PBS's "Frontline" Documentary "Democracy on Trial" Raises Issue of Who Is a True "Conservative"

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night (Tuesday, January 30) PBS ran a 2 ½-hour episode of their long-running documentary series Frontline called “Democracy on Trial,” directed by Michael Kirk and co-written by him and Mike Wiser. It purported to be the whole story of the indictments against former President Donald J. Trump but it was pretty much a rehash of the hearings last summer of the House Select Committee on January 6, 2021. Most of the archival film clips were from the committee’s televised hearings, and a lot of the interviewees were participants in the hearings, including former Congressmember Adam Kinzinger and former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers. Bowers was voted out of office by the voters in his legislative district and Kinzinger voluntarily chose not to run for re-election because he realized it wasn’t worth the bother – two more heads on Donald Trump’s trophy wall of Republicans who disagreed with him and tried to hold him accountable. One of the people I felt sorriest for in the show was Robert Ray, a former Trump attorney, who tried to present the case for Trump’s defense in a calm, reasonable and relatively emotionless fashion – which may explain why Ray is a former Trump attorney. Last Monday, when Rachel Maddow interviewed E. Jean Carroll (whom Trump sexually assaulted in the mid-1990’s and who sued him for defamation and won two judgments against him – the first for over $5 million and the second for a whopping $83.3 million) and her two attorneys, Roberta Kaplan and Shawn Crowley, one of the attorneys mentioned that Trump’s principal counsel in the case, Alina Habba, behaved very differently whether or not Trump was in the courtroom. When he wasn’t, she was a professional, reliable attorney who avoided histrionics; when he was, she went off the deep end with him and, among other things, insulted the judge to his face.

Though the show didn’t mention it, Fox News chose not to cover the House hearings on January 6 and, when asked why, the people in charge of Rubert Murdoch’s “news” network said bluntly that it was because their audiences weren’t interested in seeing it. It’s yet more evidence that the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was wrong when he said, “Every man is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own set of facts.” America’s media landscape has become so fragmented that people are entitled to their own sets of facts, since the modern age of multiple TV networks and Web sites allows them to absorb only information that agrees with their preconceived notions of what is “true.” It’s been said that had Fox News existed during Watergate, Richard Nixon would have survived politically and served out his full Presidential term. One development since the House committee hearings on January 6 that the show mentioned was Trump’s (and his attorneys’) attempt to get the whole case against him thrown out on the idea that a former President is absolutely immune from any criminal charges against him for things he allegedly did while in office unless he was first impeached by the House of Representatives and convicted and removed from office by the Senate for the same offenses. In this, as in so much else, Trump is following the precedent set by Richard Nixon, who in 1977 matter-of-factly told interviewer David Frost, “When the President does it, that means it is not illegal.”

Nixon was effectively arguing for an American version of the Führerprinzip (“Leader Principle”), the Nazi doctrine that the will of the leader was the ultimate law and he could make anything he wanted to do legal just on his own say-so. Trump is also very much of this mind-set; early on in his Presidency he fired FBI director James Comey when Comey refused to pledge “loyalty” – “loyalty” not to the United States Constitution and the laws he was pledged to enforce, but personal loyalty to Donald Trump. And it was Nixon’s hand-picked successor, Gerald Ford, who established the precedent that former Presidents cannot be prosecuted for things they did in office when he gave Nixon a blanket pardon for everything he did as President just one month after Nixon resigned the Presidency. Every time I hear how unprecedented it is to indict a former President for crimes allegedly committed while in office – including on this show, in which narrator Will Lyman said, “For the first time in American history, a president [was] charged with crimes in office” – I once again curse Gerald Ford and hope he is rotting in hell for the Nixon pardon.

One of the most interesting aspects of this Frontline episode, at least to me, was the sheer number of people who were identified as “conservative” in the chyrons announcing who they were as they made statements critical of Trump: David French, Bill Kristol (once an iconic figure on the American Right), Mona Charen, Gabriel Sterling (the Florida elections official who first warned that Trump’s statements about the 2020 election were going to trigger violence), Charlie Sykes, and perhaps Trump’s most significant critic on the Right: retired judge J. Michael Luttig. It was Luttig, along with former Vice-President Dan Quayle, who convinced Trump’s Vice-President, Mike Pence, that he did not have the loony-tunes “power” Trump and his attorneys, notably John Eastman, said he had to reverse the outcome of the Presidential electors by throwing out slates of electors who’d voted for Joe Biden and replacing them with electors pledged to Trump. In her 1974 book The Mask of State: Watergate Portraits, Mary McCarthy said that among other things, Watergate had been a test to determine who is truly “conservative” – “conservative” in the Edmund Burke sense of believing in the rule of law and in social traditions that should not be reversed lightly or arbitrarily based on the idea that we could do better by radically changing course – and who isn’t. As I’ve read in these pages before, the current six-member majority on the United States Supreme Court is not “conservative”; the six justices, three of them appointed by Donald Trump, are Right-wing revolutionaries committed to making radical social changes in American society (most of which, above all the overturning of Roe v. Wade, are not supported by majorities of the American people).

