Since US President Donald Trump’s historic visit to North Korea on June 30, tensions between the US and the hermit country have escalated.

On Thursday, North Korea launched two short-range ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan, following through on a threat made on July 16 to resume missile testing if the US and South Korea proceeded with scheduled joint military exercises. North Korea called the test a “solemn warning” to its neighbor South Korea, which it referred to as a “military warmonger.”

This is North Korea’s first missile test since May. According to South Korea, the projectiles launched by North Korea are a new type of short-range missiles. The launch of these missiles poses a military threat, and risks undermining the current peace process in place, according to South Korea. On Friday, Trump told reporters he was not surprised by the tests, and that he does not view them as a setback to nuclear talks with North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un.

While things have certainly improved since 2017 – a year in which North Korea launched 23 ballistic missiles, an intercontinental ballistic missile, and conducted a nuclear test – the situation is still extremely precarious, as evidenced by Thursday’s test.

Trump’s relaxed reaction might be aimed at reducing current tensions, and continuing the existing dialogue with North Korea. Nevertheless, nuclear and ballistic missile tests put North Korea closer to being able to launch a nuclear-tipped missile against US allies, and threaten Trump’s bargaining and defensive position in the region.

The more advanced North Korea’s nuclear program becomes, the more Kim can use it as leverage in negotiations with the US and its allies. Nuclear power is power, and Kim knows perfectly well that he can use it to his advantage when dealing with other nations. In fact, nuclear weapons are the only real bargaining chip that the North possess. Without them, they have zero leverage on the world stage. This is precisely why Kim will never willingly give up nuclearization.

On July 23, North Korea released pictures of a new submarine that could potentially allow it to launch nuclear weapons from unknown underwater locations. These recent developments suggest that the US should continue to maintain a hardline sanctions policy, with the goal of eventually forcing Kim to abandon his nuclearization program.

However, while international sanctions have seriously weakened North Korea’s economy and brought Kim to the negotiating table, they haven’t stopped him from continuing to pursue nuclearization, a priority which seems to trump almost every other consideration.

China, which accounts for approximately 90% of North Korea’s trade, has decreased its imports from North Korea by about 90% year on year, importing only $195 million worth of goods in 2018. Furthermore, fuel shortages caused by oil sanctions have led to agricultural decline, making access to food in North Korea even scarcer than it already was.

North Korea is facing extreme food shortages, with a severe famine looming as winter approaches. A recent UN report found that some 11 million people (over 40 percent of the North Korean population) are suffering from food and water insecurity. For a land rich in resources and human capital, these woes are mostly a result of severe government policies, compounded by the effect of economic sanctions.

“The unintended negative impact sanctions can have on agricultural production, through both direct and indirect impacts, cannot be ignored,” states a report from the UN’s World Food Program and Food Agricultural Organization.

Can the US and its allies help alleviate the suffering of the North Korean people, while continuing to put political and economic pressure on the aggressive Kim regime? The North Korean government’s disregard of civilian suffering, coupled with its iron hold on its population, makes this scenario extremely difficult.

Historically, food and medical aid provided by the US and other countries to North Korea has not always gone to help the people it was intended for, sometimes serving to bolster the military and the dictatorship.

In May, South Korea approved $8 million in food aid to North Korea, in response to dire food shortages. Kim called the gesture from South Korean President Moon Jae-In “non-essential” to aiding ties between the North and South.

While aid is certainly warranted, it carries risks as well. One risk is that the money will be diverted away from intended recipients. Moreover, the North Korean regime could use the funds it saves on buying food to fund its nuclear weapons program.

The aid could also perpetuate the inequitable distribution of food, which is common practice in the country. North Korea’s policy of songun, or “military first,” means that an enormous portion of the state budget goes to the military.

“If you can manufacture nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, clearly you can import enough food to make up for the shortfall in the harvest. There is no doubt about it,” Benjamin Silberstein, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told NPR.

