Buffalopundit

In a Buffalo News column Thursday, Conservative fusion Party boss Ralph Lorigo laments that “Erie County Democrats have abandoned the working class”. For the uninitiated, New York’s system of electoral fusion enables petty party bosses like Lorigo to wield political and – more critically – patronage power that is wildly disproportionate to the actual size of their party committees. 

Lorigo’s column, which is little more than a poorly concealed piece of campaign literature for right wing county clerk candidate Mickey Kearns, is one big concern troll. That’s defined as, “a person who disingenuously expresses concern about an issue with the intention of undermining or derailing genuine discussion.” The Urban Dictionary’s entry is even more explicit: 

In an argument (usually a political debate), a concern troll is someone who is on one side of the discussion, but pretends to be a supporter of the other side with “concerns”. The idea behind this is that your opponents will take your arguments more seriously if they think you’re an ally. Concern trolls who use fake identities are sometimes known as sockpuppets.

In his column, Lorigo purports to lament how the Erie County Democratic Committee, as led locally by Jeremy Zellner and Mark Poloncarz, has somehow “abandoned” the working class. Ralph Lorigo is no Democrat; he doesn’t speak for Democrats. He and his little reactionary club do not hold, espouse, or promote Democratic ideas or values. More to the point, his fusion party – a product of a pointless, fundamentally corrupt party system in New York – is no friend of the working class, Democrat or otherwise. 

There are 287,000 registered Democrats in Erie County. Lorigo’s little club boasts 13,169 registered members. So, where does Lorigo get off lecturing the Democratic Party committee, its chairman, and its most prominent local elected official about Democratic values? The only reason he has any clout at all is thanks to a structural legal aberration. 

The only reason a political club with 13,000 members has any pull at all is electoral fusion; it seldom puts up its own party members for election. Instead Lorigo’s group endorses a major party candidate – e.g., Mickey Kearns – who receives a “Wilson Pakula“, allowing him to run on the Conservative line, and those votes are added to the candidate’s total. In some cases, the vote is close enough that these cross-endorsements actually affect the outcome. The catch? LOL, when it comes to the so-called “Independence Party” and the Conservative fusion Party, that endorsement doesn’t come for free, or without strings. The connected get jobs. 

Lorigo’s concern trolling in the Buffalo News merits examination. 

I have been involved in Erie County Conservative politics for over 35 years, and have served as the chairman of the party for 23. I have never taken a salary, stipend or even a reimbursement from party funds for political activities. In addition, no government funds flow into my law office from any governmental source.

The power isn’t in receiving government funds, but in controlling jobs – the molten, glowing core of western New York politics. How many jobs does Lorigo’s club control? How many people in local, state, or county positions owe their livelihoods to Conservative fusion Party patronage? That is the proper metric, here, and it is conspicuously absent. 

As chairman, I have worked with both Democrats and Republicans to endorse and elect people who care about Erie County taxpayers. My executive committee and I look at a candidate’s platform, record and the office sought. We never assume that someone’s party registration fully defines one; and we know that not every elected office legislates or creates policy.

What emetic pablum to suppose that someone running for office doesn’t “care about Erie County taxpayers”. Especially in any election since 2005’s red/green budget fiasco, which happened under Conservative fusion Party endorsee Joel Giambra‘s watch. 

We work to apply our principles of smaller, smarter government to the candidates seeking our support. We then choose who will best carry that torch for the residents of Erie County. For the Erie County Conservative Party, this is not about party labels, but about principles. As long as I am chairman, that approach will continue.

More often than not, the Conservative fusion Party would conspire with Democrat Steve “the Splitter” Pigeon to endorse Democrats who didn’t have the support of Democratic Headquarters. Even if that person lost a Democratic primary, he still might appear on the ballot in November on Lorigo’s line, causing further worries for the endorsed Democrat. Pigeon is now gone, and his stragglers are beclowning themselves in the 2nd Erie County Legislature district race – a story for another time. 

My relationship with Democrats is not in trouble. In fact, the top of our ticket this year is Democrat Mickey Kearns for county clerk. In the past, we were proud to support Democrats such as Jimmy Griffin, Paul Tokasz, Dennis Gorski and countless others. They were conservative, pro-life, taxpayer-focused Democrats.

Jimmy Griffin died in 2008. Paul Tokasz hasn’t been an elected official since 2006. Until he became a town justice in Cheektowaga a couple of years ago, Dennis Gorksi had been out of public life since 1999. Mickey Kearns may be a lot of things, but he’s no Democrat. You don’t run in 2017 with the endorsements only of the Republicans and Conservative fusion Parties and get to call yourself that. Apparently, Republican party chair Nick Langworthy’s bench was too shallow to support a genuine Republican candidate for county clerk to succeed Senator Chris Jacobs. So? Recruit an opportunistic “Democrat” with the dearth of accomplishments or ideas. There are some glaring omissions from Lorigo’s recitation of “Democrats I heart”: G. Steven Pigeon. I wonder why? Joe Mascia? Chuck Swanick? 

Today’s Democratic Party leadership of Chairman Jeremy Zellner and Mark Poloncarz would reject those officials outright. It is clear that conservative values of any kind are no longer welcome at Erie County Democratic Party headquarters.

Lorigo’s closest Democratic friend Steve is in big federal and state criminal trouble, and Poloncarz won re-election in 2015 after having explicitly refused to seek or accept the Conservative fusion Party line. Which “conservative values” is Lorigo talking about, exactly? Is it Swanick’s homophobia? Mascia’s colorful racial outbursts? 

In spite of the ever-increasing sprint to the extremes, the Erie County Conservative Party will remain true to our platform, right here in the middle with the majority of Erie County voters; people who believe in common-sense ideas like: taxes are too high; criminals belong in jail; police should be respected; law-abiding gun owners are not the root of our crime problem; plastic bags should be legal; and 5-year-olds don’t need to be taught about sex reassignment surgery in kindergarten.

“Taxes are too high” and this patronage club is part of the problem. “Criminals belong in jail” reads like a Dick and Jane book. “Police should be respected”, except when they violate the laws and constitution. Gun ownership isn’t at risk. Plastic bags should be “legal” and cost a nickel, because they don’t degrade and there are better alternatives available. Can you imagine you use “plastic grocery bags” as a rallying cry for a political movement? How pathetic. 

Hey, Ralph Lorigo: please identify which Erie County school – public or private – teaches “5-year-olds” about “sex reassignment surgery” in “kindergarten”. I’d like to know the school, the textbook, and the teacher. Because it’s just gutter, hateful lies meant to get a rise out of the homophobes; literally, that’s all that is. And why haven’t you added why and how you pick and choose which pro-choice candidates you endorse, or candidates who support same-sex marriage? The idea that the Conservative fusion Party operates based on “principles” is laughable. The only principle is maximizing the quids for an endorsement pro quo. 

Sadly, if you agree with just one of those principles today, you don’t have a place in the Democratic Party of Zellner and Poloncarz.

