Politics as Usual
Tyner's Weekly Blog
Fiddling While the Capitol Burned
Is there a particular incident in Donald Trump’s six years in the political limelight that historians might choose to capture the essence of Donald Trump? While there are many to choose among, I would suggest that the hours that Trump watched the Capitol riot unfold on television on January 6th exemplifies the man.
While the Capitol attack was unfolding, Trump was watching on TV along with millions of other Americans. However, Trump wasn’t watching the violent rioting with the shock and horror of most Americans. Instead, Trump was fascinated and excited by the attack. Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham revealed that Trump said proudly, “Look at all the people who are fighting for me,” rewinding to watch favorite parts.
Engrossed by the mayhem, Trump ignored pleas from family, allies, and his favorite TV pundit to end the violence. Trump did nothing to stop the attack because in former Representative Adam Kinzinger’s words, “The mob was accomplishing President Trump’s purpose.” Trump sought to halt Congress’s counting of the electoral votes with the ultimate goal of overturning the election results and reclaiming the White House.
Trump continued watching television and doing nothing until it became clear that despite the threat to their lives, Congress members would not be deterred from doing their duty. Democracy survived, and Trump’s attempted coup failed.
It was only after accepting that violence and intimidation couldn’t accomplish his goal that Trump quit watching TV. He told his beloved foot soldiers to go home, saying “I know how you feel, but go home and go home in peace. I know you’re in pain.”
Trump showed great sympathy for the violent insurrectionists that he had unleashed, treating the attackers like victims. He had no sympathy for the Congressional members and Vice-President whose lives he put in jeopardy or for the scores of Capitol police who were injured. They had foiled his plan.
Later, Trump claimed outlandishly that he didn’t watch the Capitol insurrection on TV at all, no lie too big or obvious to try and turn reality on its head.
Much was revealed to casual observers of Donald Trump the day he sat and watched the Capitol attack on television. On that day, Trump cared about no one but himself and his maniacal quest to return to power. Nothing else mattered. His self-absorbance was absolute, and he wasn’t going to listen to anyone. Both the rioters and the people under attack were expendable pawns in his wicked endgame.
Trump was more than willing to destroy American democracy to reclaim the presidency. He sent his mob of supporters to the White House and watched the mayhem on TV until it was clear that violence wasn’t going to work. His contempt for the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power was stunning.
Trump showed no empathy for the members of Congress, the Vice-President, or the Capitol police whose lives he endangered. He was without conscience or remorse. His outrageous lie that he didn’t watch the insurrection on TV fit a pathological pattern of lying that characterized his political life.
During the hours of watching TV on January 6th and its aftermath, Trump displayed classic traits associated with narcissistic sociopathy: disregard for rules or laws, feeling no guilt for harm they cause others, believing they are superior, expecting people to do what they want, lying extravagantly without compunction, taking advantage of others to accomplish their purpose, having an inability to recognize the needs and feelings of others, lacking in conscience.
That Donald Trump is overwhelmingly unfit to be reelected president goes without saying. He is a clear threat to American democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law. He will attempt to attain power by any means, including threatening our democracy, the lives of others, and the welfare of the country.
A mentally unbalanced man with fantastical illusions watching the horrors of January 6th with excitement, ignoring exhortations to end the violence, rooting for his insurrectionists to help return him to the White House, indifferent to the violence he has unleashed and the injuries and deaths he is responsible for, willing to burn down American democracy to achieve his purpose, lying to a world full of easily conned pinheads and fools. Donald Trump in a nutshell.
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www.mind-diagnostics.org/blog/sociopath/sociopath-traits-symptoms-and-examples
www.verywellmind.com/understanding-the-narcissistic-sociopath-4587611
www.choosingtherapy.com/narcissistic-sociopath/
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The Founding Fathers Didn't Anticipate a Donald Trump
Former Brazilian president Juan Bolsonaro was banned from running for office for the next eight years. Brazil’s top elections’ court ruled that Bolsonaro was guilty of abuse of power for undermining faith in democracy with his false claims of election fraud, particularly regarding the credibility of the country's electronic voting systems.
Sound familiar? Donald Trump certainly undermined faith in American democracy with his false claims of election fraud, attacking among other things the country’s electronic voting systems. Trump went even further than Bolsonaro, inciting a Capitol riot to overturn the election results, pressuring state election officials to find or change votes, and approving fake electors’ slates to replace legitimate electors.
While Bolsonaro has been banned from running for office in Brazil for eight years, Trump is free to run for president, American courts having no such banning authority. While the Founding Fathers were prescient in including many Constitutional protections for our democracy, the single sentence on the limited requirements of running for president didn’t anticipate a Donald Trump.
With the Constitution setting only age and citizenship requirements for presidential candidates, the legal maxim “Everything which is not forbidden is allowed” has been followed. You can be indicted for rape, child sex trafficking, embezzlement, or illegally possessing and concealing classified documents and still be eligible to run for president. Perhaps the Founding Fathers never imagined such miscreants running for office or receiving a single vote, but again, they didn’t anticipate a Donald Trump.
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The third article of the Fourteenth Amendment provides the possibility of an elected federal or state official being banned from office if he or she “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the government “or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” The argument can be made that Trump’s incitement of the January 6th Capitol insurrection could fall under Article 3.
Legal experts, however, are divided over whether the article even applies to the presidency, which isn’t explicitly spelled out. In addition, since a majority of the House and Senate must approve the ban, a split Congress would never reach agreement. In the 247-year history of the country, Article 3 has never been invoked against a sitting or former president.
Things get murkier when you consider a presidential candidate winning the election from prison. Donald Trump could be convicted of crimes involving the current classified document indictment or future indictments, receive prison time, and still be elected president. While that scenario defies the imagination, there are millions of deluded Trump cultists who would be wildly supportive.
Nothing in the Constitution disqualifies an elected president from governing from prison. However, the Twenty-fifth Amendment can be invoked when the Vice President and a majority of cabinet members deem the President “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
As president, however, Trump could protest the Vice-President and cabinet members’ decision, passing the issue to Congress to resolve. Trump may also have the authority as president to pardon himself, stroll out of prison, and assume his duties. Trump’s indictments have thrust the legal system into dark, uncharted waters, Constitutional experts pondering the imponderable: a newly elected president languishing in prison.
In practically every state, an imprisoned felon loses the right to vote, travel abroad, bear arms or own guns, serve on a jury, drive, or ever be employed in jobs such as security, the postal service, or child care. That same imprisoned felon, however, could still serve as President of the United States unless removed from office through some Constitutional article that has never been invoked. Incredible.
For the first time in American history, the ascendancy of Donald Trump raises the question of how you deal legally with a presidential candidate who is so criminally outside the norm of presidential behavior that the Constitutional framers didn’t foresee it. A man who should never be allowed to set foot anywhere near the White House could be the first elected president wearing an orange jump suit.
Brazil got it right by banning a former president from future office who proved a direct threat to Brazilian democracy. In America, a former president even more guilty of attacking America’s democracy remains free to run for office and could be reelected president.
In the US, in an area where the Constitution is maddingly vague, we must rely on the moral decency and good sense of the American voters to avert such an unspeakable catastrophe.
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http://thelawdictionary.org/article/what-rights-do-convicted-felons-lose/
No, It’s Not Political Hyperbole
Every presidential election is billed as the most critical of its time, galvanizing rhetoric used by Democratic and Republican parties to get out the vote.
The significance of the 2024 election, however, goes beyond typical election hyperbole. The 2024 results will demonstrate what we care about as Americans and the kind of country we want to leave to future generations.
Do we believe that preserving and strengthening American democracy is of upmost importance? Will we stand up against the threat to democracy by internal right-wing forces who gravitate to anti-democratic authoritarianism? Or do we believe that American democracy is under no threat from the right, that the alleged dangers are overblown and politically motivated?
Do we believe that reducing climate change is a huge priority as it continues to fuel among the most devastating environmental disasters in modern history? Or do we believe that the disasters bludgeoning the country are natural, cyclical, and ineluctable, climate change the bogeyman used by the left to attack America’s oil and coal industries?
Do we believe that America’s gun-violence epidemic is intolerable and that we should implement gun regulations common among countries with little gun violence? Or do we believe that gun control doesn’t work, that more armed Americans can reduce gun violence, and that gun-control advocates want to eviscerate the Second Amendment and take away our guns?
Do we believe that during a national health crisis, the general welfare takes precedence over individual rights? Do we believe that implementing critical health mandates supersedes an individual’s right to act in ways that could potentially cost more lives? Or do we believe that such governmental mandates are an insufferable infringement on individual rights and that every American should have the freedom to make his or her own choices regardless of the consequences?
Do we believe that women have the fundamental right to make choices about their own bodies? Do we oppose any law that puts the control of a woman’s reproductive rights in the hands of the government? Or do we believe that the rights of the unborn child override that of the mother, and that aside from exceptional circumstances, the government should compel every woman to carry her pregnancy to term?
Do we believe that health care is a right and not a privilege? Do we support universal health care and expanded government-funded health insurance? Or do we believe that competitive free-market, for-profit health insurance programs provide the best, most affordable health care and serve as a bulwark against socialized medicine?
Do we believe that the American election system is among the fairest, most trusted in the world? Do we support efforts to broaden voting access to all registered voters? Or do we distrust the electoral system and believe that it can be rigged to a candidate’s advantage? Do we oppose increasing voting access, further adding to the potential for fraud?
Do we believe that undocumented workers play a significant role in America’s economy, paying taxes and working in numerous industries that depend on their employment? Do we support a pathway to citizenship based on an immigrant’s years of residency and employment record? Or do we believe that undocumented immigrants are a drain on the economy and take away jobs from Americans? Do we oppose a pathway to citizenship, or amnesty, which would encourage even more illegal immigration?
Do we believe that LBGTQ+ citizens should enjoy the same rights as all Americans and that educating students on gender identity creates greater understanding, acceptance, and less discrimination? Or do we believe that expanding gay rights threatens the traditional institutions of marriage and family, and that gender-identity education creates gender confusion and can be used to sexualize children?
Do we believe that America’s ethnic diversity is beneficial, strengthening our economy and democratic values, adding cultural richness, and creating a more inclusive society? Or do we view ethnic diversity as a threat to American values, our cultural heritage, and social cohesion, creating an increasingly fragmented rather than unified America?
These contrasting viewpoints reflect the dominant positions of today’s Democratic and Republican parties respectively. They reveal diametrically opposed visions of what America’s future could be like.
