1. Integrity, Citizenship and Responsibility: President Obama should begin speaking, now, about the integrity of the democratic process, the duty of all Americans to respect the opinions of others, and the civic obligation to allow elections to be peaceful and fair. he should also stop sowing partisan animus, and seeking to divide the nation for the Democratic Party ‘s advantage.
2. Responsibility and Competence: The Republican Party should tell Donald Trump that he has disgraced the party’s values, that he will no longer be considered as a candidate, and that he can do his worst. (Just for fun, it should challenge Democrats to be equally responsible and disqualify Hillary Clinton for conspiring to foil the Freedom of Information Act, which is pretty obviously what the private server was all about.)
3. Responsibility: The GOP should move the convention out of Cleveland. It may already be too late, but it needs to do this, and should have done so the second the Tamir Rice shooting occurred. Holding a national convention in that city is inviting violence. My recommendation: move it to Honolulu, so demonstrators will have to spend a fortune to get there, while placing it in Obama’s home state, bring the division he has sought and nourished into his back yard.
4. Responsibility and Competence: Cleveland should be preparing to ensure that the convention is not disrupted, while training its apparently miserably-trained police force to handle demonstrations and potential riots effectively and without increasing the chance of violence. Based on this story, however, they are late and disorganized: one more reason for the GOP to flee Cleveland.
5. Responsibility, Fairness, and Respect: Democratic party leaders and candidates should begin now urging its supporters, constituent groups and candidate supporters to allow the other party to have a peaceful convention, just as the Democratic Party wants to have its own.
6. Fairness: The Republican Party should assure the Democrats that it will observe tradition and decency and allow that party to nominate it’s candidate without any interference, and warn Democrats that they will be held responsible and accountable if they are not able to reciprocate.
7. Responsibility: The news media should shut up about the likelihood of violence at the conventions. We know they are rooting for it, especially at the Republican convention, but journalists and pundits are helping to create an environment that will guarantee violence.
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Pointer and Spark: Fred
Ethics Alarms 
Honolulu! Now that’s a clever idea!
3. I’ve been thinking on this and digging around since your last mention of refusing to nominate him. That they can refuse to do since the nomination process is determined by the rules committee and to a lesser extent can be manipulated by the credentials committee since both of those are handled under the RNC which controls the convention.
Ballot access however is controlled by the states and party affiliation there is controlled by the state parties who technically aren’t beholden to the RNC, they’re separate legal entities, once his name is on the ballot, which it is, they can no longer tell him he can’t run under the party’s banner. The RNC’s only recourse is to refuse to credential delegates from states who play along. Given most states have voted or passed the point of no return and opened early and absentee voting or finalized their ballots, the only point where he could be repudiated is at the convention itself.
As vindictive as it may sound: (1) I agree, except that Obama should stop sowing partisan animus to anyone’s advantage; (2) I agree; (3) Yes, Honolulu is very nice – nobody can complain about going there, except for those unable to go there (in addition, depleting the coffers of those that send protesters to events at which they should never be present does provide some satisfaction); (4) I agree; (5) I agree; (6) I agree. (7) I agree. Jack, I think you have outlined a near perfect plan. The only persons with reason to complain are those that have to re-plan the event given the change in venue. The only people that will actually complain are those that see nothing suspicious about a kid waving his gun around at innocent passers by.
Jack, do you think Obama really has any intention about speaking responsibly about the convention? Highly unlikely in my opinion given his past behavior. Cleveland is a terrible choice for a convention site. If the Republicans had any sense, they’d relocated it to Arizona or Oklahoma.
Nope. I’d be shocked if he did. I’ve been shocked every time he’s done anything Presidential.
They chose Cleveland because they hoped to get a boots in Ohio for the general election, large scale protests would, I think, not help them there. These things are done long in advance and finding a facility large enough and available at the right time isn’t easy. Getting a new one now, with enough nearby hotel space for 2500 delegates, plus all the other people like the candidate’s staffers, RNC members and thier staffers, committee people…
You could probably find another basketball stadium for the event, it’ll be off season, if you rotate who gets floor space, the stage can be built on the stands, baseball or football would be better for holding everyone with their signs, skyboxen for administrative space. The RNC would lose their deposit for Gund Arena, hotels with locks of rooms open would probably be the bigger problem.
They could use a college stadium and put people in the mostly empty dorm rooms during the summer but I don’t think the delegates would appreciate the accommodations and there’d be no way to avoid protests from the students doing the summer session. Then again there are always protests, protests are fine, violence and preventing the convention goers from getting in and out are where it becomes bad.
