Dear Commons Community,

An anonymous online forum called 8chan has drawn attention in the wake of the mass shootings in Texas and Ohio because violent U.S. extremists have used it to share tips and encourage one another. The site suffered sporadic outages yesterday after its cybersecurity provider cut off support for what it called a “cesspool of hate.”  Below is an explanation of 8chan courtesy of the Associated Press.

Tony

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

WHAT IS 8CHAN?

The online message board dates back to 2013. Under the banner of free speech, it allows users to post graphic and extremist content and doesn’t censor posts.

The site has been linked to violent extremists. Police are investigating commentary posted on 8chan believed to have been written by the suspect in a shooting Saturday that killed 22 people in El Paso, Texas.

If there is a connection, it would be the third known instance of a shooter posting to the site before going on a rampage. In March, the gunman in mass shootings at two New Zealand mosques posted a rambling manifesto to the site, as did another who injured several people and killed one at a California synagogue in April.

8chan’s founder, Fredrick Brennan, is no longer running the site. In an interview with The New York Times on Monday, he said the site wasn’t doing any good and called for it to be shut down.

WHY DID 8CHAN GO DOWN?

The site went down briefly after security provider Cloudflare said it would stop supporting the site. Without Cloudflare, the site was vulnerable to outside hackers who shut down the site.

“8chan has repeatedly proven itself to be a cesspool of hate,” Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince wrote. “They have proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness has caused multiple tragic deaths.”

CAN 8CHAN BE SHUT DOWN?

8chan’s popularity rose after the similarly named but unaffiliated site 4chan cracked down on more extreme posts. Because the U.S. doesn’t specifically outlaw domestic terrorism the way it does foreign-sponsored extremism, such sites enjoy broad protection from government oversight under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.

Even if that weren’t the case, content on sites like 8chan are also difficult to stamp out because users can simply move on if moderators grow stricter or if a site shuts down.

“Dealing with incitement to violence and hatred online goes well beyond any one platform,” the Anti-Defamation League’s Oren Segal said.

“These hate and racist posts will find another way to get their message out and another site with less scruples will pop up to host them,” added Tim Bajarin, a technology columnist and president of Creative Strategies. “The internet has always been a Wild, Wild West medium with very little controls to keep this type of harmful commentary from seeing the light of day.”

WHAT ABOUT REGULATION?

Mutale Nkonde, a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard, said it’s time to think about creating a legal definition for harmful speech that could be regulated.

“We need to seriously balance do we want to be secure as a nation and have the ability to go to Walmart or we want to protect the speech of those who want to destroy our country from within?” she said.

But there has been resistance to passing legislation, said David Kaye, the U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of expression and a University of California-Irvine law professor.

“It’s very difficult to get any kind of law adopted in the United States,” Kaye said. “Even after these terrible crimes and the connection the 8chan forum has to them, I don’t see much of a likelihood of a pretty serious debate about how the companies should be regulated.”

Kaye said that in the absence of U.S. government action on online speech, the most Americans can hope for is that companies like Cloudflare are transparent about their policies regarding hate speech — and what should be regarded as incitement to violence and not tolerated.

“There is probably horrible content that’s being hosted by its clients in other parts of the world,” he said, “but is it applying the same measures there?”

Dear Commons Community,

Barack and Michelle Obama expressed their condolences to the families in El Paso and Dayton who lost love ones.  One comment in their statement is especially important:  “We should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalizes racist sentiments;  leaders who demonize those who don’t look like us, or suggest that other people, including immigrants, threaten our way of life or refer to other people as subhuman, or imply that America belongs to one type of people.”

Obama’s entire statement is below. 

Our leaders especially one in particular should take heed.

T0ny

Dear Commons Community,

The Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post which generally is a “rah–rah” tabloid for Donald  Trump, is calling on the President to ban all assault weapons.  On Saturday, a gunman stormed a Walmart in El Paso and fatally shot 20 people. More than 25 others were injured. The next day, another gunman opened fire in a popular nightlife district in Dayton, Ohio, killing nine people and injuring at least 27 other people.

Dear Commons Community,

Rick Santorum, former Pennsylvania senator and conservative commentator for CNN, suggested yesterday that if everyone was armed, everyone would be safer.  He indicated that El Paso Walmart shoppers were tempting “soft targets” to a mass shooter because they weren’t armed.