In 2024, voters will have the momentous responsibility of deciding which party’s vision for the future could prevail, setting America’s course for decades to come, for better or worse.
The Point of No Return on Climate Change?
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Extreme weather is becoming commonplace on a global scale. Abnormally hot temperatures in July affected 6.5 billion people, 81% of the world's population, according to the Climate Shift Index.
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Extreme summer heat in Europe is causing tourists to seek cooler climes or plan vacations for other seasons. In the US, heat-related deaths have increased dramatically, from 494 in 2000 to 1708 in 2022, nearly a four-fold increase.
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Last week Beijing recorded the heaviest rainfall in 140 years - 30 inches in four days - in a city with normally dry summers. In the US Northeast in July, unseasonably strong storms brought torrential rains that inundated cities and towns, preceded in February by a record-shattering freeze that produced the coldest wind chill in recorded history.
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American coastal communities are experiencing stronger, more dangerous hurricanes resulting in greater flooding and wind damage. Deadly California wildfires have increased five-fold since 1971 and consumed five times more area from 1996 to 2021 than in the prior 25 years.
Droughts in the Southwestern US are becoming more frequent, longer, and more severe, resulting in shrinking reservoirs and rivers and dwindling water supplies for cities and agriculture. Droughts are growing worse worldwide with particularly catastrophic impacts to large areas of Africa.
The one thing that ties together all of these extreme climatological events is climate change, the indisputable catalyst that is altering natural weather patterns for the worse. Man has been slow-cooking the planet for over a century with fossil fuel-based greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, electricity production, industry, commercial and residential usage, and agriculture.
Climate scientists believe that the current alarming impact of climate change is but a precursor to a more disastrous future if we don’t sharply reduce C02 emissions, their prognostications to date direfully accurate. Being the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, the US must play a vital role by cutting its C02 emissions significantly and providing international leadership.
America’s record on CO2 reduction, however, is far from exemplary. The US is not among the top ten countries in the world for reducing CO2 emissions. From 2011 to 2020, the amount of CO2 emitted annually by the US remained relatively flat while increasing 6.2% in 2021 due to a post-pandemic surge in coal usage and post-shutdown travel.
The US is nowhere near the goal established by the 174-nation Paris Climate Accord of a 7.6% annual reduction from 2020-2030 to keep the global temperature increase at 1.5 degrees or less to stave off the most catastrophic effects of climate change. That former president Donald Trump was dismissive of climate change and dismantled major climate policies resulted in the US treading water for four precious years while many countries were making significant reductions.
President Biden is a powerful advocate for reducing climate change both at home and internationally: setting a US goal to reduce CO2 emissions by 50% by 2030, taking Executive Actions emphasizing clean energy development to reduce CO2 emissions, investing $550 billion in climate programs through the Inflation Reduction Act, convening world leaders of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF) four times since taking office, and rejoining the US in the Paris Climate Accord after Trump pulled the country out.
Of course, if Trump is elected president in 2024, he will repeal every climate-change policy that is repealable. It would be equally bad under a President DeSantis, who as Florida’s governor has done nothing to reduce CO2 emissions despite Florida being pummeled by hurricanes, calling policies to combat climate change that “left wing stuff.”
With climate-change fueled disasters already costing thousands of lives, the loss of millions of homes and businesses, environmental degradation, and billions of dollars in economic damage, climate-change reduction should be that rare bipartisan issue that every politician gets behind. Tragically, that is not the case as Republican politicians have proven indifferent at best, obstructive at worst.
The US must do a much better job of reducing CO2 emissions to help pull the planet from the brink of a climatological Armageddon. The simple fact is, only if Democrats prevail in the 2024 election will we have a fighting chance to help reverse the global warming trajectory that will otherwise create a global nightmare beyond our comprehension. As the 2024 election grows nearer, every other issue facing the country pales in comparison.
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http://interestingengineering.com/science/more-nasty-hurricanes-to-hit-us-coasts-study
www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions
www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/slideshows/these-countries-are-leading-the-way-in-climate-policy
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www.newsweek.com/extreme-heat-killing-more-americans-ever-1811274#:~:text=In%202000%2C%20there%20were%20494%20heat-related%20deaths%20reported%2C,1%2C708%20heat-related%20deaths%20that%20year%20across%20the%20U.S.
www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/carbon-co2-emissions
www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-sinks
http://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks.html
http://time.com/6288683/florida-desantis-environment-climate-change/
http://theboar.org/2020/07/people-losing-homes-climate-change/
http://news.yahoo.com/republican-2024-climate-strategy-more-180539499.html
www.cnn.com/2022/08/31/politics/republican-states-benefit-climate-law/index.html
The Quintessential Donald Trump
Donald Trump’s latest outrage is impossible to put into any context of normalcy.
Trump has encouraged his extreme right-wing loyalists in the House to withhold all military aid to Ukraine until the FBI and CIA provide “every scrap” of evidence they have on Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.
This is a new variation on a theme for which Trump was impeached: Trump’s threat to withhold weapons to Ukraine unless President Zelenskyy dug up dirt on Joe Biden to help Trump’s presidential election chances.
The new variation is the threat of withholding weapons for Ukraine unless American intelligence agencies further investigate the Bidens to help Trump’s presidential reelection chances.
The first takeaway, of course, is that Trump couldn’t care less about what happens to Ukraine, willing to cut off military support and allowing Russia to do its worst: turning a defeated Ukraine into a Russian puppet state. Trump has shown no interest in the US defending democracy abroad and is indifferent to the spread of totalitarianism through military force. Trump’s reelection would be every totalitarian leader’s dream.
The second takeaway is that Trump cares about nothing but himself, not exactly groundbreaking news. He is threatening to let Russia have its way in Ukraine unless the intelligence agencies dig deeper into the Bidens. He is using his House sycophants to halt the military support for Ukraine unless his personal demands are met. It is the threat of a wannabe dictator, the fevered wet dream of an unhinged mind, the quintessential Donald Trump.
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However, six years of such outrageous behavior by Trump has normalized the shockingly abnormal for his followers. For them, there is nothing he can do or say that is beyond the pale. Like cultists in the thrall of a Jim Jones or Sun Myung Moon, Trumpsters take every word of their cult leader as gospel even as his pronouncements grow darker, more bizarre, and more dangerous.
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For the rest of us, Trump has completely lost the ability to surprise. We have begun to take for granted behavior that would have been incomprehensible in any other president: the pathological lying, the admiration for dictators, the attempt to overturn the presidential election results, the disdain for the rule of law, the multiple indictments. We wonder how any sane person could ever vote for Donald Trump for president, yet here he is, the presumptive Republican nominee with a chance to pull off the inconceivable.
My frequent miscalculation is looking at Trump and his seemingly brainwashed supporters through my own world-view filter, which is diametrically opposite to theirs. To Trump supporters, he is a truth-teller, a fighter for the disenfranchised, a protector of democracy against socialism and communism, a fierce battler willing to take on the corrupt elitist politicians, a fearless leader who has exposed the extreme bias of the mainstream press and the great potential for presidential election fraud.
To Trump supporters, therefore, a deeper dive by the CIA and FBI into the corrupt Bidens as a precondition to providing military support for Ukraine makes perfect sense. If that’s what it takes to expose the Biden criminal enterprise and help return Donald Trump to his rightful place in the White House, so be it. What’s more important, Ukrainian democracy or Donald Trump’s reelection? Why even ask.
Trump’s latest outrage shows once again that Trump is who he is, an odious incorrigible who will do anything to attain power or advantage whether it means violating the law, undermining American democracy, or holding hostage a democratic country under siege until he derives some personal benefit.
That Trump’s reelection would be an absolute disaster for the US and the free world is an understatement. He would replace thousands of federal civil service employees with Trump loyalists, fill open judicial positions with Trump loyalists, co-opt a Republican-controlled Congress, consolidate executive power, make America an unreliable ally, and give wink-and-nod support to brutal dictators like Putin and Kim Jong Un.
Yet Trump supporters who have bought into his lies and dismissed all evidence of his criminality believe otherwise. Could that core of Republican voters along with independents who view octogenarian Biden as just too old possibly be enough to return Trump to the White House? I swear I just saw a pig fly by.
A Different America
How different would America be today had Donald Trump not been elected president? The answer reveals the devastating impact that one terrible leader can have on any nation, including ours.
First, had any other sitting president lost the 2020 election, the Big Lie that the election was rigged wouldn’t have occurred and tens of millions of Americans wouldn’t be under the dangerous delusion that Biden didn’t win the election fairly. America’s democracy wouldn’t have been weakened by the integrity of its election process undermined by the former president.
Had Trump not promulgated the Big Lie, the devastating Capitol insurrection would never have occurred. The violent breaching of America’s bastion of democracy would never have entered the history books as one of the darkest days in the 245 years of the Republic.
Had Trump not promulgated the Big Lie, red-state governments would not be blatantly attempting to disenfranchise minority voters by enacting restrictive voting laws. Republican lawmakers could not disingenuously use the Big Lie to justify voting restrictions to eliminate voter fraud that never took place.
Had Trump not been elected, white supremacy would not have brazenly reared its ugly head. No other president would have embraced white supremacists and given a nod and wink to hate groups like the Proud Boys. No other president would have used racist epithets against blacks, Latinos, and Asians, provoking an unprecedented rise in hate crimes against minorities. Mass shooters would not have targeted minority victims that Trump had ratcheted up racist hatred against: Mexican-Americans in El Paso, blacks in Dayton, Asian-Americans in Atlanta.
Had Trump not been elected president, the huge number of needless deaths from the coronavirus caused by Trump’s deceitful, desultory, anti-science response to the pandemic would not have occurred. Had Trump responded like other world leaders who implemented national plans based on the best scientific evidence, hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved.
Had Trump not been elected president, the Republican Party would be in a much better place. Thanks to Trump’s influence, the Party is riddled with conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, Big Lie proponents, QAnon adherents, anti-democratic obstructionists, and anti-science ignoramuses.
House Republicans like QAnon adherent Marjorie Taylor Greene and gun-toting Lauren Boebert wouldn’t be the face of the Party, Proud Boys, Three Percenters, and Oath Keepers wouldn’t feel at home, and Trump clones like Kristi Noem and Ron DeSantis wouldn’t be its 2024 presidential hopefuls. Principled conservatives wouldn’t have abandoned the Party or remained to be vilified, and the Party wouldn’t be dominated by off-the-rail fanatics.
The presidency of Donald Trump underscores the destructive impact that one abominable leader can have on a nation. While Trump isn’t in a class with Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin or Gaddafi, no other modern-day president has come close to altering the course of American history in such tragic ways.
