  How to square that circle?  Voterfraudfraud--deny the right to vote to non-whites.

My guess is that whoever HRC appoints to the Supreme Court will be less enthused about restricting the franchise.  Which will mean that the GOP will be denied its primary tool for managing to be a white party in a diverse country.

What next for the GOP?  Damned if I know.  The party elites did realize after 2008 and 2012 that the party had to broaden its appeal, and yet it is here, with a friend of white supremacists, relying heavily not on dogwhistles but air horns of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, etc.  There is a learning curve, but the party's demographics provide disincentives.  I doubt we will see much change in 2020, although the winning candidate might not be quite as clear about their racist appeals than Trump.  That would be hard to do--be more racist than Trump.

Timing and Terror: VP Competitors Scare Me

Yesterday, I was on CBC Syndicated Radio from coast to coast to coast early in the morning to talk about Canada's efforts to block/stymie/defeat Iraq.  Why? Because the Minister of Defence was visiting Iraq, and CBC wanted to check in on how we are doing.... and then we have another serious attack that is probably inspired by ISIS in France.

One of the key things that people are saying, and I repeated: that as ISIS loses ground in Iraq, it has/will amp up its terrorist attacks.  As it has lost the aura of inevitability, as its caliphate reverts from being territorial to being virtual, ISIS has to deny the gains made by the counter-ISIS coalition by increasing insecurity, by demonstrating that it still has reach and by causing governments to overreact.

Which leads to a second set of timing issues: that the Nice attack happened as Trump was about to announce his VP candidate.  In reaction, two of the candidates, the two that are most desperate to prove how awful they are, Newt Gingrich and Mike Flynn, are outbidding each other to fan the flames of xenophobia.  The best response to terrorism is ... not to be terrorized, but Gingrich and Flynn seem think that the best response to terrorism is to be scared, to overreact, to engage in collective punishment, to sell out our values, and to alienate the Muslims who actually are the best allies of a counter-ISIS effort.

So, it is a thoroughly depressing morning, not just because of the horror on the streets of Nice, but the disgusting display of craven ambition by two of the least suitable people to lead the GOP or any party into the future.

While I am not a fan of Mike Pence, it could be worse--we are seeing the competition to be the worst live on tv/radio/twitter. 

Learning the Old Lessons

I have been trying to remember the classic quote, and so the internet was my friend:

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) said this:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

The relevance today: some Jews are saying that Trump is not anti-Semitic. I have two responses to that: hell's yeah, he is; and if not, so the fuck what?!

Trump has targeted African-Americans, so should you speak out?
Trump has targeted Muslim-Americans, so should you speak out?
Trump has targeted Mexican-Americans, so should you speak out?
Trump has targeted Native Americans, so should you speak out?
Trump has targeted disabled Americans, so should you speak out?
Trump has targeted Prisoners of War and other vets, so should you speak out?
We can go on and on.... but any Jews who remain silent about Trump are betraying every lesson of the Holocaust.  Side with him? Make excuses for him? I am not an us vs. them kind of guy.  You don't have to be for Hillary Clinton, but you have to be against Trump if you have any decency.  Even if he has not quite gotten to your group yet.



 

Instant Hottakes on Brexit

We will have much, much time to ponder and study what happened yesterday... whether it was the weather that made the difference in London, why Cameron was such an idiot, and on and on.  I have a few quick reactions guided by and due to my faith in confirmation bias!

1. While I am kind of surprised by the results, I should not be as I co-authored a book that argued that individuals and leaders will often embrace xenophobia for its short term allure despite the  great costs to the country. That is why we named the book: For Kin or Country: Xenophobia, Nationalism, and War (now available in an updated 2015 paperback version!).  That Brexit did well in England but not in Scotland or Northern Ireland (Wales confuses me as it always does--not enough vowels) is not surprising, AND neither does the fact that most of the polls indicated that the relationship between fear of immigrants and support of Brexit.  The strange thing, of course, is that the UK was not part of the Schengen system so it still had much more control of its borders and of immigration than the rest of the EU.  So, leaving the EU does not really "fix" the "problem" of too much immigration.
2. Events like these have huge ramifications for those inside that country, including potentially more separatism, but not so much elsewhere.  In short, direct effects matter a lot [update: see statement by Scottish National Party leader], but indirect lesson learning does not.  Why?  For the former, the exit will directly affect the interests (incomes!) and power of those inside the UK, leading to stronger interests on the part of the Scots to leave (although it may not be as instant as some might have thought).  For the latter, the problem is that there are multiple lessons to learn.  For those who want to leave the EU or separate from their current country, they can look at Brexit and say: they did it, we can do it too, taking away the positive lessons.  For those who don't want to leave the EU or secede from wherever, they can observe the economic shocks and other painful consequences and learn that this would be awful for them.  Let confirmation bias be your guide, I always say.  Again, multiple lessons to learn, so which lessons will people take away?  The only common lesson will be that David Cameron will go down in history as one of the worst Prime Ministers of all time.
3. Already folks are worrying what this says about Trump--that if the wave of populist nationalism can break the UK, then shouldn't we worry about Trump getting more votes than we expect?  Um, no.  Why not?  First, the electoral college means that the US election is not a pure referendum where mobilizing the cranky can lead to a win.  Trump would have to do very well across a number of states, including some very diverse ones.  Second, while whites are a majority in the US, white men are not. I don't know what the gender breakdown of Brexit was, but in the US, Trump has been quite successful at alienating not just non-whites but women.  Third, there is a huge imbalance in the American election in terms of organization, skill, discipline, resources and resources and resources--Hillary Clinton and the Democrats have a huge lead here that Trump will not be able to surmount, especially as potential donors ponder whether Trump is using the campaign contributions to win the election or to save his failing businesses.  I have no idea what the balance was in the UK.  Fourth, the GOP is divided, with vulnerable Senators running away from Trump as fast as they can.  Yes, the Dems are currently divided with Sanders still not dropping out (oy!), but eventually he will.  That HRC is ahead despite Sanders sticking around is a testament either to her strength, revulsion for Trump or both.
4. Most importantly, Lindsay Lohan is relevant again!

