L ATIMES.COM/OPINION TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2019A
OP-ED
A
nyone who’s watched a
courtroom TV drama has
heard the phrase “Hard cases
make bad law.” It’s a legal
maxim that says really ex-
treme — i.e. rare or weird — cases are not
only hard to generalize from; they’re also
a bad foundation for new legislation or
policy.
This also happens to be a good rule of
thumb in life. Imagine if you judged all
people of a certain race, or sex, or occu-
pation based upon the strangest anec-
dote you have about someone who fits a
particular category. Not every male in the
Sunshine State is like “Florida Man.”
Which brings us to another Florida
Man, Jeffrey Epstein, the admitted sex
offender and high-society billionaire who
apparently committed suicide in federal
detention over the weekend, despite
having earlier been on suicide watch. A
former friend and party bro of Bill Clin-
ton and Donald Trump alike — and more
recently the highest-profile federal pris-
oner in America — Epstein blurred the
lines between a character in “Eyes Wide
Shut” (Stanley Kubrick’s awful movie
about a one-percenter sex cult that runs
the world) and a James Bond villain who
wanted to “seed” humanity with his
DNA.
Epstein used his money and connec-
tions to get a sweetheart deal in Florida
to evade serious punishment for a host of
sex-trafficking and rape charges. A dec-
ade later, after details about the nature of
the deal were exposed, a federal prose-
cutor in New York decided to prosecute
him there.
By definition, this is a hard case to
generalize from. Most rich people don’t
live this way, never mind die this way.
In response to the news of Epstein’s
death, conspiracy theories exploded
across social media on Saturday. The
hashtags “TrumpBodyCount” and “Clin-
tonBodyCount” trended nationally, the
former in no small part because Presi-
dent Trump himself retweeted the Clin-
ton body-count hashtag.
And while it was deeply irresponsible
of the president to do that (and for Re-
publicans to defend it), it’s hard to blame
everyone else because, damn, this is a
weird story. Even Atty. Gen. William Barr
was flabbergasted by the news. “Mr.
Epstein’s death raises serious questions
that must be answered,” he said in a
statement announcing an investigation.
Barr made the right call, but this
story could not come at a worse time.
America has always had a bipartisan
taste for conspiracy theories, because
humans are wired to selectively connect
dots that fit a preconceived narrative.
Every society has its own pet notions of
secret cabals and mysterious plots. If
anything, the United States is less prone
to such things because conspiracy theo-
ries thrive in undemocratic cultures
where rulers are unaccountable and
probably arescheming behind the
scenes. The rule of law, elections and a
robust free press are great antidotes to
such thinking.
That’s why in the U.S., conspiracy
theories have historically thrived among
groups that feel locked out, whether it’s
Jim Crow-era African Americans or 19th
century white farmers during the Know-
Nothing era who believed the “Pope in
Rome” was plotting against them.
What makes this moment so different
—and dangerous — is that elites who
presumably know, or should know, better
have become increasingly paranoid as
well.
It’s normal for the party out of power
to dabble in conspiratorial thinking.
Partisanship and perceived powerless-
ness fuel the desire to see your opponents
in the worst light.
The “Clinton body count” stuff
started on the right under Bill Clinton.
Under George W. Bush, 9/11 “Trutherism”
ran rampant. Under Barack Obama,
“Birtherism” spread like a cancer.
But the trend has metastasized re-
cently. No doubt, there are many causes.
Cratering faith in institutions, especially
the media, is kindling for the fires of
paranoia. Social media prioritize the
sensational over the factual and give
outsized voice to those who claim to
know what’s “really” going on. The
growth of bureaucratic and unaccount-
able government and the rent-seeking of
the financially powerful — at home and
internationally — has turned “globalists”
into the malefactors of 21st century
know-nothingism.
Then there’s Trump. He rose to politi-
cal prominence on the back of a conspira-
cy theory, and exploited several others to
rally his troops. His detractors resort to
other conspiracy theories (mass voter
suppression, Russia, etc.) to explain his
2016 electoral college victory, and he
invokes one (millions of illegal voters) to
explain his failure to win the popular
vote. Trump’s coalition is a big tent
where people with tinfoil hats get to
belly-up to the Kool-Aid punch bowl,
proudly wearing their Qanon, Pizzagate
anti-Deep State name tags.
That’s what’s so awful about the Ep-
stein story, however the facts pan out. It
lends validation — perhaps not factual,
but certainly psychological — to the
craziest voices and will make it harder,
for years to come, to argue against the
new paranoia.[email protected]Conspiracy
theories
in the age
of Trump
JONAH GOLDBERGI
t’s now commonplace for President
Trump’s critics to accuse him of blatant
racism and even of being a white su-
premacist, as Elizabeth Warren and
Beto O’Rourke recently did. But in his
public persona, Trump is not performing as
a Klan grand wizard. Instead, he speaks in
thinly coded terms to his base. Relatively
speaking, this is good news.