Had Donald Trump not been elected president, America’s democracy would be much healthier, the integrity of its election system would be unquestioned, states would have no excuse to enact harsh voting restrictions, its Capitol would not have been plundered, and America’s influence abroad would have remained strong.
Had Trump not been elected president, America’s minorities wouldn’t be under unprecedented attack, white supremacists and hate groups would have remained denizens of the shadowy fringe, the impact of the coronavirus pandemic would have been less devastating, conspiracy theories and delusional thinking wouldn’t be de rigueur, and the Republican Party wouldn’t have become a dangerous haven for racists, grievance-laden malcontents and disciples of demagoguery.
How long will the damage that Trump has inflicted on the nation persist? What will the shelf life of the Big Lie be? Will the mounting pushback against voter suppression laws produce results? How successful will American intelligence agencies be in rooting out domestic terrorism by right-wing extremists?
How effective will measures like the anti-Asian-American hate crimes’ bill be in reducing violence against minorities? How quickly can President Biden restore international confidence in America’s role as the trusted leader of the free world? Can the Republican Party reestablish itself as something that Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, or George H. Bush would even recognize?
Finally, will Americans ever again elect a president as pathologically dishonest, morally defective, and unfit for office as Donald Trump? Perhaps therein lies the answer to every question.
Stamping Out Stupidity
Never in my lifetime has there been such a consistent display of ignorance among a large minority of Americans. They reside on the political right and essentially form the base of the Republican Party.
Their willingness to accept any lie promulgated by Donald Trump over the last four and a half years has been analyzed and explained by numerous psychologists and conspiracy experts. They are in the clutches of a charismatic demagogue or cultishly brainwashed or captives of the far-right echo chamber or seeking solace in the comfort of false beliefs in times of change and uncertainty. Baloney.
These people are flat out ignorant and proud of it. They have relished believing that Obama isn’t an American citizen, that the presidential election was rigged, that Dr. Fauci doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that Democrats are part of an international pedophile ring, that the Capitol insurrection was justified, that Trump tells it like it is. They wear their ignorance as a badge of honor and defy anyone to question the rightness of their wrongness, lambasting RINO traitors like Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and Mitt Romney for speaking the truth.
In this day and age, being ignorant is a deliberate choice. When you discount all of the evidence at your fingertips that you are flat-out wrong, you have chosen stupidity. Forget that Obama has an indisputably verified American birth certificate, that 86 judges ruled against Trump’s fraudulent election lawsuits, that Dr. Fauci has provided the most factual, scientifically based information available, that QAnon conspiracies are the fevered conjurings of lunatics, that the Capitol insurrection was based 100% on Trump’s Big Lie, adding to the 30,573 lies Trump told while in office. None of that matters to the willfully ignorant.
The most ignorant Republicans especially don’t want to believe the truth espoused by the enemy: those better educated, hoity-toity elitists who think they know everything. If this is what those condescending elitists believe, we are going to believe the opposite, and all of that manufactured “evidence” doesn’t mean squat.
Ignorant Republicans also carve out a false reality to maintain their preferred world view. They want to believe that black Obama was a foreigner, that Democrats can only win by cheating, that evangelists know more than scientists, that left-wing extremists are the real domestic terrorists, that undocumented immigrants are invading America and stealing their jobs. For the world to conform to their false view, they must cling to their ignorance.
Ignorant Americans may be a minority, but because of their concentration in rural and red-state districts, they carry a punch above their weight. They can elect terrible people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Mike Gaetz to sully the halls of Congress. They can be elected to state offices and pass restrictive voter laws and gun proliferation measures. They can elect a Donald Trump president and have more Republican merchants of deceit waiting in the wings.
Ignorant people represent the gravest danger to a country during times of national crisis. During the coronavirus pandemic, ignorant Trump Republicans have flouted mask wearing and social distancing and refuse to be vaccinated. As a result, they have contributed significantly to the spread of the virus and to the real probability that the US will never achieve herd immunity, leaving the virus a lingering presence for years.
Without its ignorant base, the Republican Party wouldn’t be in the dismal shape that it’s in: rudderless, visionless, grounded in lies and conspiracy theories, full of elected politicians literally afraid to tell the truth. The most ignorant Trump loyalists are the catered to, portending even more ominous consequences for a party with a precipitously declining membership.
What might make things better? Perhaps Republicans will have less to be ignorant about now that they aren’t fed daily lies by Trump. Perhaps more Republican leaders will start telling the truth to broaden the party’s reach and attempt to pry the base and the Kevin McCarthys from Mar-a-Lago. Perhaps the majority of Americans will keep Democrats in power to prevent Republican ignorance from further undermining our democracy.
Please, no more mealy-mouthed euphemisms to describe these people. They are head-scratchingly ignorant, and if truth is the lifeblood of a democracy as Thomas Jefferson believed, they represent a most serious threat. Stamping out stupidity is a patriotic cause.
What’s Best for the Country
Democrats should use one sole criterion in determining the fate of the Senate filibuster rule: doing what is best for the country.
President Biden and the Democrat’s agenda addresses among the most pressing problems in America: ending child poverty, securing a livable wage for working families, providing affordable health care for all, providing equal educational opportunity from pre-school through college, combating devastating climate change, reducing America’s epidemic gun violence, providing tax relief for middle-class families, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, enacting sensible immigration reform.
Biden and the Democrats have the opportunity to do more for the good of the country than has been done in decades, shaping the future for the benefit of all Americans. With the filibuster, however, the Senate Republican minority has the power to block their every effort. What is more important: changing America dramatically for the better or keeping a dubious Senate filibuster rule that prevents it from happening?
The House has no three-fifths voting requirement to end debate that gives the minority party the power to kill any bill. All legislative action requires a simple majority, the basic tenet of democratic decision–making. The few instances where more than a simple majority is required for legislative action are clearly delineated in the Constitution. Great Britain, upon whose common law much of our constitution is based, has no supermajority filibuster rule, and it is a rarity among democratic legislatures. No state has such a rule, and only 13 state legislatures allow filibustering at all.
Allowing the Senate Republican minority to kill any legislation it wants also runs contrary to the will of the majority of Americans. Polls consistently show that a large majority of Americans support the legislative agenda of President Biden and the Democrats: making childcare more affordable, providing universal pre-school, providing a public health insurance option, raising the minimum wage to $15.00, banning assault weapons and closing background-check loopholes, rebuilding the infrastructure, increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans, providing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, combating climate change, making college more affordable.
Giving a Senate minority the ability to block the will of the majority of Americans is contrary to the basic democratic tenet of majority rule. In fascist countries where democratic principles don’t exist, the will of the majority is often ignored. Allowing a Senate minority to thwart the will of the majority of the American people and their elected Senate majority and president inclines more towards fascism than democracy.
The filibuster has been used historically by minority parties to preserve Jim Crow laws and block civil- rights’ legislation. It has seldom been used for the reason it was purportedly created: to require across-the-aisle cooperation and compromise to pass legislation. Instead, it has been used as a weapon to block Senate majority legislation rather than a tool to promote bipartisanship.
There is the tenuous argument that if the supermajority filibuster is killed, once in power the minority party will run roughshod over the former majority party, undoing everything it has accomplished. However, that a return to a simple- majority voting rule common among democratic legislatures, the US House of Representatives, and all state legislatures would produce cataclysmic Senate consequences is absurd.
In addition, in 2016, presidential candidate Trump and congressional Republican candidates ran on the promise of getting rid of President Obama’s greatest accomplishment: the Affordable Care Act. With control of Congress and the White House for two years, they got nowhere in undoing their most despised Obama legacy. They discovered that undoing laws that prove popular and beneficial to most Americans is politically unwise, and Biden’s agenda would create a number of such laws.
In doing what is best for the country, Senate Democrats have an easy decision to make on whether to abolish the Senate filibuster rule. Allowing the Senate minority to block all Democratic legislation to change the country for the better would be an appalling dereliction of duty.
We are on the cusp of seeing progress made that historically could rival that of the New Deal and the Great Society in making America a better place to live, work, and raise families for generations to come. The thought of letting one Senate rule stand in the way is incomprehensible.
http://ravindragarimella.com/2020/09/04/filibustering/
http://www.msnbc.com/opinion/mitch-mcconnell-wrong-filibuster-fact-racist-n1262117
Can Democrats Defy History?
Historically, the party of the US president almost always loses seats in the House and the Senate in the mid-term elections. With the Democrats’ slim majorities in both chambers, chances of Republicans gaining control of the House, Senate or both are extremely good. Could the Democrats possibly defy history and maintain legislative control against daunting odds?
The answer is probably not. However, as small a possibility as history suggests, there may be a rare alignment of the political stars that favors Democrats in ways seldom seen by either party.
Since the 1930’s, the president’s party has picked up seats in Congress in only three mid-term elections. In 1934, the Democrats picked up nine House and nine Senate seats as President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed through his New Deal to address The Great Depression. In 1998, the Democrats picked up five seats in the House with the economy thriving and President Clinton’s popularity high despite his Republican-initiated impeachment.
In 2002, Republicans picked up eight seats in the House and two in the Senate. The election was held a year after the 9/11 terrorist attack, and Republican President George Bush Sr.’s popularity rode a wave of patriotic support into the mid-term election.
Two unprecedented catastrophic events – The Great Depression and 9/11 – heightened the popularity of Presidents Roosevelt and Bush and contributed to the Democrat’s mid-term successes. The coronavirus pandemic is clearly such a shattering event, and President Biden’s effective response and high approval rating could do for Democrats in 2022 what Roosevelt’s and Bush’s popularity did in 2002 and 1934.
Roosevelt’s New Deal was popular among middle-class Americans, and with still much to be done in 1934, voters kept Democrats in power to help ensure the program’s success. Polls also show that President Biden’s legislative agenda is popular among most Americans, and Democrats will remind voters accurately that progress will come to a screeching halt in 2022 if Republicans take control of the House or Senate.
The robust economy in 1998 helped to keep Clinton’s popularity high and Democrats in the driver’s seat in the mid-term election. Biden and the Democrats could enjoy a similar benefit as Fed officials predict an economic growth rate above 3% with increasing employment through 2022 as the country emerges from the economic devastation of the pandemic.
The Democrats also have been given a gift which may keep on giving through 2022: a Republican Party in disarray. It appears the Party will continue to be moored to Donald Trump, the most divisive and least popular president in modern history. As a result, the Party is hemorrhaging members and experiencing a growing rearguard action among principled GOP leaders who seek to wrest the Party from Trump’s destructive grasp.