It’s become obvious that most Americans, especially most Republicans, are not “conservative” in the Burkean sense either; they are committed to a radical restructuring of American society aimed at reversing the liberal gains of the 20th century (the 1930’s and 1960’s in particular) and remaking America into a Christian-nationalist dictatorship. Among the voices of true conservatism on this program was Bill Kristol’s analysis of the dilemma Mike Pence faced on the eve of January 6, 2021: “Pence had just a clear conflict between what Trump wanted him to do and what the Constitution and the rule of law required him to do. I think he'd managed to navigate those conflicts in various ways over four years. Not always, in my view, the right way. But this was such a blatant transgression.” Another voice for true conservatism on this show came from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger – one of the few Republican politicians who has defied Trump and got away with it, repelling the primary opponent Trump put up against him and being renominated and re-elected – who explained his reaction to the phone call he got from Trump on January 2, 2021 pleading with him to “find” the 11,780 votes that would have “flipped” Georgia from Biden to Trump. “What I knew is that we didn’t have any votes to find,” Raffensperger recalled. “We had continued to look. We investigated. I could have shared the numbers with you. There were no votes to find.”

Former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers also spoke for true conservatism against the cult of Trump when he said, after Trump appealed to him in on the basis of party loyalty, “For someone to ask me to deny my oath and just let the courts figure it out, or punt it to someone else, is not something I will do. … We choose to follow the outcome of the will of the people. It’s my oath.” And Gabriel Sterling, who recalled that he had been a Republican since age 9 during Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign in 1984, said, “I’ll go to my deathbed knowing that they knowingly lied. They looked in the state senators' eyes, the people of Georgia, the people of America, and lied to them about this, and knew they were lying, to try to keep this charade going on that there was fraud in Georgia.” But given the thug-like behavior of the Trump cultists and the fact that anyone, no matter how low on the totem pole – like Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, who were personally called out by President Trump and his then-attorney, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani on ridiculous charges that they altered the Georgia election results – gets not only vituperative insults but out-and-out death threats, it takes real personal courage to stand up to the Trump thugocracy, and that kind of courage is in tragically short supply in today’s Republican Party.

Doug Porter: GOP Flaunts Racism as Election Strategy

I've posted e-mails from Doug Porter at Words & Deeds before, but here's a good one regarding Nikki Haley's bizarre (to say the least) response to a question about why the U.S. Civil War (the one from 1861 to 1865) happened. If you've seen the clip on TV, you can sense the gears going around in Haley's brain as she tries to figure out what's the "right" response. The plain truth is that the U.S. Civil War happened because some white people in the seceding states wanted to make sure they kept having the "right" to own Black people as slaves. Everything else is just B.S., and it's fascinating to hear Haley saying the Civil War was a battle over "individual freedom" without specifying just which side was for "individual freedom" and which side was against it. – Mark Gabrish Conlan, January 2, 2024

GOP Flaunts Racism as Election Strategy

It's as American as apple pie.

by DOUG PORTER

JANUARY 2, 2024

A GOP Presidential wannabe, Nikki Haley, is getting noticed in the media because she danced around a citizen’s questions concerning the civil war and slavery.

Get this: a brown-skinned person who presents as white pandered to the racists in the electorate who would harm her if given the opportunity. I suppose nothing is surprising in a political world shaped by lies and conspiracies.

Haley is trying to represent herself as a “reasonable” candidate to lead her party into the 2024 elections… wink, wink.

Here’s columnist Thom Hartmann, who also has a lot to say about the economic conditions prior to the Civil War:

When she was called out on it by the questioner, who said he was “astonished” that her answer didn’t mention slavery, she tried to be glib, asking rhetorically, “What do you want me to say about slavery?”

When the gaffe went viral, Haley tried to clean it up by saying that “of course” slavery was a cause of the Civil War, and, later, blaming the “gotcha” question on a “Democratic plant” who’d sneakily inserted himself into her town hall.

The simple reality is that the pro-slavery South is still very much with us, and is still—after 163 years—trying to make the case that democracy should be replaced with a strongman white supremacist oligarchy.

“Freedom” is the word of choice by modern day apologists, used to paper over past events connected to an economic and cultural system based on the belief that their supreme being created a hierarchy determined by sex and skin color.

Having fostered the perception that the white population in this country is threatened by granting rights or eliminating barriers to other racial groups, GOP politicians are openly supporting causes and actions designed to protect its imagined majority of citizens. Individuals considered extremists are now accepted as part of their coalition by party leaders.

Since they can’t use the words “n***er lovers” any more, GOP politicians have adopted the term “cultural Marxism” to dismiss criticism of their political actions and portray those opposing them as dangerous. We’ve reached the point where the concept of a nation built around advantages for certain classes is considered normal

Books and curriculum inclusive of or featuring those considered to be outside the white, male nexus are being suppressed. Companies with diversity programs are coming under fire. And cultural events with non mainstream leading characters are boycotted and disparaged.