They aren’t really “principles” as much as they are bumper sticker slogans. Lorigo’s club’s real principles might involve homophobia, criminalization of all abortion, and ensuring that everyone from children to the mentally ill have the unfettered right to possess a loaded gun; that is, unless, a candidate who opposes all or some of those makes a great offer or is an acolyte of Steve Pigeon’s.  

I can’t help but think about the Democratic Party when I started 36 years ago. Back then, the majority of Democrats I encountered crossed party lines to support Ronald Reagan. Now, the party of the working class has been replaced by ivory tower elitists who hate anyone with a different opinion.

Ronald Reagan, whose policies helped to hasten the destruction of America’s middle class? For the record, Mark Poloncarz grew up in Lackawanna; his dad worked in a steel mill, and his mom was a nurse. Jeremy Zellner lives modestly in Tonawanda with his family; his dad worked in a car factory. Meanwhile, the Lorigo family practically runs West Seneca from its law office, hobnobs with Donald gold toilet 757 Trump and endorses Spaulding Lake’s own Chris Collins, and he’s sitting there talking about “ivory tower elitists”. This is utter madness, and the “different opinion” quip is nothing but projection. 

Ralph Lorigo worked closely – even running his own primary against Rick Lazio – to ensure that Carl Paladino received the Conservative fusion Party line in his 2010 gubernatorial run. I wasn’t aware that race hate, porn, and bestiality were “conservative values” that western New York’s working class really connected with, but I guess you learn something new every day. 

Erie County residents vote for lower taxes, smarter spending and a government built to assist them with jobs, better roads and affordable services; all principles the Erie County Conservative Party champions.

LOL “assist them with jobs”. How true. 

The leaders of the Erie County Democratic Party may have taken a hard left, but Erie County Democrats have not.

Being opposed to the Republican clone party that has close ties to Steve Pigeon and Carl Paladino isn’t a “hard left”. It’s common sense and decency. 

The Conservative fusion Party purports to have principles, but it’s just an arm of the Republicans; a party so unpopular in New York State that it needs to control a bunch of extra fusion lines to win the occasional election. Its platform is made up of all the WBEN bogeymen – anti-choice, anti-LGBT, anti-gun control. It is the party that thinks “black lives matter” is a terrorist group and fully supports the Trump Administration. 

The Conservative Party’s most prominent recent candidates include disgraced former Assemblywoman Angela Wozniak and racial vulgarian Joe Mascia. 

So, is Lorigo’s relationship with Democrats in trouble? Quite simply, no such relationship should exist; it is right that he has to omit the indictees, the racists, and has to resort to Mickey Kearns and the deceased to underscore his purported bipartisanship. Democrats need to stop going to breakfasts with Lorigo, and they need to reject the Conservative Party fusion line. It is the antithesis of what is actually “conservative”. Meritocracy is anathema to it. Good government is beside the point – it’s about jobs.  

The highest and best use of electoral fusion for Democrats right now would be to start a “Freedom Liberty Gun-Eagle” fusion party line to out-conservative Lorigo’s and further use the system to confuse voters. 

Anyway, thanks, Ralph. Democrats are all set. You may speak for the reactionary hatred of some who can’t deal with gay people having rights, but we Democrats will fight for the working class by promoting univeral health coverage, protecting union membership, implementing a higher minimum wage, paid family and medical leave, and other policies and programs that actually help people, rather than facile talk radio slogans. 

This Saturday September 9th from 10am – 1pm, the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library will be holding a “placemaking workshop” in order to solicit ideas for an upcoming reading park to be located adjacent to the downtown central branch. 

Southwest Airlines and Partnership for Public Spaces recently awarded the B&ECPL a “Heart of the Community” grant to develop an outdoor Reading Park and outdoor space for free activities on an unused grass/sidewalk area next to the Downtown Central Library. The PPS will facilitate the workshop, to take place at the central branch this Saturday, and you can RSVP via email here. 

If you can’t attend the workshop, please provide your input via the survey found at this link. 

(The author is a B&ECPL Trustee)

For the balance of this column, let us assume that the New York State Thruway is a roadway for which exorbitant tolls remain necessary. Let us agree, for the sake of argument, that it is somehow acceptable to pay just under $20 to travel on an expressway from Transit Road to Yonkers Raceway. Entre nous, let’s concede that there is an especial joy in, say, driving 15 miles perhour under the posted speed limit as one truck takes five miles’ worth of roadway to overtake another, or how the rest areas inexplicably and unremorsefully shelter the only remaining Roy Rogers franchises in the known universe—detritus from a bygone era; the Fish that Saved Pittsburgh of fast food franchises. Face it—that “Fixin’s Bar” is so 1978. 

Let’s forget, for a moment, that the Thruway should have been expanded to three lanes in each direction many moons ago, and how its speed limit should really be 70, if we’re being honest. 

Instead, let’s discuss cashless tolling. 

According to a source in the know, it would take about 24 months to completely transform the entire Thruway to cashless tolling. That means ripping down toll booths at every exit from Harriman to Ripley and replacing them with overhead transponder readers and cameras set up to snap license plates at high speeds. It is 2017, and the Thruway still employs human beings—paid in actual American money—to stand in a booth literally to operate an automated ticket dispenser for you, and hand you the toll ticket. 

Ever watch the Sopranos? That show came out in 1999. During its opening titles, Tony enters the NJ Turnpike and is seen retrieving his own toll ticket from an automated dispenser. Again: New York believes that you need an actual, living person to stand in a booth and execute that complicated endeavor for you. There is no way to make that up. Even Massachusetts now has cashless tolls along its Turnpike. 

I don’t like to see people lose a job, but “ticket dispenser operator” is about as necessary for today’s Thruway Authority as “blacksmith” or “milliner”. 

It was announced recently that the Grand Island tolls would switch to a cashless system. Downstate, New York has already implemented this at the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and the RFK / Triboro Bridge. Cashless tolls snap a picture of your license plate and/or read your EZ-Pass transponder as you continue to travel at regular highway speeds. The toll plaza bottlenecks and backups are eliminated, and the entire process is seamless. If you don’t have a transponder, you are billed by mail. It has been thus on Toronto’s 407 since the day it was built. 

The Buffalo market is special for the Thruway. Not Rochester, Utica, nor Syracuse get a special toll-free local area of the Thruway, but we do. That means, however, that through traffic has to pay up at Williamsville and/or Lackawanna. Neither of these toll barriers allow for any through passage at highway speeds—all traffic must stop or slow. Traveling west through the Williamsville toll, you have maybe two EZ-Pass only lanes—one at the extreme right, and another at the extreme left. 18-wheelers are allowed to use them both. 

There has been talk in the past of extending the “free” zone of the Thruway west to include the Transit Road exit 49, but people between Clarence and Pembroke balked at the concomitent movement of noise and pollution; this despite the fact that one option was to put the plaza adjacent to a quarry which regularly uses dynamite. 

At long last, someone is talking about bringing the Thruway kicking and screaming into the 21st century, with cashless tolling to eliminate the backups in Williamsville and Lackawanna. An initiative led by Congressman Brian Higgins would use money earmarked for toll plaza “improvements” and instead replace them with overhead transponder readers and high-speed cameras. New York’s “tolls by mail” infrastructure is already in place. Even if the change was just applied to the barriers that bookend Buffalo’s free Thruway section, it wouldn’t take much to add cameras at every other toll plaza to bill motorists by mail.