If Trump were openly proclaiming white
supremacy, then it should follow that his
supporters recognize this and support his
racism. Indeed, an emerging theme among
many liberals follows this reasoning:
“Trump is a racist. If you still support him, so
are you.” But in fact the vast majority of
Trump’s supporters do not believe he’s a rac-
ist, so this kind of argument more often of-
fends rather than convinces them.
Responding to a poll taken the week be-
fore the 2016 election, almost 9 out of 10
Trump supporters, 87%, said that Trump
was not a racist. An almost equal proportion
of Hillary Clinton supporters, 91%, said he
was. These numbers have remained remark-
ably steady. A Quinnipiac poll conducted
late last month again found that about 9 out
of 10 Republicans deny Trump is a racist and
virtually the same proportion of Democrats
insist he is.
How can Trump’s supporters deny the
racism so evident to Democratic voters?
For one thing, Trump is practicing dog-
whistle politics — using rhetoric that op-
erates in code. Terms such as “shithole coun-
tries” or “go back” are silent about race, but
they provoke sharp racial reactions.
Using code has the benefit of preserving
plausible deniability. It allows Trump to stir
up strong racial emotions while denying that
he’s doing any such thing. When confronted
with the racism of his “go back” comments
aimed at four congresswomen of color,
Trump responded, “Those Tweets were
NOT Racist. I don’t have a Racist bone in my
body!”
It’s also important to understand how the
code works for the audience. As a former Re-
publican governor of Virginia once ex-
plained: “The tactic was simple: Lace your
speeches with coded appeals to racists in
Southern states. ... The intended target of
the message — the racist voter — under-
stood completely, while leaving the politician
‘plausible deniability’ with non-racist vot-
ers.”
Is this what’s happening now? Not unless
90% of Trump supporters are not only rac-
ists but committed liars to boot.
More likely, these coded messages work
by strongly resonating with voters who do
not see themselves as racist but are jolted to
action by warnings of racial threat. The suc-
cess of this sort of dog-whistle politics de-
pends on hiding the racist nature of the mes-
sages from the intended audience itself.
Rather than seeking to speak to self-con-
scious racists, the coded words aim to reas-
sure those riled up by racial appeals that
they are not bigots.
The point is to peddle group resentment.
Its uglier forms — explicit white supremacy
—would have little appeal to the broader au-
dience. Instead, the dog-whistling politician
uses words that appear to promote ideas of
security, pride or patriotism. For these vot-
ers, the cloaked language is more comfort-
able; it hides the racial character of what the
politician is actually selling.
But for most Trump supporters, his
underlying appeal remains largely racist in
nature. As the political scientists John Sides,
Michael Tesler and Lynn Vavreck report in
their book “Identity Crisis,” a study of the
2016 election, support for Trump “was
strongly linked to how Republican voters felt
about blacks, immigrants, and Muslims, and
to how much discrimination Republican vot-
ers believed that whites themselves faced.”
Trump’s supporters reassure themselves
that he and they are not racist by defining
racism incredibly narrowly.
Asupporter at a recent rally defended
Trump against the charge of racism by in-sisting, “He didn’t say nothing about the col-
or of somebody’s skin.” By implication, if
Trump attacks people’s culture, religion or
country of origin but avoids mentioning biol-
ogy, it’s not racism.
Another Trump defender, Dennis Prager,
writing in RealClearPolitics, offered this test
to Trump supporters to tell whether they are
racists: “Do you have more in common with,
and are you personally more comfortable in
the company of, a white leftist or a black con-
servative?” A “racist,” Prager wrote, “would
prefer the whites.” Supposedly, then, no one
is a racist unless their hatred for other racial
groups overpowers every other consider-
ation in their relationships.
It’s tempting to dismiss these defenses as
little more than face-saving gestures by rep-
rehensible jerks. But people are not just one
thing. As the study of implicit bias shows, al-
most all of us — whether we voted for Trump
or not — both embrace ideals of racial equal-
ity and harbor deeply internalized racist as-
sumptions. Few of us are entirely racial
saints or racist devils.
Look again at the recent Quinnipiac poll
that found that 91% of Republicans deny that
Trump is a racist. It also found that 50% of
whites, 44% of Latinos and 11% of blacks
share that view. They are not, to use an infa-
mous Hillary Clinton phrase, “a basket of de-
plorables.” These are members of our soci-
ety.
