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If I have to read one more article blaming liberal condescension toward the red states and the white working class for the election of Trump, Im moving to Paris, France. These pieces started coming out even before the election and are still pouring down on our heads. Just within the last few weeks, theNew Republichad Michael Tomasky deploringelite liberal suspicion of middle America for such red-state practices as churchgoing and gun owning andThe New York Timeshad Joan Williams accusingDemocrats of impugning the social honor of working-class whites by talking about them in demeaning and condescending ways, as exemplified by such phrases as flyover states, trailer trash, and plumbers butt. Plumbers butt? That was a new one for me. And thats not even counting the 92,346 feature stories about rural Trump voters and their heartwarming folkways. (I played by the rules, said retired rancher Tom Grady, 66, delving into the Daffodil Diners famous rhubarb pie. Why should I pay for some deadbeats trip to Europe?) Im still waiting for the deep dives into the hearts and minds of Clinton supporterswhat concerns motivated the 94 percent of black women voters who chose her? Is there nothing of interest there? For that matter, why dont we see explorations of the voters who made up the majority of Trumps base, people who are not miners or unemployed factory workers but regular Republicans, most quite well-fixed in life? (I would vote for Satan himself if he promised to cut my taxes, said Bill Thorberg, a 45-year-old dentist in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Im basically just selfish.) There are, after all, only around 75,000 coal miners in the entire country, and by now every one of them has been profiled in theTimes.

In her fascinating recent bookStrangers in Their Own Land, the brilliant sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild asks readers to climb the empathy wall and really try to understand the worldview of Trump votersas she did, spending over five years getting to know white Southern Louisianians, many of them Cajun, who have extreme free-market, anti-government Tea Party politics although they live in Cancer Alley, an area where the petrochemical industry, abetted by the Republican politicians they voted for, has destroyed nature, their communities and their health. Hochschild has a deep grasp of human complexity, and her subjects come across as lovely people, despite their politics. As she hoped, I came away with a better understanding of how kindly people could vote for cruel policies, and how people who dont think theyre racist actually are so.

But heres my question: Who is telling the Tea Partiers and Trump voters to empathize with the rest of us? Why is it all one way? Hochschilds subjects have plenty of demeaning preconceptions about liberals and blue-statersthat distant land of hippies, feminazis, and freeloaders of all kinds. Nor do they seem to have much interest in climbing the empathy wall, given that they voted for a racist misogynist who wants to throw 11 million people out of the country and ban people from our shores on the basis of religion (as he keeps admitting on Twitter, even as his administration argues in court that Islam has nothing to do with it). Furthermore, they are the ones who won, despite having almost 3 million fewer votes. Thanks to the founding fathers, red-staters have outsize power in both the Senate and the Electoral College, and with great power comes great responsibility. So shouldnt they be trying to figure out the strange polyglot population they now dominate from their strongholds in the South and Midwest? What about their stereotypes? How respectful or empathetic is the belief of millions of Trump voters, as established in polls and surveys, that women are more privileged than men, that increasing racial diversity in America is bad for the country, that the travel ban is necessary for national security? How realistic is the conviction, widespread among Trump supporters, that Hillary Clinton is a murderer, President Obama is a Kenyan communist and secret Muslim, and the plain-red cups that Starbucks uses at Christmastime are an insult to Christians? One of Hochschilds subjects complains that liberal commentators refer to people like him as a redneck. Ive listened to liberal commentators for decades and have never heard one use this word. But say it happened once or twice. Feminazi went straight from Rush Limbaughs mouth to general parlance. One of Hochschilds most charming subjects, a gospel singer and preachers wife, uses it like a normal word. Equating women who want their rights with the genocidal murder of millions? How is that not a vile insult?

Im sure I have stereotypical views of people who live in red statesincluding forgetting that, as Tomasky points out, all those places have significant numbers of (churchgoing, gun-owning) liberals. I try not to be prejudicedmost people are pretty nice when you dont push their buttonsbut I probably have my fair share of biases. But so what? What difference does it make if I think believing in the Rapture is nuts, and hunting for pleasure is cruel? So what if I prefer opera to Elvis? What does that have to do with anything important? Empathy and respect are not about kowtowing to someones cultural and social preferences. Theyre about supporting policies that make peoples lives better, whether they share your values, or your tastes, or not.