But switching just Williamsville and Lackawanna is stupid. Do it all, and do it right. Imagine the time and fuel savings—not to mention drop in pollution—by eliminating idling vehicles and plaza backups from the Thruway equation.  

Don’t like the transponder system or bill by mail? No worries—here’s an alternative. In 2012, I wrote, “The 1950s Called: They Want Their Toll Road Back”, where I suggested that cashless tolling could be accomplished quite easily using the model used elsewhere in the world, 

If tolls are to be maintained, the Thruway could take a hint from Toronto’s 407 and make toll collection something that’s done at highway speeds. However, that’s costly, and cars without a transponder pay an extra fee for the license-plate-photograph privilege. Instead, many European countries share the cost burden of highway maintenance through sales of stickers.

For tourists, we could follow the Austrian model where [€9] buys you 10 days of unlimited travel on that country’s highways. Another possibility would be to follow the Swiss model, where SFr 40 buys you a year’s worth of travel on that country’s impeccably maintained Autobahnen, Autostrade, and Autoroutes.

Police spot checks look for scofflaws. If caught without a vignette, the Swiss charge you a SFr 200 fine, plus the cost of a vignette. The Austrians will fine you €120 on the spot.  Given that it now costs almost $20 to get from the Major Deegan to the PA line, a $10 sticker for 10 days’ worth of highway travel is a bargain. So is $40 for the entire year. Vignettes could be sold at welcome centers entering New York or leaving bordering states. They could be sold online, in advance, or, as they are in Hungary, even via cell phone text message. No more toll barriers, no more toll collectors.

In 2013, I found it downright unconscionable that there was no progress being made to introduce cashless tolling of some form on the Thruway, adding,

The reason why the Thruway Authority will never, ever change the toll plazas in Williamsville and Lackawanna has to do with the fact that western New York is a nonentity. No one from Albany needs to pass through here on their way to Erie, and so it doesn’t really matter all that much whether you’re sitting in unnecessary traffic at Ripley, Lackawanna, or Williamsville on the I-90.

It’s 2013 and completely unacceptable that we haven’t made use of the not-very-advanced technology that is available to permit EZ-Pass holders fly by the toll plaza at highway speeds. No EZ-Pass, you can pay cash at a booth located off the main road, like they do in Florida…There is no accountability, so there is no motivation or impetus to improve service to Thruway consumers. It is more evidence of the dictatorship of the bureaucracy under which we live in New York.

A bit fatalistic, to be sure, but accurate. But some local politicians were pretty stupid when it came to the Williamsville barrier, such as the time Clarence’s then-supervisor voted against a resolution in favor of moving the barrier east because it would somehow ruin business along Transit Road. I brought up cashless tolling again in 2014, effectively yelling at clouds like Grandpa Simpson. If people still insist that moving to an all-cashless system on the Thruway is somehow too complicated, then do what Florida has done for at least a decade.

Cashless tolling is an idea that is long overdue. The New York State Thruway is ruled by a bureaucracy that is extraordinarily resistant to change, clinging to an outmoded way of doing business like barnacles to a hull.

Toll barriers are to driving what Roy Rogers is to fast food: a mediocre anachronism. 

Back in March, Representative Chris Collins (NY-27) appeared on a CNN town hall style show hosted by Van Jones when average citizen Renee Sutton confronted him about his lack of town hall meetings here in WNY, and his reluctance to meet with constituents generally. 

Although Collins claimed that he didn’t see the value in town hall meetings with constituents, (a topic I broached in this piece in The Public back in March), he promised to meet with Sutton at some point. That meeting happened last week. In a Facebook post last Friday, Sutton relayed what happened: 

So, yesterday I finally got my meeting with Rep. Chris Collins. He agreed to meet with me in March, after I asked him on CNN’s The Messy Truth with Van Jones why he was willing to appear on the show but refused to meet with his actual constituents in a town hall setting. That brief interaction on CNN ended with him approaching me in the audience, shaking my hand, giving me his business card (his real business card, with his personal email, cell phone number and everything) and inviting me to contact him anytime to get our future meeting set up. After four months of intermittent attempts to schedule the meeting, I was contacted with very short notice and told that he would be free and in Canandaigua. I contacted Michelle [Schoeneman, candidate for Erie County Legislature), in hope that she could join me, but life conspired to prevent it, and I went solo. 

The meeting was held in a conference room at the Ontario County Office Building in Canandaigua, and Collins was accompanied by two male aides, one of whom stayed the entire meeting while the other kept running in and out of the room. Collins came in, shook my hand, and took the seat across from me. I tried a little “break the ice” small talk, but he wasn’t interested. His affect from the start was cold and resentful, and the tone of the meeting was immediately adversarial. 

The cameras are off, the audience is gone, and the real Chris Collins showed up. 

During the first 15 minutes of the meeting we discussed the AHCA and the premature termination of grant funding for teenage pregnancy programs. The AHCA conversation went nowhere. When he commented that the individual mandate and taxes related to Obamacare were job killers, I smilingly responded something to the effect of “yet somehow the president managed to add one million jobs since January.” He visibly did not appreciate that comment, and shot me down with a comment about the medical device tax never having been implemented anyway and a snide, “you didn’t know that, did you?”

Weird, because Collins has been so vocal about that medical device tax, you’d have thought it had not only been implemented but had been at a rate of 200 percent. 

I moved on to teenage pregnancy prevention issue. This conversation started with me prefacing that, although we are probably on opposite sides of the reproductive rights issue, this might be an issue where we have some common ground. He responded that if I believed in partial birth abortion which equals murdering babies, then we most certainly were on opposite sides.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who said anything about “partial birth abortion”? 

I told him that I understand why pro-choice activists don’t agree to any erosion of abortion rights fearing it led to the elimination of ALL abortion rights, but that my personal convictions around reproductive rights led my advocacy for legal, accessible first trimester abortion that was subject to no further regulation than any medical procedure would be. Collins actually agreed. I was so surprised that I repeated, “So you agree that abortion in the first trimester should be legal and accessible?”, and he replied, “yes.”

LOL RINO. 

This was such a shocker to me that a Republican congressman was expressing support for abortion rights, any abortion rights, that I just said something along the lines of not expecting that to be an area of common ground, but still glad that we had identified at least the one! I then pivoted to the teenage pregnancy prevention funding, and his first response was that it was an HHS issue, so it wasn’t in his purview to fix, although he agreed it was a worthwhile endeavor to support. I responded that it was my expectation that as a congressman it was in his purview to advocate for his constituents and lobby the executive branch for restoration of the funding. He agreed, and asked me to send him a list of providers in the 27th who were recipients of the funding. I thanked him sincerely, and commented again that it was great that there were things we agreed on. 

So, that exchange was actually—on its face—somewhat productive. Collins agreed that first trimester abortion should remain safe and legal, and agreed to look into reinstating teenage pregnancy prevention program funding through HHS. 

