In this day and age of instant and high turnover information, peoples' attention spans are very short. Most modern news cycles are on the order of days, sometimes hours. So that said, this post will be coming eons late, since we're over a month post-election. But, I figured it'd be fun just to jot down some thoughts about the election and its aftermath.
I've watched with amusement as both political parties have been scrambling to figure out what happened and what they should do going forward. However, it's very clear that officials in both parties totally missed the boat this election, which resulted in Trump winning the Republican nomination and eventually the Presidency and Hillary losing what most thought was an election that should've been "in the bag." Both parties missed critical signs that should have told them they needed to get out of their bubbles and make some serious changes. Alas, it was not to be and we ended up with one of the strangest election outcomes.
The Republican party, although happy about the fact they now control the Presidency and both houses of Congress, nevertheless have much to contend with. First and foremost is the fact that their President-elect isn't a true Republican, nor is he a true conservative. I still haven't figured out what he is, other than someone who will do or say anything to make himself look good, someone with an extremely narrow world view, and someone who has unbelievably thin skin; not good characteristics for a President. Second is the fact that the party itself is fractured into these factions that don't seem to get along with each other, which is likely to make legislative maneuvering very challenging. It'll be interesting to see if they can forge the alliances they need to move desired legislation forward. Third, is the perception that there's a growing faction of racists within the Republican party that is becoming ever more vocal. This started during the Obama years, but with the no holds barred, free-wheeling Trump campaign, these individuals have become emboldened, much like the fringe groups that have come out of the shadows (see my other post: Out of the Shadows...). Finally, the Trump campaign is the first in modern history to essentially do and say whatever they thought necessary to win the election. I laugh when I hear discussions about "fake news" permeating Facebook....I'm sorry, fake news is permeating everything. I don't know how many times I saw and heard a Trump campaign official or supporter basically say the most outrageous lie as if it were fact. In fact, it seemed the attitude of the Trump campaign was if we say it, it must be true. I'm not talking about the nuanced BS that both political parties typically throw out there in the media. I'm talking about bold-faced, fact-less, totally fantasy-based lies. What was even more disconcerting about this was that Americans sucked it all up as fact. This kind of stuff makes me very worried about the future of our country. Really....are we THAT stupid? This also raises the important issue of fact-checking. While some will argue there are no facts and that fact-checking in and of itself is biased, there are situations where there are clear-cut facts that should be properly noted. Given that the majority of Americans don't have the sufficient attention span to do their due diligence and seem to only respond to sound bites, there is an argument for the media to do a better job of fact-checking and making sure Americans get the information they need to make an informed decision.
On the flip side, I've been laughing as Democrats point to Russian hacking, the Comey letters, and other events to explain their loss. Too bad nobody within the party has the huevos to admit that Hillary was a very flawed candidate who ran a very flawed campaign. This election was essentially hers to win and also hers to lose....much like the election of 2008. She essentially chose to lose. No doubt the events cited all played some role in the election, but at the end of the day, Hillary ran a campaign that ignored the average American, was forged within a bubble, misunderstood the electoral map, and lacked a core message. In my opinion, there were two pivotal points in the election where the Hillary campaign should have taken notice and made drastic changes to adjust course. The first was when Bernie Sanders out fund-raised Hillary. What was amazing about Sanders' fund raising was not so much that he beat Hillary, it was the fact that he beat her without large donors. The bulk of the funds Sanders raised came from small donations from the little guy. This should've been a huge warning flag for the Hillary campaign. It was, in some sense, the same warning Republicans should've paid attention to when Trump kept winning during the primaries. There were clear signs of the grassroots, small guy, vibe in both parties, but the mainstream party officials either totally ignored it or totally missed it. The second was when the Access Hollywood tape was leaked that led to the accusations of Trump sexually harassing women. Hillary should have gotten a major bump in the polls, but there was only a blip. This was a sign of two things. First, it demonstrated how unpopular Hillary was in the eyes of independents and disaffected Democrats. They weren't going to vote for her regardless of the accusations made against Trump. The Hillary campaign should have been in a panic at that point. Second, it showed that a large segment of Americans really didn't care much about Trump's behavior; they were going to vote for him despite the things he said and did. This should've been a huge sign to the Hillary campaign.