How much empathy did Louisiana Republicans show when they electedand reelectedBobby Jindal, who, backed by Republican legislators, cut taxes, slashed spending on education, health care, and social programs and gave massive tax breaks to the very petrochemical companies that poisoned Republican voters themselves? In Oklahoma, a growing number of schools are now open only four days a weekvoters, ultimately, made the choice to cut taxes instead of pay for a decent education for the states children. You can go down the most uncontroversial list of social goodshospitals, libraries, schools, clean air and water, treatment for mentally ill people and drug addictsand Republican voters label them Big Government and oppose them. And when the consequences get too big to ignore, as with climate change, they choose to believe whatever nonsense Fox News is promoting that week, as if at least 97 percent of the worlds climate scientists are just elitists who think they know so much. True, by the time the world burns to a crisp, todays voters will mostly be dead, but wheres the empathy for their own grandchildren?

Sorry, self-abasing liberal pundits: If you go by actual deeds, liberals and leftists are the ones with empathy. We want everyone to have health care, for example, even those Tea Partiers who in the debate over the Affordable Care Act loudly asserted that people who cant afford treatment should just die. We want everyone to be decently paid for their labor, no matter how low they wear their pantssomehow the party that claims to be the voice of working people has no problem with paying them so little theyre eligible for food stamps, which that same party wants to take away. We want college to be affordable for everyoneeven for the children of parents who didnt start saving for college when the pregnancy test came out positive. We want everyone to be free to worship as they pleaseincluding Muslimseven if we ourselves are nonbelievers.

What should matter in politics is what the government does. Everything else is just flattery, like George H.W. Bushs oft-cited love of pork rinds. Unfortunately, flattery gets you everywhere.

Katha Pollitt is a columnist for The Nation.

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The Tired Myth That Progressives Lack Empathy Is Hardly the Problem - AlterNet

REDLANDS >> Is health care a right?

Some of the citys conservative and progressive thinkers tackled that question at a forum Wednesday in an attempt to reach common ground.

I ask how can life be a democratic right without a system of universal health care that guarantees everyone access to medical care to sustain life regardless of economic status? said Jennifer Nelson, member of Redlands for Progressive Change.

The common ground is, of course, people need to be able to have access to medical care but that does not mean government should be providing it across the board on a free basis, responded Julie Biggs, president of the Redlands Republican Womens Club Federated.

The forum, held at the University of Redlands, was the first installment of the Common Ground Conversation Series, a collaborative effort between Redlands For Progressive Change and the Redlands Republican Womens Club Federated.

The forums are a way to get those from both sides of the political spectrum together to find agreement on issues and build relationships in the community, said Denise Davis, founder of Redlands For Progressive Change.

In order to truly move forward as a united, and emphasis on united, States of America, we believe its critical to have conversations with our neighbors, Davis said. We arent hiding behind a computer, a phone screen. Were not just watching these debates play out on television. We believe the real change happens when we sit in the same room together listening to one another.

Representing the progressive point of view were Nelson, professor and director of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies Program at the University of Redlands and expert on the history of social justice movements for health care and human rights; Mark Pavelchak, director of institutional research at Cal State Los Angeles, former assistant professor of business administration at the University of Redlands and member of Redlands for Progressive Change; and Iqbal Pittalwalla, science writer, public relations practitioner, math and physics tutor who was born in India and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2003.

On the conservative side were Biggs, attorney, board member of the Lincoln Club and elected member of the San Bernardino County GOP Central Committee; Sean Flynn, professor of economics at Scripps College, board member of the Lincoln Club and Republican congressional candidate in 2016; and Dale Broome, physician, delegate for the California Republican Party and member of the Redlands Tea Party Patriots.