Heartened by this initial success but knowing that time was running out on the meeting, I said that I next wanted to talk about Charlottesville and the tenor of political discourse since the election. BOOM: the affect that was cold and resentful turned to outright hostile and demeaning. The next ten minutes felt like some kind of crazy fever dream, and Collins did almost all of the talking, getting increasingly heated as he did so. It was just so clear that I became a target for all of his frustration and anger over the billboards and the protests and the letters to the editor. There were A LOT of things said, so for brevity’s sake I need to dispense with the narrative and just share some bullet points:

Regardless of your political persuasion, there is no doubt that political discourse has been dismal. There are certainly culprits on both sides (Louise Mensch and Claude Taylor stand out as rhetorical bullshitters, and the so-called “antifa” paramilitary-without-portfolio does no Trump opponent any favors), but the president of the United States has revealed himself to be the troll-in-chief, seemingly existing to do whatever is best guaranteed to piss off liberals. That seems to be the sum total of Trumpism. But Charlottesville—that was the work-product of only one side. 

What happened in Charlottesville was quite simple: The “Unite the Right” rally was an effort to bring together Trumpist trolls, the Klan, various and sundry Nazi wannabes, and other white nationalist/identitarian groups. There was a very thinly veiled pretext at play: to oppose any effort to remove a statue to Robert E. Lee or to rename the plaza where it sits. But really what it amounted to was an orgy of hatred and violence fueled by ignorant, phony white resentment. 

Confederate monuments and statues exist to commemorate acts of high treason and white supremacist chattel slavery. If you doubt this, go and read the constitution of the Confederacy, especially Article IV and Article I § 9. Then go and read the “Cornerstone Speech” that the CSA’s first and only vice president, Alexander Stephens, gave in 1861: “Our new government is founded upon exactly [this] idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

Back to Sutton’s meeting with Collins, who seemed triggered by mention of Charlottesville. 

• He stated that he is against white supremacists and the KKK, but supported First Amendment rights.  

This is all fine, but note the invocation of the First Amendment. We’ll come back to it. 

• Collins repeatedly referenced the protests against himself and the president. He said that “you guys haven’t stopped marching around with your signs since the election.” I replied that we were exercising our First Amendment rights and that I was among those protesting his agenda and carrying signs. He replied, “yeah, you and your sign filled with lies.”

What about First Amendment rights? “Marching around” with political “signs” is among the most strongly protected types of speech in existence. It doesn’t matter whether he thinks the signs contain “lies”. All the more reason, frankly, for this representative of the people to meet with people and listen to them—especially the ones with whom he has disagreements. 

• He said that “you guys and your protests” are the reason why he now has cameras outside all of his offices. He also accused us of drawing chalk outlines on the sidewalk outside his house in efforts to threaten and intimidate him, so I was a hypocrite for wanting civility in our political discourse.

Chris Collins is opposed to Obamacare, voted for Trumpcare, and is opposed to universal health coverage. People die from lack of care—or the inability to pay for it. Maybe he could listen to people who, unlike him, are not millionaires and have issues with the affordability of not just healthcare but health insurance. Chris Collins has offered exactly zero reasonable alternatives to Obamacare in order to expand affordable health insurance to more Americans. All he’s done is vote to repeal Obamacare dozens of times, only to fail miserably to actually repeal it when actually given the chance. To call that failure is an insult to failure. 

• He said that the ethics accusations were lies and fake news perpetuated by “you guys.”

Weird, that. The Buffalo News reports that the ethics investigation has taken a “more serious” turn just this week. The Office of Congressional Ethics referred the matter of Collins’s stock trades in an Australian penny stock to the House Committee on Ethics. I guess it’s more than just “fake news”. 

• He said that the press attacked him for calling Sheldon Silver the antichrist and evil, and that he didn’t even know Silver was Jewish. I said that I didn’t think characterizing political opponents that way was helpful and that I expected my elected officials to model better behavior than that. 

My goodness, Collins’s run-in with Sheldon Silver was years ago. Interesting he’d bring that up, unprovoked, within this context. Sutton is exactly right that maybe politicians referring to other politicians as evil devils isn’t productive. Or…

• He said that I was a hypocrite who voted for “that lying, cheating scumbag Hillary Clinton.” I responded to him that invective like that was unnecessary and harmful, and belied his interest in unifying Americans. 

I would have asked Collins how he reconciles his opposition to “lying, cheating scumbags” with his full and deep-throated support for Donald Trump. 

The last thing I said to him was, after trying to make the case for being more accessible to all his constituents, “How can you really represent me if you won’t listen to me?”

Here’s the kicker: 

His response was delivered with utter contempt (and this is verbatim), “I represent the 72% of people who voted for me. You didn’t vote for me.”

First of all, Chris Collins earned only 67 percent of the vote in 2016; not 72 percent. I mean, when you win by two thirds, what’s with the compulsion to inflate? 

Secondly, there are 477,200 registered voters in NY-27.  Collins received 220,885 votes. That amounts to 46 percent of eligible, registered voters. According to Collins’s own logic and math, he truly only represents the 46 percent of eligible voters who bothered to turn out and vote for him. This means that fully 54 percent of the eligible voters in NY-27 are unrepresented. Not only that, but the total population is 713,175. So, if Collins only represents the people who voted for him, it stands to reason that only 30 percent of the residents in NY-27 enjoy Congressional representation. Does this mean he only gets paid 30 percent of his Congressional salary? Or that he is entitled only to 30 percent of the federal health, pension, and other fringe benefits he might otherwise receive? 

For Collins to tell a constituent that he doesn’t represent anyone who didn’t vote for him is indicative of two things: 1. He is unfit to serve anyone; and 2. He is an arrogant personage whose continued involvement in WNY politics soils all of us. 

Immediately after that utterance, his one aide popped into the room and said that he needed to leave the meeting. Collins got up from the table, and walked out of the room without a backward glance. No hand shake, no thank you. His other aide asked if I would be following up with the list of providers receiving the teenage pregnancy prevention funding. I was still so stunned that I couldn’t do any more than look up and nod at him. He left the room, and I stayed to jot down some quick notes and quotes I didn’t want to forget, and then I biked home … As soon as I got home, I called Michelle. The first words out of my mouth were, “We are really getting to him.” 

“We” being the “Citizens Against Collins” group that has protested Collins at his various offices and raised money to buy billboard space to shame him for his refusal to hold public meetings. 

Before the meeting, I was really excited to have this opportunity to just exchange some ideas and possibly find some common ground with Collins. I truly believed that we were just two Americans who love our country but who have different ideas about how to solve problems, and that his bluster and invective against folks more liberal than he were more for the benefit of the cameras and his base. At best, I hoped that my friendly demeanor and respectful, reasonable arguments would telegraph to him that I saw his humanity and that, in turn, he would see mine. I really thought, on the basis of our shared American values, I could convince him that our resistance represents political engagement that benefits our Republic and was worthy of his applause, not his condemnation. At worst, I thought it would be a meaningless half hour in which my concerns would be answered with measured political doublespeak and condescending civility. Instead, my congressman told me that he will not represent me because I didn’t vote for him. My congressman called me a liar and hypocrite who voted for a scumbag. Never in a million years did I think I would be treated with the insulting hostility and contempt that I experienced. I wasn’t treated like a human being, much less a constituent. I was treated like an enemy, and it saddens me that that is the state of the nation today. 