When CNN State of the Union host Jake Tapper asked about the Texas shooting Saturday that killed 20 people, Santorum responded: “So they go after soft targets, that’s exactly right. The whole point is that when you restrict guns to law-abiding people, you make more soft targets.”  As reported by The Huffington Post

“Santorum indicated stricter gun control laws would end up taking weapons out of the hands of law-abiding citizens, making them more vulnerable to criminals — even though that’s not the case in Texas.

Texas is an open-carry state where shoppers could legally have been armed — but the law didn’t have any impact on the Walmart attack. Tapper pointed out to Santorum that alleged gunman Patrick Crusius, 21, did not appear to be deterred by the possibility of any armed shoppers. In addition, it wasn’t likely that a gunman could have easily determined who was armed and who was not to make any decision about a “soft target.”

Santorum, now a conservative CNN commentator, was parroting the narrative of gun control foes who argue that everyone is safer if everyone is armed. He also claimed, without evidence, that in “several” shooting instances this year, armed “law-abiding people actually come, not police … and stop these things.”

In fact, it was police, not armed civilians, who stopped the attacks in both El Paso and later that night in Dayton, Ohio, where a gunman killed nine people in yet another mass shooting. Last Sunday, police also stopped a mass shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California that killed two children and an adult. 

Tapper also read a list of poll numbers that indicated Americans overwhelmingly support increased gun safety measures.”

Idiocy knows no bounds!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Hundreds of protesters organized by Moms Demand Action gathered on Saturday night in Washington to protest for gun legislation after a shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, that killed 20 and injured at least 26.  As reported by USA Today:

Many of them are protesting with the organization Moms Demand Action, though a spokesperson with the organization noted that it wasn’t just moms in attendance. Students — and men — were there too. 

Gathered in Washington for a leadership conference called Gun Sense University, volunteers nationwide with Moms Demand Action mobilized on the last day. What was supposed to be a celebratory closing gala turned into a dire political moment upon hearing the news of the shootings at El Paso.

“We know that Congress isn’t here, but we wanted to turn our grief into action,” Elva Mendoza, a Moms Demand Action volunteer, told USA TODAY.

As chants of “El Paso” and “Hey hey, ho ho, the NRA has got to go” littered the air, protesters walked from the White House to Capitol Hill, eventually concluding the evening at Ulysses S. Grant Memorial.

One protester, dressed for the gala, marched in heels for the impromptu protest instead.

Mendoza told USA TODAY that the impetus for the march was El Paso, but that they were marching for the lives lost from all gun violence.

“For an individual family that loses someone to gun violence, the enormity of the grief is the same,” Mendoza said.

A moment of silence took place earlier in the evening at the White House. It lasted 100 seconds, symbolizing the number of Americans shot and killed daily.

As the crowds dispersed, heading back to their hotels for the last night before returning to their respective hometowns, a passer-by shouted “Moms are awesome!” 

“We won’t quit until we have safer gun laws,” said Mendoza. “We’re going to go back to our communities and take what we’ve learned and work.”

Moms Demand Action is becoming the NRA’s worst nightmare!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday, 20 people were killed in a Walmart shopping center in El Paso, Texas and another 20 plus were injured.  Authorities identified the gunman as Patrick Crusius, from a Dallas suburb. He was taken into custody after he surrendered to the police outside the Walmart. The authorities said they were investigating a manifesto Mr. Crusius, who is white, may have posted before the shooting, which described an attack in response to “the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

“Right now, we have a manifesto from this individual,” El Paso’s police chief, Greg Allen, told reporters.

The manifesto the chief appeared to be referring to was an anti-immigrant online screed titled “The Inconvenient Truth.” The post declares support for the gunman who killed 51 people in Christchurch, New Zealand; outlines fears about Hispanic people gaining power in the United States; and appears to discuss specific details about elements of the attack, including weapons. The four-page manifesto was posted on 8chan, an online forum where the Christchurch gunman also announced his attack. It appeared to have been published at 10:20 a.m., 19 minutes before the first 911 call, according to an archived version of the website.