Moreover, the food distribution system largely favors Pyongyang, where political elites live much more comfortably than the rest of the North Korean population.

“North Korea’s food shortages aren’t about external shocks from the weather, or from sanctions. They’re about a system,” Silberstein said.

The desire to help the North Koreans while hurting their oppressor possess a Catch-22, since weakening Kim often means weakening civilians. Moreover, North Korea’s obsession with nuclearization means that any money it gets is disproportionately spent on the military, while civilians starve.

Kim is holding the North Korean people hostage, and there is not a whole lot the international community can do about it, at least for now.

L'articolo The North Korean Catch-22: Sanctions, Starvation, and Nuclear Escalation proviene da InsideOver.

“We, the people of Sudan across cities and villages, in the north, the south, the east, and the west; join our political and social movements, trade unions and community groups in affirming through this declaration that we will continue the course of peaceful struggle until the totalitarian regime is removed and the following goals are achieved,” reads the opening statement of the Declaration of Freedom and Change, published on January 1, 2019, by the Sudanese Professionals Association in Khartoum.

The Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) has become the leader among the groups of opposition protesters in Sudan, collectively known as the Forces of the Declaration of Freedom and Change. Their first stated goal, “The immediate and unconditional end of General Omar Al Bashir’s presidency and the conclusion of his administration,” was achieved on April 11, 2019, when the Sudanese military deposed and arrested 30 year dictator Omar al-Bashir, following months of mass protests.

The protests, which began in December 2018 over food shortages and rising prices, quickly turned into anti-government protests calling for al-Bashir’s removal. During al-Bashir’s oppressive 30 year rule, he was accused of violently quelling dissent and perpetuating a genocide in Darfur which led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. The scale, fervor, and coverage of anti-Bashir protests grew quickly from January 2019 to April 2019, when al-Bashir was finally deposed by the Sudanese military forces.

Demanding a Swift Transition to Civilian Rule

The second stated goal of The Declaration of Freedom and Change– the formation of a National Transitional Government which “will be formed of qualified people based on merits of competency and good reputation, representing various Sudanese groups and receiving the consensus of the majority”– has yet to be achieved, and is the cause of the recent turmoil in Sudan.

After al-Bashir’s arrest, the military stated it would take over for two years, after which elections would be held. However, two months since al-Bashir’s removal, pro-democracy protesters are demanding a swift transition to full civilian rule.

The Forces of the Declaration of Freedom and Change demand a civilian transitional council (with military representation) that would run Sudan during the transitional period. According to the Declaration, this transitional government would rule for four years, “until a sound democratic structure is established, and elections held.”

After al-Bashir’s removal, the opposition worked with the military to develop a transitional process with the goal of establishing a democratic system. Understandably, such processes can take some time to work out after three decades of dictatorship. However, talks between the opposition and the Transitional Military Council (TMC) recently broke down.

“What is delaying the negotiations is the false understanding of a civilian-led government,” TMC spokesman Shams-Eddin Kabashi said on Thursday at a press conference in Khartoum. “In my view, civilian is the authorities, the ruling, the task which we agreed on. After we agreed that government ministers and the legislative council would be civilian-led, they are still screaming civilian, civilian,” he said.

One of the main concerns of the opposition is the military’s affiliation with al-Bashir, which has led to distrust of the military’s ability to serve as a transitional power. Many protesters are wary of the military’s willingness to hand over power to civilian rule.

Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, leader of the TMC, issued a series of decisions in late April that appear geared toward satisfying some of the opposition’s demands. Among these: the arrest of several high-ranking members of Bashir’s party, the announcement of anti-corruption and anti-graft measures, and the decision to retire the eight officers ranked lieutenant general in Bashir’s notorious National Intelligence and Security Service. Bashir has been moved from his residence to the maximum-security Kobar prison in Khartoum, where he is being held on money laundering and terrorist financing charges.