By clinging to Trump and the Big Lie, Republicans will lose even more votes from the women, suburban voters, and college-educated white voters who sank Trump’s reelection bid in 2020. The 2022 mid-term election may be a continued referendum on Trump and by extension his handpicked Trumpian candidates.
There are also the dubious kind of Republican candidates who may be running in 2022. If Trump carries the day, there will be more terrible Trump-endorsed candidates on the ballot like House Republicans Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Louie Gohmert. Such candidates may have success in ruby-red rural districts but will fare more poorly in many swing states where Republicans must do well to retake the House and Senate.
Finally, for much of the 70% of Americans who aren’t Republicans, today’s Republican Party is downright scary. The Party is full of conspiracy theorists including QAnon wackos, white supremacists and other bigots, anti-vaxxers, anti-government anarchists, armed hatemongers like Proud Boys and Three PerCenters, and alternate-reality delusionists who believe the presidential election was rigged and the Capitol insurrection was justified. The Republican Party is increasingly identified by its most extreme elements, a party that most Americans may be justifiably wary of turning over the country to in 2022.
History strongly augurs a Republican victory in the 2022 mid-term election. However, Democrats have at least a fighting chance to prove history wrong, with no less than the direction of America’s future hanging in the balance.
Http://www.thoughtco.com/historical-midterm-election-results-4087704
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/back-70s-fed-fuels-boom-060436127.html
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Donald Trump and American Ugliness
There is an ugliness pervading America today that coincides with the time that Donald Trump has been a part of the political landscape. Call me naïve, but I never reckoned on a sizable minority of Americans appearing as hostile, ignorant, bigoted, and deluded as they have shown to be. Perhaps they were always there, awaiting a Donald Trump to appeal to their most disturbing inclinations and thrust them into the public consciousness.
Certainly the worst are part of the burgeoning cancer of extreme-right hate groups that have propelled the terrifying rise in hate crimes against ethnic and religious minorities and LGBTQ members. What kind of people harass and attack Asian-Americans because the coronavirus originated in China and Mexican-Americans because throngs of Central Americans migrated north to escape oppression and poverty?
There is the ugliness of millions of ignorant, selfish people who embraced Trump’s lies and mimicked his deplorable behavior throughout the pandemic. Ignoring the recommendations of scientific and medical experts and behaving in astonishingly irresponsible ways that helped spread the virus and increase dramatically the number of infections and deaths.
There is the ugliness resulting from millions of people believing the big lie that the presidential election was rigged despite a mountain of irrefutable evidence to the contrary. While thousands of them violently stormed the Capitol on January 6th at Trump’s beckoning, millions of others justified their odious behavior.
There is the ugliness resulting from millions of people embracing the sickest of Trump-promoted conspiracy theories: the presence of a McCarthesque Deep State, an invading horde of violent immigrants transgressing the southern border, Democrats turning America into a socialist dystopia and operating a vast pedophile ring, the Chinese concocting the coronavirus in a lab and creating the global warming hoax.
Such unfathomably widespread delusion is extremely dangerous. It undermines our democracy, tears at the social fabric that connects Americans of every stripe, jeopardizes the welfare of all minorities, and results in millions of people living their lives and basing their beliefs and decisions on lies.
These same people are electing politicians who share their dangerously distorted world view and multi-targeted animus: Q Anon adherents, stolen-election believers, racists and religious bigots, truth-destroyers, violence inciters. They pose a grave threat to our democracy, evidence of the growing influence of far-right extremism in Republican politics.
What if anything can be done about people who have forsaken the path of truth and rationality, beguiled by a deceitful demagogue? The common wisdom is not to offend or criticize them. Rather, listen patiently to misguided friends or relatives, counter their distorted thinking with rational, fact-filled responses, and hope that eventually a light turns on. I don’t think that works.
Their false beliefs are as strong as your true beliefs. They operate on a set of false assumptions that truth and fact don’t penetrate, and no amount of reasoned argument will change their minds.
For the ugliness that has cast a troubling pall over America to recede, other things must happen. First, now that Trump is out of office, the poisonous influence that he has had on his followers may wane, freeing people from the destructive, cultish hold he has had on them.
Second, Republican politicians seeking to restore truth, core values, and human decency to their party must ascend in leadership to the point where a George W. Bush isn’t a pariah, a Marjorie Taylor Greene isn’t its crazed poster child, people of color aren’t vilified, and Proud Boys and their ilk are shown the door.
Third, the majority of Americans who sent Trump packing must flex their political muscle. Most Americans know that Biden won the election fairly, that wearing masks, social distancing, and getting vaccinated are essential to ending the pandemic, that climate change is a serious problem, that verbal and physical attacks against minorities are unconscionable, and that conspiracy theories are nothing but dangerous, egregious lies.
America’s majority provide the antidote to the ugliness that is scarring the country. They have the power to shape the future and elect officials who will provide the “truth and light” without which, according to Thomas Jefferson, democracy dies. They represent the America that must prevail to put one of the ugliest, most appalling chapters in modern history behind us.
Will Enough Ever Be Enough?
After every mass shooting in America, the aftermath has been the same: a great public outcry, a call for stronger gun-control laws, strong resistance from Republicans and the NRA, a gradual waning of public attention, and no gun legislation passed.
This pattern has replayed itself since the Columbine High School mass murder 22 years ago, and over 200 mass shootings later, America’s gun-control laws remain among the laxest in the industrial world. Can we expect the latest two horrific mass murders in Atlanta and Boulder to change anything?
Among developed countries, the US is a deadly outlier. We have by far the greatest number of mass shootings and the highest annual rate of gun murders. Our federal gun laws are weak compared to many countries with much lower rates of gun violence.
The predictable result is that anyone can get a gun in the US, and we have by far the highest number of guns per capita among developed countries. The facts are irrefutable. Countries with the lowest rates of gun violence have the strictest gun-control laws and the lowest number of guns per capita. US states with the lowest rates of gun violence have the strictest state gun-control laws and the lowest number of guns per capita. Gun control works.
The NRA has pushed back against any gun-control regulations despite America’s heartbreaking gun carnage. Their incessant, debunked misinformation campaign – that the bad guys can always get guns, that we need more armed citizens, that gun laws don’t help, that Democrats will take away your guns – has had its effect. Controlled by the NRA, Republicans have killed thousands of pieces of gun-control legislation over the past decades with little public outrage.
During the rare times when Democrats have controlled Washington during the past two-and-a-half decades, they have not mustered the will to act on gun control. Will today’s Democratically-controlled Congress and Democratic president act any differently?
Polls show that the majority of Americans support stronger gun-control laws. 84% support closing the background-check loopholes which currently allow anyone to purchase a gun online, at a gun show, or through a private dealer without a background check. 69% support banning assault weapons, previously banned in 1994 but legalized in 2004 by a Republican-controlled legislature. Democrats have a strong mandate to take action.
While mass shootings comprise a small fraction of the annual gun murders in the US, they create the greatest public outpouring due to the large number of victims, the unfathomable senselessness of the acts, and the existential fear that any one of us or our children could be the next victim. In the wake of one horrific mass shooting in each country, Australia, Great Britain, and New Zealand all passed new gun-control laws that virtually eliminated mass shootings in those countries. In the wake of an avalanche of mass shootings, can’t America do the same?
Banning assault weapons and closing background-check loopholes are a critical start. However, they will not be enough to reduce drastically the over 11,000 gun murders on average occurring every year in America. Other gun laws common in many advanced democracies should be enacted such as requiring licenses for gun purchases, limits on gun and ammunition purchases and magazine capacities, limits on handgun calibers, firearm proficiency requirements, safe storage requirements, and gun buy-back programs.
The horrors of frequent mass shootings and daily gun murders that Americans live with simply don’t exist in other developed countries. In 2021 alone, the US has over six time more gun murders per 100,000 population than the gun-murder average among European nations, Canada, and Australia. America’s gun violence isn’t normal, it’s monstrous. The status quo should be intolerable to every American.
Either Democrats pass strong gun-control legislation while in power, with the backing of the vast majority of Americans, or nothing will change. There is simply no excuse for not taking the boldest action. Tinkering around the edges will accomplish nothing.
It doesn’t take courage to do the right thing. It only takes a commitment to end America’s gun-violence epidemic and make Americans as safe as citizens of other advanced democracies. We can’t rest until we’ve created an America where every child grows up free from the fear of gun violence, a given birthright in many democratic countries.
http://gun-control.procon.org/us-gun-deaths-by-year/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country
http://fair.org/home/the-nra-has-basically-become-part-of-the-republican-party/
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun-deaths-mass-shootings/
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-newzealand-shooting-idUSKBN23P0TE
http://gun-control.procon.org/us-gun-deaths-by-year/
http://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-deaths-by-country
Ending the Filibuster
Mitch McConnell on Tuesday warned Democrats that weakening or eliminating the filibuster to push through their legislation would bring the Senate to a complete standstill and derail President Biden’s agenda. Democrats would do well to ignore Senator McConnell.
The filibuster rule, which requires a supermajority of 60 votes to end debate on legislation, has been used in practice to kill legislation rather than encourage bi-partisan agreement. It has been weaponized by the minority to block any bill brought forward by the majority party.
When Democrats controlled Congress and Barack Obama was president, McConnell-led Republican senators used the filibuster to kill many significant Democratic bills: the American Jobs Act, a tax levy on the wealthiest Americans, a public health insurance bill, a cap and trade bill, the Dream Act, the Emergency Senior Citizens’ Act, immigration reform, the Paycheck Fairness Act, and raising the minimum wage.
Given their use of the filibuster then, who would think for a moment that Republicans won’t do the same thing to block the Democrats’ legislative agenda now? If anything, the parties are even more polarized today, entrenched in polar-opposite positions on most major issues. The 60-vote rule will be used as a bludgeon and the American people will feel the blows.
Many of the bills killed by the Republican minority during the Obama presidency will be taken up in some form by the Senate. When Democratic bills on immigration reform, raising the minimum wage, providing a public health insurance option, raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, or reducing CO2 emissions come before the Senate, Republicans will use the filibuster to block every bill. The tail will wag the dog, and many of America’s most enduring problems will go unsolved for another four years.
Democrats have the opportunity to make tremendous legislative progress that will benefit all Americans. Problems have been allowed to fester far too long: 27 years since a significant gun-control law was passed, 35 years since immigration reform was passed, 12 years since the minimum wage has been raised, 11 years since the Affordable Care Act was passed, and no climate change-reduction legislation has ever become law. For Democrats to allow a Republican Senate minority to block progress on such long-standing issues is unthinkable.