Each panelist was given time to address the question, Is health care a right? Afterward, panelists on the opposing view discussed points of common ground, which were written on a chalkboard.

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Following the panels discussion, members from the audience shared their opinions and points of agreement.

The group found agreement on a need to provide emergency care and coverage for catastrophic events, limiting governmental involvement in health care decisions, closing loopholes and fixing weaknesses in the Affordable Care Act.

The Constitution of the United States is designed to protect people and their rights from government, from the government taking over and making decisions for you that affect your personal life, Biggs said. When government decides to provide medical care for people, it makes the decision as to who will receive that and who wont receive that.

Pavelchak agreed with some of Biggs statements.

You mentioned government should not step in to make governmental health care decisions for people and that especially hits home with regard to womens reproductive rights, Pavelchak said. I think women should be allowed to make those choices without government saying no, you cant.

Davis asked the audience for their feedback on the forum, which was an experiment, to find out if theres an interest in the community for future forums, she said. Members of the audience voiced positive responses to the discussion.

The purpose of this is not for us to walk away agreeing 100 percent, Davis said. The purpose is to find some points of agreement and some points of common ground. I think weve been able to do that tonight, which is great.

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Redlands progressives, conservatives meet to find common ground on American healthcare - Redlands Daily Facts

The United States Constitution is the supreme law in America. Anyone not subject to its jurisdiction is, by definition, not a citizen (14th Amendment). Progressives have sought to change the original Constitution over more than a century. They were successful in changing the states' selection of senators to popular election.

They passed Prohibition. They added direct taxation of income. Justices of the Supreme Court have considered international and Shariah law in their decisions making their oaths a lie.

Progressives have passed treaties which created a "right" to medical care, and invented a "right" to same-sex marriage. Health care law is constitutional as a tax.

At the same time, they obligated the United States to transfer a lot of its wealth to the rest of the world with the Bretton Woods agreements and the Marshall Plan. We pay at least 20 percent of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations and many other entities.

The head of the World Bank is American; the head of the IMF is French; and the U.N. has 15 "equal" members on the Security Council and about 190 members total. Our national sovereignty is diminished by these global entities which create "rights."

Climate agreements require the United States to clean up its act which it has done with the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Environmental Protection Agency, etc. and pay for the cleanup of developing nations like China.

As a scientist I can agree that climate change summer, fall, winter and spring is real. It is caused mainly by the sun and the obliquity of the ecliptic. Humans exhale carbon dioxide, but the effect on the global climate is not significant when compared with water vapor caused by the sun and ash clouds from erupting volcanoes.

Math models do not consider unpredictable things like volcanic eruptions even though the effect can be globally significant (see Krakatau, August 1883). Faux scientists make an error when they extrapolate a day in laboratory conditions to a billion years.

Blaming Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on global warming was easily proven false in 2006 when few hurricanes and no major hurricanes occurred. For a decade no hurricanes made landfall on Florida coasts. Still Sandy was blamed on global warming. Some scientists are hardcore. If global warming is the cause, then shouldn't every year get worse? True science is observable and testable. Big Bang and Evolution ideas are conjecture, not science.

Chuck Tatum

North Augusta

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Letter: Progressives are changing Constitution - Aiken Standard

Robert Mueller at an installation ceremony at FBI Headquarters in Washington.

By Charles Dharapak/AP/REX/Shutterstock.

Among Washingtons white-collar defense bar, whether Donald Trump was under personal investigation was not a matter of if, but when: There plainly is a question of obstruction, a lawyer who served in a previous administration said in an interview, shortly after it was reported that special counsel Robert Mueller appeared to be building an obstruction case against the president. Prosecutors are not going to leave anything like this untouched . . . they have to look at it. They have no choice.

But, in terms of the law, the path forward is anything but clear. To begin with, whether a sitting president can even be indicted is a matter of legal debate. The notion is this: if you allowed a president to be indicted, any U.S. attorney in any place in the country for political reasons could indict the president, and that would cause havoc, white-collar lawyer Robert Bennett, who represented Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky scandals, explained to me. The remedy would be for the Justice Department or the special counsel to turn over the evidence to Congress and they would initiate an impeachment proceeding and then there would be a trial in the Senate with the chief justice presiding.