“Hispanics will take control of the local and state government of my beloved Texas, changing policy to better suit their needs,” the manifesto said. It added that politicians of both parties are to blame for the United States “rotting from the inside out,” and that “the heavy Hispanic population in Texas will make us a Democrat stronghold.”

In response to the killings, South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg expressed concerns that the U.S. is “under attack” by white nationalists carrying out mass shootings — and those white nationalists have been encouraged by President Donald Trump. 

Buttigieg was one of 19 Democratic presidential candidates speaking at a forum in Las Vegas sponsored by the public-sector labor union AFSCME. During the event, co-moderated by HuffPost’s Amanda Terkel and The Nevada Independent’s Jon Ralston, news broke of the  mass shooting in El Paso, Texas.

Buttigieg, in his opening statement at the forum, condemned the shooting and commented:

“America is under attack from homegrown white nationalist terrorism.  White nationalism is evil. And it is inspiring people to commit murder, and it is being condoned at the highest levels of the American government, and that has to end.” 

When asked if he believes Trump is a white nationalist, Buttigieg said the president “at best condones and encourages white nationalism. 

“It’s flourished under his watch,” he said. “This isn’t an accident.” 

Buttigieg also stressed the need for stricter gun control laws across the country.

“We are the only country in the world with more guns than people,” he said. “It has not made us safer. We can respect the Second Amendment (on gun rights), and not allow it to be a death sentence for thousands of Americans.” 

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), who represented the El Paso area, also spoke at the forum and choked up while discussing the shooting. 

 “Keep that shit on the battlefield,” the White House contender said of military-style weapons. “Do not bring it into our communities.” 

After his appearance, O’Rourke said he was heading back to his hometown.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) addressed the shooting while speaking to reporters backstage at the forum. She said the individual shooter bears responsibility for the violence he inflicted, but that Trump’s rhetoric has “fueled more hate in this country.”

A hateful president inspires hateful actions.

Tony

Note: 

After I posted to my blog, I learned of the second mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio early this morning.  Here is an account courtesy of the Associated Press.

A gunman wearing body armor and carrying extra magazines opened fire in a popular nightlife area of Dayton, Ohio, killing nine and injuring dozens, authorities say, in the second U.S. mass shooting in less than 24 hours.

Dayton police patrolling the area responded in less than a minute to the shooting, which unfolded around 1 a.m. Sunday on the streets of the Oregon District, Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley said at a press conference.

Whaley said if the police had not responded so quickly, “hundreds of people in the Oregon District could be dead today.”

The Oregon District is a historic neighborhood that Lt. Col. Matt Carper described as “a safe part of downtown,” home to entertainment options, including bars, restaurants and theaters.

Dear Commons Community,

Steven Greenhouse, a labor reporter and author,  has an op-ed in today’s  New York Times, entitled Yes, America Is Rigged Against Workers.  His central message is that no other industrial country treats its working class so badly mainly because unions have lost their power and clout with elected officials.  While he readily admits that unions have their flaws, their diminished power has skewed American politics, helping give billionaires and corporations inordinate sway over America’s policymaking.  Below is the entire op-ed.  It is worth a read especially as we move deeper into the presidential nomination and election cycle.

Tony

New York Times

Yes, America Is Rigged Against Workers

By Steven Greenhouse

• Aug. 3, 2019

The United States is the only advanced industrial nation that doesn’t have national laws guaranteeing paid maternity leave. It is also the only advanced economy that doesn’t guarantee workers any vacation, paid or unpaid, and the only highly developed country (other than South Korea) that doesn’t guarantee paid sick days. In contrast, the European Union’s 28 nations guarantee workers at least four weeks’ paid vacation.

Among the three dozen industrial countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States has the lowest minimum wage as a percentage of the median wage — just 34 percent of the typical wage, compared with 62 percent in France and 54 percent in Britain. It also has the second-highest percentage of low-wage workers among that group, exceeded only by Latvia.

All this means the United States suffers from what I call “anti-worker exceptionalism.”

Academics debate why American workers are in many ways worse off than their counterparts elsewhere, but there is overriding agreement on one reason: Labor unions are weaker in the United States than in other industrial nations. Just one in 16 private-sector American workers is in a union, largely because corporations are so adept and aggressive at beating back unionization. In no other industrial nation do corporations fight so hard to keep out unions.

