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POLITICS-Should Democrats seek common ground with Donald Trump or oppose him at every turn? On Capitol Hill, should they abet or obstruct? (Photo above: Senators Feinstein and Schumer.) 

I can answer that. But first, let’s flash back to Inauguration Night, 2009. 

Barack Obama had just beaten John McCain by a margin of 10 million votes and 7.2 percentage points — the biggest Democratic win since 1964. Democrats also won both congressional chambers. And yet, despite this decisive pro-Democratic mandate to govern, congressional Republicans resolved, at a private dinner on day one, not to offer a scintilla of cooperation. 

Resistance Isn’t Futile. 

They resolved to thwart Obama’s efforts to fix the Great Recession, hoping that his failures would grease a Republican comeback in the 2012 race. Newt Gingrich, a dinner guest, reportedly told his former colleagues, “You will remember this day. You’ll remember this as the day the seeds of 2012 were sown.” 

Here’s where we are today: Trump has lost the popular vote (at last count) by a whopping 2.66 million. His losing share of the popular vote (46.2 percent) is the worst for an Electoral College winner since John Quincy Adams in 1824. Even his winning electoral vote margin (74 votes) is a pittance compared to Obama’s winning ’08 margin (192). So why should Democrats on Capitol Hill give Trump the cooperative deference that Republicans denied to Obama? 

Godfather Wisdom. 

As Michael Corleone said in “The Godfather II” movie, “My offer is this: Nothing.” 

Cooperating with Trump, behaving as if he were just another Republican, would lend legitimacy to his authoritarian bent. Cooperating with Trump would “normalize” his racist populism and his serial lies. Such a strategy — tantamount to surrender — would be disastrous for a Democratic Party that has spent decades fighting for tolerance and diversity. 

Democrats have buckled in the past. Even though George W. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000, they acted as if the guy had a mandate to govern. Lots of Democrats voted for Bush’s deficit-cratering tax cuts. They voted for his Iraq war resolution, despite the dearth of evidence that Saddam had WMDs. They supplied enough votes to put John Roberts in charge of the Supreme Court. Republicans reciprocated by foiling Obama on a regular basis, blocking everything from his 2011 American Jobs Act  (which could’ve put as many as two million people back to work) to his last Supreme Court nominee (the radical refusal to even hold hearings on Merrick Garland was unprecedented.) 

Do What Mitch Did. 

David Faris, a political science prof at Roosevelt University, said it well in a column the other day: 

“[Cooperation] is the first instinct of the Democratic Party even after a crushing, incomprehensible defeat … The urge to minimize the damage in defense of the public interest is broadly shared, and understandable. It must make many Democrats proud to support a party that truly believes in the public good, even at the expense of winning. 

“On the other hand, no. It’s time for Democrats to say no. To everything … 

“It helps that the Republicans — led by a man who rage-tweets fake news in the middle of the night — are about to embark on a long voyage of turning every single thing they touch into garbage. There should be no Democratic fingerprints whatsoever on the coming catastrophe … Hand Trump the keys and let him drive into a tree.” 

He’s Already Too Extreme. 

That sounds harsh. But, lest we forget, Republicans paid virtually no political price for their eight years of anti-Obama obstruction. Voters didn’t seem to care that Republicans thwarted a president who twice won elections with a majority of the popular vote. Why would they punish Democrats for standing in steadfast opposition to an unqualified poseur who was rejected last month by 53.8 percent of all voters? Chuck Schumer, the new Senate minority leader, is indeed warning that when Trump gets too extreme, “we’ll go after him with everything we’ve got.” 

Senate Democrats can set the tone by putting Trump’s Cabinet picks through the wringer, because a number of them deserve to be seriously slow-walked — most notably, attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions (rejected for a federal judgeship 30 years ago, due to his racist remarks), Treasury nominee Steve Mnuchin (who made piles of money foreclosing on homeowners during the Great Recession), and Health and Human Services nominee Tom Price (who wants to kill Obamacare, a move that would nix coverage for 20 million people). And what remotely qualifies Ben Carson to be housing secretary, beyond the fact that he lives in a house? 

Fortunately, Democrats are indeed vowing to combat those nominees. Hey, it’s a start. My unsolicited advice is simple: Grow a pair.

(Dick Polman, former political writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, blogs at NewsWorks.org. This piece was posted most recently at CalBuzz.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

POST-ELECTION DISORIENTATION-America is in a muddle and our President-elect is the center of our national confusion. If you think that the general public is disoriented by “Trumpism,” that’s nothing compared to the panic within both the Democrat and Republican parties and our allies and enemies worldwide. The real cause of apprehension is not Trump’s highly questionable economic policies and strange affection for foreign dictators (except for Fidel Castro.) A legitimate concern is Trump’s mental stability or lack thereof. 

Over months of campaigning, Donald Trump exhibited some bizarre behavior, particularly with his late night tweets. The content of his tweets and other statements were beyond the pale. However, these eccentricities were excused by his background as a reality TV star and a lack of any political experience. 

Trump’s Post-Election Behavior 

Trump’s behavior after the November election, however, has set off alarm bells. The inability of a person to conform his behavior to the norms of society suggests that he could be mentally unstable. In all societies, there are cultural expectations. What is appropriate for a child is not permitted for an adult. A toddler who runs outside naked provokes giggles, but a 35-year old naked man walking around a department store will be arrested. In the words of William Shakespeare: 

   All the world’s a stage,

   And all the men and women merely players:

   They have their exits, and their entrances;

   And one man in his time plays many parts.

   [As You like it, Act II, Scene VII] 

Because the social role of Leader of the Free World is defined by the expectations of hundreds of millions of people, Trump’s inability to control his behavior is noticable. 

Perhaps, his first serious post-election mis-tweet came when he told the cast of Hamilton to “apologize” for asking Vice-President Pence make sure that the new administration represented all Americans. As a people, we have no more basic liberty than Free Political Speech. Yet Trump demanded an apology for free speech. He called the Hamilton cast’s message “harassment.” 

There is one aspect of Trump’s Hamilton tweets which people have not heeded: the cast was not speaking to Trump, but to Vice-President Pence. Nonetheless, Trump launched his vituperative tweets, possibly transgressing the respect he owed the Vice President-Elect’s ability to speak for himself. When Pence did have an opportunity to comment, he affirmed the American passion for free speech, saying that he told his family that the boos and cheers they heard when entering the theater were the “sound of freedom.” 

Loss of Citizenship for Displeasing President-Elect Trump 

On November 28, 2016, out of nowhere, Trump tweeted that anyone who burns the American flag should lose his US citizenship. Justice Jackson in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, (1943) 319 U.S. 624 stated America’s position on obnoxious speech: 

“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.” 

Even arch-conservative Justice Scalia agreed with Liberal Justice Brennan in 1989 when both endorsed Justice Jackson’s opinion that the American Constitution protects obnoxious speech in Texas v Johnson, (1989) 491 U.S. 397. It’s vital for us to recognize that Americans across the political spectrum are unanimous on the sanctity of obnoxious speech. Trump’s repudiation of that shows that he either does not comprehend American values or he does not feel bound to behave as an American. 

His Actions Alarm Even Sarah Palin 

Quite recently, we’ve seen Trump intervene with the decision of Carrier to move jobs to Mexico. Independent of whether Carrier should move jobs to Mexico is Trump’s double disregard for his actual role as the President-Elect who is not yet the President. Furthermore, Presidents should not operate by making threats to private businesses or obtaining special benefits for them. The movement of jobs to foreign countries has complex causes; it requires Americans to act as a group through their elected representatives to decide what should be done. 

The Trashing of International Protocol 

The most egregious departure from international norms came with Trump’s phone call with the Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. Since 1979, the United States has followed a consistent and complicated policy with respect to Mainland China and Taiwan. Whether that policy should be altered is open to debate, but Trump’s gross violation of diplomatic protocol is beyond disturbing. President-Elect Trump has not even selected his Secretary of State. Thus, we know that his rash deviation from accepted world-wide procedure did not happen after discussing its ramifications with his nominee for Secretary of State. Even Vice-President-elect Pence’s comments on the Sunday, December 4, talk shows indicate that this change in China policy caught him by surprise. 

The Personal Punitive Nature of Donald Trump 

There is another aspect of Trump’s behavior that has thrown all of Washington into disarray. He seems to believe that people who disagree with him should be punished. Women who receive abortions should be thrown in jail. Companies whose business decisions he dislikes should be subject to a 35% tariff (as if this were 1650, the height of Mercantilism.) Free speech merits loss of citizenship.

This punitive approach against people who offend him is the most dangerous aspect of Trump’s personality. People we often lump under the labels of anti-social, psychopathic and sociopathic share these traits: an inability to abide by deeply held social norms and the tendency to attack people who displease them. 

As is customary when faced with a bully’s blatant disregard for fundamental values, no one has the nerve to stand up and denounce Trump’s psychopathic behavior. Rather, it seems that most, with the possible exception of David Frum, try to accommodate it. If you want to see how dictators take over a country, just turn on your TV set.

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

ALPERN AT LARGE--Much to the anguish of those who remember the 20th Century, and the horrific lessons learned during that era's worldwide conflicts, too much of our youth will never know of it. As with Civics, Financial Literacy, Home Economics, Shop Class, Cursive, and Typing/Keyboarding, there are many things that high school (and even college!) graduates just aren't being taught. 

So with the understanding that Millennials, much to the horror of their parents, often graduate high school (and college) with an understanding of U.S. History that stops at the American Civil War, I will continue to throw out occasional quizzes of the 20th Century and of history/civics-related issues.  

And one gigantic conflict that dominated the latter half of the 20th Century was the Cold War.

Because the 20th Century ... and all of its painful lessons ... DID happen.  

THE ALPERN 20TH CENTURY QUIZ—HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW/REMEMBER?

(Correct answers at bottom of this column)  

1) "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe." This comment, part of a speech which many believe formally began the Cold War, was said by which World War Two leader? 

1. a) Harry Truman of the United States 
2. b) Winston Churchill of Great Britain
3. c) Josef Stalin of The Soviet Union
4. d) Charles DeGaulle of France

2) The Cold War was fought between which two entities?

1. a) The Allied and Axis powers
2. b) The Western (the Americas) and Eastern (Europe and Asia) Hemispheres
3. c) The United States and its allies in Europe, and the Soviet Union and its satellite states
4. d) The United States and China

3) Which organization was formed to halt the spread of Communism to western Europe, to forbid the recurrence of nationalist militarism, and to encourage political integration in Europe? 

1. a) The North American Treaty Organization
2. b) The North Atlantic Treaty Organization
3. c) The United Nations
4. d) The Warsaw Pact

4) The following Central and Eastern European nations had unsuccessful revolts against the Soviet Union and their Soviet-placed leaders in the 1950's and 1960's except: 

1. a) Yugoslavia
2. b) Czechoslovakia
3. c) East Germany
4. d) Hungary

5) The barrier that kept East Germans from escaping to the West, and was emblematic of "The Iron Curtain", was known as: 

1. a) The German Divide
2. b) The Great Wall of Germany
3. c) The German Partition
4. d) The Berlin Wall

6) The U.S. President who declared, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall!" was:

1. a) John F. Kennedy 
2. b) Ronald Reagan
3. c) Jimmy Carter
4. d) Richard Nixon

7) The U.S. President who declared, "Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner!"... All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner!" in order to boost the morale of West Berliners, who lived in an enclave within East Germany, was:

1. a) John F. Kennedy 
2. b) Ronald Reagan
3. c) Jimmy Carter
4. d) Richard Nixon

8) Which President led a boycott of a Summer Olympics in Moscow, and in response to a Soviet invasion of which country? 

1. a) John F. Kennedy/Cuba 
2. b) Ronald Reagan/Granada
3. c) Jimmy Carter/Afghanistan
4. d) Richard Nixon/Vietnam

9) The United States and Soviet Union had major involvements in the following conflicts, and which were major sources of tension between the two superpowers, except for: 

1. a) The Korean War
2. b) The Vietnam War
3. c) The Yom Kippur War 
4. d) The Cyprus Civil War

10) Which of the following statements is true? 

1. a) The United States was the first nation to send an unmanned satellite into space, and to land a man on the moon
2. b) The Soviet Union was the first nation to send an unmanned satellite into space, and to land a man on the moon
3. c) The Soviet Union was the first nation to send an unmanned satellite into space, but the United States was the first nation to land a man on the moon
4. d) The United States was the first nation to send an unmanned satellite into space, but the Soviet Union was the first nation to land a man on the moon
5. e) Both the United States and Soviet Union succeeded in landing a man on the moon 

It's nice to know that the International Space Station is a first-rate example of how the United States and Russia (the predominant entity of the Soviet Union) can work together and even be friends.

In the War on Terrorism, both the U.S. and Russia have been friends and enemies--"frenemies", if you will--because both nations have been and are threatened/victimized by terrorism.  But old rivalries die hard. 

And while President Obama ridiculed Republican contender Mitt Romney, during a 2012 election debate when Romney's declared that Russia was the foremost threat to the U.S., much of the outgoing President's foreign conundrums in office stemmed from the European, Asian, and Middle Eastern conflicts with Russia.  Again, old rivalries die hard. 

