A
Southern Poverty Law Center series on Stephen Miller’s email
communications with Breitbart confirming what we have long known—that he is a
fascist and a racist eugenics “theorist” regardless of any claim to being a
member a “victimized” religious minority; the Roger Stone trial which, if
anything, is revealing the extent to which Robert Mueller took a far too
“conservative” view of what constituted “collusion,” preferring to force
Congress to make that decision. And yet we still find brazen opportunists who
want to hitch themselves firmly to Donald Trump’s wagon while still asserting “independent”
thought by “disagreeing” with him on inconsequential matters. This should be no
surprise to anyone, given the narcissism that this country cultivates in the
name of “individualism.” I was sitting in the Seattle main public library the
other day when a white male, apparently off his medication, began shouting out
the various hypocrisies of self-serving white racist angst while security was
nowhere to be found; two white females of the privileged sort were busily chatting,
completely unmoved by his rhetoric—until he mentioned that he felt “victimized”
for being a white male.
One person who apparently
believes that her road to future political success means ignoring Trump’s moral
and ethical—and unlawful—activities and beliefs and riding the foul winds that
he has generated to wherever they lead: former South Carolina governor, UN
Secretary and current traveling self-promoter Nikki Haley. Haley is on a book
tour just like Don Jr.; USA Today, among others, is suggesting
that she is considering a 2024 presidential run, presumably just like the
Greasy Don. Her book is self-servingly entitled With All Due Respect, where she claims that she and Trump have a
“great” relationship, mainly because she tended to be of a sycophant on a variety
Trump policy “initiatives” which mirrored her own lack of any “feel” or
patience for the subtleties of international relations. Jacob Bacharach in an article on the website Truthdig notes
that “Haley did not actually do
much in her tenure (in the UN post). The Trump administration has been
remarkably successful at the Washington nomination game and at dismantling the
American regulatory state where its only opposition is the Democrats, but the
world has proven less feckless…Hard-line support for Israel has been Haley’s
one consistent foreign policy position during her political career. Beyond
that, it is hard to know precisely what she believes, if she believes anything
at all.”
In her book Haley claims that Rex
Tillerson and John Kelly tried to “undermine” Trump policies they thought were not in the best
interest of the country, and instead of joining in she proudly proclaims that
she stood by her man all the way (save for inconsequential tidbits to “prove”
she wasn’t a mindless fanatic). Both Tillerson and Kelly refute her version of
events; Tillerson states that Haley—despite being made a full cabinet
member—was rarely present during foreign policy discussions, and Kelly asserts
that his attempts to provide the mercurial Trump with sound advice is quite
different from being a lapdog who simply joins the “boss” in saying “no” to
anything that a justifies her receiving a paycheck on the taxpayer dime. Haley
is probably kidding herself anyways; you think a president who prides himself
on providing “important” government posts to his completely unqualified
daughter and son-in-law would support Haley over his own kin? Not just Greasy
Don but Ivanka appears to have been bitten by the absolute power corrupts
absolutely bug from her father.
In truth, Haley may not have as
phony a bio as Mina Chang, the
deputy assistant secretary in the State Department's Bureau of Conflict and
Stability Operations—a post she apparently received because there is nothing
for Trump to object to, her being nice to look at and completely unqualified
and thus not a nuisance. But there are plenty of questions about Haley’s
motivations and credibility. She never lets an opportunity pass to make plainly
self-serving claims. Like a lot of people of Sikh heritage, she likes to claim
that she has had to overcome “racial” bigotry despite the fact that in her case
she could pass for a white woman who spent a little too much time on the beach.
Haley married white and converted to Christianity, and avoids any
reference to her plainly foreign-sounding birth name (unlike, say, Barack Hussein
Obama), a trifecta which could also be described as politically “opportunistic.”
Haley of course is
being selective in her “victim” assessment; it is fine for her to claim to have
suffered adversity because of her “race”—but it is not “OK” for other groups to
do so, particularly those who have suffered more in states like South Carolina.
If she was honest, she would admit the
racial and class (or caste) prejudice that exists among Sikhs living in this
country, something that I have experienced firsthand in convenience stores I no
longer patronize.