The consequences are enormous, not only for wages and income inequality, but also for our politics and policymaking and for the many Americans who are mistreated at work.

To be sure, unions have their flaws, from corruption to their history of racial and sex discrimination. Still, Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson write of an important, unappreciated feature of unions in “Winner-Take-All Politics”: “While there are many ‘progressive’ groups in the American universe of organized interests, labor is the only major one focused on the broad economic concerns of those with modest incomes.”

As workers’ power has waned, many corporations have adopted practices that were far rarer — if not unheard-of — decades ago: hiring hordes of unpaid interns, expecting workers to toil 60 or 70 hours a week, prohibiting employees from suing and instead forcing them into arbitration (which usually favors employers), and hamstringing employees’ mobility by making them sign noncompete clauses.

America’s workers have for decades been losing out: year after year of wage stagnation, increased insecurity on the job, waves of downsizing and offshoring, and labor’s share of national income declining to its lowest level in seven decades.

Numerous studies have found that an important cause of America’s soaring income inequality is the decline of labor unions — and the concomitant decline in workers’ ability to extract more of the profit and prosperity from the corporations they work for. The only time during the past century when income inequality narrowed substantially was the 1940s through 1970s, when unions were at their peak of power and prominence.

Many Americans are understandably frustrated. That’s one reason the percentage who say they want to join a union has risen markedly. According to a 2018 M.I.T. study, 46 percent of nonunion workers say they would like to be in a union, up from 32 percent in 1995. Nonetheless, just 10.5 percent of all American workers, and only 6.4 percent of private-sector workers, are in unions.

But this desire to unionize faces some daunting challenges. In many corporations, the mentality is that any supervisor, whether a factory manager or retail manager, who fails to keep out a union is an utter failure. That means managers fight hard to quash unions. One study found that 57 percent of employers threatened to close operations when workers sought to unionize, while 47 percent threatened to cut wages or benefits and 34 percent fired union supporters during unionization drives.

Corporate executives’ frequent failure to listen to workers’ concerns — along with the intimidation of employees — can have deadly results. On April 5, 2010, a coal dust explosion killed 29 miners at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia. A federal investigation found that the mine’s ventilation system was inadequate and that explosive gases were allowed to build up. Workers at the nonunion mine knew about these dangers. “No one felt they could go to management and express their fears,” Stanley Stewart, an Upper Big Branch miner, told a congressional committee. “We knew we’d be marked men and the management would look for ways to fire us.”

The diminished power of unions and workers has skewed American politics, helping give billionaires and corporations inordinate sway over America’s politics and policymaking. In the 2015-16 election cycle, business outspent labor $3.4 billion to $213 million, a ratio of 16 to 1, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. All of the nation’s unions, taken together, spend about $48 million a year for lobbying in Washington, while corporate America spends $3 billion. Little wonder that many lawmakers seem vastly more interested in cutting taxes on corporations than in raising the minimum wage.

There were undoubtedly many reasons for Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, but a key one was that many Americans seemed to view him as a protest candidate, promising to shake up “the system” and “drain the swamp.” Many voters embraced Mr. Trump because they believed his statements that the system is rigged — and in many ways it is. When it comes to workers’ power in the workplace and in politics, the pendulum has swung far toward corporations.

Reversing that won’t be easy, but it is vital we do so. There are myriad proposals to restore some balance, from having workers elect representatives to corporate boards to making it easier for workers to unionize to expanding public financing of political campaigns to prevent wealthy and corporate donors from often dominating.

America’s workers won’t stop thinking the system is rigged until they feel they have an effective voice in the workplace and in policymaking so that they can share in more of the economy’s prosperity to help improve their — and their loved ones’ — lives.

Dear Commons Community,

Over the past two weeks, six House Republicans have announced that they will not be seeking re-election in 2020 with at least four more contemplating such a decision.  As reported in various media: 

“Imagine being swept out of power in Congress and relegated to the role of spectator and naysayer as your political opponents dictate the terms of legislative debate. Add in the specter of a painful slog to re-election, sharing the ticket with President Trump and being asked to answer daily for his every tweet and incendiary statement.