It's anyone's guess whether President-Elect Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will be friends, enemies, or "frenemies".  A half-century of pent-up and open frustrations and nuclear threats (HOW MANY OF US REMEMBER HOW HORRIFYINGLY REAL THE MOVIE "THE DAY AFTER" WAS?), to say nothing of nuclear bomb drills and ingrained fears of the Soviets, doesn't go away overnight. 

Because the Twentieth Century, and all of its horrific disasters (including the Cold War that dominated the foreign policy of the latter half of that century) DID happen. 

QUIZ ANSWERS 

1) b

2) c

3) b

4) a

5) d

6) b

7) a

8) c

9) d

10) c

(Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D. is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties.  He is also a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at  [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.)

-cw

POST-ELECTION CONCERNS-Watching Donald Trump pick his Cabinet members has been like watching a 16-car pileup unfold in slow motion. Each move fills us with horror in the knowledge of what the near future brings. 

But the assembling of Trump’s transition team has been distracting us from one crucial aspect of our current political mess: what our current president is doing in his last few weeks in office -- or, more accurately, not doing. President Barack Obama appears so eager to be done with his tenure that he seems more invested in a smooth transition of power than in fulfilling his duty to the American people. 

Ensuring a smooth transition implies business as usual. Except that there is absolutely nothing usual, or even presidential, about Trump’s Electoral College win. And what the president-elect is promising us is so harrowing that Obama owes the nation a last-minute flurry of political actions that are within his power to take before the “Trumpocalypse,” as some are calling it, is upon us.

Democrats, are you desperate to do something about Trump? Then demand that your current president do you a solid and actually use the popular mandate he earned when he was elected, twice. Obama’s refusal so far to do even one of the following is only more proof of the Democratic Party’s ineptitude and spinelessness. 

Stop the Dakota Access Pipeline Project 

The most important political battle of this year outside the electoral realm has been the indigenous-led resistance against the Dakota Access oil pipeline (DAPL). After many months of activism by the Standing Rock Sioux and their supporters, law enforcement has upped the ante in incredibly violent ways, unleashing military-grade weaponry on an unarmed citizenry. President Obama has been forced by public pressure to delay completion of the pipeline. But what is needed is an end to the project.

President-elect Trump, on the other hand, is already eager for the decision to be made during his term and has promised to speed up the Army Corps of Engineers’ review process. Among Trump’s many financial conflicts of interest is his stake in the DAPL.  It would be disastrous for him to be the decider on this issue. There is absolutely no doubt about whose side he would take. 

Meanwhile high-profile political figures have tried in vain to get Obama to do the right thing on DAPL. From Sen. Bernie Sanders to former Vice President Al Gore and even musician Neil Young, many have appealed to Obama to end the project. Twenty-eight tribal leaders, appreciative of the attention Obama has paid to their communities in the past, have now called on him to “reroute the pipeline away from tribal lands, waters, and sacred places.” 

What does Obama have to lose by exercising his authority through the Army Corps of Engineers and doing the right thing? 

Make a Recess Appointment to the Supreme Court 

It is outrageous how the GOP has stood in Obama’s path to filling the Supreme Court vacancy. Without a doubt Democrats would not treat a Republican president in the same manner. No other Supreme Court nominee in the history of the United States has waited as long as Merrick Garland to be confirmed. What’s more, Obama’s pick to replace the late Antonin Scalia does not even come close to espousing the leftist counterpart to Scalia’s extremist right-wing ideology. Like Obama, Garland is a centrist liberal. Unlike Obama, Trump will not hesitate to appoint the most conservative justice possible. The resulting Supreme Court will probably roll back even more of the Voting Rights Act, possibly Roe v. Wade, and who knows what other social and political progress this nation has made in recent decades. 

What Obama can do to send a strong message to the Republican Party is make a temporary recess appointment of Garland to the court. Legal experts point out that Obama has the right to do it, even though he has taken scant advantage of the power to make recess appointments as compared with his predecessors. While temporary, Garland’s presence on the court could stave off regressive court decisions for at least a year. Sadly, Obama has given no indication that he plans to exercise his authority. 

The larger context is that Trump might get to appoint as many as three justices to the court during his tenure: for Scalia’s seat and those that might be vacated by Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who is 83, and Stephen Breyer, 78, both strong liberals. Again, what does Obama have to lose by making a strong gesture with a recess appointment to the court? 

Pardon DACA Recipients 

Among the most terrifying promises Trump made during his campaign was to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. There is especially great fear that he will repeal Obama’s signature immigration executive action, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Already, lawyers are recommending that those eligible for DACA should not apply at this time, given Trump’s election, because in order to be eligible for deportation relief, immigrants have to out themselves to federal authorities. With access to the information of hundreds of thousands of DACA registrants, Trump could easily deport them. 

Some people have urged Obama to use his presidential power to pardon DACA recipients. In California where many cities, as well as state and private universities, have declared themselves “sanctuaries” for the undocumented, Democratic lawmakers have publicly called on Obama to grant them legal status. According to the Los Angeles Times, Obama “promptly batted down the idea,” saying that pardons are not applicable because immigration violations are civil offenses, not criminal ones. 

Astonishingly, there is actually a Republican-led effort to help DACA recipients. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has announced plans to introduce legislation to extend DACA protections.

It might certainly be a legal gray area for Obama to pardon violators of civil offenses, but so is Congress’ stonewalling of the president’s right to appoint a Supreme Court justice. Where DACA is concerned, the lives of 750,000 young people are at stake. These are people who trusted the government and turned over their personal and contact information in order to live and work without fear. If Obama does not even attempt to protect the members of a program he created, he will be partly responsible for what they might face under Trump. 

Undo His Executive War Powers 

Many on the left spent the last eight years denouncing Obama’s unprecedented use of executive power for destructive purposes: the “war on terror.” Citing the Bush-era Authorization for Use of Military Force, Obama expanded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and used it to justify military actions against Islamic State, even though Congress is supposed to authorize war. The legal gray areas where Obama appears reluctant to operate seem sometimes perfectly black and white when it comes to his right to drop bombs, particularly through the unmanned drone program.

The Intercept’s Alex Emmons summarized the “terrifying powers” that Trump will have as commander in chief, thanks to Obama—including the power of mass surveillance, the misuse of the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers, and more. 

Obama can undo the destructive powers he has granted himself before he leaves office. According to Emmons, “Most of the new constraints on the security state during the Obama years were self-imposed, and could easily be revoked.” After all, Obama warned Americans before this election of the dangers of having a president as unstable as Trump with access to the nation’s nuclear codes. He now owes it to us to take as much action as he can to curb the presidential powers he has unleashed. 

Offer Justice to Snowden, and Clemency to Political Prisoners and Drug Offenders 

One way in which Obama could offer a mea culpa for his aggressive legal pursuit of whistleblowers is to offer the chance for former NSA contractor Edward Snowden to return to the U.S. with assurances of a fair trial for crimes with which he has been charged. A letter signed by 15 former intelligence officials who served on the Watergate-era Church Committee asks the president for leniency in Snowden’s case. 

Going further, Obama could offer clemency to political prisoners who have spent decades behind bars (or in exile) under unjust circumstances and as a result of political persecution. A great starting point is this list compiled by Sara David, naming Assata Shakur, Oscar López Rivera, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier and Chelsea Manning as worthy of clemency. 

Human Rights Watch has also written the president a letter urging him to offer relief to federal prisoners serving long sentences for drug offenses through the use of his clemency power. HRW reminded Obama of the positive impact his commutation of hundreds of prison sentences has already had and warned, “The opportunities for addressing unfairly long sentences in 2017 appear bleak, as President-elect Trump publicly criticized your commutations grants during his campaign.” 

There are many other suggestions my list could include, such as President Jimmy Carter’s appeal to Obama to recognize the state of Palestine. But I offer this list not with a naive optimism that Obama will actually act on them, but rather to point out how many crucial issues a sitting Democratic president has the power to control but often chooses not to. Clinton supporters and Obama defenders need to acknowledge the moral complacency that such inaction reveals, which in turn feeds into the political losses of the Democratic Party. 

As we lament the horrors that may unfold next year, let us not forget that Obama had the chance to do the right thing on any number of issues and chose instead to leave us at the mercy of the “Trumpocalypse.” I certainly hope I am proved wrong.

(Sonali Kolhatkar is Co-Director of the Afghan Women's Mission and a political writer at TruthDig …where this piece was first posted.)

AT LENGTH-Christiane Amanpour (Photo left above), CNN’s chief international correspondent, just won an award for championing press freedom. She is also one of the better-known faces in the mainstream media. 

In her acceptance speech at the 2016 Burton Benjamin Memorial Award at a November 22 gala in New York -- an event organized by the Committee to Protect Journalists -- she said about her fellow journalists’ coverage of the recent elections: 

Much of the media was tying itself in knots trying to differentiate between balance, between objectivity, neutrality, and crucially, the truth. We cannot continue the old paradigm. We cannot, for instance, keep saying, like it was over global warming. When 99 percent of the science, the empirical facts, the evidence, is given equal play with the tiny minority of deniers. 

She took note of the president-elect’s tweets accusing the media of instigating the uprising of protests: 

I was chilled when [Trump’s] first tweet after the election was about professional protesters incited by the media. [Because as we all know] First the media is accused of inciting, then sympathizing, then associating. And then, suddenly, they find themselves accused of being full-fledged terrorists and subversives. And then, they end up in handcuffs, in cages, in kangaroo courts, in prisons and then who knows what. 

A sentiment with which I couldn’t agree more. 

In another tweet, Trump alleged that 3 million illegal voters cast votes in an election he won, albeit losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by some 2.5 million votes -- a number that continues to grow.

It was only after Trump called the leading national journalists to his “Tower” for a scolding about their treatment during the campaign and the New York Times stood up to him that other major media companies began tentatively calling him out on his lies, false accusations and otherwise aberrant pronouncements. 

On November 5, the Toronto Star newspaper published their list of Trump’s lies -- 494 in all that fell into 20 different categories. They wrote, “the category that has the most falsehoods is ‘Clinton’s policies,’ followed by ‘Clinton’s corruption,’ and then polls.” 

That list is far too long to be printed here but can be found on Slate.com. Since that time the presumptive president-elect has backed off on his pledge to prosecute Hilary, appoint a special prosecutor and throw her in jail. However, no one can be quite sure exactly what Trump will say next or even if he’ll do what he says next. 

This of course is his real talent: keeping everyone on edge. A negotiating trick that keeps everyone one guessing until the deal is done.  Stand back from the anxiety of the campaign and the depression from the election results to see Trump for the wheeler-dealer huckster he is. 

I was reminded this week of a quote from one of our nation’s most celebrated journalists, H.L. Mencken, who in 1920, had the prescient vision to write: 

The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.  

I think at this point the emphasis should be on devious and mediocre -- clearly this man, Trump, is not to be trusted either by his own party, the people who voted for him or the rest of us who didn’t. 

It is becoming quite clear that it’s very difficult to discern fact from fiction in the media environment in which we live. People say we’re living in a post-factual era of politics, but there are several sources to fact check what you read or hear. 

Wikipedia and Snopes.com, however, is the antidote to that. And for those looking deeper into the fictionalization of facts here’s a list of those fake news sites.  And even at Wikipedia, we have to pay attention to who is editing what. 

Contrary to the accusations of some trolls on our website, we at Random Lengths News do check our facts. But we do not pretend to be neutral. 

This newspaper has always defended its brand of informed political reporting. Our progressive reporting is not blindly partisan, but is informed by a perspective not commonly found in the corporate mainstream press. 

This paradigm is changing. We now live in a world where ultra-right wing and neo-fascist ideologies threaten even the middle-of-the-road media. Breitbart News is a leading example of this phenomenon and the elevation of Stephen K. Bannon to the position of chief political strategist for the Trumpster -- with an office inside the White House is disconcerting. 

Bannon’s claim to fame is his role as the executive chairman of Breitbart News, a media outlet filled with what the New York Times called “ideologically driven journalists,” that has been a source of controversy “over material that has been called misogynist, xenophobic and racist,” and was a “potent voice” for Trump’s presidential campaign. 

Breitbart News has been misidentified and normalized by calling it “alt-right” media; it has been aligned with European populist right wing and what I would call fascist politics. This invention of alt-right news of course is the reaction to the myth of the “liberal media” in America. 

With the birth of Roger Ailes’ Fox News, there’s a growing rant that “all of the media are a bunch of liberals.” 

Information wars between left and right perspectives are fueled by the increasing use of disinformation -- leaked or hacked information from dubious sources and the growing distrust of the media in general. 

What has clearly evolved out of this past election cycle is that some media platforms have become “weaponized” for use in disinformation warfare -- a tactic that has its roots in the CIA’s covert operations from the Cold War Era. 

This, at its very core, is a threat to our democracy and the institutions of electoral politics. It is curious that these very same tactics are being brought home to roost in the very same chicken coop from which they were hatched -- Washington, D.C. 