Polls show a large majority of Americans support Democratic legislative positions on most major issues: gun control, immigration reform, minimum wage, public health option, raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, addressing climate change, increasing voter access. If Democrats don’t deliver on these issues, the will of the majority will be ignored and minority rule will prevail, standing on its head the most basic principle of democracy.
If it is necessary to eliminate the Senate’s filibuster rule to pass critical legislation supported by the majority of Americans, so be it. The House requires nothing but a simple majority to end debate on a bill, so why should the Senate have a rule that requires a 3/5th majority? The Constitution spells out specific instances in which a supermajority is required, and voting to end legislative debate isn’t among them. Great Britain ended its parliamentary filibuster rule in 1880, and it is a rarity among European countries.
McConnell’s threat to make life miserable for President Biden and the Democrats if they fool with the filibuster is laughable. Really, what worse can the self-proclaimed “grim reaper” do than thwart all Democratic legislation using the filibuster rule, the will of the majority of Americans be damned? Democrats have nothing to lose by eliminating the filibuster rule and Americans have a great deal to gain.
In addition, the best way for Democrats to hold or build on their House and Senate majorities is to pass meaningful legislation supported by most Americans. No one knows that better than McConnell. To have the Democratic-controlled legislature delivering on behalf of the American people provides the greatest political impetus going into 2022.
As long as the political parties are so impossibly polarized, the filibuster rule is a weapon for the minority party to block majority legislation. That was not its intended purpose, and it needs to go. When and if a moderate Democratic-Republican center ever develops again, the filibuster could be reconsidered. It’s been changed before and can be changed again.
http://www.dailysignal.com/2015/11/11/12-bills-that-the-filibuster-stopped-from-becoming-law/
The Best You've Got?
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At CPAC, Donald Trump was anointed the standard bearer for the Republican Party moving forward and its best choice for presidential candidate in 2024. Really Republicans. Is that the best you’ve got?
Trump was defeated by middling Democratic candidate Joe Biden by over seven million votes, this before he spread the big lie that the election was stolen and incited the deadly Capitol riot based on his lie. He dragged down Senate Republican candidates in Georgia, leading to Democrats controlling the Senate along with the House and presidency. Demographic trends the next four years point to his being trounced even worse in 2024. Really Republicans. Is that the best you’ve got?
Trump told over 25,000 lies during his presidency, an achievement worthy of the Guinness Book of World Records. Some lies were ridiculous, like the inflated size of his inauguration crowd or Mexico paying for the wall. Some were vicious, like Representative Ilhan Omar supporting Al-Qaeda or Ted Cruz’s father being involved in President Kennedy’s murder. Some were psychotic, like altering a weather map to reroute a hurricane or bragging about phone calls from prominent leaders that never took place. Some were deadly, like the coronavirus being “under control” while it raged across the country and the presidential election being stolen, leading to the bloody Capitol insurrection. Really Republicans. Is that the best you’ve got?
Trump lent credibility to brutal dictators, alienated our strongest allies, attacked our free press, judicial system, and intelligence agencies, welcomed foreign interference in our elections, flouted the rule of law, and claimed our election system rigged. Trump did more to undermine America’s democracy than our strongest adversaries could have dreamed of doing. Really Republicans. Is that the best you’ve got?
Trump accomplished little of what he claimed he would. North Korea was going to denuclearize. It hasn’t. Trump was going to negotiate a better Iran denuclearization agreement, a better Paris climate accord, and a peace settlement between Israel and Palestine. He didn’t. Trump’s trade war was going to bring China to its knees and greatly benefit American businesses and consumers. It didn’t. Trump promised to fix America’s broken infrastructure and replace Obama Care with something infinitely better. He didn’t. These monumental failures strewn across four years define Trump’s presidency. Really Republicans. Is that the best you’ve got?
Trump welcomed the support of right-wing extremists, and his racist verbal attacks against minorities jeopardized their safety. During Trump’s presidency, the number of right-wing hate groups increased by 55% and violent hate crimes rose dramatically, committed primarily against Latinos, blacks, Asian-Americans, Jews, Muslims and LGBTQ members. Four of the worst mass murders during Trump’s presidency targeted Mexican-Americans, blacks, Jews, and gays. Trump has divided the country, put minority citizens at greatest risk, and empowered the most racist, militant segment of Americans. Really Republicans. Is that the best you’ve got?
Three of the most respected former members of the Trump administration denounced Trump’s presidency. John Kelly, retired four-star general and ex-chief of staff, called working for Trump the “worst job I ever had.” Retired four-star general Jim Mattis called Trump “dangerous, unfit, and felony stupid.” Former Secretary of State John Bolton said Trump was incompetent and unfit for office. Their depictions coincide with other former administration members who have characterized Trump as undisciplined, unprincipled, ill-informed, and self-serving. Really Republicans. Is that the best you’ve got?
By clinging to Trump, the Republican Party has declared moral bankruptcy and indifference to the fate of America’s democracy, and to what end? How will catering to a base that believes the presidential election was stolen, that justifies the Capitol insurrection, that thinks Dr. Fauci is the enemy, and that is menacingly full of QAnon adherents and militant right-wing extremists do anything but debase and ultimately destroy the Party? What kind of madness has gripped a party that trucks in dangerous lies, conspiracy theories, racism, and cult idolatry and panders to the basest human instincts of its members?
With Donald Trump calling the shots, expect more right-wing loonies like Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert, Laura Loomer, and Angela Stanton King getting endorsed and financed in Republican primaries. All Trump idolaters, they represent the blighted, batty future of Trump’s Republican Party. Really Republicans. Is that the best you’ve got?
http://en.paperblog.com/trump-s-lying-more-than-ever-has-topped-25000-lies-2541003/
http://news.yahoo.com/trumps-trade-war-china-failure-124346226.html
http://newsroom.uw.edu/postscript/hate-crimes-disproportionately-affect-blacks-minorities
http://newsone.com/playlist/dayton-shooting-black-victims/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_synagogue_shooting
Democrats and American Public Aligned
With control of the legislative and executive branches for the first time in six years, Democrats have the opportunity to make significant progress towards solving some of America’s most enduring problems. They will get no bi-partisan support from Republicans, but they have something even more important: the support of a large majority of the American people.
Polls consistently show that a majority of Americans are on the same page as Democrats on most major issues. 69% of Americans support a public health insurance option which is a cornerstone President Biden’s health care proposal. Republicans oppose a public option, intent on maintaining America’s costly, deeply flawed private for-profit insurance system.
60% of Americans support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, a key component of Biden’s immigration reform proposal. Republicans oppose a pathway to citizenship, calling it “amnesty” for lawbreakers although millions of undocumented workers have provided essential labor for major American industries for over half a century.
Most Americans support two pieces of Democratic legislation to reduce gun violence. 84% support closing background-check loopholes which currently allow anyone to purchase a gun online, at a gun show, or through a private dealer without a background check. 66% support banning assault weapons, previously banned in 1994 but legalized in 2004 by a Republican-controlled legislature. Republicans have repeatedly thwarted all legislative efforts to close background-check loopholes and ban assault weapons.
59% of Americans support the Democratic proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $15, which is currently at a poverty-level $7.25. Raising the minimum wage to $15 could raise 1.3 million American households out of poverty according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis. Republicans oppose raising the federal minimum wage, coming down on the side of major employers like Walmart, McDonald’s, Kroger, and Target, among the lowest-paying companies in the country.
Most Americans want to make it easier for all registered citizens to vote, which is addressed by Democratic legislation to make online registration universal, allow all eligible voters to register on Election Day and provide funds to train poll workers. 74% of Americans support the ability to cast absentee ballots by mail. Republicans oppose all measures to increase voter participation, concerned primarily that greater minority participation would hurt their chances in elections, and are working in a number of states to restrict voter access.
66% of Americans believe that climate change is a serious problem and support aggressive action to reduce CO2 emissions, a high priority for President Biden and Democrats. Most Republicans don’t take man-made climate change seriously or disavow its existence, support ramping up CO2-emitting fossil fuel production, oppose federal funding for clean energy development, and when in power, have rolled back environmental regulations that restrict CO2-emissions.
And the list goes on. Most Americans agree with Democrats on the importance of universal pre-school, affordable colleges for all, federally funded daycare, higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, the decriminalization of marijuana, and America’s participation in the Paris Climate Accord. Republicans continue to demur.
That major problems affecting most Americans have been neglected for too long is an understatement. While America has the highest rate of gun murders among advanced democracies, no meaningful gun-control legislation has passed for 27 years. While undocumented immigrants continue to live in the shadows, no immigration reform legislation has passed in 35 years.
While the US has the greatest poverty rate among advanced democracies, the minimum wage hasn’t been raised in 12 years. While American health care is the most expensive in the world and over 27 million Americans are uninsured, no substantive health care legislation has passed since the Affordable Care Act in 2010. While America has experienced an unprecedented rash of deadly hurricanes, flooding, droughts, wildfires, and extreme weather conditions, no legislation to reduce climate change has ever passed.
The stirring call to action, “If not us, who? If not now, when?” must be answered. Democrats have it in their hands to change the country dramatically for the better with the greatest of tailwinds at their backs: the will of the majority of Americans. Failure simply isn’t an option.
http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/paris_agreement_by_state/
http://thehill.com/homenews/news/457481-two-thirds-support-assault-weapons-ban-fox-news-poll
http://thehill.com/homenews/news/395205-poll-majority-of-americans-support-roe-v-wade
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/sep/15/americans-climate-change-crisis-cbs-poll
http://www.theroot.com/gop-can-t-take-an-l-and-is-working-to-severely-limit-vo-1846457656
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/228231-house-democrats-push-to-make-voting-easier
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/509775-poll-70-percent-of-americans-support-voting-by-mail
Lindsey Graham and the Dark Pied Piper
Lindsey Graham supports a continuing major role for Donald Trump in the Republican Party while admitting that Trump has a “dark side.” A standard bearer with a dark side is just what the Republican Party needs to continue its descent into political madness.
Would Trump’s “dark side” include lying that he won the presidential election by a landslide and convincing his followers that the election was stolen? Would it include calling his faithful to Washington DC on January 6th for a “wild” gathering, revving them up to go to the Capitol, inciting the bloody riot, and telling the insurrectionists, “We love you. You’re very special?”