Now picture doing all of that only to risk landing in the minority again, possibly under the other party’s president.

Such is the plight of House Republicans contemplating whether to seek re-election in 2020, and the bleak outlook is taking its toll. A half-dozen Republican members of Congress have announced over the past two weeks that they will retire rather than face voters again next year, and more are expected to follow in the coming weeks, dealing an early setback to the party’s uphill battle to win back the House.

The rush for the exits is also providing evidence about how difficult the House Republican Conference is becoming for the few women and people of color who remain in it.

Among the retirements announced in the past week are Representatives Will Hurd of Texas, the only African-American Republican in the House, and Martha Roby of Alabama, one of only 13 Republican congresswomen. Representative Susan Brooks of Indiana, the head of recruitment for the party’s campaign committee, had been tasked with replenishing the ravaged ranks of Republican women; she announced in June that she would retire, an indication of the long odds of that effort.

“It’s a reflection of the pessimism Republicans feel about regaining the majority in 2020,” said David Wasserman, the House editor of the Cook Political Report, which tracks congressional races.

Speculation is swirling that Representative Fred Upton, Republican of Michigan, a 32-year veteran and moderate who has broken with Mr. Trump on critical votes, will announce that he will not seek re-election. And Democrats, buffeted in recent days by a crisis inside their campaign committee and eager to capitalize on the wave of exits, on Friday added four new names to their Republican retirement watch list: Representatives Adam Kinzinger and Rodney Davis of Illinois, Lee Zeldin of New York and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.”

Good-bye and good luck in your new endeavors!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Trump yesterday dumped his nominee, Representative John Ratcliffe, for Director of Intelligence, after a lukewarm reception from Republicans and Democrats. Questions were raised about his qualifications.  Other than being a staunch Trump supporter, he had practically no experience for the position.  As reported by the New York Times:

“President Trump on Friday abruptly dropped his plan to nominate Representative John Ratcliffe, Republican of Texas, as the nation’s top intelligence official after questions by Republicans and Democrats about his qualifications and concern over whether he had exaggerated his résumé.

Mr. Ratcliffe, a vocal supporter of Mr. Trump, had come under intense scrutiny since the president declared on Sunday on Twitter that the lawmaker was his pick to succeed Dan Coats, who is stepping down as director of national intelligence on Aug. 15. The selection generated scant enthusiasm among senators of both parties, who would have decided whether to confirm him.

Mr. Trump, in his post announcing that Mr. Ratcliffe would not be his nominee after all, spoke bitterly of the attention that Mr. Ratcliffe’s overstated claims about his experience as a federal prosecutor quickly received from the news media.

“Our great Republican Congressman John Ratcliffe is being treated very unfairly by the LameStream Media,” he wrote.

The announcement was another reversal for the president and underscored the recurring dysfunction in the White House selection and vetting process that has plagued the administration. Mr. Ratcliffe joined a long list of Trump administration appointees who have had to pull their names after the president announced his plans to put them in powerful posts without a full picture of potentially disqualifying details.

Mr. Trump promised to announce a new nominee soon. Pete Hoekstra, the American ambassador to the Netherlands and a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is one of the leading candidates for the post, according to two people briefed on the discussions. He wants the position, they said, and his long service on Capitol Hill and work helping create the job of director of national intelligence could make him more palatable to senators.

As soon as Mr. Ratcliffe was named, his qualifications came under scorching examination, including that he had embellished his credentials as a former federal prosecutor in East Texas, portraying himself as having deep experience putting terrorists in prison and shaping the George W. Bush administration’s counterterrorism policy.

In fact, while he was given the responsibility of coordinating any terrorism matters that arose for his office — a role every district was required to assign to someone — there were no significant national security prosecutions in that jurisdiction during his tenure, according to former colleagues.

Mr. Ratcliffe, who also briefly served as an interim United States attorney, also exaggerated his role in a major crackdown on the employment of undocumented immigrants by a poultry producer, taking all the personal credit for what was actually a multistate, multiagency operation.

In a statement on Twitter, Mr. Ratcliffe said he had chosen to withdraw.”

Ratcliffe was an incredibly poor choice!