And all of this confusion effectuated by the rise of social media and convenient hand-held devices has only brought us closer to the truth that all democracies are fragile and dependent upon a public being able to deconstruct the information provided. Therein lies the great divide separating America today. What media outlet do you trust to tell you the truth?

(James Preston Allen is the Publisher of Random Lengths News, the Los Angeles Harbor Area's only independent newspaper. He is also a guest columnist for the California Courts Monitor and is the author of "Silence Is Not Democracy - Don't listen to that man with the white cap - he might say something that you agree with!" He has been engaged in the civic affairs of CD 15 for more than 35 years. More of Allen…and other views and news at: randomlengthsnews.com.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GUEST WORDS-High above, somewhere behind the black glass façade, President-elect Donald J. Trump was huddled with his inner circle, plotting just how they would “drain the swamp” and remake Washington, perhaps the world. On the street far below, inside a warren of metal fencing surrounded by hefty concrete barriers with “NYPD” emblazoned on them, two middle-aged women were engaged in a signage skirmish.  One held aloft a battered poster that read “Love Trumps Hate”; just a few feet away, the other brandished a smaller slice of cardboard that said “Get Over It.”  (Photo above: Security agents in front of Trump Tower, New York.)

I was somewhere in between ... and the Secret Service seemed a little unnerved.

Trump Tower is many things -- the crown jewel skyscraper in Donald Trump’s real-estate empire, the site of the Trump Organization’s corporate offices, a long-time setting for his reality television show, The Apprentice, and now, as the New York Times describes it, “a 58-story White House in Midtown Manhattan.”  It is also, as noted above its front entrance: “OPEN TO THE PUBLIC 8 AM to 10 PM.”

When planning for the tower began in the late 1970s, Trump -- like other developers of the era -- struck a deal with the city of New York.  In order to add extra floors to the building, he agreed to provide amenities for the public, including access to restrooms, an atrium, and two upper-level gardens.    

When I arrived at Trump Tower, less than a week after Election Day, the fourth floor garden was roped off, so I proceeded up the glass escalator, made a right, and headed through a door into an outdoor pocket park on the fifth floor terrace.  Just as I entered, a group of Japanese tourists was leaving and, suddenly, I was alone, a solitary figure in a secluded urban oasis.

But not for long. 

Taking a seat on a silver aluminum chair at a matching table, I listened closely.  It had been a zoo down on Fifth Avenue just minutes before: demonstrators chanting “love trumps hate,” Trump supporters shouting back, traffic noise echoing in the urban canyon, the “whooooop” of police sirens, and a bikini-clad woman in body paint singing in front of the main entrance.  And yet in this rectangular roof garden, so near to America’s new White House-in-waiting, all was placid and peaceful.  There was no hint of the tourist-powered tumult below or of the potentially world-altering political machinations above, just the unrelenting white noise-hum of the HVAC system.     

On His Majesty’s Secret Service

The Stars and Stripes flies above the actual White House in Washington, D.C.  Inside the Oval Office, it’s joined by another flag -- the seal of the president of the United States emblazoned on a dark blue field.  Here, however, Old Glory flies side by side with slightly tattered black-and-silver Nike swoosh flags waving lazily above the tony storefronts -- Louis Vuitton and Saint Laurent, Burberry and Chanel -- of Manhattan’s 57th Street, and, of course, Trump Tower-tenant Niketown. 

That I was standing beneath those flags gazing down at luxe retailers evidently proved too much to bear for those who had been not-so-subtly surveilling me.  Soon a fit, heavily armed man clad in black tactical gear -- what looked to my eye like a Kevlar assault suit and ballistic vest -- joined me in the garden.  “How’s it going?” I asked, but he only nodded, muttered something incomprehensible, and proceeded to eyeball me hard for several minutes as I sat down at a table and scrawled away in my black Moleskine notepad.

My new paramilitary pal fit in perfectly with the armed-camp aesthetic that’s blossomed around Trump Tower.  The addition of fences and concrete barriers to already clogged holiday season sidewalks has brought all the joys of the airport security line to Fifth Avenue.  The scores of police officers now stationed around the skyscraper give it the air of a military outpost in a hostile land.  (All at a bargain basement price of $1 million-plus per day for the city of New York.)  Police Commissioner James O’Neill recently reeled off the forces which -- in addition to traffic cops, beat cops, and bomb-sniffing dogs -- now occupy this posh portion of the city: “specialized units, the critical response command, and the strategic response group, as well as plainclothes officers and counter-surveillance teams working hand-in-hand with our intelligence bureau and our partners in the federal government, specifically the Secret Service.”  The armed man in tactical gear who had joined me belonged to the latter agency. 

“You one of the reporters from downstairs?” he finally asked. 

“Yeah, I’m a reporter,” I replied and then filled the silence that followed by saying, “This has got to be a new one, huh, having a second White House to contend with?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” he answered, and then assured me that most visitors seemed disappointed by this park.  “I think everyone comes up thinking there’ll be a little more, but it’s like ‘yeah, okay.’” 

Small talk, however, wasn't the agent’s forte, nor did he seem particularly skilled at intimidation, though it was clear enough that he wasn’t thrilled to have this member of the public in this public space.  Luckily for me (and the lost art of conversation), we were soon joined by “Joe.”  An aging bald man of not insignificant girth, Joe appeared to have made it onto the Secret Service’s managerial track.  He didn’t do commando-chic.  He wasn’t decked out in ridiculous SWAT-style regalia, nor did he have myriad accessories affixed to his clothing or a submachine gun strapped to his body.  He wore a nondescript blue suit with a silver and blue pin on his left lapel. 

I introduced myself as he took a seat across from me and, in response, though working for a federal agency, he promptly began a very NYPD-style interrogation with a very NYPD-style accent. 

“What’s going on, Nick?” he inquired.

“Not too much.”

“What are you doing? You’re all by yourself here…”

“Yeah, I’m all by my lonesome.”

“Kinda strange,” he replied in a voice vaguely reminiscent of Robert De Niro eating a salami sandwich.

“How so?”

“I don’t know. What are you doing? Taking notes?” he asked. 

I had reflexively flipped my notepad to a fresh page as I laid it between us on the table and Joe was doing his best to get a glimpse of what I’d written.      

I explained that I was a reporter. Joe wanted to know for whom I worked, so I reeled off a list of outlets where I’d been published. He followed up by asking where I was from. I told him and asked him the same. Joe said he was from Queens.

“What do you do for a living?” I asked. 

“Secret Service.”

“I was just saying to your friend here that it must be a real experience having a second White House to contend with.”

“Yeah, you could call it that,” he replied, sounding vaguely annoyed. Joe brushed aside my further attempts at small talk in favor of his own ideas about where our conversation should go. 

“You got some ID on you?” he asked. 

“I do,” I replied, offering nothing more than a long silence.

“Can I see it?”

“Do you need to?”

“If you don’t mind,” he said politely. Since I didn’t, I handed him my driver’s license and a business card. Looking at the former, with a photo of a younger man with a much thicker head of hair, Joe asked his most important question yet: “What did you do to your hair?”

“Ah yes,” I replied with a sigh, rubbing my hand over my thinned-out locks. “It’s actually what my hair did to me.” 

He gestured to his own follically challenged head and said, “I remember those days.”

Trump Tower’s Public Private Parts

Joe asked if there was anything he could do for me, so I wasn’t bashful. I told him that I wanted to know what his job was like -- what it takes to protect President-elect Donald Trump and his soon-to-be second White House. “You do different things. Long hours.  Nothing out of the ordinary. Probably the same as you,” he said. I told him I really doubted that and kept up my reverse interrogation. “Other than talking to me, what did you do today?” I asked. 

“I dunno,” he responded. “Look around. Security. We’re Secret Service.” It was, he assured me, a boring job. 

“Come on,” I said. “There’s got to be a lot of challenges to securing a place like this. You’ve got open public spaces just like this one.”

There are, in fact, more than 500 privately owned public spaces, or POPS, similar to this landscaped terrace, all over the city.  By adding the gardens, atrium, and other amenities way back when, Trump was able to add about 20 extra floors to this building, a deal worth at least $500 million today, according to the New York Times.  And in the post-election era, Trump Tower now boasts a new, one-of-a-kind amenity.  The skies above it have been declared “national defense airspace” by the Federal Aviation Administration.  “The United States government may use deadly force against the airborne aircraft, if it is determined that the aircraft poses an imminent security threat,” the agency warned in a recent notice to pilots. 

Back on the fifth floor, a metal plaque mounted on an exterior wall lays out the stipulations of the POPs agreement, namely that this “public garden” is to have nine large trees, four small trees, 148 seats, including 84 moveable chairs, and 21 tables.  None of the trees looked particularly large.  By my count the terrace was also missing three tables -- a type available online starting at $42.99 -- and about 20 chairs, though some were stacked out of view and, of course, just two were needed at the moment since Mr. Tactical Gear remained standing, a short distance away, the whole time.

This tiny secluded park seemed a world away from the circus below, the snarl of barricades outside the building, the tourists taking selfies with the big brassy “Trump Tower” sign in the background, and the heavily armed counterterror cops standing guard near the revolving door entrance.

I remarked on this massive NYPD presence on the streets. “It’s their city,” Joe replied and quickly changed topics, asking, “So business is good?”

“No, business is not too good. I should have picked a different profession,” I responded and asked if the Secret Service was hiring. Joe told me they were and explained what they looked for in an agent: a clean record, college degree, “law experience.” It made me reflect upon the not-so-clean record of that agency in the Obama years, a period during which its agents were repeatedly cited for gaffes, as when a fence-jumper made it all the way to the East Room of the White House, and outrageous behavior, including a prostitution scandal involving agents preparing the way for a presidential visit to Colombia. 

“What did you do before the Secret Service?” I inquired. Joe told me that he’d been a cop. At that point, he gave his black-clad compatriot the high sign and the younger man left the garden. 

“See, I’m no threat,” I assured him. Joe nodded and said he now understood the allure of the tiny park. Sensing that he was eager to end the interrogation I had turned on its head, I began peppering him with another round of questions. 

Instead of answering, he said, “Yeah, so anyway, Nick, I’ll leave you here,” and then offered me a piece of parting advice -- perhaps one that no Secret Service agent protecting a past president-elect has ever had occasion to utter, perhaps one that suggests he’s on the same wavelength as the incoming commander-in-chief, a man with a penchant for ogling women (to say nothing of bragging about sexually assaulting them). “You should come downstairs,” Joe advised, his eyes widening, a large grin spreading across his face as his voice grew animated for the first time. “There was a lady in a bikini with a painted body!”

Joe walked off and, just like that, I was alone again, listening to the dull hum of the HVAC, seated in the dying light of the late afternoon.  A short time later, on my way out of the park, I passed the Secret Service agent in tactical gear. “I think you’re the one that found the most entertainment out here all day,” he said, clearly trying to make sense of why anyone would spend his time sitting in an empty park, scribbling in a notebook. I mentioned something about sketching out the scene, but more than that, I was attempting to soak in the atmosphere, capture a feeling, grapple with the uncertain future taking shape on the chaotic avenue below and high above our heads in Manhattan’s very own gilt White House.  I was seeking a preview, you might say, of Donald Trump’s America.    

Descending the switchback escalators, I found myself gazing at the lobby where a scrum of reporters stood waiting for golden elevator doors to open, potentially disgorging a Trump family member or some other person hoping to serve at the pleasure of the next president. Behind me water cascaded several stories down a pink marble wall, an overblown monument to a bygone age of excess.  Ahead of me, glass cases filled with Trump/Pence 2016 T-shirts, colognes with the monikers “Empire” and “Success,” the iconic red “Make America Great Again” one-size-fits-all baseball cap, stuffed animals, and other tchotchkes stood next to an overflowing gilded garbage can.  Heading for the door, I thought about all of this and Joe and his commando-chic colleague and Trump’s deserted private-public park, and the army of cops, the metal barricades, and the circus that awaited me on the street.  I felt I’d truly been given some hint of the future, a whisper of what awaits. I also felt certain I’d be returning to Trump Tower -- and soon.

(Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch, … where this piece was first posted … a fellow at the Nation Institute, and a contributing writer for the Intercept. His book Tomorrow's Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa recently received an American Book Award. His latest book is Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead: War and Survival in South Sudan. His website is NickTurse.com.) 

-cw

STANDING ROCK STAND-OFF-(Editor’s Note: This is a update on Jennifer Caldwell’s earlier CityWatch article, “Thanksgiving 2016: The Worst in Seven Generation”.)In a remote, windswept corner of North Dakota, a seven-month standoff continues without an end in sight. Thirty miles south of Bismarck, where eroded buttes rise from grassland and corn fields, the Oceti Sakowin camp appears along the winding girth of the Missouri River. Here, a story of protection, protest and cultural conflict unfolds against the desolate prairie. 

At issue is the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL); an “energy transfer” project that would pipe approximately 470,000 barrels of oil per day from the Bakken Oil Fields through South Dakota and Iowa, to refining facilities in Illinois. The pipeline is a 1,172 mile, 30-inch artery that is touted by its progenitor, Energy Transfer Partners, as necessary to transport light sweet crude in a “more direct, cost-effective, safer and responsible manner.” 