Welcome to Collins country. “Collins for our Future”—a future of rude, arrogant, entitled multi-millionaires. 

As crappy as it felt to be on the receiving end of that much hostility, I am proud of the way I behaved and unapologetic for my idealism. Yes, it is clear to me now that my civility was wasted on Chris Collins, but it wasn’t a waste to me. Chris Collins supports a president and policies that run counter to fundamental American values and that will hurt his constituents and lead to the destruction of our environment. Collins’s behavior and hateful rhetoric yesterday were unprofessional, unbecoming, and incompatible with representative democracy. For those reasons I will work hard to ensure his defeat in 2018 and 45’s in 2020. But I will do so modeling the behavior and rhetoric I want to see from others, eschewing hateful and divisive speech and personal attacks. I hope you all will join me. To the fair-minded people we hope to convince, our integrity and decency will be as powerful a source of persuasion as our reasoned arguments. And when we win, we will have the satisfaction of knowing we did it in the sunshine, and not the gutter.

The Public reached out to Collins’s office Monday morning. Sutton’s version of events was copied and pasted, and these three questions asked: 

1. Is Sutton’s account of the meeting substantially accurate?

2. If there are inaccuracies, can you please identify them and offer the Congressman’s account?

3. Can the Congressman please explain or elaborate on this statement, which Sutton says she is quoting verbatim: “I represent the 72% of people who voted for me. You didn’t vote for me.”

Neither Collins nor anyone from his office responded. 

Return confederate flags to a South Carolina courthouse, said plaintiff Russell Walker. It’s about heritage, said the man who let loose “Martin Luther Coon” on live TV. 

Russell Walker filed a lawsuit in York SC, demanding confederate flags be returned to the main courtroom @SpecNewsCLT pic.twitter.com/MVDYSEBIEe

— Yoojin Cho (@Yoojin_Cho) August 24, 2017

Over the weekend, a large group consisting of neo-nazis, Klansmen, and other “alt-right” white nationalists converged on Charlottesville, Virginia ostensibly to protest the possible removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. Lee was the general of an army fighting for a country that had betrayed and seceded from the United States to preserve the right to buy and sell black people as chattel. Query whether we should replace confederate statues with ones honoring the victims of its inhuman feudal ethos. (Note: I will not capitalize the word “nazi”. It’s not a mistake.)

As one might expect, people came to the college town to launch counter protests against the nazis. These weren’t antifa black bloc rioters smashing Starbucks’ windows because capitalism is at the root of racist fascism, and to smash one is to smash it all; but regular people who were disgusted that their town had become a magnet for nazis.

When it becomes wrong to protest nazis, then we’ll know that political correctness has, indeed, run amok. 

It all culminated when a 20 year-old nazi from Ohio adopted the means and method popularized by ISIS-inspired jihadist terrorists in France and the UK – he rammed his Dodge Charger into a crowd of peaceful counterprotesters, then backed it up and rammed over some more. The nazi motorist murdered a woman – a 32 year-old paralegal named Heather Hayer, and injured over a dozen more. The nazi who murdered her stands charged with second-degree murder. This representative of the master race hasn’t the means to afford his own lawyer, so he must rely on the state to fund one for him. The public defender’s office was conflicted out because of personal ties to other victims of the nazi’s ISIS-inspired attack. 

Charlottesville is home to the University of Virginia, a school that hipster nazi Richard Spencer attended. Spencer befriended Trump adviser Stephen Miller when they both attended Duke University about a decade ago. 

In the aftermath of what had transpired in Charlottesville, the Public and I reminded Buffalonians of our own white nationalists here in our region. 

My March 14th article discussed an email that local elected school board official Carl Paladino had sent, which contained this image: 

I wrote at the time, “Carl Paladino, an elected school official, thinks murder is funny.“

In the wake of the murder of Heather Hayer, who was killed by a nazi plowing his vehicle through a group of protesters, I’d be wholly unsurprised to see Paladino express his white nationalist glee at the news. 

On Monday, Carl Paladino posted something to his public Facebook page. He likely thinks it’s a funny joke and all us extreme leftists should lighten up and tolerate racist jokes like we tolerate things like immigration and multiculturalism, but in the wake of the fashy haircut hipster citronella fascists’ march ‘n murder in Charlottesville, it is unbelievably tone-deaf. 

In Michigan, Carl quips, a guy with 100 guns and 100,000 rounds of ammunition would be called, “the last white guy still living in Detroit“. Because Detroit, like the Buffalo school district Paladino oversees, is predominately African-American. That is the punch line to that part of the joke: a white guy in Detroit would need that much firepower because of all the blacks. We know this because of the use of the adjective, “white”. 

It makes sense to pause here as a reminder that white nationalist “pride” is comically weak stuff. If you’re white, it’s nothing more than an accident of birth – it’s not an achievement, or the result of any effort. If all you have to be proud of is your whiteness, maybe it’s time to accomplish something meaningful with your life. If all you have to be proud of is your whiteness, you’re not proud of anything at all. 

Carl Paladino swears up and down to all and sundry that he’s not racist – you’re racist. He controlled a majority on the Buffalo school board for two years, and his only achievement was to worsen the dysfunctional circus atmosphere there. Hey, at least he has “being white” to be proud of. He is part of a board that oversees a school district as diverse as, e.g., Detroit, and he jokes that this sort of ethnic or racial diversity is something against which white people need to arm themselves.

Carl Paladino has established time and again the myriad ways in which he disqualifies himself from – and is unfit to – oversee any school district, much less one whose kids overwhelmingly don’t look like his own. His racism, veiled thinly if at all, is something that rational, fair-minded people need to reject and shun. If anyone needs to see Paladino’s attitudes towards black Americans, it’s Mary Ellen Elia, who is now deliberating what to do with Paladino vis-a-vis the Buffalo school board. 

None of this is new. 

March 2010: Paladino’s racist and pornographic emails
October 2012: Paladino denies he’s a birther, but is birther. 
August 2014: Paladino’s homophobic reaction to a 419 scam letter
February 2015: Paladino rejects civil rights assessment of Buffalo schools. 
March 2015: Paladino threatens school board “sisterhood” with libel suit (which never came)
July 2015: Paladino demeans “damn Asians” at UB. 
July 2015: Paladino offers fake apology to “damn Asians”
July 2015: Paladino’s supporters: hey, he could have said, “damn Ukrainians”. 
July 2015: Paladino defends Joe Mascia’s n-word outburst
July 2015: Sandy Beach calls Paladino out on Joe Mascia
August 2015: Paladino digs a deeper hole on Shredd & Ragan. 
August 2016: Paladino claims Obama is Muslim. 
December 2016: Paladino wishes President Obama dead, likens the First Lady to a Zimbabwean gorilla. 

Paladino says he wants to run for governor again. His 2010 effort was torpedoed, in part, by the revelation of private racist and pornographic emails that he had sent to friends of his. Any potential future effort must be thwarted by his own public pronouncements. 