However, talks between the TMC and the opposition protesters collapsed as the two sides failed to agree on the structure of the sovereign council that would oversee the transition period.

Military Cracks Down Violently on Protesters

As talks broke down, protesters took to the streets, and the military cracked down with extreme violence. On June 3, the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group organized by Bashir, violently dispersed protesters at the main demonstration site outside army headquarters in Khartoum, where protesters had been staging a weeks-long sit it.

According to doctors on site, there have been 118 dead and 784 wounded as a result of confrontations with the military. Over 40 bodies were recovered from the Nile River, and over 60 cases of rape and sexual assault have been reported. The military has also imposed a nation-wide internet blackout that has largely impeded protesters from regrouping.

On June 14, Sudan’s military council admitted that it ordered the dispersion of protesters in Khartoum. “We ordered the commanders to come up with a plan to disperse this sit-in. They made a plan and implemented it…but we regret that some mistakes happened,” TMC spokesman Kabashi said on Thursday.

Following the violent attacks on protesters, SPA called for a nationwide general strike which would serve as a civil disobedience campaign. The strike largely brought the capital city of Khartoum to a standstill.

On June 4, General Fattah al-Burhan, leader of the TMC, announced that general elections would be held in 9 months “under regional and international supervision.” He also stated that previous agreements to hand over the country to civilian rule within three years would be terminated, and that officials “involved in corruption or other crimes” would be held accountable.

“We do not want to rule Sudan forever, a few months and we will go home,” Lieutenant General Salah Abdel Khalig, head of the Sudanese air force, told the Financial Times. He said the military would invite the UN to monitor the elections, but must remain in charge until the elections happen for national security reasons, the Financial Times reports. He said that the military would maintain stability to protect against the insurgence of rebels and Islamist groups which shared power under Bashir.

“We are assuring that the Islamic system will not take power again because it brought us a lot of sanctions, a lot of the problems with the free world,” Lt Gen Khalig told the Financial Times.

On June 11, Sudanese protest leaders agreed to end the general strike and resume power-sharing talks with the military council, and advised citizens to return to work.

“The Alliance for Freedom and Change agreed to end the civil disobedience (campaign) from today,” Mahmoud Drir, who has been mediating since the peacekeeping visit of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, told reporters. “Both sides have also agreed to resume talks soon.”

A Concerned International Response

In light of the violence against protesters, the U.S. sent its top diplomat for Africa, Tibor Nagy, to Sudan to aid in securing a stable agreement between the military leaders and the opposition.

According to a statement published by the Sudanese Professionals Organization, “The meeting discussed the necessity of transferring power to an interim civilian authority. The meeting also thoroughly discussed the massacre committed at the army HQ and the acts of murder and horror perpetrated in a number of Sudanese cities and villages in tandem with the massacre on June 3rd, 2019 and beyond.”

According to the statement, both parties affirmed the “importance of the immediate transfer of power to an interim civilian authority in realization of the aspirations of the Sudanese people and the gains of their revolution.”

International leaders and the media have been closely following the precarious situation in Sudan. Thousands of people have partaken in social media campaigns in an effort to show solidarity with protesters, with the hashtag #BlueforSudan trending on social media sites such as Instagram and Twitter.

Stability in Sudan, a nation of 40 million, is important to other countries in the region struggling from conflict and insurgencies. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have backed Sudan’s new military leaders in an effort to maintain stability in the region, agreeing to send $3 billion worth of aid, including a $500 million cash injection into the central bank to help bolster the plunging Sudanese pound, which has been a cause of Sudan’s woes.

Peaceful collaboration between military leaders and the Forces of the Declaration of Freedom and Change is integral for securing a stable, democratic Sudan in the coming years.

L'articolo Sudanese Military Cracks Down as Opposition Demands Swift Transition to Civilian Rule proviene da InsideOver.