At the juncture of the Missouri River and Fort Yates, along the northeastern edge of the Lakota Sioux Standing Rock Reservation, the project slowly churns its way toward a hotly disputed patch of land. Several hundred yards north of the camp, a lone bridge has come to define the front line of this conflict. On one side, the West Dakota SWAT Team stands watch over the DAPL’s border. On the other, two young Lakota men are charged with maintaining order among the camp’s curious and defiant. In between rest the carcasses of burned-out trucks, which several tribal “water protectors” torched in response to the past few days of skirmishes that had culminated in a volley of tear gas and rubber-bullets. A concrete barrier topped with barbed wire and decorated with vulgar graffiti exemplifies the air of tension. 

The stand-off has given way to violence and threats of violence, here and well beyond the borders of the Standing Rock Reservation. While law enforcement and the water protectors engage in a guarded choreography, fear strikes in the vulnerable hamlets that dot the plains. Across the prairie, the pipeline dispute has resurrected age-old enmity between the native peoples and those they perceive to have permanently occupied the territory of native birthright. 

Normally, by mid-November the ground here would be frozen with knee-deep drifts of Midwest snow. Today, however, the temperature will rise into the mid-60s with almost balmy comfort. 

“This is what I call the upside of global warming,” jokes Ken Many Wounds. “Or, perhaps Great Spirit is looking out for us.” A member of the Standing Rock Lakota Sioux, Ken is an organizer and the camp’s communications director. His authority is confirmed by the company he keeps with the core leaders of the action. Ken is an imposing figure. He has rugged features and strides with a cowboy’s gait as his long wiry ponytail flows from beneath a baseball cap. Ken bristles at the term “protesters” and admonishes that those opposing the DAPL are “water protectors.” 

Versed in the complex history of Sioux land disputes, Ken explains the intricacies of treaties, land grabs and the exceptions within exceptions that have chipped away at the territory of the Sioux Nation for over 150 years. “Where we stand is Sioux land, according to the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851,” he says, adding that the subsequent Sioux Treaty of 1868, which the Sioux allege to have never been properly ratified, illegally redefined the borders of Sioux territory. At best, the state of ownership and land rights is nothing short of confused. 

Indians and non-Indians mill around nearby, executing various tasks in the maintenance of the protest camp’s daily life. The aroma of wood fires and beef stewing in cast iron kettles fills the air. The setting sun casts a shadowy skyline of tents, tepees and converted buses, all gathered to push back at the slow, oncoming creep of the pipeline. The camp ebbs and flows in population, retaining about 6,000 inhabitants, and pushing hundreds of yards to the swampy tributaries flowing into the Missouri. 

In the distance, a drilling pad pushes closer to the river with the ultimate goal of tunneling beneath it. In the process, the excavation will cut through burial grounds. Distrust of the project has intensified over allegations that non-Indian archaeologists from the North Dakota State Historic Preservation Office have been exclusively charged with identifying native graves. Equally, there is concern as to what will occur should the pipeline breach below the Missouri’s pristine waters. 

On these two issues, there is an odd chorus of consensus bridging what is otherwise a de facto apartheid in this small corner of the world. On and off the reservation, the welfare of the Missouri River provokes ready conversation. 

“We don’t want that pipeline coming through here,” explains a woman named Terrie in Mandan, a town of roughly 20,000 inhabitants just west of Bismarck and 30 miles north of the standing Rock Reservation. Her youthful face softens as her distrust of me thaws. “If that pipeline ruptures, it will be the end of the Missouri. That’s going to affect millions of people down-river.” 

But, just as quickly as Terrie is to condemn the pipeline, her teenage daughter shows me photos of vandalism in the nearby veteran’s graveyard. The agitated teen exclaims, “Look! Look at this. These pipeline protesters went and put a Tonka truck in the veteran’s graveyard with a sign that says ‘Let’s start drilling here’!” 

Terrie is angry. “Leave our veterans alone,” she says. “Why would you desecrate their graves? They have nothing to do with this.” 

It’s hard not to be taken in by the women’s congenial earthiness. On the other hand, the irony of their sensitivity to a distasteful prank, and the simultaneous indifference to the impact on Native American burial grounds, is inescapable. Here, the contempt for Native Americans is palpable and ubiquitous. “They get handouts and they are taken care of by the government,” Terrie adds. “They don’t have to work for any of it.” 

As much as there is division between races, there is also dissent within. Earlier in the day, a group from Standing Rock led a march to Mandan’s municipal offices. Working on a theme of forgiveness, love and peace, the group prayed for a cleansing of what they claim are the hatred and offenses of both sides of the conflict that occurred in the preceding weeks. Those actions led to the arrest and detention of Lakota Sioux who continued to languish in the Morton County Correctional Center in Mandan. 

The march was in stark contrast to the more extreme “direct action” principles undertaken by elements within the camp. In silence, the demonstrators encircled the jail and courthouse and pleaded for the release of their brethren. It was a display of the diverse beliefs and tactics emerging from the reservation; the hawks and the doves form a division so easily overlooked on the erroneous assumption of a monolithic Lakota Sioux culture and a unified stance in the face of adversity. 

On my way back to Standing Rock, I stop at Rusty’s Saloon in St. Anthony, a village half way between Mandan and the reservation. It is a clean and orderly establishment constructed as a lodge, and decorated with “taxidermied” wildlife. The place is awash in camos and blaze orange as hunters gather for lunch. I take a seat alongside a regular who eyes me with suspicion. Lori, the barmaid, senses my apprehension and relaxes the atmosphere with some easy talk. I oblige and the conversation soon deepens. 

Before long, she voices concern about threats to local farmers, the killing of livestock and a plethora of fires and vandalism alleged to have been perpetrated by Indians. According to Lori, the acts are the product of a native reawakening of land rights and a history of intrusion. “Our children had to have an armed escort to school because of the threats over this pipeline,” Lori adds. “People here are just plain scared.” 

These and other conversations reveal that, while there is agreement as to issues between those on and off the reservation, opinions are very much in cadence with peer allegiances and along the cultural divide. 

The dialogue of race is different here. In contrast to the low rumble of urban settings, race-based hatred in rural North Dakota is immediately explosive. The conversations with non-Indians are rife with animus toward Indians and outsiders. Likewise, the indigenous population, on and off the reservation, offers little more warmth. There is a noticeable lack of eye contact with non-Indians and the almost obligatory dirty looks cast at the “was’ichu,” (the somewhat derogatory Lakota word for “white” and non-Indian). The culture is understandably steeped in historic distrust. 

Back at the camp, three young people bide their time waiting for a march to the front lines. Today, the Standing Rock Youth Council will take an offering to those manning the SWAT vehicles. The Youth Council is a contingent of the reservation’s younger generation that is guided by the mantra of “removing the invisible barriers that prevent our native youth from succeeding.” They are steadfast in support of the water protection action. Today, they will push to the front lines in peaceful offering to the men bearing arms and armor just beyond the barbed wire. 

I am confronted by the stoicism of two visiting tribal members from Michigan, and of Maria, a young woman affiliated with several North Dakota tribes. “This is not a conflict zone,” Maria explains. “It’s not a war zone. We don’t want it to be seen that way.” 

Maria is correct. While tear gas and rubber bullets have been unleashed in the course of the DAPL conflict, the people of Standing Rock show no interest in having their actions seen as being at war with the outside world. This erroneous characterization, spawned by the mainstream media, has drawn an array of characters to Standing Rock — Indian and non-Indian, each seeking to make the action their own. I find myself having to fight my way through throngs of posers and protesters to get to the core Native American water protectors who are truly sincere in their actions. 

Likewise, within the Indian community, as in any community, I discover a great variance of identity and adherence to the mores of Indian culture. Maria points to her companion, “Me Shet Nagle,” a visiting member of the Blackfeet Nation, and chides, “He doesn’t even know what his name means! For all he knows, he could be named after a sock!” 

Me Shet Nagle meets Maria’s playful contempt with a sheepish grin. I jokingly assure that they will be portrayed in the most stereotypical manner possible. They get the humor. We all get it; the revelation of the Native American as a diverse culture with all of the beauty, humor, internal conflict and struggle for identity as any other. 

Tension builds as the time to march draws near. Dozens of water protectors assemble across the bridge from the barricade. Members of the SWAT team can be seen readying themselves in the distance. The bridge is disputed territory. Leaders from the Youth Council cradle a sacred pipe and carry an offering of the life-giving water that is threatened by the DAPL. In silence, dozens march on toward the front line. 

Within yards of the barricade, the council motions for all marchers to be seated. People pray. Some look woefully onward, expecting plumes of tear gas. Cameras click away over the crowd. Among this throng, a young woman carries an infant wrapped in a thick wool blanket. The group is completely vulnerable. I glance over the edge of the bridge and quickly calculate a two-story drop to the freezing water of unknown depth. If things went as they have before, pandemonium could break out with any incoming projectiles. 

The leaders of the Youth Council disappear behind the burned-out trucks. A number of heavily armored police and military appear from behind the barricade to take stock of the crowd. They peer from behind dark goggles beneath Kevlar helmets, adorned in heavy flak vests, with weapons slung at the ready. 

The moments linger. 

Finally, the Youth Council members emerge. They slowly walk to the crowd and command that everyone rise and move forward. In unified mass movement, the marchers close another 10 yards toward the barricade and the tension heightens. The council leaders sternly motion directions and, again, everyone is seated. The marchers are entirely under the Youth Council’s control. 

“We offered them water,” one leader reports as he raise a mason jar. “They would not drink from it!” A murmur spreads across the crowd. “However,” the leader continues, “they prayed with us.” His words are slow and punctuated with the tension of the moment. “We prayed together and, while they would not drink the water, the men did accept our water and rubbed it about their uniforms in a showing of respect and solidarity.” 

After a long pause, a Lakota woman seated before me raises a rattle in the air and shakes it with a cry of approval. One by one, hands rise and a cheer of praise breaks the quiet. The armed troops’ act of personal solidarity and sensitivity was all they asked for. In modest triumph, the marchers make their way back across the bridge in humble silence and with a renewed hope. 

In the distance, the machines churn on. 

Recently, North Dakota law enforcement authorities, reacting to what they labeled a riot, turned a water cannon on hundreds of protesters and Indian “water protectors” opposed to the construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline (DAPL). Tony Zinnanti’s story describes life on and around the Standing Rock Reservation in the days leading up to the assault on the protest encampment.

(Tony Zinnanti is a lawyer, freelance journalist and photographer from Los Angeles. His legal work has included defense of activists John Quigley and Ted Hayes, and representation of members of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. This piece first appeared in Capital and Main. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GUEST WORDS--I came out as bisexual to more than 43,300 people last year in a Daily Bruin column. But my parents weren’t among them. 

It may be 2016, but it can still be risky for someone to publicly identify as LGBTQ, undocumented or as part of any other marginalized group. And the holidays may be especially difficult for closeted individuals. Even someone who is out to her siblings, but not her parents or the other adults in her life, like me, can struggle.

My internal monologue is always running at family gatherings. I am constantly eyeing everyone in suspicion and worrying that someone might expose my identity. And it doesn’t help that the holidays are painted as a time when families lovingly gather in peace and harmony.

Despite coming out to the UCLA community and receiving support on campus, it is difficult to translate that same support at home. UCLA is a progressive bubble. It is not reflective of the rest of the world, and certainly not reflective of my family.

But it’s precisely this difference in thought we students have to embrace and face. Simply dismissing the other side inflames tensions. And what better time to reach out than the holidays? This is the one time of the year when you are with family and everyone is taking a break from the daily responsibilities of school and work.

This month’s events have brought to the forefront issues of racism, sexism and homophobia that have been quietly simmering. They inflame the hurt of being rejected or only partly tolerated rather than fully accepted by my family. But while we are able to create our own online echo chambers free of triggering ideas from the other side, unfriending your racist and homophobic uncle on Facebook is not likely to keep him away from the Thanksgiving dinner table back home.

Since the first time my tongue slipped and called UCLA “home,” I realized the stark contrast between the definition of the word and the place it represents. Home is a feeling of comfort and acceptance, whereas being home may not elicit those same emotions.

I, like many first-generation students of color, grew up in a pivotal position for an immigrant family. My parents grew up on small ranches in Mexico. They raised cattle and chickens and grew corn to make bread and tortillas. Their life was simplified to homemaking and cleaning for the women, and yard and paid labor work for the men until they each met a partner to have their own children with. This lifestyle they grew up with did not leave much room for experimenting alternative lifestyles, let alone deviating from the patriarchal and heteronormative culture.

My parents never studied past sixth grade. They never went to a university to learn about the things they do not know and they did not have the opportunity to socialize with the diverse set of individuals that colleges bring together. But with the growing visibility of the LGBTQ community, they engage the only way they can: making homophobic jokes – sometimes in front of me.

But this difference in viewpoints is natural. I have met many diverse people, heard from a wide array of speakers and read books that my parents have not. I, like every other Bruin, have been exposed to these differences in thought and have had the had the chance to analyze both sides of the ideological spectrum in a classroom setting. But my parents – and many other students’ – aren’t currently participating in these kinds of discussions, so it’s expected we diverge in opinion.

