Wednesday 9 October 2019

Post No. 1,426 - cross postings: human rights book, and the possible impeachment of POTUS45

These first appeared on my political blog at:

Humans, humanity, and human rights
I haven't had much time or energy for the researching, thinking, and writing of my humans, humanity, and human rights book project, but one thing I have started doing is creating an audio version of the book, and the first interim video is on YouTube at https://youtu.be/zyd4LR_nudw. 

 If you want to have a look at the written sections I've done (I have completed the first draft of Chapter One), have a look at https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2019/02/humans-humanity-and-human-rights-update.html.

Voters and the possible impeachment of POTUS45
A long time ago, I wondered what could get me interested in the LGBTIQ+ newspapers, and the answer was having more international news other than those based around LGBTIQ+ human rights problems and gains.

I then thought that, well, if that was what I wanted to see, I should have a go at writing it - here, on this blog, since I know no-one in the LGBTIQ+ print media, but when I started doing that (see here), I slipped into writing blog posts rather than using news-style.

I'm probably going to keep using blog-style, as it is more attractive (if not more interesting :) ) on this type of site, but that sequence of contemplation did suggest a few different ways of approaching issues, and one of the main ones is:
Why should people who are overwhelmed with their own issues care about others who also have problems?
This has been an issue for many years - in fact, it was a point of contention between suffragists (the suffragettes were a later, more militant organisation) and anti-racism campaigners in the USA just after their civil war (I'm not going to try and find that reference now: I'm OK with you choosing to disbelieve me, if you wish - but you should think carefully about such statements, no matter whether you agree or disagree), and I've seen that in quite a few areas in my life. (One is work [engineering], where professional demands seem to combine with conservative inclinations to stop some people [others, on the other hand, are up to date, inclusive, and merit the adjective "great"] staying up to date with changes in the late 20th Century, such as laws banning discrimination against LGBTIQ+ people - laws that even came with a big public debate, nearly two decades [some even earlier] before the Equal Marriage public-gay-and-trans-bashing fest.)

Of course, not caring about some people played a big role in getting POTUS45 (I will not use his name) elected - people who had been treated glibly, shabbily, and with disdain by pro-globalisation advocates / supporters / implementers.

So there's one harsh lesson about caring to begin with.

I've written elsewhere about Australia's move away from hospitality to hate over the last couple of decades ("Accepting asylum seekers strengthens our borders"), so there's another argument - viz., being hard and uncaring harms us and our standing in the world. (Mind you, refugee advocates - and I count myself as one - also have to address the sovereignty issue, which I did here . . . and that will come up elsewhere in the post [or the topic]).

Another aspect - and the one that is the biggest one for me personally - is that not caring makes us accomplices, even if "only" in the accessory-after-the-fact sense, to crimes against humanity, up to and including genocide - and what is happening against the Rohingya and other minorities in the burmese empire is one of the biggest examples of that (the crisis in Yemen is another; Syria is the third) - and my thoughts on the Rohingya are at "The Crime of Indifference".

The final introductory point I wish to make is the notion of communicating respectfully. This is something that is brilliantly demonstrated and written about by Paul K Chappell. As I wrote here, in “The Art of Waging Peace” (pub. Prospecta Press, reprint 2015, ISBN 978-1632260314 [Amazon]), Mr Chappell - in a section on listening, and how the target is to change the position of enough people, not all people - quotes the following comment by Leslee Goodman on how Mr Chappell was able to change the mind of a pro-war person:
"I had lost patience with one such person after ten minutes of unproductive dialogue. The Chappell showed up. He respectfully engaged my critic for a full forty-five minutes. Their conversation ended with the man thanking Chappell for listening to him and accepting a copy of [his book] The End of War. A few weeks later Chappell ran into the man and learned that he had read the book and had changed his mind about war as a means of ending terrorism."
This point is also argued for by  Amy Chua in "Political Tribes" (Pub. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018, London, ISBN 978-1-4088-8154-5; Amazon; a review here)., which I wrote about here, pointing out the impracticality - and others problems - of trying to get TGD people to talk to and convince every transphobic person in the world to stop being transphobic. There are limits, elegantly elucidated by the great Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. as follows:
“It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless.”
Nevertheless, when it comes to politics, the notion of communicating (keeping Zeno of Citium's admonishment that "We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we say" in mind) is a worthy one. In fact, one of the three major architects of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, PC Chang (the other two being Eleanor Roosevelt and the Christian Lebanese Arab, Charles Malik - see Mary Ann  Glendon's "A World  Made  New", which I reviewed here, for more on them and the other major architects such as Hansa Mehta) often mentioned "two man mindedness", which was an ancient Confucian formulation aimed at agreeing to disagree, when necessary.