Last weekend, the Niagara Falls water department released some sort of fetid, black effluent into the Niagara River near the Falls. The Buffalo News referred to it as a “Black Sewage Plume”, which sounds like it should be a character in a song.

In the olden days, someone would have written “The Ballad of the Black Sewage Plume” by now. When you sing or recite this – whether out loud or in your head – consider it in the manner of Roger Miller singing about Robin Hood and Little John in the 1973 Disney version of Robin Hood. 

Down below the cataracts,
up in Niagara Falls,
People started worrying
and placing lots of calls

They called the cops and rangers,
their hearts were filled with doom
from witnessing Niagara Falls’
Black Sewage Plume

The sewage oozed and stank
and the tourists got upset.
They watched it as it blanketed
Niagara’s riverbank

From all around the world
People came to see the flumes,
and really didn’t want to see the
Black Sewage Plume.

Nobody in government  
knew about the botheration, 
so the water board explained 
that it was sediment filtration. 

The state issued a permit
for discharge that was brackish, 
but no one had permitted them
to turn the water blackish. 

The water board had done this
for a variety of reasons, 
but never had they done it
at the peak of tourist season. 

The black blob grew for hours, 
and continued through the night
and the most disturbing images
arose from helicopter flights. 

The matter turned political, 
the mayor commenced investigations, 
the Niagara County Legislature
demanding instant terminations.

It took about a week
for all the sludge to go away. 
The tourists were now free
to all enjoy Niagara’s spray.

There ain’t no need to holler
and there ain’t no need to fume. 
Just raise a glass and celebrate the
Black Sewage Plume.

Later today, Representative Chris Collins (NY-27) is expected to introduce something called the “Second Amendment Guarantee Act”, or “SAGA”. He intends for this legislation – if passed – to repeal key parts of the New York SAFE Act. According to a press release, SAGA would, “limit the authority of states to regulate conduct, or impose penalties or taxes in relation to rifles or shotguns.”

The Federal 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the NY SAFE Act is Constitutional, and the Supreme Court refused to undertake a review of that decision, tacitly upholding it. 

Collins’ proposed legislation only applies to long guns, not to handguns. It would also expressly reserve for Washington the sole ability to regulate and tax long guns. This might work now for Mr. Collins and his gun-toting base in his largely rural district, but query what happens if Congress were to flip from Republican control and pass restrictions on long guns even stricter than the SAFE Act. Under this proposal, Collins’ top-down, big government, Washington one-size-fits-all solution for gun regulation might not go over so well. 

Just as the 1st Amendment is not absolute – restrictions on libel, obscenity, and inciting a riot are examples of restrictions on speech – neither is the 2nd. There are as many sets of laws and restrictions on gun ownership in the United States as there are states. In some cases, individual municipalities have their own restrictions, such as New York City’s stringent handgun laws. Furthermore, individual states have long maintained their own firearms regulations. After all, what works in Wyoming might not work in Rhode Island. 

It is odd here that a Republican Congressman is introducing legislation that usurps from the states their power to regulate, and hands it to the federal government. After all, conservatives have long agitated for government power to be exercised, whenever possible, not by Washington, but by state and local governments.  Their stated intent is to preserve the intent of our federal system and to comply with the 10th Amendment. Collins’ proposal effects that very usurpation, ripping power from the states and handing it to Washington lawmakers and bureaucrats. After all, 

…as Judge Frank Easterbrook of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit explained in the Highland Park case, the Constitution not only guarantees rights, but also “establishes a federal republic where local differences are cherished as elements of liberty, rather than eliminated in a search for national uniformity.”

Maybe the polling reveals that Trump isn’t so popular and Collins’ relentless cable TV appearances to defend whatever the President does may not play so well. Given the way in which a Collins aide shared the news of this proposal on Twitter, it would appear that this will go nowhere, and is merely an appeal to his base, as Mr. Collins evidently can’t wait to run for governor. 

If the Trump family are the Bluths, Donald, Jr. is Gob. 

The New York Times obtained an email string from early June 2016 in which an intermediary contacted Junior to set up a meeting with Russian “government” operatives who supposedly had dirt on Hillary Clinton. The meeting was to be with Putin/Kremlin-connected lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, whose primary brief has been to push for repeal of the Magnitsky Act. Magnitsky was a lawyer whom Putin harassed before having murdered, and Congress passed the law to deny visas to – and freeze assets of – Putin cronies. In retaliation, Putin blocked Americans from adopting Russian orphans. This was set up by an Azerbaijani pop star, “Emin”, and his manager, Rob Goldstone.

When people tell you this is about “adoptions”, it’s not. It’s about sanctions that Congress passed that are specifically targeted at evil Russian malefactors. 

Some in the American intelligence community think this meeting was a “dangle” by the Russians – an effort to sniff out how receptive the Trump people would be to meddling. Quite receptive indeed, it turns out. Go look at Goldstone’s emails again – he seemingly goes out of his way to identify these people as Russian government agents who are part of an official Russian government effort to help Trump. 

Emin’s father is a Putin stooge and big-time developer in Russia. Goldstone was involved in Trump’s production of the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, and that interconnection led to this, which may arguably be even uglier than collusion to fix an election: 

In response to the first Times article, Don, Jr. issued this statement, written on Air Force One en route home from the G20 in Hamburg and signed-off on by the President: 

It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up.

The the New York Times reported that the meeting was set up to get Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton, Junior said: 

After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Mrs. Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.

Later, after the Times reported that Trump, Jr. was told it was part of a Russian government effort to help the Trump campaign, Junior tried to pass it all off as just a regular guy getting some opposition research from a friendly source. 

Obviously I’m the first person on a campaign to ever take a meeting to hear info about an opponent… went nowhere but had to listen. https://t.co/ccUjL1KDEa

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 10, 2017

When the Times contacted Donald, Jr. to let him know it had the emails themselves, her released them on Twitter and wrote, 

To put this in context, this occurred before the current Russian fever was in vogue.

The Washington Post characterizes Donald, Jr.’s changing stories thusly: 

• I never represented the campaign in a meeting with a Russian.
• Actually, I did, but the meeting was about adoption.
• Well, the pretext of the meeting was incriminating information about Clinton, but we didn’t actually get any.
• This kind of meeting is totally normal.
• The meeting didn’t seem like such a bad idea at the time because the media wasn’t focused on Russia yet.

What the email string shows quite clearly is that when approached by a middleman peddling Russian government intelligence on Hillary Clinton, Donald, Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner reacted enthusiastically and acted fleetly. The issue is – what happened next? Because the timeline of what happened after that June 9 meeting with Veselnitskaya – a person who frankly had no business being in the country in the first place – a lot of interesting things happened.

Two days before the meeting, Trump gave a speech promising to give a “major speech” about Hillary Clinton’s “crimes” on June 13th. 

I am going to give a major speech on … probably Monday [June 13th] of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons. I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting.