Tony

Marianne Williamson

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist, David Brooks, has a piece today entitled, Marianne Williamson Knows How to Beat Trump.  He provides insight into her comments on Tuesday during the Democratic Party Presidential Candidates’ Debate.  His message is that Williamson understands Donald Trump and the dark side that he has brought to the American presidency.  Essentially what we need to defeat him is an “uprising of decency.”  Below is Brooks entire column.  It is important reading for those hoping that the Democrats can defeat Trump in 2020.

Tony

————————————————————————————————————————

Marianne Williamson Knows How to Beat Trump!

By David Brooks

Aug. 1, 2019

If only Donald Trump were not president, we could have an interesting debate over whether private health insurance should be illegal. If only Trump were not president, we could have an interesting debate over who was softest on crime in the 1990s. If only Trump were not president, we could have a nice argument about the pros and cons of NAFTA.

But Trump is president, and this election is not about those things. This election is about who we are as a people, our national character. This election is about the moral atmosphere in which we raise our children.

Trump is a cultural revolutionary, not a policy revolutionary. He operates and is subtly changing America at a much deeper level. He’s operating at the level of dominance and submission, at the level of the person where fear stalks and contempt emerges.

He’s redefining what you can say and how a leader can act. He’s reasserting an old version of what sort of masculinity deserves to be followed and obeyed. In Freudian terms, he’s operating on the level of the id. In Thomistic terms, he is instigating a degradation of America’s soul.

We are all subtly corrupted while this guy is our leader. And throughout this campaign he will make himself and his values the center of conversation. Every day he will stage a little drama that is meant to redefine who we are, what values we lift up and who we hate.

The Democrats have not risen to the largeness of this moment. They don’t know how to speak on this level. They don’t even have the language to articulate what Trump represents and what needs to be done.

Part of the problem is that the two leading Democratic idea generators are both materialistic wonks. Elizabeth Warren is a social scientist from Harvard Law School who has a plan for everything — except the central subject of this election, which is cultural and moral. Bernie Sanders has been a dialectical materialist all his life and is incapable of adjusting his economics-dominated mind-set.

They are what Michael Dukakis would be if he emerged in an era when the party had swung left. This model has always had appeal to a certain sort of well-educated Democrat.

The bigger problem is simply the culture of the Democratic Party. The modern version of the party emerged during the Great Depression to solve one problem: material want. It is a secular party, trapped in a Lockean prison: Politics should be separate from faith. Politics should be separate from soulcraft. Democrats believe they can win votes by offering members of different groups economic benefits and are perpetually shocked when they lose those voters.

It is no accident that the Democratic candidate with the best grasp of this election is the one running a spiritual crusade, not an economic redistribution effort. Many of her ideas are wackadoodle, but Marianne Williamson is right about this: “This is part of the dark underbelly of American society: the racism, the bigotry and the entire conversation that we’re having here tonight. If you think any of this wonkiness is going to deal with this dark psychic force of the collectivized hatred that this president is bringing up in this country, then I’m afraid that the Democrats are going to see some very dark days.”

And she is right about this: “We’ve never dealt with a figure like this in American history before. This man, our president, is not just a politician; he’s a phenomenon. And an insider political game will not be able to defeat it. … The only thing that will defeat him is if we have a phenomenon of equal force, and that phenomenon is a moral uprising of the American people.”

They are unready for it, but it falls on the Democrats to rebuild the moral infrastructure of our country. That does not mean standing up and saying, “Donald Trump is a racist!” 500 times a day. It means reminding Americans of the values we still share, and the damage done when people are not held accountable for trampling on them. The values are pretty basic and can be simply expressed:

Unity: We’re one people. Our leader represents all the people. He doesn’t go around attacking whole cities and regions.

Honesty: We can’t have deliberative democracy without respect for the truth. None of us want congenital liars in our homes or our workplaces.

Pluralism: Human difference makes life richer and more interesting. We treasure members of all races and faiths for what they bring to the mosaic.

Sympathy: We want to be around people with good hearts, who feel for those who are suffering, who are faithful friends, whose daily lives are marked by kindness.

Opportunity: We want all children to have an open field and a fair chance in the great race of life.

Trump has put himself on the wrong side of all these values. So Democrats, go ahead and promote your plans. But also lead an uprising of decency. There must be one Democrat who, in word and deed, can do that.

.