UCLA is a world all its own, but very few will call it home forever. As students of the country’s most applied-to university, we are put on a pedestal as examples of progressive citizens. And despite how diverse a picture UCLA paints on its brochures, the real test begins the moment you leave campus. The college bubble will eventually give way to the real world full of differing opinions – good and bad – and we need to confront and accept these differences if we are to pay homage to our education.

Whether you’re liberal or conservative, you’ll meet other people with different opinions from yours. And when you graduate, you will continue to be tested on what you have learned at one of the top public universities in the world.

For me, not confronting ideological disagreement with family members would cause them to reject me and my identity. And it’s no surprise that in return, I would reject them, despite my familial ties and everything I learned at UCLA about being a leader. You cannot reject your family during the holidays because of different viewpoints because your family ties and environment are likely to bring you together.

Confrontation does not burn bridges, avoiding it does.

Moral and social progress is not linear or inevitable. It is difficult and daunting. You cannot, and should not, reject those with whom you disagree.

So open up, listen and agree to disagree. ‘Tis the season for family and love, after all.

(Jasmine Aquino posts at The Daily Bruin … where this perspective was first published.)

-cw

@THE GUSS REPORT-In her 1969 book, On Death and Dying, Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross created a framework of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. While her book was essentially about grieving the loss of human life, it could also apply to the loss of a marriage, a pet or even an election. 

Denial was exemplified by Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta telling her supporters late on election night that “there are a lot more votes to be counted,” as the reason why she did not come to speak to the crowd even though President Obama simultaneously urged her to concede. Anger was demonstrated by the violent protests that broke-out in major American cities over the subsequent days. Now the talk of vote recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania (states formerly known as part of Clinton’s “Blue Wall” that the Democrats never imagined losing to Trump, but did) are what might be described as the Bargaining phase of grieving. We need to take a second look at the votes in these states to make sure that they are legitimate. 

The problem for the Green Party and its presidential nominee Jill Stein, now that they quickly raised millions of dollars late last week for those recounts, is that people expect them to actually move forward and do them. But that is no sure thing. 

What the Green Party and Stein may have done was inadvertently shoot themselves in their feet.

In Pennsylvania, one cannot simply demand a vote recount and fork over a pile of cash to have it done. The Green Party and Stein (who were joined in the recall effort over the weekend by the DNC and Clinton campaign) must show evidence of voter fraud. A judge will then decide whether a Pennsylvania recount is warranted. And since Stein already acknowledged that there is no evidence of voter fraud, the effort is likely to hit a brick wall right there because even if flagrant, out-of-control voter fraud were discovered in Wisconsin and Michigan, it won’t be worth a hill of beans if they are shut out from doing a recount in Pennsylvania. 

The Green Party and Stein originally set a fundraising goal of $2.5 million, which was raised to $7 million once the original goal was quickly surpassed. But that also raises expectations that recounts will be done. If they are not done, donors may be disillusioned to learn that their money will not be refunded to them, but instead go to other voter confidence initiatives. Stein’s website says: “We cannot guarantee a recount will happen in any of these states we are targeting. We can only pledge we will demand recounts in WI and MI and support the voter-initiated effort in PA.” 

By rooking donors out of millions of dollars, and not delivering those recounts, if that is what eventually happens, the Green Party will do more harm to itself than it ever imagined. That is when the fourth stage of grieving, Depression, will sink in for many.

While the Green Party and Libertarian Party, which nominated former New Mexico Governor Gary “And what is Aleppo?” Johnson, have plenty of worthwhile positions for people to embrace, here are some sobering thoughts: 

In Pennsylvania, Trump beat Clinton by 68,236 votes. Together, Stein and Johnson siphoned 191,565 votes. 

In Wisconsin, Trump beat Clinton by 27,257 votes. In that state, Stein and Johnson got a combined 137,422 votes. 

In Michigan, Trump beat Clinton by 11,612 votes. Stein and Johnson collectively raked in 223,757 votes. 

Talk about depressing for the Anyone-But-Trump crowd! Trump is going to have the power of incumbency and Republican majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives. Then again, so did Barack Obama in 2008, so things do tend to even out eventually. 

The weeks between now and Trump’s inauguration will no doubt see people slipping back and forth between the Anger and Depression phrases, and perhaps by late January they will acquiesce to Acceptance, because there is simply nowhere else for them to go. 

By then, spring will be around the corner. We will get the hour of daylight back. And the 2018 mid-term elections will be not all that far off. The problem for those with 2016 “election regret” is that, Congressional redistricting being what it is, the Democrat presence on Capitol Hill and in state houses across the country is likely to get weaker before it gets stronger. 

The good news is that this might finally get people to start taking their votes, the candidates and the issues more seriously, and to spend less time blindly trusting what they see in political polls, the mainstream media and on social media. The candidates will, no doubt, continue to take all of us for granted.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a contributor to CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640 and Huffington Post. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

ALPERN AT LARGE--If ever there was a justification for the mortality of a man, it would be the frightening example of Fidel Castro.  Two other examples would be Josef Stalin and Mao Tze-Tung.

(Photo above: President Kennedy silhouetted in his office during the Cuban Missile Crisis.) 

There are those who would lionize Fidel, his revolutionary export of Che Guevara and the bloodletting Guevara caused and their fight for the "people", and their revolutionary zeal against the excesses of capitalism...but while they lived most of their lives in luxury, millions suffered, were tortured, were starved, were unfairly imprisoned and were slain as a result of their "enlightened" cause. 

So with the understanding that Millennials, much to the horror of their parents, often graduate high school (and college) with an understanding of U.S. History that stops at the American Civil War, I have and will continue to throw out occasional quizzes of the 20th Century and of history/civics-related issues.  Because the 20th Century ... and all of its painful lessons ... DID happen. 

THE ALPERN 20^TH CENTURY QUIZ—HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW/REMEMBER?

(Correct answers at bottom of this column) 

1) Fidel Castro allowed which nation to place nuclear missiles on its territory, and the Cuban Missile Crisis was responded to by which President in what was arguably the closest thing to World War III that ever occurred during the Cold War: 

1. a) North Korea/Ronald Reagan
2. b) China/Richard Nixon
3. c) The Soviet Union/John F. Kennedy
4. d) The Soviet Union/Dwight Eisenhower 

2) Fidel Castro vigorously opposed what he referred to as American Imperialism, and sent Cuban soldiers to unsuccessfully fight wars or to establish Marxist governments that were subsequently either overthrown or defeated by his opponents EXCEPT: 

1. a) Israel (during the Yom Kippur War)
2. b) Nicaragua (during the Nicaraguan Civil War)
3. c) Venezuela (during the Venezuelan Civil War)
4. d) Granada (subsequently overthrown by U.S. Forces) 

3) Fidel Castro, after almost succumbing to a gastrointestinal ailment (possibly diverticulitis with bleeding) in 2008, handed over the reigns of power in Cuba to: 

1. a) Hugo Chavez
2. b) Che Guevara
3. c) Raul Castro
4. d) Evo Morales 

4) The unsuccessful U.S.-backed attempt to militarily overthrow Fidel Castro in 1961 was called, and was supported by which U.S. President: 

1. a) The Bay of Pigs/John F. Kennedy
2. b) The Crimson Tide/Richard Nixon
3. c) The Freedom Flotila/Jimmy Carter
4. d) The War of Liberation/Harry Truman 

5) Prison work camps known as "Military Units to Aid Production" were created by Fidel Castro's younger brother Raul, and those sent there without trial for torture and threatened execution included: 

1. a) Businessmen and those believed to be U.S. spies
2. b) Individuals believed to be connected to former-elected Cuban President and later dictator Batista
3. c) Counter-revolutionaries and criminals
4. d) Homosexuals, men believed to be homosexuals or effeminate, and Jehovah's Witnesses 

6) The late communist dictator Mao Tse-Tung is credited with the deaths of approximately how many Chinese through execution, war, forced or war-associated starvation, or imprisonment? 

1. a) 10,000
2. b) 10 million
3. c) 35 million
4. d) 65 million 

7) Which of the following socialist/communist nations allowed/allows freedom of religion? 

1. a) The former Soviet Union
2. b) Maoist China
3. c) Cuba
4. d) North Korea
5. e) None of the Above 

8) The late communist dictator Josef Stalin is credited with the deaths of approximately how many Russians and other Soviets through execution, war, forced or war-associated starvation, or imprisonment? 

1. a) 100,000
2. b) 10-20 million
3. c) 35-45 million
4. d) 55-65 million 

9) The English translation of the former Nazi Party of Germany before and during World War II is: 

1. a) Nationalistic Zionist Party
2. b) National Zeig Hail Party
3. c) National Socialist Party
4. d) Non-Associated Socialist Party 

10) Che Guevara, who is believed to have personally or indirectly killed thousands of men, women and children both in Cuba and in nations throughout Latin America and Africa, was executed in which nation? 

1. a) The United States
2. b) Cuba
3. c) Bolivia
4. d) Grenada 

It's likely that many, like Florida Senator Marco Rubio (Republican, of Cuban descent) are noting that Fidel Castro is finally meeting his maker, and are wondering if his soul now suffers the same fate as his soon-to-be-cremated body (after the week or more of "mandatory mourning" of course). 

It's also likely that New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez (Democrat, of Cuban descent) isn't the only one wondering if Raul Castro will be any better than his older brother, now that he is control, with respect to human rights, civil liberties, and democracy in Cuba. 

But one thing is truly likely:  if anyone wants to throw around the idea, or wear a Che or Fidel t-shirt, espousing the wonderful "revolution" of Cuban socialism in front of a person of Cuban descent whose family fled Cuba, and braved death and overcame persecution in order to do it, then that person should expect a verbal rebuke of the harshest sort, or maybe even a punch in the nose. 

And that person will have richly deserved and earned that rebuke or punch in the nose. 

Because the Twentieth Century, and all of its horrific disasters (most especially Socialism) DID happen.

QUIZ ANSWERS 

1) c

2) c

3) c

4) a

5) d

6) d

7) e

8) d

9) c

10) c

(Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D. is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties.  He is also a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at  [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.)

-cw

MEDIA WATCH--On Monday, some of the biggest names in TV news trooped into Trump Tower for an off-the-record meeting with the president-elect.

It was an all-star cast. Not just on-air stars like Lester Holt, Wolf Blitzer and George Stephanopoulos, but their bosses were also summoned before the Potentate of Fifth Avenue.

The meeting was a huge success — for Donald Trump.

SKID ROW-After the recent election of Donald Trump as the next President of the United States, a tremendous “display of pride” has been seen all across America by Trump supporters, who mostly identify with White America. 

It’s 2016 now and I can’t help but wonder, where was all this bravado and widespread arrogance from White America in 2008 when the United States of America almost completely collapsed financially? 

For Trump and his supporters to stick their collective chest out now is laughable seeing how the country has already been stabilized by outgoing President Barack Obama. Sure, anybody can take the reins as Commander-in-Chief...now that all the heavy-lifting has been done! 

Remember 2008, just before the election, when war and foreclosures were the two biggest concerns in all of America? Remember all the debates about a stimulus package and who should receive portions of it? Remember all the jokes about “W” possibly being the all-time stupidest President in the history of America?   

Right. I do, too. 

In Skid Row during that time, we had to differentiate between the “traditional homeless residents” and the sudden increase of “non-traditional homeless residents” who flocked into our community, already known as “The Homeless Capital of America.” 

At the same time, countless homes on seemingly every block in every neighborhood across America had “for sale” signs in their front yards. Then we all learned what a sub-prime loan was. People were genuinely frightened. They stood in long lines for hours to pull all their money out of the banks -- to the point where “W” had to give a presidential speech urging Americans to leave their cash in the banks and trust the leadership of the Federal Government. 

This was the moment in time for White America to step forward and collectively elect its most trustworthy choice for President: someone (male or female) who would, first, stabilize the country from total financial meltdown and second, rebuild America literally from the ground up: financially, by fixing the banks, and economically, by creating new jobs and industries, putting restrictions on previous de-regulation, and re-purposing the funding that goes toward multiple wars in multiple countries. This would have been that perfect moment in time for a Presidential campaign slogan of “Make America Great Again.” 

To use that eight years later, after America has already been stabilized is so asinine. The Dow Jones consistently hovering above 18,000 points means only one thing: the Great Recession is completely over. 

Jobs are constantly being created in a multitude of industries, unemployment numbers are at their lowest in decades and the real estate and home-buying markets have stabilized as well. 

So, in order to “Make America Great Again,” after we’ve completely come out of the Great Recession, seems highly redundant, virtually impossible and arguably improbable. 

All that should be done now is to continue building on the stabilization of America. In other words, there’s really nothing newsworthy to be shouting about at the top of one’s lungs! 

Yet White America is getting its collective gloat on as if something has been accomplished. Please keep in mind that after eight years of an African-American President, the pendulum was bound to swing back to White. In fact, both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates were White. 