And, while Trump admitted on national television that he fired F.B.I. Director James Comey to hinder the Russia investigation, it is a long way from [Robert Mueller] taking a look at it to making [a] case, one leading Washington defense lawyer said. All those complications, difficulties, burdens that a prosecutor has to make in such a case still are there. Mueller, whom Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed as special counsel in the Russia probe last month, and his team would have to prove that Trumps actions were driven by corrupt intentthat he knowingly and willfully tried to thwart the F.B.I. investigation.

This corrupt intent is what remains to be shownhe has to be concealing something. In the opinion of several attorneys I spoke to, Trumps reported request that he hoped Comey could see his way to letting this go, letting Flynn go, in reference to former national-security adviser Mike Flynn, and his subsequent decision to fire the F.B.I. director dont, on their own, meet this standard. Its just not a garden-variety obstruction case, the D.C. defense lawyer continued, after noting the constitutional protections a president has to fire subordinates. I cant think ofand I dont believe one existsa case in which counterintelligence and criminal law investigation have merged or overlapped the way that they have in this case . . . I think it is a very delicate and difficult puzzle to put together for that reason.

Bennett echoed the sentiment. Of course I am not in a position to know all of the evidence, but right now I dont see where you would have a good case or a strong case on obstruction of justice.

One key to the puzzle, say attorneys, is whether Trump or someone else gave any assurances to Flynn or other subjects of the investigation, such as the presidents campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Trump is reported to have called Flynn after hed been fired and told him to stay strong, but otherwise this is a dark area. We have looked at what he said to people that could help influence the course of the investigation, but we havent looked at the question of what understanding he might have reached with the beneficiaries, the former White House lawyer said.

[Trump] is a prosecutors dream because he keeps talking.

While William Jeffress, a D.C. trial attorney who represented I. Lewis Scooter Libby in the investigation into the leak of Valerie Plames identity under George W. Bush, understands firsthand the risks of perjury and obstruction charges in political scandalsthe fate that befell Libbyhe believes that based on Trumps actions to date, Muellers ability to build a viable obstruction case against Trump could hinge on what he uncovers about the Trump campaigns Kremlin ties. The question is what evidence is there of collaboration between the Russians and the Trump campaign. That is what we dont know now, Jeffress said. If there is evidence out there that there was collaboration and Mr. Trump knew it, and against that background he was seeking to influence the investigation, hes got a problem . . . If they wind up not producing evidence of that, I think that affects their obstruction charges as well because you wouldnt be in a position to say that they were trying to keep people quiet.

To determine what, if any, coordination occurred between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin during the 2016 election, Mueller is assembling an all-star legal team. He has hired a dozen top-notch legal minds to help him in the probe, including Michael Dreeben, a leading expert on criminal law, Andrew Weissmann, who rose to prominence for his work on complex cases against New York mobsters and Enron executives, and Lisa Page, an F.B.I. lawyer with experience in organized crime. Already Muellers team has reportedly begun digging into the business and financial dealings of Flynn, Manafort, and Trumps son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner.

Critics on the left, and even some on the right, have been quick to highlight parallels between Watergate and the Russian melodrama captivating Capitol Hill. Most recently, amid rumors that Trump might fire Mueller, comparisons were drawn to the Saturday Night Massacre. But the D.C. defense attorney argued that Trumps actions have yet to bubble up to Nixons level of infamy. To be fair to Trump, he said Watergate encompassed a much greater and more expansive set of acts, direct acts by the president to interfere in an ongoing investigation than we have seen so far.

He did, however, also stress that Trump has been, and likely will continue to be, his own worst legal nightmare. For a prosecutor, there is a clear pattern to Trumps fulminations against anyone involved in the F.B.I. probe, from Comey to Mueller to Rosenstein, in turn. In effect, he supplied evidence against himself I guess is the ironic part of all this. In one sense, he is a prosecutors dream because he keeps talking.

