Content Analysis of Donald Trump Tweets

I am no fan of Donald Trump who is bad news for the Republican Party (and US politics more generally) so I hesitate to give his candidacy any more attention. He is entertaining, however, and I thought I'd post this content analysis of his tweets below as a pedagogical example of how one goes about conducting content/discourse analysis, and in particular, gauging "tone" (something I also do for my own research on Congressional statements on the North Korean regime). 

Faith, Christsianity, and the Meaning of Christmas

Christians get bashed for being intolerant, closed-minded, and ignorant. Some of this is deserved by Christians who reflect the values of Christ poorly. But this Christmas season, it was refreshing to see news stories and editorials reflect on the beauty and centrality of the Christian faith and its importance in this broken world.

Michael Gerson's piece centered on German theologian and Nazi resistor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was at the heart of this message. Here's Gerson quoting Bonhoeffer:  "He [God] takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous. And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly. . . . He loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken.”

Gerson then reminds us that amidst the oppression and violence:

In the Christian view, the door was swung open by the incarnation, by a God who somehow became a defenseless child, a refugee, a teacher of good, a victim of injustice, left alone, tired, in doubt, to face a humiliating death. A God who — strangely, paradoxically, mysteriously — at the end felt abandoned by God. A God on our side. 

“God wants to always be with us,” Bonhoeffer said, “wherever we may be — in our sin, in our suffering and death. We are no longer alone: God is with us. We are no longer homeless; a bit of the eternal home itself has moved unto us.”This, despite all our fears and doubts, is Christmas: a God secretly revealed as love.

This article set the tone for an editorial which repeated a frequent theme this Advent season connecting the Syrian migrant crisis to Christ's birth by reflecting on Jesus as a displaced person, his parents fleeing from Egypt upon King Herod's decree to kill all children under the age of  two. I quote the last section of the editorial here which ended in a verse from Matthew 25:35:

 But the word “Christian” is often misused in our times, in a way that implies some allegiance to a particular political party, economic doctrine or set of moral strictures that are not representative of large numbers of true Christians. (The media are often complicit in this confusion.) There is a broader concept of the term, one that is succinct, relevant and all but imperative in this season when we face a humanitarian crisis that tests our character and our compassion. It comes from the Gospel of Matthew and is stated as an ideal voiced by Jesus: “I was hungry and you gave me food.I was thirsty and you game me drink.I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

Finally, last week's Washington Post featured a story headlines, "The quiet impact of President Obama’s Christian faith." Part of the article described Obama's thought process in drafting the eulogy of Rev. Clementa Pinckney following the mass shooting murder at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC. The shooter, a white man, was welcomed by black church members to join their Bible study when an hour into the study he stood up and went on a shooting spree. As author Greg Jaffe writes, Obama observed that " the Charleston parishioners had demonstrated their faith when they welcomed the killer into their Bible study. The families of the dead had passed God’s test when they faced down despair and found the grace to forgive." In essence, the President wanted to set the response of Emanuel church members as an example for a polarized nation.  As Obama quoted, “There’s all this goodness and decency and common sense on the ground, and somehow it gets translated into rigid, dogmatic, often mean-spirited politics.”

I don't see President Obama always as a man of faith, so it was a refreshing to hear how he thinks and struggles to apply Christian teaching to his politics. The lesson here (particularly for Christians) is that even if we fundamentally disagree on principles and policy, there's a way to be civil in our discussion and at least attempt to understand the other's position.

Overall, I'm pleased to see a mainstream newspaper like the Washington Post publishing stories which address issues of faith and Christianity without resorting to simple caricatures of Christians.

ISIS and A New Strategy for Bases?

Richard Immerman, who sponsored a conference on US Bases and the Construction of Hegemony earlier this fall, sent us a link to this NY Times article about the Pentagon working to build a string of bases in Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East to address the threat from ISIS and its affiliates. I'm not sure how new this strategy is since plans like these have been in the works since the Bush Administration. However, it appears that the threat of ISIS has given strategic planners renewed interest in coordinating base policies.

Gratitude on Thanksgiving

We moved into our new house on Thanksgiving week, which means we have much to be thankful for this year. Our new home has also given me reason to pause and reflect on the millions of displaced people around the world with no place to call home.

EJ Dionne, in the spirit of thanksgiving, calls on readers cast aside politics and consider humility and gratitude. Quoting from Ecclesiastics 9:11 he speaks of grace, and reminds those with plentiful not to be arrogant, and remember what we have does not necessarily come from our own hands and works, but from Above.  Casting aside politics (but not religion), it's a call to be both gracious and caring.

Obama, Syria, Migration, and Intervention

Initial reactions from a few Republican presidential candidates and handful of Republican governors have ranged from disheartening to appalling. Unsurprisingly Democrats, including President Obama have attacked Republicans and others for refusing to accept Syrian refugees.

Conservatives have hit back, putting some of the blame on the Obama Administration for producing the Syrian crisis., and making a case for intervention. As Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post argues:

Four million Syrians have fled, with even more internally displaced. Half of all Syrians have been forced from their homes.For that, the Obama administration bears some responsibility — and the reasons should be something voters think about in 2016....He withdrew all U.S. troops from Iraq when experts advised that a residual force of 15,000 would help to keep a fragile peace. He bombed Libya to overthrow its dictator but opposed a small NATO training force that might have stabilized the new government. He ordered a limited surge of troops to Afghanistan but soon began withdrawing them on a timetable unmoored to conditions. When Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad cracked down on democracy protesters, kindling violence, Obama kept the United States aloof.