Would Trump’s dark side include lying to the American people over 25,000 times, being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans by his failed leadership during the pandemic, and welcoming foreign interference from our adversaries in presidential elections?
Would Trump’s dark side include currying favor with militant right-wing extremists and using racist rhetoric that has fueled a dramatic rise in hate crimes against minorities? Would it include Trump lashing out viciously at anyone who criticized him or didn’t show proper obeisance and destroying careers or reputations when he could?
Trump’s dark side is colossal, so all-encompassing as to define the man. That doesn’t seem to bother Graham. He believes that Trump is the charismatic pied piper who will lead the Party to the 2022 promised land. Graham also said Trump could destroy the Party, leading the mesmerized faithful off the political cliff, but why not roll the dice?
If the Republican Party sticks with Trump, it will rest on an incredible foundation of dangerous false beliefs. Trump’s followers believe that the presidential election was rigged, that Joe Biden is not the legitimate president, that Trump had no role in the Capitol insurrection, that the pandemic isn’t that serious, that more guns would make the country safer, and that climate change is either a hoax or no big deal.
Thomas Jefferson said that when the people are deceived, it “subverts democracy at its most important link: the ability of the people to obtain the truth and light.” If Jefferson is right, no president has subverted America’s democracy like Trump, whose followers gorge themselves on a steady diet of Trump falsehoods. The health of our democracy, however, isn’t of huge interest to Graham as long as Trump delivers the votes. The obliteration of truth is just a little collateral damage.
What kind of Republican candidates will Trump support for 2022? Those would be Trump’s far-right idolaters like House members Majorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert and candidates like “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer, whom Lara Trump campaigned for. If more Trump-endorsed candidates are elected to the House, no doubt a QAnon caucus will be formed.
Republicans who spoke truth to power, saying that the election was fair and that Trump had an instrumental role in the Capitol insurrection, are the worst of RINOs. They are political road kill in the party of Trump, yet they offer the only hope for pulling the Republican Party out of the morass. Lindsey Graham isn’t one of those principled conservatives, apparently believing that morality, decency, and honesty are a losing combination in the new Republican Party.
Graham believes that Trump can make the Republican Party bigger, ignoring the fact that Trump is one of the worst beaten, least popular presidents in history who cost Republicans the Senate. As for Trump growing the Republican Party, it is doubtful that the party is in need of more deluded, conspiracy-driven extremists that Trump attracts like flies.
Nothing will drive Democrats into a frenzy of activity like keeping their House and Senate majorities from the clutches of Trump-endorsed candidates. Graham may be underestimating the strength of the rabidly anti-Trump Democrats, Republicans, and independents who will turn out in droves to defeat Trump’s hand-picked clones.
Where the Republican Party goes from here is anyone’s guess. However, if a return to sanity isn’t in the offing, the Party will ultimately self-destruct. How long can a party co-opted by the far right, built on lies, conspiracy theories, hatred, and bigotry, and led by the most disgraced president in US history last? Apparently Lindsey Graham is banking on a long time.
An Unprecedentedly Traitorous President
While Donald Trump would no doubt like to be remembered for his stretch of vanity wall built along the US-Mexico border, he will be much better remembered for the seven-foot, non-scalable security fence erected around the Capitol building necessitated by the bloody insurrection that he incited on January 6th.
This is the first time in the 245-year history of the Republic that a security fence has been erected around the Capitol for the protection of House and Senate members and the Capitol building itself against domestic threats. It was erected in response to the only invasion of the Capitol in history by American insurrectionists. It was in response to concerns for the possibility of further attacks on the Capitol attempted by right-wing terrorists spurred on by Trump’s “stolen election” lie.
January 6th was the greatest day of infamy ever for an American president. Not only was the Capitol violently attacked by American insurrectionists for the first time in history, it was attacked at the will of the president. Trump called his extremist supporters to Washington on January 6 for a “wild” gathering, repeatedly reiterated the lie that the election had been stolen, told them “you’ll never take back the country with weakness,” and sent them to the Capitol to do their worst.
Trump knew the mob well, the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, QAnon conspirators, and other militant right-wing extremists brazenly displaying their affiliations. He knew what they were capable of, and when he sent this ginned-up mob to the Capitol, the violent siege was inevitable.
Trump’s same-day response to the insurrection was as chilling as his incitement. He relished that the mob had done his bidding, tweeting, “These are the things and events that happened when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away.” He refused to call out the National Guard to end the siege, was indifferent to the fate of the House and Senate members and Vice-President Pence who were being hunted down by terrorists bent on revenge, and he essentially congratulated them on a good job: “We love you. You’re very special.”
On January 6th, Donald Trump betrayed the country. He attempted to overturn the results of the presidential election through violence, sent a mob to the Capitol to stop the Congressional affirmation of the electoral votes, and through some insane delusion, sought to reclaim the presidency for himself.
There is no way that the January 6th storming and desecration of the Capitol that resulted in the deaths of five people would have occurred were it not for Donald Trump. He bears sole responsibility, everything that happened stemming from his “stolen election” lie and fervent desire that on January 6th his most violent followers would do something about it.
This is the lasting legacy of Donald Trump: the only president out of 44 predecessors spanning 245 years who not only held office when the Capitol was violently overrun by American insurrectionists but who was directly responsible for the attack. If there was ever a clear-cut impeachable offense, a reason that a president should never again be allowed to hold public office, Trump had committed it.
This unfathomable scenario – an American president trying to overturn the results of an election through force to retain power – has played out periodically in democratically unstable countries by nefarious quasi-dictators. It never seemed even a remote possibility in America until Donald Trump attempted the unspeakable, and it must never happen again.
Going forward, US history textbooks should mark January 6th as a most infamous, tragic day in American history. For the first time, our democracy was threatened from within by an attack on the Capitol and attempt to overturn the presidential election orchestrated by the President of the United States.
History books must tell the shocking truth so that future generations of Americans understand what an historically shattering day January 6th was for our democracy and the role that America’s 45th president played. By etching in the public consciousness the horrors wrought by abominable leaders, countries help to ensure that such heinous villains never again rise to power. For that reason, we must never forget Donald Trump.
Trump’s Greatest Betrayal
As the sordid saga of Donald Trump’s presidency mercifully winds down, it’s time to begin reflecting on the damage that he has inflicted on the country. Singling out the one most damaging aspect of his presidency isn’t an easy task.
The list of ignominious contenders is sizable: dividing the nation like no other modern president; using racist rhetoric and embracing white supremacy to fuel a dramatic increase in hate crimes against minorities; undermining America’s free press by convincing half the nation that truth and facts are “fake news;” reducing social discourse to gutter level; weakening America broad by cozying up to dictators and abandoning allies; attempting to undermine the legitimacy of America’s election system; ignoring climate change, the most serious environmental threat to our planet.
Of Trump’s many acts of infamy, however, I believe the worst is his criminal response to America’s worst health crisis in over one hundred years. There is no way to bring back the lives of the hundreds of thousands of coronavirus pandemic victims who have died or undo the suffering of the millions who have fallen grievously ill. Trump bears direct responsibility for the pandemic’s staggering magnitude in the US. The heartbreaking impact of Trump’s betrayal of the American people during the pandemic will last forever.
Trump is the primary reason that America has 22% of the world’s coronavirus deaths with less than 5% of the world’s population. Had America’s death rate been in proportion to its population size, we would have close to 70,000 deaths today instead of 285,000. Given America’s wealth and vast scientific, medical, and governmental resources, there is only one reason that we have over four times as many deaths as we should: a president who led America down the most destructive path possible and abandoned its people in its darkest days.
Trump’s criminal response to the pandemic has been well chronicled: dismissing its seriousness when he knew of the grave danger; contradicting and discrediting the medical experts; imploring states to open as the pandemic surged; flouting the importance of wearing masks and social distancing; holding super-spreader rallies; lying that America had “turned the corner” while the coronavirus raged uncontrollably; having no national plan of containment.
Trump has had a pernicious impact on his followers. Mimicking his defiance of mask wearing and social distancing, millions have brazenly exposed themselves to the virus. In 376 counties with the greatest surge in coronavirus cases, 93% supported Trump in the presidential election. In fourteen counties where Trump held his super-spreader rallies, a significant spike in coronavirus cases occurred a month later.
Trump-mimicking governors in states with surging coronavirus cases have followed his deadly lead. North Dakota governor Burgum said, “It’s not a job for government.” Iowa governor Reynolds will not put restrictions on businesses or make students wear masks. Texas governor Abbott said he saw no reason Texas “would not be able to reopen 100%.” South Dakota governor Noem lied that the surge was due to more testing and won’t encourage mask wearing or social distancing.
Trump has dangerously warped Republican perception of the pandemic. Astonishingly, only 43% of Republicans polled by the Pew Research Center believe the virus is a “major threat” to public health compared to 86% of Democrats. Look no farther than Trump-created Republican delusion for the engine that’s fueling the rampant escalation of the virus.
Equally despicable is that Trump never acknowledged the profound tragedy of 285,000 lost lives, responding publicly with a callous, “It is what it is.” Thanks to Trump, America was never allowed to come together as a nation to mourn the greatest loss of American life since World War II, to grieve collectively for the victims and their families no matter their race, religion, or politics. Americans could have united in our grief and in common cause to defeat this merciless enemy, but Trump destroyed any chance.
Most of the damage Trump has done to America will be repaired. Our democracy is far too strong for one dreadful president to destroy. What can’t be undone, however, is the needless loss of life and untold suffering that Trump’s criminal response to the coronavirus pandemic has wrought, which will be neither forgotten nor forgiven.
http://apnews.com/article/counties-worst-virus-surges-voted-trump-d671a483534024b5486715da6edb6ebf
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/10/trump-rallies-covid-spikes.html
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/dec/7/republicans-far-less-concerned-about-coronavirus-t/
Nothing New in Politics
To millions of Americans, Donald Trump and his cultish followers seem like a new and frightening presence in American politics. Trump supporters comprise a large minority in the country who believe the most unfounded claims and count as enemies anyone they perceive as aligned against them, whether Democrats, immigrants, elitists, RINOs, or the free press.
That there is nothing new in politics, however, is evident in Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Hofstadter’s essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” first published in 1964. Writing over fifty years ago, Hofstadter could have been describing what’s happening in America today.
According to Hofstadter, time and again American political life has served as an arena for “uncommonly angry minds” that coalesce around a shared feeling of persecution. Hofstadter uses the term “paranoid style of politics” because it “evokes the qualities of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy” that dominate such people’s thinking.
