Los Angeles Times - 27.08.2019

LATIMES.COM/OPINION TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2019A

OP-ED

L

ast week there was a sharp

uptick in speculation that

President Trump is a few fries

shy of a Happy Meal.

Obviously, this is not the

first time the idea has popped up that

the commander in chief ’s cheese might

have slid off his cracker. Early in his

presidency, and again in 2018, there was

a lot of chatter that Trump should be

removed via the 25th Amendment.

Through it all, the president responded

by insisting he was a “very stable ge-

nius.”

But after what has seemed like a

personal best in whackadoodle state-

ments over the last few weeks, cable

news networks and prominent Twit-

terati are ratcheting up the talk that the

president’s wheel might still be turning

but the hamster’s dead.

Whether it was his tweet declaring

that American companies “are hereby

ordered to immediately start looking for

an alternative” to doing business in

China, or his decision to cancel a trip to

Denmark because the Danish prime

minister didn’t have a “nice” reaction to

his desire to buy Greenland, or his sug-

gestion that Federal Reserve Chairman

Jerome H. Powell might be a greater

enemy than China’s premier-for-life, it

did seem like the West Wing’s nurse

might have accidentally switched his

meds for M&Ms.

“This is not normal. And I don’t

mean that as in, ‘Trump is violating the

shibboleths of the Washington estab-

lishment,’ ” wrote the Washington Post’s

Megan McArdle. “I mean that as in,

‘This is not normal for a functioning

adult.’ ”

CNN’s in-house media critic (who

often seems to define “media” as Fox

News) said over the weekend: “He’s

getting worse. We can see it. It’s happen-

ing in public but it’s still a very hard,

very sensitive story to cover. I’m talking

of course about President Trump, about

his behavior, about his instability.”

I’ve long thought that Donald

Trump was a perfect illustration of the

old observation that rich people are

never crazy; they’re just “eccentric.” But

I am skeptical that the president’s men-

tal state has gotten worse.

Instead, his situation is getting more

precarious and that is making Trump’s

Trumpiness more obvious. Specifically,

I think the fizzle of the Mueller probe

was a grievous blow to the president, for

the simple reason that it removed an

extremely useful political and psycholo-

gical bogeyman.

Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation

allowed Trump to give voice to his per-

secution complex. In his mind, at least,

the “witch hunt” was an all-purpose

excuse to whine about “fake news” and

distract from other controversies. But it

also served the same function for much

of the right-wing media, giving them a

ratings-and-clicks-rich topic to focus

on.

In a sense, Mueller was a substitute

for Hillary Clinton. His 2016 opponent

was such a reviled figure on the right,

she gave many Trump-skeptical voters

the excuse they needed to overlook his

shortcomings. After the election,

Mueller and his “angry Dems” of the

Deep State served as a serviceable

alternative for imposing cohesion and

message discipline on the right. Just

consider all of the books and thousands

of hours of TV programming dedicated

to the subject.

With Mueller gone, Trump is left

scrambling to find a replacement. The

“squad” — the four left-wing Demo-

cratic first-term congresswomen — are,

collectively and individually, candi-

dates. And they certainly have their

political uses, given their radicalism,

hostility to Israel, etc. His base is happy

to go all-in against them.

But attacking four women of color

has its limits as a political strategy,

especially given that Trump’s electoral

Achilles’ heel is suburban moderate

women.

Also, they pose no serious threat to

Trump’s presidency the way Mueller

seemed to, so they do not focus Trump’s

mind the way the special prosecutor

did.

Right now, the leading candidate for

Trump’s Mueller replacement is Powell.

And that dog won’t hunt. Trump is

clearly convinced that the Fed chair is

trying to destroy his reelection chances

by not lowering interest rates to goose

the economy past the 2020 finish line.

