Stereotyping In Congress, Then and Now (14 February 2014) – An Analysis

by Lawrence Davidson, To the Point Analyses

Part I – Stereotyping in Congress 1922

In the year 1922 the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives held hearings on a joint resolution in support of the Balfour Declaration. The committee chairman, the pro-Zionist representative from New York, Hamilton Fish, called an array of witnesses, including a few who did not favor a “Jewish home” in Palestine. This did not mean that the committee’s support for the Balfour Declaration was ever really in doubt, but rather their apparent openness resulted from the political influence of certain academics, as well as American Christian missionary societies, who were sympathetic to Arab nationalist aspirations.

Among those who testified against the resolution was Fuad Shatara, a Palestinian-born American citizen and successful physician who led an organization called the Palestine National League. Among the points he made to the committee was that a good number of Palestine’s Zionist community were devoted socialists. This information, given to congressmen who feared leftist “red scares” in the U.S., was dynamite. If accepted, it could have scared the committee members enough to derail the resolution.

But Shatara’s quite accurate assertion was not accepted by Fish and his committee. It was not even investigated, because it appeared utterly counterintuitive. Why so? We learn the answer from committee member Representative Henry Allen Cooper of Wisconsin, a successful lawyer with a college education, and also an imperialist who had supported the retention of the Philippines as an American colony following the Spanish-American War. According to Cooper, the assertion that socialists were active among the Zionists in Palestine could not be true, because all the world knew that the Jew is “proverbially a believer in private property.” In other words, at least some members of the U.S. Congress had bought into the stereotype that a capitalist orientation is a congenital part of Jewish culture.

There was, of course, a racist undertone to this stereotype, and in Europe such a belief, conjuring up the figure of Shylock, had contributed to widespread anti-Semitism. Nonetheless, there it was coming out of the mouth of a U.S. politician with a seat on the Congressional Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Part II – Stereotyping in Congress 2013

We now fast-forward 91 years. Representative Duncan D. Hunter of California, a college graduate holding the rank of major in the Marine reserves, is a member of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities. He appeared on 4 December 2013 on C-Span, a cable network that largely concentrates on government affairs. The program concerned the negotiations of the P5 + 1 powers (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) with Iran seeking a limitation on that country’s nuclear energy program in exchange for a lessening of international sanctions.

Representative Hunter, a “tea party” Republican, is suspicious of these negotiations because he feels that even if there is a positive outcome, Iran cannot be trusted. Why so? Iran is part of the Middle East and, according to Representative Hunter, “In the Middle Eastern culture it is looked upon with very high regard to get the best deal possible, no matter what it takes, and that includes lying.” In other words, at least some of members of the U.S. Congress have bought into the stereotype that lying is a congenital part of the Middle Eastern personality.

Once more we can readily identify the racist undertone of this stereotype. It presently feeds into an islamophobia that has led to hysteria and violence among some elements of the American population. And now we see it coming from the mouth of a U.S. politician with a seat on the Congressional Subcommittee for (of all things) Intelligence….

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Trade treaty secrecy raises questions

Letter by Nathaniel Smith, Daily Local News, 1/24/14

“Trans-Pacific Partnership” sounds sort of benign; aren’t partnerships good?

If it’s benign, why is Congress being pressured to assign it to a “fast track” that would shut down discussion and any improvements by Congress itself?

Corporations and a dozen governments (US, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, New Zealand, Australia, and five in Asia) have been working on this “partnership” plan for years, with lots of business input; but even Congress hasn’t seen much of the text, and the public even less.

A Freedom of Information request was rebuffed with the answer that contents of the treaty are national security information. If a trade treaty falls under national security, what doesn’t?

This is an issue on which Americans of all political persuasions can agree: the public should know what’s going on, and Congress should vet trade deals, listen to public opinion, and act in our interest.

Some possible downsides of this “partnership” are:

1) It would hand corporations (including energy, pharmaceutical, and tobacco multinationals) the power to evade national public health and environmental protections.

2) Some of the leaked provisions, like extending corporate music and movie copyrights to almost a century and permitting drug companies to prolong patents by switching the medium (e.g., from capsule to tablet) serve corporations but not people. (No, corporations are not people!)

3) How is allowing companies to patent surgical procedures, life forms and seeds beneficial to humanity? It would probably just raise prices and profits.

4) Would the deal really improve the US balance of payments with selected Asian countries or would it go the way of the 2011 free trade agreement with South Korea, in whose first year US exports to there dropped and imports from there increased, increasing our trade deficit by an estimated $5.8 billion and costing 40,000 US jobs?

5) Would TPP allow other countries to serve as conduits for additional Chinese goods to flow into our markets and cost us further employment?

Congress is not popular right now, and with good reason. Our representatives in DC should start spending less time raising money and more time doing their homework and serving the people’s interests.

Stop the TPP

image from “People Pressure is Making Fast Tracking the TPP Politically Toxic,” Nation of Change, 1/20/14:

Congress’s Temerity on Gun Safety

editorial, New York Times, 12/22/13

Despite lawmakers’ copious sympathy for the 26 victims of the Newtown, Conn., school massacre, all members of Congress were able to manage in the way of gun safety as they left town was renewal of the ban on the manufacture of plastic firearms. This is a type of arcane weapon that figured not at all in the Sandy Hook Elementary School rampage in 2012, nor in the mass shootings featuring adapted weapons of war that have occurred on average every two weeks somewhere in America.

The measure is needed because guns made of plastic could render metal gun detectors ineffective. But it does nothing to control metal guns, and little to confront the awful challenge of Newtown and the nation’s ongoing history of gun carnage. In a politically safe gesture, both the House and the Senate voted by voice so members could duck individual accountability.

The process was a sad reminder of this Congress’s determined avoidance of meaningful laws controlling the lethal (metal) weapons regularly scourging the land.

An analysis of mass killings by USA Today found that the youngsters murdered in Newtown in rapid sprays of rifle fire were not alone. Nearly one-third of the victims of mass killings since 2006 have been children younger than 18 — 363 of them shot dead at an average age of 8 years old.

The grieving parents of Newtown were armed with facts like these when they visited Congress last summer to plead for gun safety. Their ghastly losses repeatedly drew tears from lawmakers but no determined action. Congress’s failure is part of the tragedy of Newtown.