Jumping back into US history, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t accepted by his opposition or much of the populace as a great moral statement. As Heather Cox Richardson enumerates, Lincoln’s party lost bigly in the 1862 midterm elections, losing 25 seats in the House of Representatives and control of governance in Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana.

The sausage-making of the Emancipation Proclamation had long-term repercussions. The redefinition of Black Americans as superhuman workers undercut later attempts to support formerly enslaved people as they transitioned to a free economy, and the road to equality was not at all as smooth as the Republicans hoped. But that such a foundational change in our history emerged from such messy give and take, necessary in order to preserve our democratic system, seems a useful thing to remember in 2024. The well of racism in this country runs deep. The shockwave after H. Rap Brown declared that “racism is as American as apple pie” eventually led to processes of nation self-examination and some realization that so much of our society was built upon the assumption of white supremacy.

The process came up short when it came to understand racism’s role in our national wealth and its shaping of the economy. Thus, the door to Make America Great Again was left open. The foundation of racism renewal is economic, of course, a building block in the quest of a few to destroy democracy and pave the way for an authoritarian oligarchy.

Instead of a civilization reaching for the stars of equality and empathy, these are advocates for a future existing in the sewers of ignorance and hatred; where violence and cruelty are currency.

An indication of the weakness in our democracy is that there won’t be anti-racism advocacy involved in the vast majority of voting choices we get to make this year. In fact, such advocacy is actively portrayed as a call for chaos by those who would use this imagined chaos as a stepping stool for power.

Simply saying the phrase Black Lives Matter is portrayed as a call for anarchy and destruction. In vetting the profiles of users at Threads**, a would-be successor for Xitter, I’ve noticed the preponderance of ordinary people who use the BLM initials as a statement of beliefs.

Politicians, on the other hand, rarely use the phrase. If you wanna push back against the book banners and denialists, let’s make that phrase mainstream for good. It’s just a word choice, but symbolism is a powerful political motivator.

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I am currently signed up with a half-dozen social media platforms with formats and intentions similar to those of the company that Elon Musk has destroyed. Sometime this spring I’ll publish an accounting of my perceptions and experiences. One thing I can already tell you, is that the days of social media serving as news feed are long gone.

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Tuesday’s News Shorts

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Nebraska Legislative Preview - The Definition of Insanity Via Daily Kos

Erin Porterfield, executive director of nonprofit Heartland Workforce Solutions investigated why blue collar workers are now leaving Nebraska. Among reasons cited are that negative experiences with racism “contribute to feeling unsafe” and to reduced employment and social opportunities. “Feeling like Nebraska isn’t for everyone,” was another refrain, along with increased limits “on rights for people of diverse identities, including transgender care.” How are the Nebraska Republicans responding to this crisis? If you guessed more tax cuts for the rich, you would be right! Surprise! Surprise! They are consistent. Pillen has pledged to cut property taxes “significantly” in the next legislative session. The Nebraska Governor promised to reduce property taxes by $2 billion or 40%. Pillen would fund these massive tax cuts by cutting state spending by 6% and placing draconian spending caps on county and local governments. That would most likely include cuts to public school funding.

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Playbook PM: Biden’s big election-year choice Via Politico

And in a handful of swing-state counties that have backed the last four presidential victors, WSJ’s Ken Thomas, Catherine Lucey, Eliza Collins and Paul Overberg find a familiar refrain: Voters aren’t enthused about either frontrunner. In these areas, often removed from big cities and home to aging populations, there’s “a broader frustration with America’s trajectory and a desire to break the logjams that impede progress on the country’s economic and social problems.” Behind closed doors, an uncorked Biden often gets more candid, or assertive, at campaign fundraisers. That can create headaches for aides who have to clean up his gaffes or inconvenient truths, but several donors tell Reuters’ Steve Holland, Nandita Bose and Trevor Hunnicutt that his campaign “could actually use more of this type of aggressive language, especially pushing back on Republican attacks.” Meanwhile, Trump is laying big plans: He tells Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle and Alexander Marlow that he’ll make a “heavy play” for Minnesota, New Jersey, New York (!), New Mexico and Virginia in the general election. And he floats the possibility of a rally at Madison Square Garden.

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Shawn Fain’s New Year’s Resolution Is to Lay the Ground for a National Strike Via The Nation

Fain’s May Day throwdown takes aim at capital’s divide-and-conquer legal regime. But to be successful in 2028, the labor movement will need millions of workers to join in: those now in unions, who should begin to line up contracts for that decisive date, and many more who are not yet in unions but are beginning to organize.

This vision is what makes the new surge of auto worker organizing the UAW is currently embarking on particularly momentous.

In the wake of the UAW’s breakthrough strike and contract settlements at Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, workers at the industry’s growing non-union plants—Toyota, Honda, Subaru, Hyundai, BMW, VW, Tesla, and more—are beginning to organize on a scale not seen in generations. Thousands of workers have signed union cards in the last few weeks. The UAW has dispatched organizers to non-union plants and launched a splashy national media campaign along with social media organizing tools.