Using a stump of a hand pressed against his cheek, an African boy with skin as white as milk skillfully sketches a portrait of a man. Once the work is finished, the boy looks up, eyes shining with joyful pride, at the man he’s just drawn.

This talented young artist is Emmanuel Festo, an albino student at Lake View School in Mwanza, Tanzania, featured in a Reel Truth documentary in which this touching scene was captured. Festo was brutally attacked and dismembered by albino hunters at the age of seven, while his mother was preparing dinner. The men who attacked him cut off his arm, fingers, and teeth with machetes. After the attack, Festo was offered treatment in the US, where Philadelphia surgeons were able to attach one of his toes to his remaining hand to form a grip.

June 13, 2019, marks the world’s 5th International Albinism Awareness Day. Unfortunately, the persecution, murder, and dismemberment of people living with albinism– a disorder marked by the absence of pigment in the skin, eyes, and hair– is still widespread, most concerningly in sub-Saharan Africa, where some believe that albino body parts have magical, healing powers.

While albinism is relatively rare in the West, it is genetically more common in sub-Saharan Africa, most likely as a result of consanguinity, according to the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. In Europe and North America, approximately 1 in 20,000 people has albinism, while in sub-Saharan Africa the figure is closer to 1 in 5,000-15,000, according to the World Health Organization. In Tanzania– where the most attacks on albinos have been reported– the prevalence of people with albinism is believed to be a staggering 1 in 1,500.   

Attacks on people with albinism are particularly prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa due to superstitious myths surrounding their nature. Albinos in these regions are often shunned by their communities, and viewed as non-human spirits or ghosts. Some believe that minerals within albino body parts bring wealth and luck. Many albinos, including infants and children, are killed or dismembered for these parts.

“In some communities, erroneous beliefs and myths, heavily influenced by superstition, put the security and lives of persons with albinism at constant risk,” states the United Nations website. “These beliefs and myths are centuries old and are present in cultural attitudes and practices around the world.”

Albino body parts such as teeth, bones, genitals, and thumbs have been used in rituals by traditional healers, who say they promote health, riches and success. Albino body parts are dried up, ground, and packaged for illegal trade. These parts are then consumed as “medicine” or carried around for good luck. According to a 2013 UN Report, some believe albino body parts are more potent if the victims scream intensely during amputation.

Over the past decade, nearly 200 killings and 500 attacks on albinos have been reported in sub-Saharan Africa.

However, the number is likely higher since many of these attacks and killings are not documented. According to Amnesty International, traffickers sell albino body parts to witch doctors for steep sums, sometimes in the tens of thousands of dollars. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that albino hunters can sell a whole human corpse for up to $75,000, while a single arm or leg can be sold for approximately $2,000.

Albino graves are dug up and desecrated to procure body parts. Those with albinism are also raped by those who believe that unprotected sex with them can cure viruses such as HIV and AIDS, consequently infecting the victims.

Between the threat of such killings, dismemberments, and rapes, people with albinism in sub-Saharan Africa often live in constant terror. Despite the gravity of these abuses, governments across southern and eastern Africa have done little to effectively prevent these practices.

The lack of health services to manage albinism is also a big problem, as albinos are very susceptible to skin cancer and impaired vision due to sun exposure. 98 percent of albinos in sub-Saharan Africa die before the age of 40, often due to causes which are easily preventable. For reference, the average life expectancy for the general population in sub-Saharan Africa is 61 years.

“Many of those living with the condition cannot afford badly needed sunscreen and protective clothing,” reports Africa Renewal, a magazine published by the UN. “A bottle of sunscreen that lasts for two weeks sells for about $15 in Tanzania, a country where most people live on less than $1.50 a day.”

In Tanzania, where reported attacks on albinos are the highest, the government has attempted to work with NGOs to conduct investigations, pass new laws against witch doctors, and make convictions in attacks against albinos.

