- It’s been 76 years since the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in America, conservatives prevent or keep trying to reverse many of those rights;
- Example of their latest bugaboo: transgenders;
- How Trump’s cabinet picks would please Putin, whose ambition is to sow distrust within Western democracies;
- And why so many voters think Republicans manage the economy better than Democrats, despite all the evidence.
Last night’s column by Heather Cox Richardson reminds us about Human Rights Day, celebrated internationally since the United Nations, 76 years ago, announced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in the years just after World War II. (Which can be found here.) Richardson sketches the state of the world at the time. Many principles of the UDHR are familiar from American’s own Bill of Rights and various amendments, but we don’t have many of them — notably not “equal rights of men and women” since American conservatives, essentially tribal in their thinking, do not actually approve of rights for those beyond their immediate kind. Sad but true.
The UDHR is an example, considering all of human history before it, of how morality has evolved, the circle of common humanity expanding to include more and more people and situations. (And potentially sentient non-humans.) Skimming this piece, I note many items that American conservatives still resist: not only equal rights for women, but equal pay for equal work; rights to health and well-being; rights to a free education that “shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations…” South Africa (then under apartheid), Saudi Arabia, and six Soviet countries abstained back in 1948.
Morality evolves because we keep realizing that ancient prejudices were driven by tribal competition and have no basis in reality, and because we keep discovering new categories of human beings that conservatives latch on to diminish people unlike themselves. Richardson:
In a proclamation today, the White House recommitted to “upholding the equal and inalienable rights of all people.” It noted that in the U.S., the Biden administration established “the White House Gender Policy Council to advance the rights and opportunities of women and girls across domestic and foreign policy [and] rejoined the United Nations Human Rights Council to highlight and address pressing human rights concerns.” It has “worked to protect the rights of LGBTQI+ people” and to expand “accessibility for people with disabilities.” Crucially, the administration has also worked to stop the misuse of commercial spyware, which has enabled human rights abuses around the world as authoritarian governments surveil their populations, and to fight back against transnational repression targeting human rights defenders.
Despite American conservatives, and religions in general, the world is a better place than it was a century ago.
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The political seesaw continues, liberals making progress, conservatives trying to reverse it, each in their turn.
AlterNet, Alex Henderson, 11 Dec 2024: ‘Ideological shift’: Trump taps conservative lawyer to eviscerate DOJ’s Biden-era civil rights initiatives
What civil rights does she want to reverse? Why, those concerning the latest conservative bugaboo: transgender people.
“If confirmed, Dhillon would be in a position to upend the division’s work on a range of hot-button areas, including transgender rights, voting and policing. In particular, the division is expected to try to dismantle DEI policies at schools, government agencies and other public institutions, according to the sources familiar with the planning.”
Because conservatives would very much prefer that no one exist except for straight, white Christians, with males in charge. Overton window: you have to suppose they would repeal laws against slavery, and for women’s suffrage, if they could still get away with it. Again see Prothero. Conservatives struggle and struggle, but surely they know they’re on, as the saying goes, the wrong side of history. That’s the trend that history shows.
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And so the conservatives’ perennial call: retreat! Reinstate the values of tribes led by strongmen! Enough with this human rights nonsense!
Slate, Fred Kaplan, 11 Dec 2024: Trump’s Cabinet Picks Are Great News for Putin. The title on Slate’s homepage is the first line of the article, here:
Donald Trump probably isn’t a Russian agent, but he wouldn’t be behaving much differently right now if he were.
Among the main goals of the Kremlin’s foreign policy are to sow chaos and distrust within Western democracies and to disrupt the alliances that join those countries together, especially the links between the United States and Europe. The idea is that a weaker West makes for a stronger Russia—a connection all the more important as the measures of Russia’s strength on its own (economic, political, and military) are diminishing.
Many have noted Trump’s open antipathy toward alliances and his aversion to any foreign commitments that don’t yield immediate transactional gains.
Trump’s desire is to sow distrust within the American political system, for his own purposes, never mind the consequences.
Trump is not stupid. He must know that many of his nominees to be Cabinet secretaries, agency directors, and ambassadors have no apparent qualifications to run vast bureaucracies, parse complex problems, or engage in delicate diplomacy. That’s not the point. He wants them to empty out the bureaucracies or run them into the ground. He wants them to twist the agencies into empty shells or blunt instruments of his vendettas. He wants to insult the diplomatic corps and to show foreign leaders how slight he regards their status.
Trump is thus a chaos agent. Examples of Hegseth, Patel, Gabbard, Oz and Noem, e.g.:
He named Dr. Mehmet Oz, an orthopedist turned TV doctor with financial interests galore to run Medicare and Medicaid, because he wants to gut Medicare and Medicaid. He named Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, to run the Department of Homeland Security—a hodgepodge of 22 once independent departments and agencies with a combined budget of $108 billion (more than 16 times that of South Dakota’s state budget)—because he wants to gut homeland security.
And Trump’s voters, I think, are intimidated by the complexity of modern life, and society, and yearn to return to a simpler life.
Many of Trump’s voters think it’s great that he plans to blow up the system. That’s a big reason why many of them voted for him. No doubt, much of the system could use reforms or outright overhaul. But the people Trump wants to put in charge have no idea how to improve the system, nor are they expected to.
Back to Putin and his plan to show chaos in the West; concluding:
It may not be Trump’s intention, but as the Trump Cabinet takes shape, Putin is no doubt smiling, Putin’s propagandists are laughing (the hosts of the main Kremlin-run TV news show gleefully welcomed Trump’s nominees as “totally wonderful“), and much of the rest of the world—those who rely on the United States—sigh and tremble.
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A similar piece:
NY Times, Jamelle Bouie, 11 Dec 2024: A Political Reckoning Will Come for Trump, Too
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A perennial topic, not just about economics, but about how so many people do not perceive reality correctly, and why is that? (Well, we know the answer.)
Vox, Abdallah Fayyad, 11 Dec 2024: Why do people think Republicans are better for the economy?, subtitled “Since World War II, the economy has, on average, fared better when Democrats are in the White House.”
But there’s a disconnect between how voters feel about Republicans’ management of the economy and the historical record. Since World War II, there’s been a consistent pattern of the economy faring better under Democratic presidents than Republican ones. More jobs have been created under Democrats, for example, who also saw higher rates of GDP growth. And economic downturns tend to happen under Republicans: Ten of the last 11 recessions started under a Republican administration.
With details about the numbers. Are the numbers just a coincidence? Well, this piece claims no clear answer; the world is complicated.
You might think it’s hard to argue with numbers. When you look at the past 80 years, it’s clear that the economy has performed better when Democrats are in the White House. But the reality is that it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly why that is.
Well, here’s a possible answer, that’s plain as day: Republicans prioritize policies that favor the wealthy, because the wealthy fund the Republicans. Tit for tat. While Democrats really do believe in the “common good” (and would raise taxes on the wealthy, to reverse the trend toward extreme inequality).