So, come January 20, 2017, we will have President Donald Trump. He will have a Republican House and Senate to move his agenda forward. I really hope the Democrats don't do like the Republicans and basically attempt to block everything brought before them simply to be obstructionist. I frankly felt what the Republicans did was overt racism veiled in differences in political ideology. The Democrats should oppose when they need to, but everyone in the Congress needs to be doing the work they're supposed to be doing and reaching across the aisle to do it. Compromise should not be a dirty word. Finally, both parties need to take a real close look at themselves and make changes to address the concerns of America...show some political leadership for a change. As I have been telling people, middle America just gave the big middle finger to the rest of America. Not only is it time to address their concerns, but to also weave them back into the fabric of America to make this country what it should be. Our political leaders need to provide that government of the people, by the people, for the people that Abraham Lincoln described in his Gettysburg Address.
#LetsMakeAmericaBuenoAgain
Friday, December 30, 2016
Thursday, December 29, 2016
Freedom of Speech and Defining Populations
A few weeks ago, the LA Times Travel section had an article about National Park sites that featured two of the ten concentration camp locations (the two within California) that were operated by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) during World War II. That article, which was trying to focus on race and ethnicity in America's history, resulted in the LA Times publishing two letters that criticized the original article, essentially defending the incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry during World War II, and resulted in wide-spread condemnation of the newspaper by readers offended by those letters. This posting is not about the letters per se nor the details of the response to them. Although, I have to say the original letter writers were very ill-informed. I had to chuckle when one talked about "anti-U.S. remake of history," since the history the individual cited was, in fact, the propaganda circulated to the public at the time by the U.S. government and was not an accurate reflection of history....but, that is also the nature of history.
Rather, I wanted to focus on two things about this whole incident. The first was the response of individuals who claimed the LA Times should not have printed those letters to begin with, since they espoused cultural stereotypes, misinformation, and racial bias. The LA Times eventually issued an apology and responded by saying the letters did not meet their editorial standards and therefore should never had been published. However, I would argue that the LA Times should not be faulted for printing those letters. Why should the LA Times have published the letters? First, there's the First Amendment and while what was written was, again, wrong and could be construed racist, those individuals have the right to their opinion, right or wrong. Frankly, by printing those letters, the LA Times has exposed the fact that racism and bias are alive and well in America, something many people are just now starting to realize. Thus, these letters provide an opportunity to educate the public, especially in a time when racial bias is on the rise. The First Amendment is not something that can be selectively applied. By denying these individuals the ability to express their opinion, what's to prevent someone else from suppressing your opinion in the future? Who's opinion is right? Who's is wrong? This is the nature of the First Amendment. My view is that the LA Times has done the community a huge favor and it presents an opportunity to educate America about what exactly happened during that period and why the opinions expressed in those letters were wrong. Suppressing these people won't make them nor their opinions go away. Yelling back at them won't change their opinion nor make them go away. Educating them might change their opinion and might make them go away.
Second, the general discussion of the wartime incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry engendered by these letters reveals a flaw in how the affected population has been characterized. Everyone tends to treat this group as a single homogeneous group; calling them "Japanese" as if they were all Japanese immigrants with Japanese citizenship (naturalization laws at the time prevented Japanese immigrants from becoming naturalized U.S. citizens). Both the letter writers and those who responded to those letters make this same mistake. In fact, I blame many in the Japanese American community for perpetuating this myth, because they too tend to use the phrase "Japanese" when talking about this group. It is extremely important to remember that the population of people of Japanese ancestry was, and continues to be, a mixture of Japanese immigrants and Americans of Japanese ancestry. In fact, the vast majority at that time, and even today, were U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry, not immigrants from Japan. As an example, the 1940 Census estimated there were a little over 127,000 individuals of Japanese ancestry living in the 48 contiguous states, the vast majority living in west coast states. Approximately 42% of the population of Hawaii was of Japanese ancestry. The majority of those individuals (approximately two-thirds) were U.S. citizens....they were not Japanese, they were Americans. Therefore, it is incorrect to refer to all of them as Japanese. The Japanese American community should stop referring to the population (past and present) as "Japanese," since we will always be a mixture of these two broad groups.