It doesn’t matter how hard it is. It can be done, and the GOP is foolish if it doesn’t change the venue. Even holding the convention remotely via internet and phone would be better.
‘They can do it,’ he says.
*grumbles about available venues with nearby airports and business class hotels*
(Jack – you have a small typo in that paragraph “electiosn” should obviously be “elections”.)
I agree. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a President that would purposely do Presidential things to unite instead of divide.
Let me be so bold as to make a general prediction about this one: I think Obama will come out and say something about this, it will seem like he has good intentions in the first part of the “speech” but then somehow he’ll delve into the same divisional rhetoric we have seen from him. Obama thrives on division so he will find a way to blow his dog whistles at his base.
The rest of your points are all great points too!
Trump certainly is another addition to the dividing forces (Hello, Obama!) that now represent politics in America. Trump’s outrageous behaviors have been described on this very blog numerous times so no need to repeat them.
What upsets me is the attempts to silence Trump simply represent mob rule at its finest. You don’t like Trump you don’t support him by votes, cash or active campaigning.
The circus will continue as the wolf pack smells blood or is it plenty of PR? And the very ones who should be addressing their supporters – Bern and Hill – do not. The press? Seems the idea is now not to report news but to create news.
I left out the fact that this is some of your finest work, Jack. Excellent analysis.
Thanks!
Amen on all points, Jack, but I think you are “a voice in the wilderness” that few folks are going to listen to. I think both sides have become so blind to the other being anything other than evil, and so drunk on anger, that they WANT this to turn ugly. The Democrats want to be able to say the GOP is a bunch of angry, racist yahoos. The GOP wants to be able to say the Dems are a bunch of white-hating thugs. It’s the ultimate negative campaign.
Amen on all points, Jack, but I think you are “a voice in the wilderness” that few folks are going to listen to.
Really? Gee, that’s a shock…
The thing isd, would the majority side with the party of “angry, racist yahoos” or “white-hating thugs”?
I think, as with juries, people with side with whoever most closely mirrors their own color and culture and taps into whatever issues evoke strong feelings in them.
So they will side with the angry, racist yahoos over white-hating thugs.
P.S., what do you bet the Democratic mayor of Cleveland is going to drag his feet when it comes to keeping order around the convention? It would be relatively simple to cite limited resources, fear of litigation, and scrupulous respect of the right to protest as pretexts for holding back the police when they were needed.
I don’t know: the Democratic convention riots badly hurt Mayor Daley.
Do you have a link to the pointer (Fred)?
I think it would great theater if they combined the two conventions into one big week long convention. That would fun to watch.
“3. Responsibility: The GOP should move the convention out of Cleveland. It may already be too late, but it needs to do this, and should have done so the second the Tamir Rice shooting occurred. Holding a national convention in that city is inviting violence. My recommendation: move it to Honolulu, so demonstrators will have to spend a fortune to get there, while placing it in Obama’s home state, bring the division he has sought and nourished into his back yard.”
Holding any national convention or just a Republican one? In my opinion, the Republican party should take this opportunity to denounce Trump and show Americans that they can unify the public. Address the Tamir Rice incident head on, propose changes and lay out a plan for changes in police enforcement. Denounce not only Trump but ANY American (including Republicans) who believe people should be judged based on the color of their skin. Lead by example instead of secretly courting the vote of white nationalists who Trump has gleefully led out of the closet.
And, as for moving the convention, police shoot people everywhere it seems — black or white — even in Hawaii. Where should they move the convention to: Baltimore, St. Louis, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles? I would argue that they are worse venues and if you are going to have a convention, you want to be able to have it in a major city to appear meaningful instead of being forced to hide in the middle of the Pacific.
In any event, the tit-for-tat conclusion of your point with “bring the division he has sought and nourished into his back yard” violates various ethical principles that you have laid out here time and again.
1. Urban Honolulu is about the same size as Cleveland, St. Louis and Pittsburgh. Look it up. It’s a state capital too.
2. You really think at this point Trump’s absence or presence will change whether BLM, for example, tries to disrupt the convention?
3. How is that “tit for tat”? What’s the matter with giving Obama some extra motivation to try to cool things, rather than having him sit in front of the TV with pop corn, rooting for a real blood bath in Cleveland?
Beth wrote: “In my opinion, the Republican party should take this opportunity to denounce Trump and show Americans that they can unify the public. Address the Tamir Rice incident head on, propose changes and lay out a plan for changes in police enforcement. Denounce not only Trump but ANY American (including Republicans) who believe people should be judged based on the color of their skin. Lead by example instead of secretly courting the vote of white nationalists who Trump has gleefully led out of the closet.”