So if White America has been in control of this country since its inception, and for eight years out of well over 500 years, a Black man helped America stabilize itself, exactly who is White America taking this country back from? Unfortunately, all the worthless and empty rhetoric is at the expense of other races and types of people who have all helped contribute to the current stabilization of America. 

This “we gotta take our country back” mindset is troubling to me. As someone who has voluntarily chosen to live in Skid Row for the last 10 years and who sees homelessness and extreme mental illness on a daily basis from a firsthand perspective, I am allowed to make realistic comparisons to the “loud and obnoxious” people within White America who have sparked KKK parades, racially-based protests, fistfights and so much more. 

I can’t help but see similarities between this behavior and the variety of mental illnesses, lack of common sense and/or use of basic logic that I see every day in Skid Row. It’s almost like saying we should “Make Skid Row Great Again.” Both these slogans equally defy common sense and logic. 

And to those who pause at this analogy, I ask, “When was America great to begin with?” During the cowboys’ battles with Native Americans? During slavery? During World Wars I or II, the Vietnam War or the Korean War? The Iraq or Afghanistan wars? Civil Rights or Women’s Rights eras? When, did you say? Exactly. 

Whatever moment in time one chooses to identify America as “great” would coincide with a moment in time when White America was either racist or discriminated against others. I single out White America because that is the group which claims to “run this country.” 

If making America “great again” includes any of the above notions, while tens of thousands of men, women and children have already taken to the streets in protest marches, then I struggle not to laugh at the simplicity of White America’s “rank and file.” At the same time, I am in awe of the true number of racists there are within White America. I seems that countless numbers wish bodily harm, incarceration and even death to people who look just like me, a Black man, even though they don’t even know me and apparently don’t even care to. 

That’s also funny because I look like the American President who brought America back from the brink of total collapse in 2008. President Obama is a smart, handsome and classy Black man who never disrespected women, Mexicans, Muslims, disabled people or anyone else for that matter. Currently, Obama’s approval numbers are well above 50% and this includes the approval of countless White Americans. 

So which is it, White America? Recent history says you hate me, but you need me; you know this, but you don’t want to admit any of this, all at the same time -- symptoms of collective mental illness. 

My suggestion to White America is to look in the mirror and decide among yourselves -- can White America truly “make America great again” without any Black or Brown people? 

If the answer is no, then why are you making a mockery of yourselves in front of the rest of the world?

Surely, the rest of the world doesn’t see this as anything “great,” either.

(General Jeff is a homelessness activist and leader in Downtown Los Angeles. Jeff’s views are his own.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

AT RANDOM--“Democracy is like growing a fig tree. It must be pruned for it to bear the best fruit. As it grows older, the pruning gives the tree its own unique and distinctive shape. But let it go too long without pruning, the tree will grow wild and the fruit it bears will be small and un-sweet.”

—From James Preston Allen’s personal journal, Second Thoughts 1997 – 2016

THE EPPERHART REPORT-Real life has ruined fiction. Books, movies, television -- it’s all been wrecked by the characters who now dominate media. I don’t mean entertainment media. I’m referring to what we still call news media. 

Any number of spy thrillers used the device of secret information, usually some coded communication in the form of microfilm or a microdot. Whatever was contained therein was always so explosive in nature it could topple governments or start wars. 

Many of Alfred Hitchcock’s films (North by Northwest and The Man Who Knew Too Much, for example) used such a plot device. We never knew what the information was, just that it was crucial to the free world. Hitchcock called these devices used to drive the narrative “McGuffins.” 

The writers John Le Carre and Len Deighton created fictional worlds of cold war spies who traded in secrets. Their characters were always seeking to protect a secret or learn a secret, but never, ever to reveal a secret. 

That fictional device was saved for stories of the innocent trapped in the system and whose only salvation was to tell the world what really happened, usually via the New York Times (Three Days of the Condor) or some other equally righteous media outlet. These protagonists knew that widespread outrage would save them and result in punishment for the bad guys. 

Government’s secrets and the fictional tug-of-war over them made for some truly suspenseful fiction.

But thanks to Wikileaks and Edward Snowden and, apparently, the Russians, there are no more secrets. Real life has overtaken fiction. Plots were driven by the mere knowledge that there was a secret. What that secret was didn’t matter. What the hero had and the villain wanted, or vice versa, was key to the story. 

Now that everyone knows what the secrets are, what’s the point of protecting them? Where’s the thrill of knowing your operative in Berlin or Cairo or Hong Kong is risking their life when all you have to do is check the Wikileaks website to get the information? 

The worse part of all this is that the material in the deluge of emails is usually mundane and often trivial. Media digs through it looking for the good stuff, which frequently turns out to be no more than confirmation of what everyone already suspected. Now we know. So what? 

Today’s best authors of spy novels are setting their stories in earlier times. The years leading up to, during, and after World War II are particularly popular. By night, characters circulate in the drawing rooms of Europe, elegantly dressed and bantering with the representatives of the Third Reich. By day, they are organizing partisans and blowing up bridges. Communications is done using invisible ink or clandestine radios in dusty garrets. None of this smartphone stuff for our hero. And certainly no emails that will end up on Facebook. 

Transparency in the real world is a good thing. Discovering what our politicians and bureaucrats get up to behind closed doors is how we keep our democracy. But, all that openness can sure ruin a good story.

(Doug Epperhart is a publisher, a long-time neighborhood council activist and former Board of Neighborhood Commissioners commissioner. He is a contributor to CityWatch and can be reached at: [email protected]) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GUEST COMMENTARY-The LA Times Friday, Nov. 18 editorial, “Muzzling the muezzin,” opposing two bills working their way through the Israeli Knesset (parliament) sent conflicting messages. The Times stand opposing the two bills is pro-peace because both bills, if enacted, would deepen the occupation which will lead to increased violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict. 

But in its final paragraph, the Times changes course and summarized the status of the conflict in a biased pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian manner that undermines peace.

The first law the Times opposes would allow Israel to retroactively “legalize” Jewish-only, settlement outposts built on Palestinian-owned private-property in the West Bank, and force the owners of the property to accept a government offer of compensation.

The first thing to remember is that all Jewish settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal by the international community (including the United States but excluding Israel) because they are in the occupied West Bank; the United Nations holds that settlements are a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention as does the International Court of Justice. There are more than 200 settlements. About half were established before George W. Bush’s 2002 “Road Map for Peace,” and are considered “legal” by Israel. The remaining half were established after that date and even Israel considers them “illegal.”

The current bill is especially onerous because it creates a method to legalize settlements that were built on private land without the owner’s permission. By building these settlements, Israelis are stealing Palestinian’s land. And now the Israeli government wants to legalize that theft.

The Times correctly notes that “the bill deepens the occupation thereby threatening the viability of the two-state solution, which admittedly is nearly moribund but which remains the only realistic hope for peace.”

The second bill the Times opposes bans religious institutions from using public loudspeakers to reduce noise pollution. Although written generally, the bill would only apply to Mosques that universally broadcast the Muslim call to prayer. There is a “Shabbos exemption” that will allows some ultra-orthodox communities to continuing marking Shabbos with a siren.

The Times correctly says “this will not end happily. Instead of trying to work out a reasonable, mutually agreeable modus vivendi in mixed-population cities like Jerusalem and Haifa and Lod, the Knesset is poised to adopt a harsh and provocative approach that will deepen the conflict.” The Times suggests that Israel use existing laws to deal with excessive noise, rather than target the Palestinian minority which would increase animosity between Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians.  

Opposing the two bills is pro-peace because each would create additional barriers to Israeli – Palestinian peace. But the Times editorial takes a pro-Israel tact in its last paragraph that encapsulates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by claiming that Palestinians kill Jews and “teach resentment and propaganda,” while Israelis merely “respond” with settlements, walls, and harassment.

That summary of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict blatantly distorts the dynamic in a pro-Israel manner by ignoring that the Israeli army regularly kills and arrests Palestinians as the leading edge of Israel’s systematic dispossession of Palestinians, destruction of their economy, and denial of political and human rights. That is the military occupation of Palestine that has been going on for 50 years.

Worse, to show balance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Times summary buys into the Israeli and Jewish American propaganda that Israelis seek peace and Palestinians seek death. It ignores the well-documented fact that Israeli schools equal or exceed Palestinian schools in teaching resentment and propaganda. The summary ignores that the Israel army has violently occupied Palestine for 50 years, and in doing so has killed thousands of Palestinians. 

The LA Times can’t have it both ways. Either the Times stands for peace as it did by opposing the two bills that will propagate the occupation. Or the Times stands with Israel in its long-term project to take control of the West Bank and marginalize or expel Palestinians as it did in its last paragraph.

(Jeff Warner is a founding member of LA Jews for Peace. He can be contacted at: [email protected])

-cw

NEW GEOGRAPHY--One obvious, if little discussed, reason the progressive wave receded last week: The left’s increasingly unappealing economic agenda. In the past, progressives focused on improving conditions for working and middle class Americans through economic growth, home ownership and expansive infrastructure projects.

Today, notes former Bill Clinton aide William Galston, progressives rarely promote economic growth, having developed a particular hostility to many of the industries—energy manufacturing, transportation and agriculture—that offer economic opportunity to millions of Americans. This new environmental orientation has been less than enthusiastically embraced away from the coasts, where Trump, not coincidentally, triumphed.

In contrast to the old Democratic notions embraced by the likes of Harry Truman or the late California Governor Pat Brown, today’s progressives promote social control and the consolidation of a cognitively determined world order. Its promise amounts to forging a kind of high-tech middle ages in which the new aristocracy—techies, media grandees, financial moguls, academics, high-level bureaucrats—dominate while the middle class becomes increasingly serf-like.

In this new neo-feudalism, property ownership, like power, is concentrated in ever fewer hands.

Trumpism as anti-feudalism

The Trump victory tapped into a class rebellion among middle- and working-class voters who feelthe most alienated and pessimistic about the future. The post-industrial, asset-inflated world so beneficial to the Apples, Googles, media stars and the trustifarians in glamour cities has been less kind to the middle and working class, whose incomes have dropped or stagnated over the past decade and a half.

While some percentage of Trump’s supporters were fundamentally “deplorable,” this wasn’t the KKK triumph imagined by scriptwriter Adam Sorkin. Rather, he won with the support of many people who had previously voted for Barack Obama.

White working class voters, endless mocked and sometimes even demonized in the media, were massively underestimated by the pollsters, as well — who used 2012 exit polls that undercounted as many as 10 million white voters over 45 to build their models for who would turn out in 2016. 

And Trump dominated those voters, winning them by 40 percentage points — a 15 point improvement over Mitt Romney’s margin. Trump’s opponent, it should be noted, was also white.

How feudalism could trump populism.

It remains to be seen how Trump’s voters will feel about their choice in the years to come, but the basic incoherence of his world-view, along with the corporatist leaning of the Republican majority in Congress, could undermine any attempt to restore upward mobility

There are fundamentally three forces driving our post-modern feudalization, all of them related. One is globalization, highlighted throughout the campaign, and clearly responsible for considerable job losses for certain classes and certain regions. As countries such as China and India move up the value-added chain, even higher-paid workers will face mounting economic competition. San Jose and Raleigh soon could feel some of  the pain that Youngstown and Flint have absorbed for decades.

The second is immigration which, for all its many blessings, tends to depress wages for lower and middle workers. Many native-born Americans who used to enjoy steady work have joined the rapidly expanding, and economically vulnerable, precariat made up of contingent, irregularly employed workers. Both Bernie Sanders and Trump identified the problems faced by such workers by unrestricted immigration.

Undereducated whites are not the only ones who are suffering from downward mobility. Trump trailed but still considerably outperformed previous GOP nominees among both Latinos and African Americans. Increasingly, educated workers are threatened by such things as -IB visas for skilled workers, which essentially replaces indigenous skilled workers with imported indentured servants. This has already resulted in job losses among IT workers at places like the Disney Company and Southern California Edison.

The third driver of feudalization lies in the concentration of business and property ownership. Lenin once identified “small scale production” as what “gives birth spontaneously to capitalism and the bourgeoisie.” America’s small firms are in retreat while large corporations increasingly dominate everything from food to technology. For the first time in our modern history, exits from business now exceed new incorporations.

Similarly, home ownership has dropped to its lowest level in five decades, with the decline steepestamong young people. More millennials now live with their parents than with a partner. And when they do move out, they are often trapped into renting, often at high rates, with little chance of ever buying a house.

The Religious Slant of Ecotopia

The first feudal era was characterized by constrained class mobility, a decline of middle orders and a persistent concentration of power, first in feudal lords and later kings. But what held Medieval society together was an attachment to common articles of faith. Catholic dogma defined and justified the ascension of the aristocracy and royalty, and explained in theological terms both why the poor should accept their fate, and why middle-class aspirations were a threat to the moral order.

Today religion is in, pardon the pun, secular decline. Particularly in the bluest states, it has been replaced by two new faiths. One is the green religion, now focused on climate change. The other new faith is technological determinism, the idea that there is a magical, disruptive solution to any problem, including those relating to nature.

Nowhere are these two religions more commingled than in America’s Ecotopia, which extends from Northern California to the Pacific Northwest and is both the home to our leading tech companies and birthplace of modern environmentalism.