A 2012 study conducted by the Pew Research Center found that approximately 93 percent of Tanzanians surveyed believe in witchcraft, and 60 percent depend on witch doctors for treating supposedly witchcraft-related ailments. Witch doctors are largely responsible for perpetuating the belief that albino body parts bring riches.

In 2015, after an increase in attacks on albinos, the Tanzanian government began trying to regulate healers, requiring them to have a government license. While traditional healers working with herbal medicines can continue to practice, witch doctors who use human body parts have been banned. Despite this, attacks on albinos have persisted in alarming numbers. The problem continues to be a lack of enforcement and a lack of education to dispel myths.

Improvements in education and law enforcement may take considerable time. Scholar Bright Nkrumah believes that African albinos should be able to seek asylum in the West, given the failure of African states to protect these populations from violent persecution.

Nkrumah evokes the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Although African governments remain the primary custodians of Africans with albinism, the burden of violence often visited on this group constitutes “persecution” under the UDHR and therefore the international community has a role to play in safeguarding this group.”

Various states– among them, the US, France, and Tunisia– have already granted asylum to some African albinos who fled the imminent threats they faced. However, most albinistic Africans lack the means to flee their countries and declare refugee status as currently required under international law, according to Nkrumah.

If they can’t reach a third country, they cannot be considered asylum seekers under the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention, making it extremely difficult for them to seek assistance from the international community.

Nkrumah suggests that the UN Refugee Agency adopt a document which would unify state practices around Protected Entry Procedures (PEP) and encourage many states to adopt it. Under PEP, persecuted peoples without means of escaping to another country can complete refugee and asylum applications from diplomatic establishments within their own countries.

In addition to providing a means of safety to persecuted populations who lack the resources to flee, widespread adoption of PEP would also alleviate illegal immigration into the host nations, says Nkrumah. While some countries, such as Spain, have operated PEP in various embassies, it has not yet gained widespread global acceptance.

L'articolo The Albinos Born with Targets on Their Heads proviene da InsideOver.

It’s November 8, 2016, and celebrations are already underway at Hillary Clinton’s election night party in Manhattan. Earlier in the evening, the New York Times reported Clinton had an 85 percent chance of winning. Supporters gathered under the glass ceiling of the Javits Center, waiting for their candidate to shatter the symbolic Glass Ceiling for women in politics. However, the only thing that would be shattered that night were their hopes.

Nearly three years after the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, the world is still reeling from what will perhaps go down as the most shocking political upset in American history, if not the history of democracy. On November 8, 2016, billionaire businessman and political outsider Donald Trump became President-elect of the United States, defying nearly every poll, pundit, and political prediction.

Well-known pundits, both Democrat and Republican, indicated Hillary Clinton was a clear favorite, a shoe-in for the presidency, even up to until a few hours before the results. In October 2016, poll expert Sam Wang even tweeted that he would eat a bug if Trump got over 240 electoral votes. The consensus in the media was so strong, a Trump victory seemed laughable. Moreover, developments in the months leading up to the election– including allegations of sexual assault, entanglements with a porn star, and the release of a 2005 tape in which Trump brags about grabbing women by their private parts– signaled his campaign was doomed.

Nevertheless, as election night wore on, blue states on the electoral map were slowly but surely replaced by a wave of red. Defying the polls, Trump won key states in which he had never been ahead, securing the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Overall, Trump got 306 electoral votes (and poll expert Sam Wang ate a bug on national television).

The mood at the Javits Center turned so grave, it would have made a state funeral look like a state fair. Clinton supporters appeared shell-shocked. People sobbed on television, college classes were cancelled, and a pending apocalypse was predicted, if not all but expected. Amidst the shock and sheer surprise of the election, many wondered how the polls could have been so wrong.

So, why were the polls so misleading? On election night, the national polls put Clinton at a 52% to 53% chance of winning the two-party vote. She ended up winning the popular vote by a margin of about 2 percent, meaning the error in the national polls was not significant. However, Trump’s unexpected success in flipping the key battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida– all won by Obama in 2012— gave him the majority of Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency.