As if we weren't already headed towards a freaky Friday https://t.co/Epkvv3Khny

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) June 24, 2016

Alas, she seems to have deleted all of her anti-Brexit tweets.

Anyhow, for those outside of the UK, we don't need to panic much.  For those inside, I am so sorry for your loss.

Project Much? Understanding the Latest NSFW Obsessions

Last night, on twitter, I learned some new lingo.  I had been seeing on cuck mentioned a lot on a conservative academic's twitter feed and seeing it elsewhere, but was mostly confused about the origins of cuckservative.  Pegging? That was new to me.  The common theme, of course, is emasculation. Obviously, what is going on here is that the utterer/twitter-er/whatever is insulting someone by suggesting that their wife is sleeping with someone else or one is being penetrated by one's wife--that the person is less of a man because of their political opinions.  And maybe calling someone gay or an f* is not as acceptable so these people have had to get more creative?  (I guess there must be sociologists already on this stuff, looking at trends of insults).

*I don't want my blog posts to be searchable by epithet

This may not be an entirely right-wing thing--my guess is that the misogynists among the Bernie bros are probably saying similar stuff.  Why?  Tis in the title: these folks are projecting.  They want to make men (mostly) feel bad by suggesting that they are lousy men.  Why?  I am no feminist scholar (I am a feminist, just not a scholar who uses feminist theories/methods), I guess this people are themselves feeling emasculated.  This may be why this campaign seems to be gamer-gate in a different arena. 

Of course, some will note that women use these terms as well.  Sure, but much of the volume seems to be from males.  Of course, when women are the target, the language is not about cucks and the like, but the usual misogynist vocab and, of course, threats (the woman with whom Justin Trudeau made contact in "elbowgate" or parliamess is now being hit by the barrage of internet insults because fans of Liberals can also be illiberal).
 
The extreme political stances are chock full of hate--hate for women, hate for those who support women, hate for African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Jews, Latinos, LGBT, and Muslims (and Sikhs because ignorant people are easily confused).  And the US now has a candidate who has successfully been stoking these flames of hate to get to the nomination of a major party.

Lots of stuff is being written on why this is coming out from under the rocks now, but it has always been there, of course.  Racism, homophobia, misogyny, and xenophobia are not new.  The internet has made it possible for groups of losers (those who either lost in life or feel they are losing their advantages over others) to gain an outsized voice by directing attacks at specific people, especially women and minorities.  It is not just the anonymity of the web as plenty of idiots gave away their identities when attacking the Nevada Democratic Chairwoman, but anonymity does have a role, of course.  As does Donald Trump who has been inciting hate for the past year (more than that since he was a birther for quite some time, but more so lately), leading to hate crimes quite directly.

And, yes, this stuff is intensifying because these folks have been losing the big political battles.  They rail at Social Justice Warriors precisely because gays are now more accepted, that transgender people are now being treated more positively (a long way to go, of course), that women are breaking through some glass ceilings, and, yes, we have a black President.  Whenever I see someone use the SJW, I assume that they are a gamer-gate kind of misogynist because if one is on the opposite side of a social justice warrior, does that not make the person a fan of injustice?

So, what can I conclude from this rambling rant? That it sucks to be a loser?  That much of the hate is venom spewed by those on the wrong side of history?  That those who use cuck and other terms to denigrate the masculinity of their opponents have small hands and peni?  I guess we cannot dismiss these folks because they can and do resort to violence, but perhaps we can remember that they are losing, that their losing is a source of their animus, and that we need to keep winning the battles that improve the opportunities for all.  And if the losers do not want to partake in a better society, we need to marginalize them and the politicians who tolerate or empower them.  Which, of course, means vote against Trump.  

Update: I forgot one of my key points: there are all kinds of men with all kinds of ways to be a man, so these folks have a very specific idea of what is it is to be a man.  And, the irony is that their cowardice--attacking folks online, using lame insults rather than good arguments--actually contradicts their ideal John Wayne-esque kind of manhood.  But then again, their efforts to emasculate others emasculates themselves more than anyone else.