After Veselnitskaya’s visit to Trump Tower, it was as if a dam had burst. Literally within the hour after the June 9th meeting, Trump tweeted his first reference to Hillary’s “missing” “33,000 emails” – he had never said that before, but said it almost daily since. This jibes perfectly with the allegations in the Steele Dossier about Russia peddling supposed intelligence on Clinton to Trump’s campaign. After those in the Trump orbit spent a year falsely denying any communication – much less collusion or coordination – during the 2016 election, and after Donald, Jr. changed his story three or four times on this June 9th meeting, what rational person would believe that the meeting was a “nothingburger”, or inconsequential? Even Trump, Jr. admits that the meeting was set up so he could obtain secret Russian kompromat on Hillary Clinton, but that Veselnitskaya instead talked of “adoptions”. Even taking that at face value, the kompromat was the quid pro quo for weakening or repeal of the Magnistky Act. 

Even Grover’s sells “nothingburgers” smaller than this June 9th meeting. The circumstances surrounding the aftermath of that meeting reveal that much more was likely discussed and agreed-upon. 

Within days, Julian Assange crowed that Wikileaks would be publishing things about Hillary Clinton. A few days later, the news broke that the DNC’s computer network had been hacked by Russian operatives, and “Guccifer 2.0”, took credit. The US Intelligence community has identified Guccifer 2.0 as a fictional construct created by Russia’s GRU and FSB. Three weeks after the meeting, DCLeaks published the first hacked DNC emails. Within a few days after the meeting with Veselnitskaya, membership in the /r/the_donald subreddit spiked larger than at any time before or since. 

I wrote about it as early as July of last year. 

By mid-July, the Trump campaign, led by Paul Manafort, worked to remove language from the Republican platform that called for military aid to Ukraine to counter Russian military hostility. Days later, Wikileaks released thousands of DNC emails. On July 27th, Trump said, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you can find the 33,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” A few weeks later, Roger Stone told a Republican apparatchik, “I actually have communicated with Assange. I believe the next tranche of his documents pertain to the Clinton Foundation but there’s no telling what the October surprise may be.”

On August 21st, Stone tweeted, “Trust me, it will soon [sic] the Podesta’s time in the barrel.” On October 7th, a “Joint Statement from the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence” formally accuses Russia of hacking the DNC to “interfere with the US election process”, the Access Hollywood pussy grabbing tape is released, and within one hour, Wikileaks has published the first of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s private emails, which continued to be released in daily dribs and drabs until election day for maximum anti-Clinton impact. On October 12, Stone confirms that he communicated with Assange through an intermediary, who is now thought to be former UKIP chief Nigel Farage. 

After the election, President Obama applied some targeted sanctions against Russia for its interference in our electoral process, and Russia threatened retaliation before now-disgraced Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn intervened. 

The Trump people are now saying it was a rookie mistake. Here’s why that’s a bullshit cop-out: not a lot of people ever work on more than one Presidential campaign; they’re all pretty much rookies at that level. 

They’re trying to say that everyone collects opposition research, and this was no different. Except it is different for this reason: opposition research is stuff that is “researched”; i.e., you hit Lexis and find articles, you check clerk’s websites and court dockets. You talk to associates and enemies of the target. It is completely different – and not routine “opposition research” to be approached by people identifying themselves as representatives of a hostile dictatorship who purport to have compiled a secret intelligence dossier on your opponent. Donald, Jr. knew exactly who these people purported to be, and what they were offering. His response? “If it’s what you say, I love it. Especially later in the summer”. 

The last round of talking points referred to the June 9th meeting as a “nothingburger”. But they’ve been saying that all along – not just about this meeting, which is only now coming to light, but about the entirety of the Russian hacking, disinformation, and other active measures interference with the 2016 election. Trump repeatedly calls it “fake news”, and tweets out warnings about not believing stuff that’s attributed to anonymous sources hours before yet another damning report is published about his campaign’s ties with Russian agents. 

Wikileaks is one of the glues that bonds this whole sordid affair together. Julian Assange and his website long ago transformed into anti-American, anti-Western, anti-democratic pawns of the Putinist regime. Yet he claims to have an open communications channel with the Trump family. 

“But…but the Democrats colluded with Ukraine“.  This is an old Russian propaganda tactic called “whataboutism” – e.g., during Soviet times, if an American complained about the repression of free speech or dissent, the Russian would not address the complaint, but instead point out something that happened in the US, such as lynchings.

A few things: 1. Ukraine isn’t a nation hostile to the United States; 2. Ukraine is a nation that has been the victim of Russian theft of the entire Crimean peninsula, and years’ worth of war along its eastern frontier; 3. Ukraine has been on the front lines against Putinism for years; 4. Manafort had worked extensively in Ukraine, working for the Putinist quislings. A Democratic strategist researched this in Ukraine to find out what she could about Manafort’s dealings there.

At no time was there an operation run out of Kyiv by Ukrainian governmental operatives or intelligence.  The evidence that Manafort was paid over ten million dollars to elect Putinists in Ukraine was leaked by a Ukrainian parliamentarian in the Ukrainian press.  It’s not even in the same solar system as what Trump’s campaign is alleged to have done with Russia, even based on the scant public evidence available now. 

They had a good thing going, relentlessly denying that they solicited or obtained any help from Russian government agents. Until Gob Bluth Don, Jr. tweeted out the first bit of incriminating evidence. 

Come on. 

Last week before the G20 summit in Hamburg, President Trump gave a speech in Poland that seemingly recast American ideals, and our role in the world. Trump’s Stephen Miller/Steve Bannon-fed Weltanschauung eschews the optimism and idealism of democracy and liberty in favor of something more exclusionary, authoritarian, and sinister. Trumpism isn’t so much about freedom, but about a “West” where hatred and fear fuel an epic clash of civilizations, which can only be won through sheer force of will. 

ISIS, al Qaeda, and other jihadist terrorist organizations themselves couldn’t have written a better third act. This is exactly what they want. 

James Fallows writes in the Atlantic, comparing past Presidents’ rhetoric with Trump’s. Reagan, Carter, Bush, and Obama all spoke of the idea – and ideals – of America, and how the postwar expansion of pluralist democracy throughout western Europe united us as people who aspire – almost as one – to liberty and equality. If you look at the world wars that laid waste to Europe’s humanity and property twice in the first half of the last century, America and her ideals came in to help rebuild the countries that wanted it, and to protect them from the competing ideology of expansionist Stalinist oppression. 

America is an immigrant nation. We aren’t brought together by blood, race, ethnicity, or religion, but by the law and ideas. Europe is different. Generally speaking, European national boundaries are – more or less – drawn around an ethnicity, with nationality intertwined with statehood. The history of multiethnic European states is about hereditary monarchy, oppression, ownership, and submission. The notion of national self-determination was popularized after WWI, although not applied with care. Since at least the end of the cold war, however, Czechs, Croats, Serbs, and Slovaks have their own nation-states. Albanians live in Albania and Kosovo. The French live in France. The Portuguese live in Portugal. The Norwegians live in Norway. The Italians live in Italy. These states aren’t just political constructs, but have their own shared language, ethnicity, and – in many cases – religion. Some have monarchs, but all have pluralist democracies of one sort or another.