As an example, shortly after President Kennedy’s assassination, Senator Dodd of Connecticut sponsored a bill tightening federal control of firearm sales by mail. Three men from Arizona drove 2500 miles to Washington to oppose the bill, one testifying that “it was a further attempt by a subversive power to make us part of one world socialistic government.” That was in 1964, but it could easily have been 2020, and a good percentage of Americans today would no doubt have believed the absurd conspiracy theory.
Daniel Bell, in his 1963 essay “The Dispossessed,” added that the modern right wing felt “dispossessed,” believing America had largely been taken away from them, and they were determined to repossess it. Over fifty years later, Bell could be describing Trump’s conspiracy-driven supporters, determined to save their America from socialist/Marxist Democrats, burgeoning minority populations, the Deep State, and Trump’s ever-growing array of enemies.
People susceptible to the paranoid style of politics gravitate to a leader who feeds into their anger and alienation and follow him uncritically. Such a leader unites the disaffected by providing them a powerful kindred spirit who justifies their fears and confirms their suspicions. They have no trouble believing the unbelievable, and no truth or facts penetrate their distorted world view.
Playing upon the Communist fears of the country in the 1950’s, Senator Joe McCarthy convinced many Americans without any evidence that the government was rife with Communists. McCarthy spun the conspiracy that Communists had infiltrated every level of American government and were plotting a Communist takeover.
Employing the paranoid style of politics, McCarthy said, “This must be the product of a great conspiracy, a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man.” Over fifty years later, those could have been the words of Donald Trump, advancing the dangerous conspiracy that those heinous Democrats had stolen the election from him, perpetrating the greatest crime in the history of mankind.
No good can come of a political movement whose adherents’ beliefs are steeped in lies, conspiracies, and animus. Trump’s paranoid style of politics has caused millions of Americans to believe that climate change is a Chinese hoax, that hoards of violent immigrants are invading our country, that the coronavirus pandemic is no big threat, that Democrats are running a global child sex-trafficking ring, and that the presidential election was rigged. When almost half the country nearly reelects a president who peddles these conspiracies, we are in a dangerous place.
The good news according to Hofstadter is that paranoid-style movements wax and wane. They require the confluence of a charismatic, paranoid-style leader and a significant percentage of angry, disaffected citizens jarred by unsettled, changing times. The current paranoid-style movement will eventually fizzle out, but it’s impossible to predict when or to estimate the damage left in its wake.
The bad news is that the paranoid style of politics never disappears. It has spawned movements throughout history and will continue to do so. Although most common in fascist countries, Hitler’s Germany a prime example, it can occur anywhere.
Writing over fifty years ago, Hofstadter helped us understand what’s happening in America today. We too will weather the current storm and may encounter nothing again as destructive for many decades. Much will be determined by how wisely we choose our presidents.
Richard Hofstadter, essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” in the book The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Vintage Books, June 2008
Daniel Bell, essay “The Dispossessed,” in The Radical Right, New York, 1964
Trump’s Dwindling Influence on American Politics
Donald Trump’s powerful influence on the future of American politics is greatly exaggerated. He doesn’t have a stranglehold on the Republican Party or any more chance of delegitimizing the presidency of Joe Biden than he did of overturning the results of the election.
Here are the facts. Trump lost the popular vote by a greater margin than any modern president. He is the first president in modern history never to receive a positive approval rating during his term. Polls show that a large majority of Americans trust nothing Trump says about the coronavirus pandemic and believe that he is dangerous, divisive, and a racist. For most Americans, Trump will soon be flushed from their minds and have zero political influence.
What about Trump’s stranglehold on the Republican Party? First, over 90% of Republicans and Democrats vote straight party tickets, so practically every Republican would have voted for Attila the Hun had he been their candidate.
Second, down-ticket Republican candidates won crucial elections in states where Trump lost including Arizona, Michigan, and New Mexico. That Trump lost in states where other Republican candidates fared well indicates that Trump’s universal popularity among Republicans is a myth.
33% of Republicans most recently polled said they would not support Trump’s candidacy for president in 2024. Add to that 90% of Democrats and 63% of independents not wanting a 2024 Trump candidacy, and only 31% of registered voters favor another Trump run. Given those numbers, clinging to Trump for four more years would be a political death wish for the Republican Party. It is not going to happen.
Trump’s die-hard followers, the 68% of Republicans who want him to run in 2024, comprise only 19 per cent of American voters. No amount of anger and noise on the right alters the fact that they are a small minority with proportional influence. When gun-toting Proud Boys and their ilk are fast becoming the ugly face of the party of Trump, their appalling, neo-fascist presence drives huge nails into Trump’s political coffin.
To help defeat Trump, a number of prominent Republicans formed several anti-Trump super PACs. Although their impact on the election is debatable, such organized in-house opposition to the party’s presidential nominee is unprecedented. No doubt they will continue their efforts to pry Republicans from Trump and reestablish a Republican Party based on principles, family values, and traditional conservatism.
Trump’s deceitful, failed response to the coronavirus pandemic will also linger in people’s minds. Countless Republicans are among the over 300,000 Americans who have died from the virus, and the disapproval of Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic crosses party lines. Only Trump’s most devout followers would want him anywhere near the White House when America’s next national crisis occurs.
As time cools the current fevered political environment, reflective Republicans, perhaps a bit oxymoronic sounding, will suspect that they would have been better off with a different Republican president. Under a President Kasich, Rubio, or Bush, the economy would still have hummed along, conservative judges would have been appointed, and Obama-era regulations would have been rolled back.
Under a different Republican president, however, dictators wouldn’t have been coddled, allies wouldn’t have been abandoned, no presidential impeachment would have occurred, the country wouldn’t be so badly divided, the lie-ometer wouldn’t have blown a fuse, and a Republican president in all probability would have been reelected. As more Republicans understand they could have fared better, Trump’s influence will continue to wane.
Finally, many Republicans supported Trump despite knowing exactly who he was. They admitted not liking his lying, bragging, and vindictiveness. They wished he wouldn’t tweet so much nonsense. They didn’t care for the man but liked his outspoken positions on their pet issues. They knew he was a jerk, but he was at least their jerk, and all they had for the time being.
Once Trump is out of office, however, relieved Republicans will abandon him in droves, leaving behind that minority remnant saturated in nativism, conspiracy theories, and grievance politics. The rest will look forward to the rise of decent, honest Republican leaders who share their political beliefs. Donald Trump will disappear in the political rear view window, the only way Republicans can save the party from itself.
https://dailycaller.com/2020/11/12/republicans-won-trump-failed-outperform/
Party of Trump a Danger to Country
The current Republican Party poses a greater danger to America than any previous GOP in modern history due to the toxic influence of President Trump.
Because the Republican Party has become the party of Trump, Republicans reside in a false alternative universe where truth is irrelevant. They believe that any media criticism of Trump or exposure of his falsehoods is fake news. They don’t take the coronavirus pandemic seriously and flout the essential health protocols of mask wearing and social distancing.
They believe every false conspiracy theory that Trump employs to attack his enemies. They believe that Democrats are bent on turning America into a socialist dystopia. They don’t believe that Trump’s rejection of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, assault on the free press, delegitimizing America’s election process, abandoning our allies, or cozying up to dictators weakens our democracy.
Trump Republicans don’t believe in science. They don’t think climate change is an existential threat despite decades of evidence to the contrary. They don’t believe the scientific evidence that mask wearing and social distancing are the only way to curb the surge of Covid-19. They don’t believe in evolution and advocate for including creationism in a school’s science curriculum.
Republicans believe the 2020 election was rigged despite all evidence revealing it was one of the most secure, fair, and effectively administered elections in history. They believe that ballots were dumped and votes were switched to deny Trump the election despite absolutely no evidence.
Republicans believe that Trump’s welcoming white supremacist support and launching hateful, bigoted attacks against minorities have nothing to do with the dramatic rise of hate crimes in the US. They believe that far-left groups like antifa pose the real danger to Americans. However, a database compiled by the Center for Strategic and International Studies revealed that since 1994, one death has been attributed to a far-left anti-fascist while white supremacists have committed 329 hate-crime murders.
Almost every false belief that Republicans cling to stems from believing Trump’s lies. Given any other Republican president, Republicans would not have lost touch with reality in such an unfathomably panoptic way.
How does such massive Republican delusion threaten America? If nearly half of the country doesn’t believe America’s free press, the seeds of doubt exist that Putin, Erdogan, Chavez, and Duterte have planted to discredit and then subvert their countries’ free press. If half the country ignores Trump’s abuses of power, attacks on the judicial system, and dictator-like authoritarianism, the balance of powers on which our democracy is based is jeopardized.
If half the country believes our election process is rigged, the free, fair American election process that forms the Constitutional foundation of our democracy is under assault. When a country’s election process is delegitimized, its democracy grows tenuous.
If half the country believes that Joe Biden was not fairly elected, the political divide widens to unworkable dimensions, with Republicans obstructing every effort for the fraudulently elected Biden to do his job. If half the country believes Democrats are wild-eyed socialists, the badly thinned-out Republican middle evaporates. If Republicans obstruct, executive orders are Biden’s main recourse to accomplish anything, further strengthening the executive branch and weakening the self-destructive legislative branch.
Since half the country doesn’t take the pandemic seriously, Trump supporters continue to spread the virus in every state, resulting in ever-escalating infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. They will be responsible for prolonging the pandemic and due to their Trump-mimicking defiance, will be the Americans least likely to take the coronavirus vaccine.
If half the country doesn’t believe in climate change, it will be difficult for the Biden administration to make significant reductions in CO2 emissions. As a result, climate scientists agree that ever more frequent and powerful hurricanes, wild fires, floods, tornadoes, and droughts will ravage the country.
Unless Republicans can free themselves from the disastrous clutches of Trump-think, our election system will continue to be undermined, our democracy weakened, our free press debilitated, the deadly spread of the pandemic facilitated, governmental dysfunction elevated, the violence against America’s minorities perpetuated, and America’s climate-change fueled environmental catastrophes accelerated.
This is America’s future if the Republican Party remains the party of Trump and continues its descent into uncharted depths of delusion and ignorance.
For fact-checking:
http://www.businessinsider.com/right-wing-extremists-kill-329-since-1994-antifa-killed-none-2020-7
http://apnews.com/article/hate-crimes-rise-FBI-data-ebbcadca8458aba96575da905650120d
http://www.mic.com/articles/80179/14-states-use-tax-dollars-to-teach-creationism-in-public-schools
http://time.com/5910256/covid-19-presidential-election-outcome/
Trump Heightens Danger to Biden
President Trump has created a hostile, tinderbox environment filled with his extremist supporters that could put president-elect Joe Biden’s safety in greater jeopardy than would have been imaginable.