In this respect, Trumps personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, has followed the presidents leadwhich is precisely the opposite of how defense attorneys ordinarily like to relate to their clients. They have already violated all the rules of dealing with this thing, so I dont know that there is much left for them to do tactically except to let it play out, the defense lawyer said of Trumps legal team. Its like they ratify these things and they make it harder for the investigators to look the other way or ignore . . . they are making one mistake after another.

So while Mueller may not yet have enough to build a case, the president is continually supplying new material. As the former White House lawyer said, Trumps capacity for making it a lot worsethrough his choice of counsel, choice of tacticsshouldnt be underestimated.

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Sorry, Liberals: There's No Shortcut to Indicting Donald Trump - Vanity Fair

I wrote that in 2011, in the wake of the horrific shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords that killed six people. At the time, we didn't know if Jared Loughner had any self-proclaimed political "motivations," and it turned out he was severely mentally disturbed. That didn't stop Democrats and liberals in the press from blaming Republicans and their "heated rhetoric" for the shootings. Now the shoe is on the other foot. James Hodgkinson -- a volunteer for Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign and anti-Trump socialist, according to his social media -- sought out Republican lawmakers on Wednesday at a practice for a charity baseball game, taking aim at members of Congress and severely injuring one, as well as a Capitol Hill police officer and two others. His motives seem far clearer than Loughner's, whose journals revealed an incoherent maze of anti-God, anti-government paranoia and affection for gold currency and apocalyptic conspiracy theories. Hodgkinson's Facebook page alone offers a treasure trove of evidence that he simply believed Republicans and the Trump agenda must be stopped. Rep. Rodney Davis, an Illinois Republican who survived the shooting, was ready to concede that "This could be the first political rhetorical terrorist attack."

And yet, as tempting as it is for Republicans to blame liberals for Hodgkinson's attack, we still must resist blaming political rhetoric for the ginned-up whims of a madman. Murder is murder: Focusing solely on why he claims he did it, no matter whose argument that may serve, doesn't benefit anyone.

One of the first casualties of politically charged tragedies like this one is consistency.

Some Republicans, who are always quick to insist that right-wing ideology, angry rhetoric and even the unprecedentedly divisive language that President Trump used on the campaign trail are not to blame for individual actions, are loosening their grip on that mantra.

Of course, back in 2011, Gingrich was one of the first to slam liberals for blaming the Giffords shooting on conservative rhetoric.

He was right, then, at least.

"Nobody can honestly express surprise that such a tragedy finally occurred. ... Congresswoman Giffords publicly expressed concerns when Sarah Palin, on her website, placed her district in the crosshairs of a rifle -- and identified her by name below the image -- as an encouragement to Palin supporters to eliminate her from Congress." He further insisted the burden was on Sen. John McCain to do more:

"As the elder statesman of Arizona politics, McCain needs to stand up and denounce the increasingly violent rhetoric coming from the right wing and exert his influence to create a civil political environment in his state."

Others on the left were likewise quick to blame Trump for inciting violence and are just as quick to denounce any connections between Hodgkinson and left-wing rhetoric.

He makes no mention at all of the violence at anti-Trump rallies but does anecdotally (and irrelevantly) offer that "Not once, publicly or privately, did a single person in a single meeting I was a part of ever suggest, explicitly or implicitly, that someone should go do what James Hodgkinson allegedly did today."

And then, with almost impressive inconsistency, King suggests it's once again Trump's rhetoric, not the left's, that created a climate in which a lunatic would go after Republicans. Try to make sense of that one.

This isn't to say that rhetoric is meaningless. This is a terrific time, if a tragic one, to call for a lowering of the temperature on both sides. That, first and foremost, should come from our leaders, and that should start with President Trump.

In trying times like these, it's admittedly difficult to keep our heads cool and our voices sane. But it's also imperative that we do. Consistency in our arguments, regardless of whose politics is benefiting from the situation, is the very least we should demand.

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Republicans, resist the temptation to blame liberals for this tragedy - CNN