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I venture to guess that you, and many others here, perhaps most or even all, do not have much of an idea what ‘White Nationalism’ is, what it proposes, what it is concerned with, nor its philosophical underpinnings. I was drawn to your statement ‘who Trump has gleefully led out of the closet’. The fact is that the White Identity movement is extremely varied, and in its best manifestations extremely well thought and quite intelligent. It is not a union of so-called ‘haters’ (at this level) but a group of often quite disparate and tendentious thinkers who are concerned not with hatred, nor exactly with judging people by their skin color (a silly reduction), but people who are concerned for 1) their community 2) their people 3) their neighborhoods and regions 4) the future of their communities and states and 5) civilization itself. They are often very concerned with and interested in the higher dimensions of intellectual life, art, spirituality, religion, and much else, but what they oppose is a blending of cultures and peoples, undertaken as a social policy, but ‘elites’ and by groups of people who have specific agenda in mind and who are the ones who have decided policy in the post-war era.
Even if one were to consider such people as one’s ‘enemy’, it is not a bad idea to understand what their platform is, and why the have it.
The European movement – which is popular and is also reactive – far antecedes Trump, and the ‘New American Right (it does exist) has been largely informed by the Europeans who have forged a platform of ideas. What is interesting about this New American Right (it is varied and is not one thing) is that it is not at all unintelligent. What I mean is that it is made up of people who have ideas and who are quite capable of expressing and defending their ideas. It is articulate is what I mean. And its positions are considerable. They are in many ways articulations of defensive postures. And one main aspect of their argument is that forced blending of people (as in multiculturalism) is not a recipe for social harmony but one for its opposite. The policies that have been pursued function against ‘organic community’ and against the will of the people of those organic communities.
The movement – if it can be called such, and I think it can, and I also think it should be recognized, seen and understood (even if one were interested in combatting it) – is also largely anti-American. This is a pretty important part. It opposes the Grand Design of the American political and economic camp as it ploughs through the world redesigning the world, dictating to the world what it must be and what it must not be, and selling a specific sort of American Plan, setting up its manufacture and distribution systems: the Walmartization of the Universe (to put it ironically). Those positions are also very interesting, articulate and considerable. (Pierre Krebs is one who enunciates a platform of anti-Americanism of this sort).
It would be wise, in my view and also from my angle of view, to understand the psychology of opposition that informs these New Right movements because over the next 5 years we will be hearing a good deal more from them. We will hear snips and snappets from Europe (the NYTs has recently mentioned, not wholly unfavorable, a German reactionary movement which has been gaining steam. Everyone already knows about (the dread) Marine Le Pen et famille. A good deal of the intellectual platform too is being defined by Eastern Europeans who articulate unique positions, and who avoided much of the ‘liberalization’ of the West which has also been concurrent with ‘decadence’ (as they see it).
I know, and of course you know, and many who write on this blog know (I think) that these ideas (any idea of race that is not in step with the allowed versions) are non-considerable in the American context. In short it is simply impossible to mention any part of this in any ‘serious’ political and social platform. They have top be shut out and shut down. The best response is of course … silence.
It is my personal sense that what is repressed inevitably rises up to make itself known. Therefore, it is wise to understand just what it is, exactly, that is coming to the surface. I suggest it is different from what it seems. I also suggest that it takes a certain revolution in thinking to be able to grasp what its concerns are.
Your views on this are garbage Alizia.
A very well written rebuttal.
100% devoid of argument and idea.
You used a lot of long sentences to describe and possible justify white supremacy, which you didn’t really need to do. At its heart, the philosophical underpinnings which you keep mentioning just boils down to fear of “other.” It’s not worthy of scholarly discussion or debate.
As a FYI, I’m also not going to debate with you the color of the sky or the chemical formula for salt. Some things are just a given in life and it’s not worth my — or anyone else’s time — to try and convince you otherwise.
Forgive me for annoyingly continuing …
More accurately, the notion of white supremacy stems from a particular anthropology peculiar to the 17th and 18th centuries. In no sense at all was it based in ‘fear’ but rather in awareness of power. It had to do with the power to be able to define and to control. Much hinges on how that sense of power was understood and expressed.
If you have read anything else I write you will know that the question of ‘power’ is always a backdrop for me.
To link the underpinning of white supremacy (in power and ideology) with ‘fear’ is then seen quite imprecise.