People of both parties and every color can
be moved by dog-whistle stories about sup-
posedly dangerous and undeserving “thugs”
and “illegals.” This is a sad lesson about the
enduring power of politicians to divide us by
stoking racial terrors.
Rather than condemn one another, the
way forward depends on Americans coming
together to fight those who purposefully di-
vide us.Ian Haney Lópezis a law professor at UC
Berkeley and author of the forthcoming
“Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class,
Winning Elections, and Saving America.”Talking past each other on racism
By Ian Haney López
S
ection 17.12.290 of the
Los Angeles County
Code of Ordinances
states unequivocally, “a
person shall not bring or
maintain on any beach a dog or
cat.”
Ha!
I love dogs, having grown up
with two gigantic German shep-
herds, but I agree that dogs do
not belong on public beaches.
Many dog owners clearly dis-
agree.
My family and I have spent
portions of the last three years in
Venice Beach, so that our son,
who has autism and cognitive
disability, can receive a special-
ized therapy. Venice has the
wonderful quirky combination
of beach, city life and walkable
streets that seem made for him.
But even more important for us
is the dog ban on the beaches of
L.A. and Santa Monica.
Many people with autism —
including our son J — are terri-
fied of dogs. But, despite the
ban, they abound on L.A.
beaches.
On our first day on Venice
Beach this year, a heavily preg-
nant blond woman in expensive
sunglasses was walking across
the sand, her dog in tow. A wom-
an walking the other way said to
her, “Excuse me, but the rules
are no dogs on the beach.” To
which the blond woman replied,
“Hey, no bitches on the beach!”
She then walked on as if she were
somehow the aggrieved party.
We encountered dogs on the
beach every day of our stay, on
leash and off. This year, inspired
by the civic action of the woman I
saw confronting the dog owner, I
started engaging with anyone I
saw walking a dog, asking if they
knew about the law, and if so,
why they were breaking it.
Most of those I spoke to made
clear they thought the law was
dumb. As in, there’s a beach! My
dog likes to swim! Instagram!
Lifeguards are usually the
only visible authority on the
beach. When I have spoken to
them, they always confirm the
ban, then shrug apologetically,
sometimes even as unleashed
dogs run by, and say they “can’t
do” anything about it. “They’re
supposed to be ticketed,” one
told me. “But the police won’t get
involved.”At Dockweiler Beach, we
watched as a young woman
walked past the “no dogs” sign
and onto the beach for the ex-
press purpose of letting her dog
relieve itself on the sand where
so many people walk barefoot. In
the evenings, a group of dog
owners often turned a stretch of
sand near the boardwalk into a
de facto off-leash dog park —
right under a no-dogs sign.
When I told lawbreaking dog
owners about the ordinance,
many insisted they hadn’t
known — but then I’d see them
again the next day, their dogs
still in tow.
One woman who acknowl-
edged she was knowingly break-
ing the law said, “Get the home-
less people off my porch and
then I’ll stop walking my dog on
the beach.”
Another woman, who didn’t
even bother to bring a leash,
stood by as her dog chased J and
then complained to me about his
screaming. “I’m such a loving
person,” she said. “And look how
I’m trembling! This is so trau-
matic!”
When I explained about the
ordinances, and she saw I’d in-
advertently captured the whole
thing on video, she instantly
worried that the episode would
soon be on YouTube. She ag-gressively demanded I erase it.
Then she added, “You know, I
work with kids with autism,”
making her either the world’s
worst liar or the worst aide for
kids with autism.
We love L.A., and some of the
nicest memories from our most
recent visit are of people we met
on its beaches: the older gent
toting a surfboard who was kind
to J, chatting with us about dol-
phins as we walked; the woman
lawfully walking her golden re-
triever on the boardwalk, who,
when I explained J’s fear of dogs,
patiently waited so we could
maintain the distance that
made him comfortable, even
from her friendly and calm dog.
But I also kept thinking
about the pregnant lady from
our first day. Disability is just
one accident, one genetic alter-
ation away. It’s not a club you can
avoid if you have enough money.
L.A.’s dog rule at the beaches
helps make the wonder of the
ocean available to more of the
humans who live here and visit.
Now, if it were only enforced.Marie Myung-Ok Leehas
taught writing at Yale, Brown
and Columbia universities.
Her novel “The Evening Hero”
will be published in 2020.
@MarieMyungOkLeeSOME BEACHES along the Southern California coastline allow dogs. Most of them do not. But even where dogs are
banned, some owners regularly ignore regulations and take their dogs, often off-leash, for a run on the sand or a swim.
Christina HouseFor The TimesDon’t take Bowser to the beach
Dogs are banned on L.A.
beaches. But that doesn’t
stop some owners.
By Marie Myung-Ok Lee