 Structural changes help explain this melding. Today Silicon Valley profits have become more centered on software and media than hardware, so the constraints associated with environmental regulations, such as high energy and water costs, have become less important to oligarchs. At the same time many Silicon Valley companies — notably Tesla/Solar City — have sought to profit from the shift to “green” energy, feeding on the beneficent federal subsidies attached to it.

For these interests, the GOP’s great sweep represents a bit of an unexpected setback. The federal subsidies driving some of these industries are likely to be scaled back. Used to a cozy relationship with the White House, the tech elite, with the notable exception of Peter Thiel, finds itself on the outside looking in.

Acolytes of the technocratic green ideology, hostile to Trump, geographically and ideologically removed from the rest of the nation and already functioning as a kind of wealthy, cossetted alt-nation, are now talking vaguely about succession. That conversation is driven in part by apocalyptic predictions about climate change generally accepted without skepticism in media, academic and political circles.

 Although couched in scientism, green politics should be seen as somewhat faith-based, a craving more about piety than practical reality. Both Bjorn Lomborg and NASA’s Richard Hansen, one of the earliest heralds of climate change, doubt that the measures embraced by the Paris accords will prove remotely effective in reducing temperature rise. California , a recent report demonstrates. could literally fall into the ocean with no appreciable impact on global temperature, particularly given that countries like China continue to boost their coal capacity.

Neo-feudalism and the fate of the middle class.

Most critically, the theology of green progressives will do as little good for today’s middle and working class people as extreme Catholic dogma did for the medieval peasantry. Overall, according to a recent Social Science Council report, California is now the most unequal state when it comes to “well being,” combining stupendous, mostly coastal wealth with the highest rate of poverty in the nation, concentrated inland.

Neo-feudalism diminishes  the property owning middle-class. In the Bay Area, regional governments are now seeking to limit all new development to a mere fraction of the area’s land mass, all but guaranteeing the future generations will face almost impossibly high housing prices. And a new set of state regulations, including a requirement that new houses have “zero” net energy use all but guarantees that houses, over time, will continue becoming ever more expensive.

The Bay Area’s regional plan also says goodbye to the American dream, suggesting that 82 percent of all new housing should be rental. Ultimately there will be little left for “little people” save for low end service jobs and benefit-less roles in the gig economy   created by the oligarchs  . Tech firms in the Valley employ shockingly few Latinos or African Americans, who make up barely 6 percent, for example, of Facebook’s workforce. And that’s better than the average of barely 5 percent among the leading tech firms.

Older industries do far better on these terms. In manufacturing, 16.2% of workers are Latinos and 9.7% are African America, according to 2015 data.  In mining, quarrying and oil and gas extraction, Latinos make up 16.9% of the workforce and African-Americans 4.8%, while in agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, nearly a quarter of the workforce—23%—is Latino and 2.7 percent is African-American.

As the green ideology undermines the last bastions of the middle and working class economy, some of the most extreme “ethnic cleansing” is taking place in such cities as San Francisco, Portland and Seattle, where high prices, regulations ,  sometimes aided local redevelopment,  have worked to push minorities to the poorer suburbs, or out of the region entirely.

Oligarchs and Alms for the Poor

Silicon Valley’s answer to this to this reality is hardly reassuring. At a conference on environmental economics several years back, I discussed with a prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist the impact of these policies on homeownership and family formation. A low birthrate didn’t faze him because he believed “we really don’t need people now,” at least not those without special skills. Ultimately robots will do most of the basic work, he explained.

Of course, if the largely childless hipsters on of San Francisco may accede to this view, it’s unlikely that many others, including the poor and undocumented immigrants, will embrace the post-human perspective at the heart of Silicon Valley. Of course the oligarchs have a solution to the marginalization of the masses: a pool of subsidies to help cover artificially inflated housing and energy costs. Elon Musk and other valley heavyweightssupport a government-sponsored minimum income for what they regard as an  increasingly redundant population.

The oligarchs do not want risk a rebellion from below; the Trump victory demonstrates that potential. Yet don’t worry much about their being burdened by their call for societal generosity. Skilled at tax avoidance, they’ll pass the bill on to the remaining middle and working class residents, while the regulatory clerisy, both in government and the universities, enjoy pensions and other protections unavailable to the masses.  

Trump and the New Feudalism

For all the awfulness associated with Trump, his election stemmed from a disinclination among Americans to accept their place in the new technocratic order. Trump is best praised for some of the enemies he has made—movie stars and hierarchs of the environmental left, the racial grievance industry, the high-tech oligarchs, the bureaucracy and a university system that serves largely as a giant re-education camp. Not surprisingly, those enemies are having a collective fit about his victory.

Yet for all the pleasure one can derive from this spectacle, it’s dubious that Trump, himself the licker off a silver spoon, will be effective at slowing America’s slide towards neo-feudalism. After all, his basic policy instincts tend to be wrong: cutting taxes on the rich is not what the middle and working classes need. And banning illegal immigration and engaging in trade wars may help some industries, but will certainly hurt others. By themselves, there’s no chance that those steps will restore prosperity to so many Americans.

But Trump’s working-class-fueled victory should finally convince the operatives in both parties that restoring upward mobility constitutes our  great political challenge. There could be some common ground in policies that embrace things like expanding skills  education and economically useful infrastructure, relaxing federal regulation and reducing taxation of small enterprise.

What Trump deserves credit for—perhaps the only thing he deserves credit for—is derailing the predictable transition of the same old insiders who would feed at the trough in a Clinton Inc. administration. Now it’s up to the rest of us—those who supported him and those, like me, who did not—to determine that making America “great again” also means standing up to the new feudalism, and chasing this regressive order back into the darkness of the past, where it belongs.

(Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. … where this piece was most recently posted. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us, will be published in April by Agate. This piece first appeared at The Daily Beast and was published most recently by New Geography.) 

-cw

YOU GOTTA STAND FOR SOMETHING--As Donald Trump plans his transition into the White House, some have called for “unity.” Let’s “come together,” they say. Let’s “give him a chance.”

I say no.

When a man abuses his wife, you don’t tell her to give him a chance. You don’t tell her to try to talk things out with him. Meet him halfway. Hear his side of it. Believe him when he says he loves her and he won’t hit her again.

Why? Because it won’t work.

The rules of normal social conduct don’t apply in such a case. Nor do they apply in this one. As I’ve said before, Trump exhibits textbook emotional abuse tactics. 

If you give him a chance, he’ll walk all over you. If you go into any negotiation ready to meet him in the middle, he’ll demand it isn’t enough, that he must get his way entirely. And he’ll strong-arm you to get it.

We already have evidence that Trump does absolutely everything he can get away with.

He walked in on naked teenage beauty queens while they were changing, just because he could. Twelve women have accused him of sexual assault. He openly admits that he kisses and gropes them without consent.

He doesn’t pay contractors for their work. During the campaign, he even stiffed his own pollster. And his lawyers had to meet with him in pairs to prevent him from lying about their meetings.

This is a man who’ll do anything he can get away with. And he’s about as ready to change as a man who beats his wife would be.

So we can’t roll over and let him. We fight.

That’s what we must do now. We must make it absolutely as hard as possible for this man to wreck our democracy. And that’s not a partisan statement.

At this point, it’s not about whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican. It’s not about whether you prefer to repeal NAFTA or Obamacare, or about whether you think same-sex marriage should be legal.

It’s now about whether you think the democracy the United States has had for over 200 years should remain in existence. If the answer to that question is yes, then it’s time to fight. Because that’s what’s under threat.

The pain of this bitter election hurts. For the second time in recent years, the Electoral College is on track to install a president who received fewer votes from the American people than his opponent.

We’re all dealing with difficult emotions in different ways. I’m listening to audiobooks and knitting. Okay, and ugly crying. Others are protesting. And some are trying to handle their anger and fear by “thinking positive.”

It’s not the time for that. Not when thinking positive means denying reality.

It’s been only days since the election and Trump has already appointed Steve Bannon, a white supremacist and “alt-right” media kingpin, as a top adviser. If you wanted to give Trump a chance, there. He’s had one. He blew it.

The next four years are going to be hard. But now is the time to start mobilizing. The continuation of our very democracy depends on it.

(OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is the author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It and an occasional contributer to CityWatch. Distributed by OtherWords.org.)

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW-This has been a long week. As a politically engaged vocal activist and a writer, I find it beyond challenging to silence my voice on social media. I respect and appreciate my friends’ decision to remain unwired for respite, peace and healing. 

I realize that unfortunately leaves me vulnerable to attacks. No matter which side of the aisle, we can probably agree that Trump has legitimized the voices of racists, sexists, homophobes, white supremacists and others. He may not be any of these things (well, pretty hard to walk back the sexist part) but in that scenario, he used the dog whistles to court the KKK, ant-Semites, and others in those camps to "win."  

I had a bizarre cyberbullying experience two nights post-election. A woman with a substantial following had posted about the protests on her Facebook wall. Some had written some pretty heated comments, which is their right. I’m not even sure at this point why I even bother to parachute into enemy territory but I did. I wrote a fairly innocuous fact-based comment and seconds later, “Laura Israel” asked if I “support criminals.” I took the bait. Her response included pretty vitriolic words about Hillary Clinton and an attack on me that included personal information. I felt violated. Did I know this woman? 

Moments later, I received a message from “D, whom I didn’t know but who shared this same Laura Israel had attacked her on one of the blogger’s Facebook threads about same-sex marriage and called her pretty vile names. Both “Laura Israel” and her “friend” had similar profiles so I suspected they might belong to a group. 

About an hour later, D. messaged that she had uncovered both Laura and her “friend” were troll accounts belonging to the same woman. It turned out “Laura” was someone I know. I had been a guest at her daughter’s bat mitzvah, celebrated at her holiday parties and her son’s bris. 

Since Donald J. Trump’s “season opener” with The Wall, I’ve wondered who nearby was on board. After Tuesday, I’ve begun to feel like we are in inside-out McCarthyism or the Salem Witch Trials. We aren’t really sure whom we can trust. I do not believe every person who voted for Trump shares the views he spewed at his rallies or in his early morning Twitter rampages. We don’t even know if he shares them. But we’ve turned the corner on what is accepted form. 

On the flip side, Donald Trump’s “anti-PC” scapegoating and rhetoric have exposed not only those who stand behind his dog whistles. He has also exposed our neighbors and Facebook “friends” who are appalled, people like the nurse from my children’s elementary school who turns out has a pretty strong activist bent. 

So, look around. We don’t know who might hold racist, sexist, ant-Semitic views or who might be hiding behind a phony troll profile or two to fire off cyberbullying missives to anyone who disagrees. But we also don’t know who among us is gearing up to protect our collective rights and to save the planet. 

Good will prevail. And despite the Electoral College outcome, Love Trumps Hate.

(Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

BATTLING GEN X AND MILLENNIAL PERSPECTIVES?-The 2016 election is in the rear-view mirror. But the votes and views of a key demographic group – young women -- will reverberate significantly in future elections. Two members of this group, Ivanka Trump and Chelsea Clinton, were the most visible representatives of their peers during the campaign. Examining their unique demographic characteristics and attitudes provides clues about what we can expect from the emerging female electorate going forward. 

Diversity

Let’s start with the basics. While very close in age, the two women fall into different generations. At 35, Ivanka Trump is at the front end of the much-discussed millennial cohort. Millennials are now the largest generation, making up more than one quarter of the nation’s population. Chelsea, at 36, is a young Gen Xer, a group with a less distinctive profile in public opinion. Together, Millennials and Gen Xers make up the largest share of eligible (not actual) voters (56%). 

The United States is experiencing what demographer Bill Frey calls a “diversity explosion,” with Millennials the most diverse generation in our history. Ivanka and Chelsea are part of the declining national white share of America’s population. Among Millennials, 56% are now white, 21% Hispanic, 14% African-American and 7% Asian. 

The Millennial generation is also the most educated generation in history, especially its women. Women surpassed men in bachelor’s degrees conferred in 1982, master’s degrees in 1987, and doctoral and other professional degrees in 2006. Ivanka and Chelsea’s Ivy League educations are not the norm for most young women, but their levels of education illustrate the impressive gains their female peers are making. This election, women with a college degree were 51 percent of voters and voted for Hillary Clinton, 58%-38%. 

The Future Family

Ivanka married at age 27, just days before her 28th birthday; Chelsea at age 30. Like many other women their ages and younger, they married later (and will be married longer if they stay married.) In 2015, the average age of first marriage was 27 for women and 29 for men, up from 21 for women and 23 for men of the Silent generation (born 1928–45). Around 20% of Millennials are married today. A quarter are the children of divorce or parental separation, true for Ivanka but not for Chelsea. 

While these two women have married, the rise of the non-married electorate may be more consequential politically. In the AEI/Brookings Institution/Center for American Progress report “States of Change: The Demographic Evolution of the American Electorate, 1974–2060,” we note that in 1974, 70% of eligible voters were married. Today, the married share of the eligible electorate is down to 52%. The non-married share is almost as large at 48%. Among female eligible voters, the non-married share has surpassed the married share. Strong majorities of non-married women (a group that includes single, divorced and widowed women) have voted Democratic in every presidential election since the 1980s, the first time the exit pollsters collected these data, and they have become more Democratic over time. Non-married women voted 62 percent for Hillary Clinton. Sixty-seven percent voted for Barack Obama in 2012. 