Some will think this is bat-guano bon-

kers, others won’t, but the political

reality is that this storyline is just too

complicated to replace the Mueller

narrative. It doesn’t attract allies the

same way, and the talking points re-

quired to sustain it are just too convo-

luted.

Whether or not he’s a stable genius,

the Trump on display now is the same

one we’ve always seen. What’s changed

are the circumstances. Like an un-

steady man long held upright by push-

ing on a locked door, he’s tumbling now

that the path is suddenly open. He

needs some new enemy to brace

against, and he’s flailing around in

search of one.

That makes him appear wobblier

than before, but he’s exactly as unbal-

anced as he’s always been.

[email protected]

Is Trump

a few fries

short of a

Happy Meal?

JONAH GOLDBERG

D

emocratic primary
candidates this sum-
mer made school de-
segregation a cam-
paign flashpoint. It’s
an issue Americans battled over,
then mostly retreated from,
nearly four decades ago, despite
ample studies detailing how stu-
dents of all backgrounds benefit
from integrated campuses.
“We’re segregated now,” for-
mer Vice President Joe Biden
told a reporter at an event in New
Hampshire, before asking rhe-
torically whether California Sen.
Kamala Harris — who made
waves at the first Democratic de-
bate with her own desegregation
story — would want to order fed-
erally imposed busing all over
again.
Forced integration, as Biden
implies, is a nonstarter. But that
doesn’t mean the story ends
there. School districts and
states, quietly yet potently, have
devised workable ways to inte-
grate their classrooms. Their
success is largely a product of in-
ventive curricula and bold edu-
cators going out of their way to
invite diverse children into their
classrooms.
The city of Burbank, for ex-
ample, shows remarkable prog-
ress: Its highly diverse popula-
tion of students is spread fairly
evenly among its public schools.
In most districts nationwide, the
isolation of Latino children has
grown worse over the past gener-
ation, according to a new UC
Berkeley study I led. But not in
Burbank, where a Latino child is
eight times more likely to sit be-

side a white classmate than his

or her peers in the L.A. Unified

School District.

To retain middle-class and

white families in public schools,

Burbank educators invest in art

and music curricula and in ca-

reer-pathway programs, “which

appeal to all parents,” in the

words of Supt. Matt Hill. Two

Burbank elementary schools

immerse their students in two

classroom languages, English

and Spanish. Hill’s only prob-

lem: These programs are so

popular the schools lack enough

seats to admit all the white fam-

ilies who apply.

LAUSD’s overall ratio of

white students to Latinos

doesn’t come close to Burbank’s,

but Los Angeles’ vast and div-

erse district can claim its inte-

gration success stories too.

Palms Middle School, just west

of Culver City, draws a student

body that almost mirrors L.A.’s

demographics: 40% Latino, 33%

white and Asian, 25% black.

Moreover, two-thirds of all its

students clear the state’s profi-

ciency bar in reading, slightly

fewer in mathematics. This de-

spite the fact that more than half

come from poor households.

Palms’ magnet and honors

programs, serving nearly half of

the student body, purposefully

ratchet up the pace and com-

plexity of learning. The gifted

and talented magnet attracts

students from across the city,

many traveling “an hour each

way,” often by bus, says the

school’s magnet director, Arlene

Weissmann. Like all LAUSD

magnet students, they are se-

lected by a weighted lottery to

ensure a rich ethnic mix.

Palms will unveil a second

magnet next year, Modern Me-

dia and Communications, which

will emphasize project-based

learning to teach students how

to craft stories on multiple plat-

forms, including video produc-

tion and digital animation. The

appeal of such inventive magnet

curricula pulls families into pub-

lic schools who might otherwise

bolt for charters. That, in turn,

helps create the level of integra-

tion that helps kids “learn to ac-

cept each other,” Weissmann

says.

LAUSD recently doubled its

magnet offerings to nearly 300

programs. But for the new

school year, slots were available

for less than two-fifths of the

84,738 pupils whose parents ap-

plied. Next week, the Los Ange-

les school board will vote on

member Kelly Gonez’s effort to

further desegregate magnet and

other “schools of choice,” includ-

ing strategies to combat the

stratifying effects of charters.

