The Week USA - August 24, 2019

16 NEWS Talking points

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QJuly was the warm-

est month the world has

witnessed since record

keeping began more than

a century ago, reports

the European Union’s Co-

pernicus Climate Change

Service. This July’s global

average temperature was

1.01 degrees above the

1981–2010 average.

The Washington Post

QOf the 10 states with the

highest poverty rates, all

but one—New Mexico—

are in the South, and gave

the majority of their votes

to Donald Trump in 2016.

The Northeast—the region

with the lowest poverty

rate—voted against Trump,

with the exception of one

electoral vote in Maine.

CNN.com

QTwo California profes-

sors have installed three

pink

seesaws

across the

U.S.-Mex-

ico border

wall

running

between

Sunland

Park,

N.M., and Ciudad Juárez,

Mexico, allowing children

on both sides of the border

to play together. Ronald

Rael of the University of

California, Berkeley, one

of its designers, said the

“Teetertotter Wall” vividly

illustrates that “actions

that take place on one side

have a direct consequence

on the other side.”

Agence France-Presse

QThe Trump adminis-

tration has extended

temporary protected status

for 7,000 Syrian refugees

living in the U.S. But the

administration is pushing

to revoke that status for

tens of thousands of peo-

ple from six countries who

were admitted years ago,

including Salvadorans,

Hondurans, Nicaraguans,

Haitians, and Sudanese.

Axios.com

Williamson: Moral beacon or kook?

Self-help guru Marianne

Williamson “will not be the

Democratic nominee” for

president, said Dana Milbank

in The Washington Post.

“But hopefully the one who

will be is taking note.” While

other Democrats bickered

over details of their health-

care plans and other policies

during last week’s debate,

Williamson—an “impossibly

youthful 67-year-old with a comical patrician

accent”—repeatedly stole the spotlight “with a

cut-the-crap sensibility.” She spoke “plainly and

passionately” about the moral danger that Donald

Trump and white nationalism pose to our nation.

“This wonkiness,” she said, won’t dispel “this

dark psychic force of the collectivized hatred that

this president is bringing up in this country.” She’s

absolutely right, which was why she dominated

Google searches and Twitter right after the debate.

“I hate to crash the tarot card–reading party,”

said Brian Boyle in the Los Angeles Times, but

Williamson is a loon. She has a “history of anti-

science, anti-vaccination rhetoric” and believes

cancer and AIDS “are physical manifestations of

a psychic scream” that can be cured with love

and hugs. Oh, and have I mentioned she’s Cher’s

spiritual adviser and “officiated at Elizabeth

Taylor’s eighth wedding” at Michael Jackson’s

Neverland Ranch? The fact

that political pundits are

lavishing praise on William-

son’s performance shows

they’ve learned precious little

from “Donald Trump’s rise

to power,” said Zack Beau-

champ in Vox.com. It wasn’t

too long ago that they show-

ered attention on another

entertaining celebrity kook

who had no chance of get-

ting the nomination. Look at how that ended up.

Just stop, already.

Williamson might be a “wackadoodle,” said

David Brooks in The New York Times, but she

“knows how to beat Trump.” As she so keenly

understands, this election is not about health care,

trade, or any of the usually worthy policy issues

that would otherwise dominate a presidential

primary. Trump’s perversion of American norms

has turned this election into a question of “who

we are as a people, our national character.” At

stake are honesty, pluralism, and “the moral

atmosphere in which we raise our children.” As

Williamson put it, “This man, our president, is

not just a politician; he’s a phenomenon.” Other

Democrats also better realize that only “a moral

uprising of the American people” will be enough

to overcome what Trump has unleashed, and

return us to decency.

Noted

Conservatives have always insisted that their

hero, Ronald Reagan, “didn’t have a racist bone

in his body,” said Josh Levin in Slate.com. But

last week, a recording emerged of Ronald Reagan

talking about black people “behind closed doors,”

and it wasn’t pretty. In the tape of a 1971 phone

call with President Nixon, then–California Gov.

Reagan angrily complains about watching Tan-

zanian officials dancing in celebration after the

United Nations voted to recognize the People’s

Republic of China. “To see those, those monkeys

from those African countries—damn them, they’re

still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” Reagan tells

Nixon, who “cackles” in response. In a subse-

quent call, a giddy Nixon described Reagan’s rant

about African “cannibals” and said that the gov-

ernor “spoke for racist Americans.”

Look—Reagan’s use of the word “monkeys” was

admittedly “sickening,” said Jay Nordlinger in

NationalReview.com. But it was “uncharacteris-

tic.” In private letters during his presidency, Rea-

gan wrote about being “frustrated and angered by

the attempts to paint me as a racist.” In speeches,

he “constantly emphasized the common human-

ity of Americans” of every race, and applied that

“universalism” to foreign affairs, working to

advance human rights in China, Cuba, and the

Soviet Union. Ask anyone who knew Reagan,

said Paul Kengor in Spectator.org, “and they will

tell you that he was not a racist, period.” There

are no other records of him making similar com-

ments, which can’t be said for Lyndon Johnson,

Harry Truman, and plenty of other Democratic

icons. Racism, to Reagan, “was a sin,” and his

entire life reflects that view.

Black people would tell you otherwise, said Renée

Graham in The Boston Globe. Reagan popular-

ized the “vile stereotype” of poor black women as

“welfare queens,” and he exploited it “to attack

housing benefits, aid to children in poverty, and

food stamps programs.” His disdain for AIDS

victims was disastrous for straight black women

as well as gays, and he was similarly blind to

the racially skewed consequences of his War

on Drugs. By launching his 1980 presidential

campaign with an ode to “states’ rights” in Mis-

sissippi, Reagan clearly proved he was willing to

tap into “white fear and resentment.” That cyni-

cal Republican strategy has a direct lineage from

Nixon to Reagan to Donald Trump. The Gipper’s

1980 campaign slogan, after all, was “Let’s Make

America Great Again.”

Reagan: Was he really a racist?

Running against ‘this dark psychic force’