Religious intermarriage is becoming more common, and both Ivanka and Chelsea married someone of a different faith. Pew’s 2014 religious landscape survey found that people who married after 2010 were more than twice as likely to be in religious intermarriages as those who married before 1960 (39%-19%). 

Millennials are leading another significant religious change in America: the rise of the “nones.” More than a third of Millennials (35%) say they have no formal religious affiliation. Still, around 50% of Millennials say they are absolutely certain they believe in God. 

Declining fertility is another big story of our time, and the current fertility rate of 1.9 births per woman now falls below the replacement rate of 2.1. Ivanka has three children at this point, and Chelsea, two. Today, according to Gallup, American women say their ideal family size is 2.6 children, down from 3.6, a figure that remained constant until the late 1950s. In the same survey, 40% of Americans 18-40 years old who do not have children said they want them someday. Young adults still want kids; they just aren’t having as many. 

Women at Work -- And at Home?

Ivanka and Chelsea are working mothers, as both have highlighted in recent public appearances. They are both working moms of newborns, to boot. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), 68% of married mothers in 2015 were in the labor force, as were three-fourths of mothers not married or living apart from their spouse. Fifty-eight percent of mothers with infants under a year old were in the workforce either full- or part-time last year. 

As more women have entered the U.S. workforce, their attitudes about working have shifted. Since 2007, around 50% of women, up from 36% when Gallup first asked the question in 1974, have consistently told the pollsters that if they were free to do either -- a big “if” for most women -- they would prefer to have a job outside the home than to stay home and take care of their house and family. While a majority of younger women and women with a college degree said they would prefer to work, a majority of women with children said they would not. In Gallup’s 2014-15 data, 54% of employed women with children under 18 preferred to stay home, as did 57% of women not currently employed with children. 

In 2015, both parents worked in 61% of married-couple families with children under 18, according to the BLS. Ivanka and Chelsea have more resources than most working mothers to help them navigate the work-family balance. More millennial husbands than husbands in earlier generations say they help at home. Fifty-nine percent of parents employed full-time say they share household chores equally, but women still handle most child-rearing responsibilities.

Ivanka is not alone in professing the joys of parenthood, as she did in her September Wall Street Journal article. In a 2015 Pew study, more than three in four parents with children under 18 described being a parent as enjoyable and, separately, rewarding. Mothers and fathers both gave equally as high responses. 

Political Laggards, Social Leaders?

In terms of partisan identification, Ivanka spoke for many in her generation when she said at the GOP convention: “I do not consider myself categorically Republican or Democrat.” More young people describe themselves as independents than as Republicans or Democrats. This election, more young voters cast ballots for third-party candidates than older voters did. But in recent elections, young voters have voted heavily Democratic. They voted solidly for President Obama in 2008 (66%) and 2012 (60%), fueled largely by the preferences of minority youth. 

In 2016, they voted 55% for Clinton to 37% for Trump. White young people voted narrowly for Trump, 48%- 43%. Minority millennials voted heavily for Clinton. Young white women voted for Clinton, 51%- 42%. Their older sisters, white women ages 30–44, voted more closely for Trump, 49%- 45%.

Younger voters pay some attention to politics. In the Spring 2016 Harvard Institute of Politics (IOP) poll, over half of 18- to 29-year-olds said they are following closely this year’s presidential election (60%) and, separately, news about national politics (52%). But unlike Ivanka and Chelsea, most do not actively participate. Although 37% have liked a political issue on Facebook and 29% a political candidate, most are passive and don’t engage in traditional political activities such as volunteering. 

Even though Ivanka and Chelsea haven’t made explicit their opinions on many mainstream issues, polling data show clear patterns in young people’s attitudes. Both Gen Xers and Millennials strongly support gay marriage, but until recently, young women were much more supportive than young men. Today their views are similar. Young men and women support marijuana legalization, but young women are more dubious about it than men. On abortion, the young, like other generations, want to keep abortion legal but are willing to put restrictions on its use. Young women are less supportive about women being drafted than are young men. Although these issues get substantial media attention, the top issues for most young people -- as for their parents -- are the economy, terrorism and health care. 

The granddaughters of feminism are charting their own course. In the Harvard IOP poll, 37% of women 18-29 years old identified themselves as feminists, while 58% did not. That’s not to say young women don’t think there’s progress to be made. In another poll from Pew earlier this fall, 63% of women 18-34 said there are still significant obstacles that make it harder for women to get ahead than men, compared with 38% of men this age who gave this response. When asked if they’ve ever personally experienced discrimination because of their sex, more women say they haven’t than say they have (53%-46%). 

Life at the Local Level

Ivanka and Chelsea campaigned on behalf of a parent for the country’s highest elected office, but young people aren’t very confident in government. They want the federal government to do many things and at the same time have little trust in it. Nearly two-thirds don’t think Social Security will be available when they retire. Similarly, young people are neither cheerleaders for nor hostile to big business. Many observers have commented on their distrust in central institutions, but this could have a silver lining. As they grow up, they are likely to be more self-reliant and perhaps more active in their local communities, where they have higher confidence that problems can be solved. 

Both Ivanka and Chelsea appear to have close relationships with their parents, another factor that defines the younger generations. Young people often talk to or text with their parents, and 32% of 18- to 34-year-olds live with a parent, surpassing for the first time the number of those living with a spouse or partner in their own household. Many also live near their parents. In the 2014 General Social Survey, over half (53%) of young adults said they lived in the same city as when they were 16 years old. Of those who moved away, one in five lived in the same state, while slightly more (one in four) moved to a different state. 

A Younger Direction

Ivanka and Chelsea didn’t sign up to be presidential surrogates, but both were a credit to their families on the campaign trail. Both have said their friendship will continue after the dispiriting political brawl that was this year’s campaign, something that could serve as good advice for the rest of us. And in an interview with 60 Minutes this week, Ivanka said she is “going to be a daughter” in her father’s presidential administration, rather than having a more formal role. As she and Chelsea return to their lives off the campaign trail, the demographic and attitudinal footprint of young women gives us a sense of how this emerging electorate will reshape the country’s political and cultural landscape for generations to come.

This piece is adapted from an article that first appeared on WSJ.com.

(Karlyn Bowman is a senior fellow and Heather Sims a program manager at the American Enterprise Institute. This piece was posted most recently at New Geography.)[[[   http://www.newgeography.com/content/005451-ivanka-trump-chelsea-clinton-and-emerging-female-electorate ]]] Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

Tags: Karlyn Bowman, Heather Sims, American Enterprise Institute, New Geography, Wall Street Journal, Millennials, Gen Xers, women in the workplace, demographic opinion patterns

TRUMP BRAND ADJUSTMENT BEGINS-Throughout the election, critics often savaged the media for “normalizing Trump,” broadly defined as the act of treating his rank sexism, xenophobia and fascist dog-whistles as just another policy difference against equally valid opponents. This trend, borne largely by a combination of cognitive dissonance and access, is being accelerated now that Trump has won the election, and its continuation, if left unchecked, could undermine opposition for years to come.

Oprah Winfrey, in an interview with Entertainment Tonight, said Trump’s recent visit to the White House gave her “hope” and suggested he has been “humbled” by the experience. The Guardian’s Simon Jenkins told his readers to “calm down” and that Trump wasn’t the “worst thing.” His college, Nouriel Roubini, insisted the Oval Office will “tame” Trump. People magazine ran a glowing profile of Trump and his wife Melania (though a former People writer accused Trump of sexual assault). The New York Times’ Nick Kristof dubiously added that we should “Grit our teeth and give Trump a chance.” The mainstays—Washington Post, New York Times and CNN—while frequently critical, are coving Trump’s transition as they would any other. President Obama, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have all issued statements recognizing Trump’s legitimacy and pleading we give him a chance.

Overall there’s a creeping sense that we’re stuck with Trump and we should make it “work” in some type of do-goody liberal appeal to patriotism.

But this is wrong, both tactically and ethically. Trump isn’t normal and he should never be treated as such, regardless of what President Obama and Clinton and Sanders say. These people are politicians, bound by a different covenant. The media, namely progressive media, is subject to no such charge. The overall message of normalizing Trump is that you can steamroll women, LGBT people, the disabled, Muslims, and people of color, yet everything will be okay so long as you win. Indeed, when asked if he thought his rhetoric had gone too far, Trump responded, “No, I won.” This is the logic of a fascist, and liberals are acquiescing to him by pivoting to “Trump as our kooky uncle” normalization mode.

In addition to it working in Trump’s favor in the present, it creates a moral hazard for all future Trumps: you can go as far right as you want and smear as many vulnerable populations you want, so long as you surpass 270 electoral votes come fall.

Had Trump lost, he would likely have been cast out of proper company, left to build his own Breitbart-like brand operating on the margins of acceptable opinion. Influential and profitable to be sure, but not mainstream. Political principles, to say nothing of morality, should not shift based on the outcome of an election. If Trump was a vulgar racist and sexual predator before November 8, he still is after, regardless of his new position.

So what to do?

Those not appealing to bromides about “working together” are staging massive protests throughout the country, from Austin to Portland to Kansas City to New York. As expected, the same pundit class that neither predicted nor adequately combated Trump’s rise are concern trolling those taking to the streets to show their revulsion. The Daily Show ran a boring segment hand-wringing over some overturned cars. New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait insisted the people shouldn’t denounce Trump the day after the election because it was “a little soon.” Too soon? Given the stakes, one is compelled to ask, why wait?

Israel has already signaled it will expand settlements with the blessing of the president-elect. The cabinet looks like it will be stuffed with unqualified Trump cronies. Virulently anti-poor people Paul Ryan has effectively been put in charge of budget priorities and is floating Medicare cuts. A climate change denier is selecting the head of the EPA. Why wait to use every available avenue to undermine Trump on the altar of civility?

Instead of appealing to civility or plotting a run four years down the road, pundits who truly want to undermine Trump as much as possible should spend more time supporting their local anti-Trump protests and far less time treating Trump like just another politician. The left can only combat Trump by leveraging both its political and activist wings, not indulging in Sorkinesque gestures of “working together.”

(Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst at FAIR and contributing writer for AlterNet. This perspective was posted most recently at TruthDig.) 

-cw

PERSPECTIVE-Ivanka Trump will take the oath of office as President of the United States in 2032. By then, she will have served in Congress for ten years, filling Rep. Peter King’s seat in New York. This would come after four years as White House Press Secretary. 

I can hear the readers of this article madly typing comments, many of them expressing outrage.

Before you hit the “send now” button, you should understand that those who are well-acquainted with me know my affection for satire. I have even written a few satirical pieces for Citywatch. 

In my early youth, I developed an appreciation for the genre. Steve Allen’s and Ernie Kovacs’ off-the-wall skits, while not about politics, not to mention tame by today’s standards, were the prototypes for contemporary comedic interpretations of current events and social norms. 

John Oliver’s work is at the top of my list these days (Jon Stewart is OK, but Colbert is a frightful bore.) Oliver pulls no punches and uses gut-busting delivery and politically incorrect content, although I wish he would refrain from over-reliance on the F-bomb. 

I’m waiting for someone to perform a skit about Ivanka Trump rising to power; Chelsea Clinton too – it has been reported that she is being groomed to run for Congress. There’s great potential material here. It could top all of the Donald Trump/Hilary Clinton sketches that appeared on SNL. 

I thought Donald Trump’s campaign was satire – until November 8th – but Clinton ended up as the punchline. So, while I am not serious about either Ivanka’s or Chelsea’s prospects for leading the nation, the recent election proves that anything can happen. Maybe Billy Bush can resurrect his family’s political fortunes. 

Yes, anything can happen, but, judging from partisan Facebook posts, few of Clinton’s supporters failed to recognize that right up through late in the afternoon of November 8th. By the way, Dave Chappelle’s sketch with Chris Rock on SNL hilariously made that point. 

Both candidates took their lumps in the parodies; perhaps Trump more so, but his rants were softballs which the writers were able to knock out of the park. Many Clinton supporters may have developed a false sense of security by assuming the satire reflected the prevailing sentiment across all regions. However, what may seem funny and improbable one day, can become reality the next.

Too many people have a myopic view of the world. They do not understand how anyone can hold an opposing position. As a result, they can get blindsided and unduly horrified when results do not go their way. 

We owe it to ourselves to understand the underlying reasons for the views of a wider audience, not just what is reported in the mainstream and social media, or fed to us by partisan organizations. Michael Moore had it right. 

Unless we make an effort to understand each other, we will allow satire to obscure reality. Then it will no longer be funny.

(Paul Hatfield is a CPA and serves as President of the Valley Village Homeowners Association. He blogs at Village to Village and contributes to CityWatch. The views presented are those of Mr. Hatfield and his alone and do not represent the opinions of Valley Village Homeowners Association or CityWatch. He can be reached at: [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.