Of course, Haley’s apologists point to her appointment of Tim
Scott, who is black, to replace Tea Party fanatic Jim DeMint, who retired two
years into his second term to join the Heritage Foundation, which then transformed
from a “respected” think tank into a uber-partisan Tea Party front. DeMint
apparently felt that he would wield more
influence from that post than in the U.S. Senate, where he was viewed largely as
a fringe radical. Ironically, he was eventually booted from the Heritage
Foundation because it was felt that he was too much the extremist-right
partisan to be able to mediate discord in the Republican ranks to form a
“common” vision. At first blush it would
seem to Haley’s credit that she replaced DeMint with someone less extreme. But Scott is a bit of a racial hypocrite
himself. While frequently denouncing racial prejudice against fellow
blacks—particularly by judicial nominees—he has much less sympathy for Hispanic
migrants fleeing largely U.S.-bred violence in their home countries, claiming
that he supports so-called “merit-based” immigration, meaning of course that only
“tech” jobs have “merit,” and not jobs that maintain the infrastructure of this
country or food production. He was also in the minority who voted for a
government shutdown in February 2019 in support of Trump’s border wall demands.
Scott also represented a minority of senators who urged Trump to withdraw from
the Paris climate accord—not surprising given that his biggest donors are from
the energy sector.
Haley also self-servingly claimed to have suffered some sort
of emotional breakdown after the Dylan Roof shooting in Charleston; like her
phantom phone call to Trump to “protest” his flip-flop after Charlottesville,
there is of course no evidence to back-up this claim. Her decision to take down
the Confederate flag from the state capitol building was made easier for her
from pressure from civic and business interests who felt the flag issue was
hurting the view of the city as a safe spot for investment; like for any
Southern Republican, business concerns always “trump” that of civil rights.
Furthermore, during her six years as governor, South Carolina remained firmly
in the bottom rung of the country in poverty level, literacy and healthcare.
When the all talk and no action Haley left for the UN post, few black South
Carolinians mourned her departure.
Haley also likes to claim a certain amount of “overcoming”
of gender discrimination, which of course is self-serving as well; Haley won
the governorship in part because she spoke strongly in support of “state’s
rights” in a state that was not just the first state to leave the Union prior
to the Civil War, but threatened to do so previously during the Nullification
Crisis of 1832-33. Although it was technically over tariffs, Pres. Andrew
Jackson wrote that the tariff issue was only a pretext, that South Carolina was
using it as a practice run for likely “disunion and Southern confederacy” over
the question of slavery; the continuing fight over the “meaning” of the
Confederate flag demonstrates that many people in South Carolina still prefer
to keep the Civil War and slavery as “separate” issues.
Of course, for a Republican to play
the gender card for all it is worth has its pitfalls. In her tome Haley
proclaims that “Women are cautious about politics, for good reason. It’s not a
pretty business. It’s often hateful. It would be wonderful if we could change
our politics in America to make it less nasty and less personal. But until that
happens, especially if you’re a woman, you have to stand up for yourself. Always.”
This self-servicing is the more hypocritical when it should be clear that like for
all those leggy blonde conservatives on Fox News, there is always a high place
for women like Haley in the right-wing world. She claims to be frequently
confronted by “boys’ clubs,” yet she goes out of her way to ingratiate herself
in them; her unwavering support of Trump
says as much, as does the fact that she feels more “comfortable” coexisting
with a political party that is usually viewed as being inimical to gender “rights”
advocacy. As usual, the gender hypocrisy of Republicans like Haley is rampant; not
only has she said one thing and done another in regard to minority interests as
governor in the South Carolina, Haley has benefited from the hypocritical
self-congratulation of Republican voters voting for both a “minority” and a woman who is perfectly comfortable
maintaining the “status quo.”
The bottom line is that Trump
supporters like Haley are shamelessly opportunistic. During the 2016 primaries,
Haley first abandoned Marco Rubio’s sinking ship, then climbed aboard Ted Cruz’s
leaky boat before paying a premium price to abandon all credibility so that she
could sail on Trump’s yacht. She has shown a willingness to portray herself as “glass
ceiling” breaker not just on the gender but racial front, and on both counts
she is a monumental hypocrite.
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