Why should we care about what most might call a technicality? The distinction is extremely important, because of perceptions; referring to everyone as "Japanese" immediately equates them as being immigrants and at that time, the enemy. More importantly, the Federal government treated this population as a single homogeneous group and went to great lengths to ensure the public treated them as such. Hence, the use of the phrase "non-aliens" when referring to U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry; they were never referred to as "citizens" in any public declarations or documents. A second example of this were Americans of Japanese ancestry serving in the U.S. military when the war started. These individuals, all U.S. citizens, were labeled as 4-C "Enemy Alien" and expelled from service. How could they be "Enemy Alien" if they were U.S. citizens? Again, the government exploited the existing racial prejudice and fear to justify the label and implement policy. It might be of interest to those two individuals who wrote those letters that prior to the start of the war, the Federal government was concerned about the high concentration of people of Japanese ancestry in Hawaii and along the west coast that they commissioned an investigation into the loyalties of those individuals. The so-called Munson Report came to the conclusion that there would be no need to incarcerate people of Japanese ancestry if we went to war with Japan. Curtis Munson, the author of the report, was very careful to note that the population were mostly Americans of Japanese ancestry and that many of the immigrant Japanese would have become U.S. citizens had our laws allowed them to. A similar independent report by the FBI came to the same conclusion. The conclusions of both these reports were ignored when the war began. Calling the entire population "Japanese" facilitates people assigning guilt upon Americans of Japanese ancestry as being part of the enemy population. In fact, many Americans even today assign guilt to Americans of Japanese ancestry for the heinous war crimes committed by Japanese troops during World War II. How can American citizens be blamed for the acts of individuals of another nation? Guilt by association, or more correctly, paraphrasing the late comedian George Carlin, guilt simply because their parents were born in the wrong country.
Again, these are important issues that don't just apply to the population of Japanese and Japanese Americans. You can replace "Japanese" with whatever ethnic/racial group you want and the same kinds of issues arise. America needs to better understand its ethnic/racial and multi-cultural history, embrace it, and make this a better country for all. Yes, we need to protect ourselves from both internal and external threats. But labeling groups in a homogeneous fashion and creating stereotypes is not the way to do it.
#LetsMakeAmericaBuenoAgain
Rather, I wanted to focus on two things about this whole incident. The first was the response of individuals who claimed the LA Times should not have printed those letters to begin with, since they espoused cultural stereotypes, misinformation, and racial bias. The LA Times eventually issued an apology and responded by saying the letters did not meet their editorial standards and therefore should never had been published. However, I would argue that the LA Times should not be faulted for printing those letters. Why should the LA Times have published the letters? First, there's the First Amendment and while what was written was, again, wrong and could be construed racist, those individuals have the right to their opinion, right or wrong. Frankly, by printing those letters, the LA Times has exposed the fact that racism and bias are alive and well in America, something many people are just now starting to realize. Thus, these letters provide an opportunity to educate the public, especially in a time when racial bias is on the rise. The First Amendment is not something that can be selectively applied. By denying these individuals the ability to express their opinion, what's to prevent someone else from suppressing your opinion in the future? Who's opinion is right? Who's is wrong? This is the nature of the First Amendment. My view is that the LA Times has done the community a huge favor and it presents an opportunity to educate America about what exactly happened during that period and why the opinions expressed in those letters were wrong. Suppressing these people won't make them nor their opinions go away. Yelling back at them won't change their opinion nor make them go away. Educating them might change their opinion and might make them go away.