Still, efforts withindistricts

can go only so far. Urban areas

like those served by L.A. Unified

and Burbank Unified may sim-

ply host too few white and Asian

students to blend with other mi-

norities. Voluntary efforts in

other states also integrate

schools acrossdistrict lines.

In Hartford, Conn., more

than 19,000 students from multi-

ple districts are attracted to

shared magnet programs. In

Massachusetts, the METCO

program project (the name

stands for the Metropolitan

Council for Educational Oppor-

tunity Inc.) awards extra tax dol-

lars to suburban Boston dis-

tricts that invite 3,100 inner-city

children into their schools each

year. This regional effort ar-

ranges and pays for buses to

move kids in and out of the city,

and and even sets up urban-sub-

urban play dates to foster cross-

racial friendships.

I can attest to METCO’s hu-

man-scale benefits. When my

family lived outside Boston, my

son established a crucial friend-

ship with James, who left down-

town Boston before sunup each

morning, did homework at our

house and joined in neighbor-

hood sleepovers. A 2019 Harvard

University study tracked the ef-

fects: Black and Latino

“METCO kids” display stronger

reading scores and graduate

from high school at a 30% higher

rate than matched peers who ar-

en’t in the program.

Despite Biden’s weary de-

spair about segregation, under a

caring president greater federal

support of magnet schools and

greater fiscal carrots for cross-

district integration could am-

plify these success stories.

In the meantime, California

Gov. Gavin Newsom need not

wait to make a difference. His

first budget spotlighted in-

creased access to early child-

hood education. Newsom can

widen his attack on inequality by

next earmarking funding to

scale up the best practices of

Burbank, LAUSD and other dis-

tricts in the state that put the lie

to “we’re segregated.”

Bruce Fulleris a professor

of education and public policy

at UC Berkeley.

The innovation-desegregation link

By Bruce Fuller

L

ast week, Isat in a restaurant in a
small town called Tabatinga in
northwestern Amazonia. Looking
out to the street, through the haze,
I could see the moon was stained
pink by the smoke of burning rainforest.
President Jair Bolsonaro thundered on the
restaurant’s TV, asking how could Europe-
ans tell Brazil what to do with the Amazon,
after they had cut down all of their forests?
What Bolsonaro says is routinely echoed
by many people in this town and throughout
the Amazon. In fact, long before Bolsonaro
became known as a presidential candidate
with a knack for polemical statements, I
heard similar sentiments from farmers and
ranchers frustrated over environmental
regulations.
A cattle rancher put it to me bluntly a few
years ago: “You all tell me not to deforest. It’s
easy, isn’t it? Mix a drink there [in the U.S. or
Europe] and talk. Now why do we have to
stop deforesting? I agree that we should not
deforest more, but we have a lot of people
here. How will they live? What is the average
income in the USA? Give that much to every
person here. Then we can all sit around and
watch the little birds fly.”
On Friday, Bolsonaro reversed course
and agreed to send in 43,000 troops to fight
the blazes. This hasty about-face may take
the immediate international pressure off of
Brazil, but the factors and tensions that fu-
eled these fires will continue to smolder. This
record-setting fire season — with more than
80,000 fires burning throughout the country
on Sunday — shows how easily a change of
government can unleash the forces that
cause people on the ground to strike a match
and fan the flames.
Natural fires are rare in Amazonia, but
humans have a long history of reshaping the
environment through burning. Swidden,
sometimes called “slash and burn” agricul-
ture, has been practiced in the region for mil-
lenniums with limited perceptible impacts
on rainforest cover.
The scale and frequency of burning in-
creased in the 1970s, when the government
opened up Amazonia to settlement, and mi-

grants from other parts of Brazil flooded the

region to claim land. For these newcomers,

who considered themselves pioneers heed-

ing the call to make productive an “unin-

habited” land, the forest held no value; it was

an obstacle that had to be cut and burned to

create arable land for crops and cattle pas-

ture.