Yet I do get that what you likely mean is that you understand that anyone in our present who might think in such terms does so because they are fearing something: the ‘other’ as you say. This ‘fear’ is a complex of psychology, can be penetrated and I assume transformed. Adorno and Fromm might agree! According to you they are victims of their fear and their ideas are determined by that fear. People operating from fear cannot be understood as rational, and thus the whole topic ‘is not worthy of scholarly discussion or debate’.
Yet it is debated: ‘Race, Evolution and Behavior’ by Phillipe Rushton; ‘The Decline of Intelligence in America’ by Seymour Itzkoff; ‘The Bell Curve’ by Murray & Hernstein, and that is not to mention hundreds of other scholarly expositions, as well as a rather new field of Evolutionary biology.
What is interesting too is the way that the ‘debate’ is held in this sense at arm’s length. And for good reasons, it seems to me.
The ‘color of the sky’ and the ‘chemical composition of salt’ analogies, alas, fall apart. Yet you indirectly make an important point: that certain declarations about certain things are upheld not by reason and argument but by assertion, and are represented to be ‘givens’. Thus, mot to be thought about.
I am not necessarily defending any of this, or taking one side or the other, I am rather more interested in actually seeing what is there, and understanding it. And that is what my little essay was about.
1. Yes, Honolulu is a city and a state capitol — in the middle of the freakin’ Pacific Ocean. Juneau is a state capitol too. Why not hold it there?
2. Well, at a minimum it would help. And, in any event, BLM disrupts Democratic events too. They believe in equal opportunity in that way I guess.
3. Nice dodge, but you’re a better writer than that. It reads as tit-for-tat, and why are you assuming that Obama would be rooting for a blood bath? No one wants that Jack. I’m not watching Trump and hoping for that — in fact, quite the opposite. Trump is reminding me that appealing to nationalistic populism is alive and well. It’s depressing.
1. Yes, Honolulu is a city and a state capitol — in the middle of the freakin’ Pacific Ocean. Juneau is a state capitol too. Why not hold it there?
That would be fine too. Did you miss my stated motivation for that selection: to make flying in protesters prohibitively expensive?
2. Maybe, but it’s the GOP having a convention where an innocent 12-year old black kid was gunned down in a tragedy of errors.
3. I’m sorry, Beth, but I no longer am sure of that at all. Obama has courted Al Sharpton, and along with Holder, undermined police while seeding anger with his comments about Trayvon Martin and the investigation of Officer Lewis after no charges were filed. My second choice for moving the GOP convention, if my name were Priebus, would be DC. Playing with fire is a little less appealing if it might set your own house on fire.
“Undermines police.”
Okay, this is completely off-topic, but have you seen Zootopia? You don’t have young kiddos anymore so you probably haven’t, but you should. It is a buddy cop movie with cartoon animals and Disney did a really terrific job. It’s one of the best animated movies I’ve seen in a long time.
The movie is meant to celebrate diversity, challenge preconceptions, and generally restore your faith in police. And the movie does that very well …. except the heroine of our story (a rookie cop) is able to solve the big bad mystery by teaming up with a known con artist (who she threatens to blackmail if he refuses) and a known mobster (who agrees to help her Godfather-style because she previously had saved his daughter from getting hurt during a police chase).
So, the point of this little tangent is to inform you that reading this blog has now ruined my enjoyment of all things — including seeing silly animated feel-good movies with my daughters, because I can’t get over the fact that the cop uses “the ends justifies the means” to save the day.
Thanks Jerk … I mean Jack.
The main character was not a cop during the “ends justify the means” scene.
She most certainly was when she blackmailed Nick.
I’m going to see Zootopia with my sister, and thanks for the warning. If you think ethics ruins things like movies for you, imagine what it’s like for me!
Juneau would look just as bad as Honolulu because it would look like the Republican Party: 1) needs to run away from the masses and hold secret meetings; and/or 2) is irrelevant.
On TV, all convention centers are the same.
Here is a reason to vote for Donald Trump if he is nominated.
Let me get this straight. The argument is vote Trump, impeach him and i assume his vice president to install Paul Ryan in the white house? Wouldn’t that be stealing an election?
The argument is that the Congress will keep Trump in check and the media will report on everything he does.
The Democrats don’t need to worry about Republicans showing up in force to trash their convention, so they have no real incentive to tell their unwashed rabble ranks to behave themselves. It wouldn’t do any good, anyway! The only thing the Democrats need to worry about is their super radical supporters having a riot for the hell of it or some of their delegates getting busted for soliciting prostitutes.
Boy, just when you have me convinced that you are lying in a ditch somewhere, you reappear, tanned, rested, and ready to rumble!
Anyone that gets caught in an illegal whatever automatically loses their EBT card or access to their trust fund.