Historians believe that the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy is due, in part, to the fact that those countries were late to unite under one flag. Germany only united its various principalities and city-states to become a nation-state in the mid-19th century. Italy followed a similar timeline. The idea of being “Italian” or “German” was relatively new in the 1920s and 30s, so totalitarian ultra-nationalism became a popular and viable choice, especially as a reaction to the rise of the Soviet Union. 

America is a nation united by our laws and ideals. We pledge allegiance to a flag – not a person. Our elected officials pledge to uphold the Constitution, not to do the will of some potentate. Anyone can be an American, regardless of their nationality.

As Fallows writes, 

When John F. Kennedy gave his celebrated remarks in Berlin a few months before his death, he presented both the United States and free West Berlin as proud illustrations of a larger idea: “Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was ‘civis Romanus sum.’ Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’” (You can read the text of the speech, and see a video of its still-remarkable five-minute entirety, here.)

Nearly 25 years later, when Ronald Reagan went to the Berlin Wall, he gave a speech that became famous for its rhetorical plea, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” But the surrounding tone was like Kennedy’s.

There’s been a change since January. 

But the major departure in Trump’s speech was its seeming indifference to the American idea. At least when speaking to the world, American presidents have emphasized an expanded “us.” All men are created equal. Every man is a German. Ich bin ein Berliner. Our realities in America have always been flawed, but our idea is in principle limitless. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

Trump gave grace-note nods to goals of liberty and free expression. Mainly, though, he spoke not about an expanded us but instead about us and them. He spoke repeatedly about our “heritage,” our “blood,” our “civilization,” our “ancestors” and “families,” our “will” and “way of life.” Every one of these of course has perfectly noble connotations. But combined and in practice, they amount to the way the Japanese nationalists of the early 20th century onward spoke, about the purity of “we Japanese” and the need to stick together as a tribe. They were the way Mussolini spoke, glorifying the Roman heritage—but again in a tribal sense, to elevate 20th-century Italians as a group, rather than in John F. Kennedy’s allusion to a system of rules that could include outsiders as civis romanus as well. They are the way French nationalists supporting Marine LePen speak now, and Nigel Farage’s pro-Brexit forces in the U.K., and “alt-right” activists in the United States, and of course the Breitbart empire under presidential counselor Steve Bannon. They rest on basic distinctions between us and them as peoples—that is, as tribes—rather than as the contending ideas and systems that presidents from our first to our 44th had emphasized.

Here is the theme of Trumpism, from his speech in Warsaw: 

We have to remember that our defense is not just a commitment of money, it is a commitment of will. Because as the Polish experience reminds us, the defense of the West ultimately rests not only on means but also on the will of its people to prevail and be successful and get what you have to have.

The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?

Just as Poland could not be broken, I declare today for the world to hear that the West will never, ever be broken. Our values will prevail. Our people will thrive. And our civilization will triumph.

This clash of civilizations isn’t about freedom vs. totalitarianism or liberty vs. communism. It’s about the triumph of the will against the savages. This is Bannon’s and Miller’s America – what they see as the last bastion of white Judeo-Christian – but mostly Christian – people against the atheist socialist libtards and the brown Muslim people who would destroy it. It’s not even nationalism so much as it is tribalism.

Whatever best distracts from, e.g., ripping health coverage away from 22 million Americans, I guess. 

Poland is, indeed, one of America’s closest European allies. A member of NATO and the European Union, Poland sees America as a bulwark against the constant threat from the east. It was America that supported the Solidarity trade union against Soviet-compelled martial law. It was America that helped Poland’s transition from failed communist planned economy and one-party totalitarianism to regulated free markets and pluralist democracy. 

In recent years, however, Poland has been governed by a right-wing nationalist party that doesn’t necessarily abide the freedoms that come along with the American ideal. The press has been harassed and suppressed, and the “Law and Justice Party” is emblematic of the backlash against liberalism that has popped up in Europe since the 2008 global financial meltdown. Trumpism reflects what the Poles and Hungarians will abide, but the French recently rejected. 

What hasn’t gone unnoticed in the Israeli press, for instance, is Trump’s historic refusal to visit Warsaw’s memorial to the Ghetto Uprising. Polish Jewish leaders specifically condemned this as a “slight”. 

…ever since the fall of Communism in 1989, all U.S. presidents and vice presidents visiting Warsaw had made a point of visiting” that site,  representing Americans “who had played such a central role in bringing down Fascism,” at a “universal commemoration of the victims of the Shoah, and condemnation of its perpetrators.”

Ivanka went, and placed a wreath at the memorial, but her father didn’t. The “Law and Justice” party thereby scored a win, according to Politico. 

The Law and Justice party has been highlighting the role of the Poles who fought against Nazi Germany while downplaying the persecution of 3 million Polish Jews who perished in the Holocaust. After all, if you believe in blood and soil, and you call for the will to triumph against the savages, you have to keep up appearances. 

In the days following this re-configuration of “Western” ideals, Trump held a pathetic love-in with murderous dictator Vladimir Putin in Hamburg, and the news came of the first concrete evidence of possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia in 2016, or at least a willingness to collude. 

On June 9, 2016, Donald Trump, Jr. met with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Kremlin-linked lawyer, who promised harmful intel on the Clinton campaign. He attended that meeting at the urging of a mutual friend, alongside campaign chief Paul Manafort and his brother-in-law, Jared Kushner. The meeting, according to Trump, Jr., soon turned to issues surrounding adoption and the Magnitsky Act. After the Act was enacted, Russia blocked all American adoptions of Russian orphans. You can read more about what the Magnitsky Act was, and what it was a reaction to, here. 

What can be easily inferred from Trump, Jr.’s own releases is that the meeting at Trump Tower on June 9th was to set up the parameters of a quid-pro-quo whereby Russia would provide anti-Clinton intel to Trump (or Wikileaks) in exchange for a reversal of the Magnitsky Act.  It was, perhaps not coincidentally, later on June 9th that Trump first Tweeted about Hillary Clinton’s “33,000 emails”. After all, the email he received to set up the meeting specifically informed him that it was part of a Russian government effort to help his father; he took the meeting. Trump, Jr. has since lawyered up, retaining a guy who specializes in defending a different kind of don. 

The first page of the Steele Dossier – dated June 20, 2016 – which contains raw intelligence concerning alleged ties between Trump and the Russian regime reads, 

[Trump] and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals.” 

Richard Painter, who served as an ethics counsel for George W. Bush, says that this is all getting very close to treason, 

This was an effort to get opposition research on an opponent in an American political campaign from the Russians, who were known to be engaged in spying inside the United States…If this story is true, we’d have one of them if not both of them in custody by now, and we’d be asking them a lot of questions…This is unacceptable. This borders on treason, if it is not itself treason.

It bears mentioning that when someone leaked Bush’s debate prep materials to the Gore campaign, Gore’s debate advisor called the FBI. By contrast, when a Kremlin lawyer offered negative intel on the Clinton campaign to Donald Trump’s campaign, Trump’s people took the meeting and kept it secret until very recently. 

Day by day, it grows clearer that the Trumps are more Bluth than Gotti. 

All of this raises a serious question: what does Trump think the West stands for, exactly? Which values & civilization is he talking about? How does his dalliance with Putin advance either one?