Second, the general discussion of the wartime incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry engendered by these letters reveals a flaw in how the affected population has been characterized. Everyone tends to treat this group as a single homogeneous group; calling them "Japanese" as if they were all Japanese immigrants with Japanese citizenship (naturalization laws at the time prevented Japanese immigrants from becoming naturalized U.S. citizens). Both the letter writers and those who responded to those letters make this same mistake. In fact, I blame many in the Japanese American community for perpetuating this myth, because they too tend to use the phrase "Japanese" when talking about this group. It is extremely important to remember that the population of people of Japanese ancestry was, and continues to be, a mixture of Japanese immigrants and Americans of Japanese ancestry. In fact, the vast majority at that time, and even today, were U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry, not immigrants from Japan. As an example, the 1940 Census estimated there were a little over 127,000 individuals of Japanese ancestry living in the 48 contiguous states, the vast majority living in west coast states. Approximately 42% of the population of Hawaii was of Japanese ancestry. The majority of those individuals (approximately two-thirds) were U.S. citizens....they were not Japanese, they were Americans. Therefore, it is incorrect to refer to all of them as Japanese. The Japanese American community should stop referring to the population (past and present) as "Japanese," since we will always be a mixture of these two broad groups.
Why should we care about what most might call a technicality? The distinction is extremely important, because of perceptions; referring to everyone as "Japanese" immediately equates them as being immigrants and at that time, the enemy. More importantly, the Federal government treated this population as a single homogeneous group and went to great lengths to ensure the public treated them as such. Hence, the use of the phrase "non-aliens" when referring to U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry; they were never referred to as "citizens" in any public declarations or documents. A second example of this were Americans of Japanese ancestry serving in the U.S. military when the war started. These individuals, all U.S. citizens, were labeled as 4-C "Enemy Alien" and expelled from service. How could they be "Enemy Alien" if they were U.S. citizens? Again, the government exploited the existing racial prejudice and fear to justify the label and implement policy. It might be of interest to those two individuals who wrote those letters that prior to the start of the war, the Federal government was concerned about the high concentration of people of Japanese ancestry in Hawaii and along the west coast that they commissioned an investigation into the loyalties of those individuals. The so-called Munson Report came to the conclusion that there would be no need to incarcerate people of Japanese ancestry if we went to war with Japan. Curtis Munson, the author of the report, was very careful to note that the population were mostly Americans of Japanese ancestry and that many of the immigrant Japanese would have become U.S. citizens had our laws allowed them to. A similar independent report by the FBI came to the same conclusion. The conclusions of both these reports were ignored when the war began. Calling the entire population "Japanese" facilitates people assigning guilt upon Americans of Japanese ancestry as being part of the enemy population. In fact, many Americans even today assign guilt to Americans of Japanese ancestry for the heinous war crimes committed by Japanese troops during World War II. How can American citizens be blamed for the acts of individuals of another nation? Guilt by association, or more correctly, paraphrasing the late comedian George Carlin, guilt simply because their parents were born in the wrong country.
Again, these are important issues that don't just apply to the population of Japanese and Japanese Americans. You can replace "Japanese" with whatever ethnic/racial group you want and the same kinds of issues arise. America needs to better understand its ethnic/racial and multi-cultural history, embrace it, and make this a better country for all. Yes, we need to protect ourselves from both internal and external threats. But labeling groups in a homogeneous fashion and creating stereotypes is not the way to do it.
#LetsMakeAmericaBuenoAgain
Monday, December 26, 2016
Out of the shadows...
We're now a bit over a month past the Nov 2016 election and a week post-Electoral College. I will be posting my thoughts about the election in the near future, but wanted to start by talking about a very disconcerting consequence of the election.
The election of Barack Obama led to people and the media talking about a "post-racial" America. While Obama's election as President did show how far America has come since its founding, it hardly meant the country was in a post-racial period. This was best exemplified by a variety of race-based issues, such as police shootings, that flared up during the Obama years. However, more importantly, the manner in which candidate Donald Trump ran his campaign clearly showed that we are far from being "post-racial." While I don't want to sound like I'm saying that all Trump supporters are racists, it's very clear that the language used by Trump and his campaign and their refusal to acknowledge the consequences of the language they've used has allowed fringe groups to come out of the shadows and use the language of the campaign as a vehicle to push their agendas and attempt to exert their influence again.