Deforestation and burning continued

through the 1980s and 1990s, but interna-

tional pressure and grass-roots social move-

ments in Brazil gradually led to changes in

economic development and environmental

policies. These efforts flowered in the 2000s,

as protected areas expanded and environ-

mental regulations on deforestation and

burning were enforced. Deforestation rates

decreased each year for a decade, from 2004-

14.

During the period of declining deforest-

ation rates, governmental monitors re-

viewed real-time satellite images to alert the

authorities of illegal clearing and fires. When

armed troops arrived by helicopter to sites of

illegal clearing, people took notice and word

spread that the environmental laws — of

which Brazil has hundreds concerning the

use of Amazon lands — were no longer just

on paper. As one man jokingly told me, “We

even put a roof on our outhouse because the

government is always watching.”

The laws that held deforestation and

burning in check in the last decade have not

changed under Bolsonaro, but enforcement

has. There has been an 80% increase in defor-

estation since last year.

It has always been difficult to carry out

policies and enforce the law in the vast and

distant territory that comprises 59% of Bra-

zilian territory, at more than 5 million square

kilometers (almost 2 million square miles).

Even in good years, government officials in

the agencies tasked with environmental en-

forcement or indigenous protection rarely

have sufficient personnel and resources to

carry out their duties. This problem has be-

come more pronounced since Bolsonaro

weakened and reshuffled key institutions,

such as IBAMA, the environmental protec-

tion agency, and FUNAI, the National Indian

Agency. Morale is low, and some functionar-

ies I spoke with felt unsafe in enforcing envi-

ronmental laws.

Fire is traditionally used to prepare fields

for planting or to clear recently deforested

land. Farmers, who are limited by regula-

tions, are eager to return to a custom that al-

lows them to give weed-choked fields new life

and expand their production. But the moti-

vations for setting fires this year may also

have a political dimension.

On Aug. 10, a wave of fires was set at ap-

proximately the same time in the same re-

gion of Eastern Amazonia. Investigators are

looking into a coordinated effort to set off the

fires, aiming to show support for Bolsonaro

and his attempts to weaken environmental

controls, and perhaps as a protest to interna-

tional environmentalists who want to tell

Brazilians how to use their land.

People in the Amazon are sensitive to the

threat of punishment for transforming a for-

ested land. They weigh those risks against

actions that could bring them anything from

humble earnings to immense profits. These

calculations shifted with the election of Bol-

sonaro.

A return to enforcement of the laws is

clearly necessary, but stronger enforcement

during the 2000s did not change economic in-

centives on the ground. In the eyes of many

Amazonian farmers and ranchers, they

shouldn’t be asked to bear all the costs for

preserving the forest. Until that changes,

many feel that foreign concern for the Ama-

zon is just a smokescreen for powerful north-

ern countries to maintain their position by

holding down a potential agricultural power-

house through unreasonable environmental

standards.

International sanctions and enforcement

can play an important role in containing fur-

ther destruction, but long-term sustainabil-

ity will require a shift in how Amazonians val-

ue the rainforest. What they are asking for

now is a more equal form of engagement with

international powers. The forest can’t be

saved without it.

Jeffrey Hoelleis an associate professor

of anthropology at UC Santa Barbara and

the author of “Rainforest Cowboys: The

Rise of Ranching and Cattle Culture in

Western Amazonia.”

BRAZILIAN PRESIDENTJair Bolsonaro has weakened agencies that protect the environment and indigenous people in
his country. The laws have not changed, but enforcement has, resulting in an 80% increase in deforestation since last year.

Bruna PradoAssociated Press

Why the Amazon is burning

By Jeffrey Hoelle