In politics, successfully appealing to swing voters is crucial, and the impact of the investigation and possible impeachment of POTUS45 is one matter where being aware of other people's positions, and planning accordingly, is going to be crucial.

After all, as things stand now, it is likely that any move to impeach POTUS45 would be adopted by Democrat-controlled the US House of Representatives, but fail to get the required two-thirds majority in the Republican-controlled US Senate - neither of the two previous impeachments, against POTUS42 Bill Clinton and POTUS17 Andrew Jackson, achieved the required majority.

That means, to impeach POTUS45, a compelling argument needs to be made for a significant number of US Republican Senators to change their current position, and a lot of that goes back to the effect of this on voters - so we're back to communicating with (not to) everyday people.

Even more so, given that the time taken for these procedures may mean the proceedings will either be concluded during or only just before the next US Presidential election in 2020.

People in my social bubble all assume that the impeachment proceedings will be seen as a terrible thing showing POTUS45's unfitness for the position of President of the USA. However, it is possible that this will harden the views of POTUS45's supporters, and cast him as a martyr for them and some swing voters.

Let's look at that a little further, using a few analogies.

Those who dislike POTUS45 see impeachment as something well deserved. It is like:
  • a bully in the schoolyard being punished by a teacher; or 
  • a bigot being ordered to back down, apologise and make restitution for their harm by a court; or 
  • an animal abuser being forced to give up the animals they are abusing.
For those who support POTUS45, impeachment is akin to:
  • being an LGBTIQ+ person and seeing another LGBTIQ+ person being sacked or or bashed; or
  • being coloured in South Africa before the 1990s and seeing one of your people humiliated; or 
  • being Jewish, and seeing your family and friends being persecuted.
The reactions of POTUS45 supporters around possible impeachment are powerful, genuinely held, and must not be underestimated.

Nevertheless, those who support POTUS45 are, in my opinion, doomed to suffer disappointment. Many of them are supporters because they feel ignored and abandoned by the pro-globalisation "elite". Sadly, however, the way to change something like that is not by withdrawing, or trying to put the globalisation genie back in the bottle (as the "white picket fencers" who want to go back to the 1950s when problems were buried under a pretence that they didn't exist are doing). The way to get more effective change is by engagement, and arguing for things like the measures the Andrews government introduced to help workers who lost their jobs when the Hazelwood power station was shut down (although too many of them are still unemployed, which possibly reflects issues such as age discrimination, and the need for a major new industry), and for the free TAFE courses in areas the community needs, and for a life long learning fund, first raised by the ACTU in around 2012, and which I have added my voice to the calls for.
Going back to the POTUS45 supporters, I suspect they're going to find POTUS45 cannot deliver on his job promises - especially with his clumsy, 1950s era thinking, and his unconscious inclination to favour his rich mates and elites. That will probably be what breaks their support, not behaviour that, no matter how deplorable it is, is viewed as if it was just part of a reality show that is putting its thumbs in the eyes of hated globalisation elites - a view that would be hardened by impeachment.

For an electoral change of President, more people need to get out and vote for someone other than POTUS45 than vote for him, and those voting for someone new will be died-in-the-wool Democrats and progressives, and, crucially, a number of swing voters. Those voting for POTUS45 will likely be died-in-the-wool Democrats and conservatives and POTUS45-ites, as well as a number of swinging voters.

Which takes us back to swinging voters, and how to get them to vote for someone other then POTUS45.

One aspect of that will be how they view impeachment proceedings - which will probably be determined by how partisan or otherwise those proceedings are, and I understand US Speaker Nancy Pelosi is wisely urging her colleagues to tone down their rhetoric. There will also be other issues - including the climate crisis (still not accepted by everyone, and even amongst those who do there can be reluctance to take action because of fear of job losses), globalisation, and jobs.

Oh, and incidentally, the Democrats still need to get united behind a single, credible candidate.
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