A quick refresher: The Electoral College, the system by which the U.S. President is elected, was devised by America’s Founding Fathers to serve as a check on direct democracy and increase the power of small states, encouraging candidates to appeal to voters outside of large cities. The candidate who wins the majority of votes in a state generally wins all of the states’ electoral votes (winner-takes-all), even if he or she only won by a slim margin.

The main predictive failure in the 2016 Presidential Election was that most polling at the state-level consistently underestimated Trump’s support in the key battleground states. 206 counties, many located in the Rust Belt, unexpectedly flipped from voting for Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016.

“National polls were pretty good in the 2016 presidential election, but state-level polling was fairly poor,” writes prominent statistician Nate Silver on his site, FiveThirtyEight. The fact that the national polls were “pretty good” is significantly secondary to the fact that state-level polls were “fairly poor,” since the U.S. President is not elected based on the national popular vote. So, what explains pollsters’ underestimation of Trump’s support in these key states?

One hypothesis that has been put forth to explain the discrepancy is the silent Trump vote, or the “shy Trump supporter” phenomenon, which polls would not have reflected. According to this hypothesis, social desirability bias (in this case, hesitance to express favor for an unpopular candidate) caused some Trump supporters to conceal their vote preference from pollsters. According to some scholars and pollsters, however, there is data to suggest that the “shy Trump voter” phenomenon was not in play.

“Trump outperformed the polls the most in states such as North Dakota and West Virginia where we assume respondents would’ve had little embarrassment in declaring their support for him, while he did no better than the polls’ predictions in solidly Democratic states,” write Andrew Gelman and Julia Azari in a paper published by Columbia University. Nate Silver presents the same argument in his article, “‘Shy Voters Probably Aren’t Why the Polls Missed Trump.”

However, these observations are not conclusive, as they don’t consider other factors, such as the discouraged-voter-effect, that could have come into play in solidly blue or red states, where political minorities tend to believe their vote won’t count much.

Even if voters did not intentionally mislead pollsters, which is very plausible, there is another development that substantiates the “shy voter” hypothesis. Two weeks before the election, the five key swing states that were predicted wins for Clinton– Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina– recorded a historically high percentage of voters who said they were either undecided or would vote for a 3rd-Party candidate.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average, the number of voters that polled as undecided or voting for a third-party candidate was much higher in 2016 than in recent elections:  In 2016, 12.5% of voters polled as Undecided/Other, compared to 3.1%, 3.4%, and 3.7% in 2012, 2008, and 2004, respectively.

“Third-party voters often have a weak commitment to their candidates and can be picked off by one of the major party candidates,” writes Silver, who assumed Clinton would win most of those Undecided/Other votes. Instead, they mostly went to Trump in all five states and pushed him over the edge in the Electoral College vote.

Can we assume that the increase in “Undecided/Others” voters was a result of the “shy Trump voter” phenomenon? There is no way to know for sure, but it is certainly plausible. It’s also possible that the anti-Trump sentiment fueled by the media contributed to low response rates, or survey-shyness, among Trump supporters. This would also explain why Trump’s supporters were under-polled in virtually every poll in the five key states.

“When there is good news about a candidate, his or her supporters are more likely to respond to polls,” write Gelman and Azari. “The final polls were off by about 2 percentage points, suggesting that, even at the end, Trump supporters were responding at a lower rate than Clinton supporters, most notably in certain key swing states.” Moreover, the numbers didn’t need to be significant to significantly skew the polls and change the election.

Now, let’s look at some previsions for 2020. According to state-by-state Gallup polls released in February 2019, Trump’s approval ratings in the key states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan– which largely accounted for his victory in 2016– are not strong. 42% in these states approve of the job Trump is doing, and in all three, a majority disapprove. Already, a new poll has come out indicating that Trump is trailing behind Democratic candidate Joe Biden in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania.