As a result, Hiatt claims we are paying "the price of inaction."

Today Libya is “engulfed in civil war and bloodshed.” In Iraq, having lost leverage and interest, the United States stood aside as the Shiite prime minister turned the U.S.-trained armed forces into a sectarian militia that gave space and impetus for radical Sunnis — reborn as the Islamic State — to reemerge. In Syria, effects even direr than Obama feared from U.S. intervention bloomed in its absence: a wider war, spilling across borders; radical jihadists establishing the kind of statelet that al-Qaeda never achieved; millions of refugees destabilizing not only Syria’s neighbors but all of Europe. 

This argument fits well with an ongoing discussion in my class on the extent to which the U.S. needs to engage in global affairs. Following Chris Preble in  The Power Problem, overextending our reach only does us more harm than good, and does not benefit U.S. interests. We should rely on regional powers and our allies to deal with crises in distant lands, especially if we cannot make the situation any better. Others, believe the U.S. must exercise its leadership and lead by example, recognizing that securing long term U.S interests do require maintaining/managing  global crises.

The One-Child Policy and Teaching About Human Rights in China

China ended it's controversial one-child policy last week, most likely on economic rather than any humanitarian grounds given potential labor shortages and an ageing population. The NY Times provided a timeline chronicling the implementation and effects of the policy. The one-child policy is often associated with forced abortions, compulsory sterilization, infanticide, and other abuses committed by party officials (usually at the local level). Here is one anecdote from the Washington Post:

Katherine Hesse. From NY Times.
 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/world/asia/one-child-rule-china.html

His wife was seven months pregnant with their second child when the group of people barged into his home and took her away. He followed them to the local hospital, where — against medical advice and despite his pleadings — they jammed a needle into her belly.“They grabbed my wife’s body like they were grabbing a pig, four or five people holding her hands and legs and head, and injected a shot into her belly,” the man said, asking not to be named for fear of retribution. “Neither my wife nor I signed any consent form.”Ten hours later, she gave birth to a boy, wriggling and faintly crying. But the doctors in southern Hunan province would not even let her hold the dying infant, the husband said. They put the baby in a plastic bag and instructed him to pay a cleaner a small sum to bury it on a nearby hill.

Several other news stories appeared about the horrors of the one-child policy last week. See here, here, and here. Adding to criticism, despite the welcome end to the one-child policy, human rights organizations such as Amnesty International argued that the policy change didn't address the deeper issue of setting limits on child bearing. Coincidentally, I invited renowned activist Chen Guangchen, currently affiliated with Catholic University, to my class the week before China's announcement. Mr. Chen has made it his life commitment to challenge the abuses associated with the one-child policy. Despite this qualified victory, I'm certain he will continue to press on with his activism.

There is no question that this policy has resulted in horrible abuses. A classic example of initially well-intentioned social engineering gone wrong (future labor shortages, uneven gender ratios, inability to support ageing population etc...). But from a teaching standpoint, I am curious to hear the official Chinese stance on the one-child policy. Was there ever any merit to this policy which has been thoroughly tarnished in the West?  Did the CCP intentionally encourage abuse to support policy? Some of the articles I read indicated it wasn't necessarily the central government which enforced abortions, bur rather local party cadres intent on moving up in the ranks. How effective was the one-child policy? Amartya Sen argues more credit is given to the one-child policy than warranted (he attributes declining fertility to other factors such as women empowerment  and new norms of smaller households).

I have one student from mainland China in my Intro to IR class and wondered what was going through his mind during Chen Guangchen's discussion. His presence has made me mindful of how I discuss China in class, especially after inviting Mr. Chen. I wouldn't say it's self-censoring, but I'm reminded that all sides of the debate should be represented, even if China is an easy target to condemn for its human rights abuses.

David Vine's Base Nation

Celeste Ward Gventer reviewed David Vine's book, Base Nation in this Sunday's Washington Post. The book, which was added to my syllabus on the Politics of Overseas Bases and American Empire, basically presents an argument for why overseas U.S. bases do more harm than good. In the bad category, they're expensive, force local people off land, tie the US to dictatorships, result in environmental destruction, corrupt local economies.  

David and I have had several conversations over the years about bases. Although we disagree on several key points about the nature and consequence of US basing, we both agree that a consensus of sorts exists among policy elites regarding basing strategy. However, one point Gventer raises which is absent from Vine's book, and which Stacie Pettyjohn and I address in a working paper evaluating realist and imperial interpretations of overseas base expansion is the relationship between American strategy and bases. Gventer writes: 

Bases are merely a symptom of U.S. strategy, a visible sign of America’s expansive view of its role in the world. Indeed, the bases underscore the relative continuity of American strategy since the end of World War II.

Stacie and I have a slightly different take. US strategy evolves, as reflected by reductions, downsizing, and consolidation of overseas bases over time, and particularly following the 2004 Global Defense Posture Review.