This has led to increased activities by these various groups and has resulted in an alarming spike in post-election racist-based incidents across the country. These incidents have sadly engulfed people of all colors, creed, and age. I have never seen this level of racist activity since my childhood. However, what has been even more alarming is the deafening silence and, in some cases, participation of our political leaders. Democrats are too busy trying to figure out what happened in the election, assigning blame, and laying out plans for their political future. Republicans are too busy trying to figure out how to exploit their current majorities and how they fit into the coming Trump era. The President-elect himself has been nearly silent on this issue, other than a brief "stop it" mentioned in a 60-Minutes interview.
I have previously talked about lack of political leadership and we're seeing a prime example here. It is sad to me that members of both political parties have put party loyalty and party survival above the good of the country. The increase in racist activity needs a strong response from our political leadership, not the echos of silence that we are currently hearing. In particular, President-elect needs to be more vocal about this issue, if he wants to prevent his legacy from being tainted by the activities of these groups.
However, in parallel, we need to educate Americans that America is not White, it's not Black, it's not Hispanic, it's not Asian, it's not Native American, it's not any other ethnic/racial group....it's ALL of them. The same thing can be said about religion or any other aspect of our country. America exists and is a great nation because of its diversity. As such, there needs to be a better appreciation of this important component of our country. In particular, people have to stop living in their various bubbles and start reaching out across political party, ethnic/racial, and religious ideologies to build those bridges that will help us all understand and appreciate others.
Since our political leaders do not seem to care about what's been happening, it's time for Americans to stand up and fight these injustices. Recall our Constitution starts with "We the people..." and it's time for we the people to fill the void created by our political leaders and work towards creating a truly post-racial America.
#LetsMakeAmericaBuenoAgain
The election of Barack Obama led to people and the media talking about a "post-racial" America. While Obama's election as President did show how far America has come since its founding, it hardly meant the country was in a post-racial period. This was best exemplified by a variety of race-based issues, such as police shootings, that flared up during the Obama years. However, more importantly, the manner in which candidate Donald Trump ran his campaign clearly showed that we are far from being "post-racial." While I don't want to sound like I'm saying that all Trump supporters are racists, it's very clear that the language used by Trump and his campaign and their refusal to acknowledge the consequences of the language they've used has allowed fringe groups to come out of the shadows and use the language of the campaign as a vehicle to push their agendas and attempt to exert their influence again.
This has led to increased activities by these various groups and has resulted in an alarming spike in post-election racist-based incidents across the country. These incidents have sadly engulfed people of all colors, creed, and age. I have never seen this level of racist activity since my childhood. However, what has been even more alarming is the deafening silence and, in some cases, participation of our political leaders. Democrats are too busy trying to figure out what happened in the election, assigning blame, and laying out plans for their political future. Republicans are too busy trying to figure out how to exploit their current majorities and how they fit into the coming Trump era. The President-elect himself has been nearly silent on this issue, other than a brief "stop it" mentioned in a 60-Minutes interview.
I have previously talked about lack of political leadership and we're seeing a prime example here. It is sad to me that members of both political parties have put party loyalty and party survival above the good of the country. The increase in racist activity needs a strong response from our political leadership, not the echos of silence that we are currently hearing. In particular, President-elect needs to be more vocal about this issue, if he wants to prevent his legacy from being tainted by the activities of these groups.
However, in parallel, we need to educate Americans that America is not White, it's not Black, it's not Hispanic, it's not Asian, it's not Native American, it's not any other ethnic/racial group....it's ALL of them. The same thing can be said about religion or any other aspect of our country. America exists and is a great nation because of its diversity. As such, there needs to be a better appreciation of this important component of our country. In particular, people have to stop living in their various bubbles and start reaching out across political party, ethnic/racial, and religious ideologies to build those bridges that will help us all understand and appreciate others.
Since our political leaders do not seem to care about what's been happening, it's time for Americans to stand up and fight these injustices. Recall our Constitution starts with "We the people..." and it's time for we the people to fill the void created by our political leaders and work towards creating a truly post-racial America.
#LetsMakeAmericaBuenoAgain
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