However, if some form of the non-response bias was at play in 2016, we can assume it will be at play in 2020. In swing states, silent supporters matter. They only need to exist in small numbers to make a significant difference in the polls and at the ballot box, as we so shockingly learned.

There is also a second, perhaps more prevalent, kind of silent supporter. This isn’t just the supporter who is silent in the polls, but the supporter who is silent in daily life and in the public dialogue. A May 2019 Gallup poll reveals that Trump’s approval rating has hit 46%, the highest since his first month in office. Though that is relatively low when compared with the averages of other presidents, it’s high for Trump, and it is 2 percent higher than Obama’s was at the same point in his presidency. Meanwhile, the mainstream media is still rife with disapproval, and in cities like Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco, expressing support for any of Trump’s policies is taboo, if not entirely socially prohibited.

A study conducted by Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center reports that the tone of Trump’s news coverage during his first 100 days in office was 80 percent negative and 20 percent positive. According to Pew Research, news stories about Trump were only 5 percent positive in 2017, compared with 42 percent positive for Obama in 2009.

“In the press and in the academy, Trump is almost uniformly recognized as a catastrophe, the worst president in history,” writes David Graham in The Atlantic. “Trump’s flaws have been so extensively cataloged that it’s easy to lose sight of his strengths as a politician… [He] possesses an unequaled instinct for connecting with voters and exploiting their grievances.”

Many of these grievances are economic in nature. Civic life is not as flourishing as it was in the days when Tocqueville wrote of democracy in America. When it comes to politics, people care mostly about their own interests. Economic well-being is usually top of mind. And Trump certainly has a booming economy on his side, with strong job growth across the board and an increase in US GDP. A recent CNN poll reported that 71 percent of Americans view the U.S. economy as “very good” or “somewhat good,” higher than has been measured since 2001.

“Despite the fact that Trump is a largely incompetent clown, Democrats should not be overly confident or sanguine that they can beat him,” Dan Pfeiffer, a top aide to former President Barack Obama, told Politico. “He is a slight favorite to win. But he barely won last time and it took a Black Swan series of events to make that happen.”

The idea that it was merely a Black Swan series of events that led to Trump’s victory is a dangerous one. We need to remember that even though Trump was opposed as dangerous, uncouth, and overall unfit for the presidency by almost everyone in the establishment– including most of his Republican primary opponents at some point, many conservative intellectuals, and nearly the entire media– almost half of voters chose to go with him anyway.

While Trump’s victory has been largely dismissed as a fluke, the result of an unpopular democratic candidate, a racist outlash, and even Russian interference, some of the issues he tapped into deserve consideration. Trump sent Americans a message that resonated with them, a message that his Republican counterparts could not deliver for fear of being ostracized. The three main issues that catapulted him to the presidency– opposition to the establishment elite, trade, and illegal immigration– are not going away any time soon. Moreover, Trump has been dogged in pursuing his key campaign promises, even when they seem to undermine his popularity with establishment Republicans and the nation at large.

To allow for a flourishing, civic society we need to be able to have balanced conversations about important issues that affect Americans on all sides of the political, economic, and social spectrum. Criticism of our president is necessary, and often warranted. The problem is not that there is criticism of Trump or his character. The problem is that some of the legitimate issues he seized on are contemporaneously thrown under the shade of the “terrible Trump” umbrella, so that honest conversation about them is virtually impossible. This blocks civic dialogue, instills hatred on both sides, and causes the silent supporters to grow even more silent.

Donald Trump might not win easily in 2020. In fact, he might not win at all. But if he does, it is likely that the silent supporters– those not reflected in the polls, the media, or on the streets— will take him over the edge, yet again. As long as we can’t openly and civilly discuss important economic and social issues, we’re going to have silent supporters and loud surprises.

L'articolo Trump’s Silent Supporters: Real, Shy, and Maybe Triumphant (Again) proviene da InsideOver.