Trump has convinced his most rabid loyalists that he actually won the election and that president-elect Biden will be an illegitimate president. Trump tweeted, “He (Biden) didn’t win the Election. He lost all six Swing States, by a lot.” Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones told a gathering of Trump supporters in Washington that Biden "will be removed one way or another." Proud Boys and other radical supporters have vowed not to allow Trump to be removed from office.
By Trump delegitimizing Biden’s presidency and abetting far-right extremism, it is not unfathomable that some Proud Boy, Neo-Nazi, or Klan member with a fantasy-warped mind and penchant for violence would believe it his duty to take down the illegitimate president, reestablish Trump in the White House, and save the country.
According to an Anti-Defamation League report, in 2019 alone, 42 Americans were killed by domestic terrorists, 38 of those killings committed by right-wing ideologues. A Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) database revealed that since 1994, white supremacists and other right-wing extremists have killed at least 329 Americans while only one American has been killed during a left-wing extremist attack, the assailant himself.
Hate crimes are committed by the type of violent right-wing extremists who idolize Trump. Who couldn’t imagine extremists like the right-wing terrorists who plotted to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer plotting violence against an illegitimate president Biden?
While I imagine Trump doesn’t wish violence upon Joe Biden, he also doesn’t care how much his actions raise that possibility. He is smart enough to realize that the outrage he has created among radical, armed Trump loyalists could lead to an attack on Trump’s illegitimate usurper, yet he continues to pour gasoline on the flame.
During Trump’s four years in office, there has been a significant escalation in hate crimes among far-right extremists, and the number of white nationalist hate groups has grown by an astounding 55%. These dangerous malcontents view Trump as a kindred spirit, a president who welcomes their support, encourages their armed vigilantism, ignores their atrocities, and shares their racism and hatred of the left.
How many of these violent extremists harbor the delusion that their greatest act of loyalty to Trump would be to destroy the man who not only stole the election from him but who robbed them of the only president who ever validated their existence? Losing their friend in the White House would once again relegate them to the murky shadows of the far-right fringe, vilified and hounded by any other administration.
Trump is encouraging a “wild” gathering of these fanatics in Washington on January 6th when Congress confirms the states’ electoral vote results. There will be heavily armed right-wing extremists on the loose and tremendous potential for violence. Militants could even be plotting to storm the Capitol to try and prevent the confirmation from occurring. Trump unleashes the furies and then revels dementedly in whatever chaos and destruction he wreaks.
Had Donald Trump been any other president, he would have acknowledged president-elect Biden’s victory long ago and gone about his job. The legitimacy of Biden’s presidency wouldn’t be questioned, the furor among Trump fanatics wouldn’t have occurred, and the heightened potential for violence wouldn’t exist.
Thanks to Trump, however, the situation could remain volatile for some time. As long as he doesn’t concede defeat, neither will his followers. As long as Trump spews hatred and clamors for vengeance, Joe Biden will be an increasingly righteous target for Trump’s most violent, demented loyalists.
Because of Donald Trump, the potential threat against the safety of incoming president Joe Biden has been immeasurably heightened. No president has done more to unleash the frothing hounds of retribution on his successor.
The Secret Service will work overtime to keep the incoming president safe and US intelligence agencies will ferret out the slightest hint of any violent plot from some Trump-inspired right-wing terrorist. President Biden and America will survive Trump’s final maniacal attempt to burn down the country behind him.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/right-wing-extremists-killed-38-2019-anti-defamation-league/
http://www.businessinsider.com/right-wing-extremists-kill-329-since-1994-antifa-killed-none-2020-7
http://news.yahoo.com/trump-promises-wild-protests-washington-165055313.html
Biden Assumes Presidential Role
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President-elect Biden has assumed the role of president in leading the country’s battle against the coronavirus during our darkest days. He has filled the void left by President Trump, who has washed his hands of the pandemic, leaving it to do its very worst.
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Biden has candidly told the American people that despite the beginning rollout of coronavirus vaccines, the next months could be the deadliest yet unless we all wear masks, social distance, and remain vigilant. The majority of Americans won’t get vaccinated until late spring and into the summer, so the risk of increasing numbers of infections and deaths will remain high for several months.
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Earlier this month, Biden laid out a three-pronged plan for combatting the virus once he is in office, including 100 million vaccine doses in the first 100 years of his presidency, safely reopening as many schools as possible, and asking all Americans to wear a mask for the 100 days. As a competent president would, Biden has laid out a national plan for combatting the virus and moving forward, with the education and safety of America’s children a top priority.
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Biden recently received the coronavirus vaccine on television, sending the message to the American people that the vaccine was safe and effective, nothing to fear, and something that we all should take. He noted that because of the virus, he wouldn’t be holding a traditional Christmas family gathering, setting an example that if followed, will help keep Americans safe during the holidays.
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Biden has made America’s battle against the coronavirus his number one priority, emphasizing the need to do everything possible to minimize the number of infections and deaths. Biden’s message is somber yet hopeful, indicating that by following the safety protocols and everyone ultimately getting the vaccine, we have it in our collective power to put the pandemic behind us.
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In short, president-elect Biden has been leading the country by word and example in a way we would expect a competent, thoroughly engaged American president to do during a time of national crisis.
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Compare the leadership that Biden is showing during the pandemic to what we’ve seen from Donald Trump. From Trump, we got a stream of lies instead of the truth, false hopes instead of honest assessments. We were told America was “turning the corner’ while the virus raged uncontrollably throughout the country.
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From Trump, we got the best possible example of how to contract the virus: don’t wear a mask or social distance, congregate in large crowds, ignore the recommendations of the medical experts, pretend that the virus is no big deal, disregard the safety of others.
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From Trump, we got no national plan for containing the virus and subversive advice to resist state-imposed mandates. He responded, “it is what it is” to the ever-mounting death toll, and finally just gave up as the crisis grew worse, the ultimate betrayal of the American people whose welfare he was elected to protect.
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No incoming president has had an easier act to follow than Joe Biden. By providing leadership during a time of crisis, being straight with the American people, and articulating a plan for the future, Biden has reminded us what we elect presidents to do. Four years of Donald Trump’s chaotic, derelict mess of a presidency made it difficult to remember.
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A president’s response in a time of crisis reveals much about the person: his ability to lead, to unite the country, to tell the hard truths, to show courage and resolve, to show compassion for victims, and to inspire people to keep the faith. President-elect Biden is showing all the qualities that President Trump lacks, and for that, we are in infinitely better hands to weather the current storm and come out stronger and more united in the end.
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Everyone certainly isn’t going to agree on everything in president-elect Biden’s agenda to improve the lives of Americans and strengthen the country. However, all Americans will at least have a president whom they can trust, who will restore truth to the White House and civility to political discourse, and who will provide strong, consistent leadership.
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America will once again have a president worthy of the great office and imminently capable of leading the nation, already in evidence as Biden leads the American people through one of the worst crises in our history.
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http://wtop.com/education/2020/12/biden-vows-to-reopen-most-schools-after-1st-100-days-on-job/
Mask Wearing Not Ideological
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I have read articles that I believe wrongly characterize the wearing or not wearing of masks as an ideological divide based on differing views of what personal freedom means. I beg to differ.
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The wearing or not wearing of masks is the difference between right and wrong, knowledge and ignorance, selflessness and selfishness, compassion and heartlessness, science and superstition. To suggest whether to wear a mask is a matter of differing ideological perspectives of equal value is like drawing a moral equivalency between the racist, white supremacist protestors and the counter-protestors in Charlottesville.
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Wearing a mask means that you believe the medical experts who say a mask is the best way not to catch or pass on the coronavirus. It means you respect the orders of your national, state, or local governments that are based on these experts’ advice. It means that you care about the welfare of your fellow Americans and will do nothing knowingly to endanger their health. It means you understand that your personal freedom doesn’t give you the right to infringe on the freedom of others.
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Wearing a mask means that you are doing everything possible to protect your loved ones and friends from contracting the virus. It means you understand the gravity of the pandemic that has infected over 7 million Americans and killed over 200,000 and that no one is immune to its spread. You understand that wearing a mask is a critical part of the national containment effort that can only be effective if every American cooperates. You understand that you are doing your part in helping America to get back to a safer normal.
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Wearing a mask means that the minor discomfort and inconvenience you put up with means nothing and that you care enough about your own health not to jeopardize it needlessly when it takes so little effort. It means you are a patriot, concerned about the welfare of every American and willing to do what is best for the greater good of your country.
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Not wearing a mask means you don’t believe the medical experts who say that mask wearing is crucial to your health, the health of others, and containing the spread of the virus. It means that despite over 7 million infections and over200,000 deaths in the US from the coronavirus, you don’t think it’s a big problem and refuse to take it seriously. It means that you are willing to risk the chance of infecting other Americans and of people dying because of you, an immoral if not criminally negligent act. You believe you are above the law in refusing to comply with national, state, or local mandates for wearing masks.
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Not wearing a mask means that you don’t care about stomping on the rights of others whose health you are endangering by exercising your selfish “right.” It means you are willing to take the chance of exposing your loved ones and friends to the virus that you may infect. It means that you don’t care whether your personal actions may further the spread of the virus, prolong its impact, and increase the suffering and deaths of your fellow Americans.
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Not wearing a mask means that you follow the lead of Donald Trump, who doesn’t wear a mask, ponders the value of injecting Lysol, has ingested hydroxychloroquine which the FDA banned for coronavirus treatment, and said the virus would disappear like a miracle. Along with your leader, what you consider to be a brave and fearless act of defiance against an encroachment on your rights is in fact an irresponsible, morally repugnant act that endangers the welfare of all Americans and your country.
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Of course, refusing to wear a mask is just one symptom of a deeper problem. Most people who don’t wear masks don’t trust their government, don’t believe in accepted science, believe in conspiracy theories, mistake irresponsibility for freedom and stupidity for courage, lack patience and foresight, and are willingly led by a demagogue whose own misguided ignorance validates their own. There is absolutely no space between Trump and these followers and little hope for the social distancing that might contain the spread of the ignorance and bias that is infecting the country.
Trump’s Mind-Warped Followers
It is easy to dismiss the millions of people who refuse to wear masks or social distance as ignorant, selfish oafs. I’ve been inclined to do so many times. The fact is, millions of normally decent Americans have been so mind-warped by President Trump for four years that they are beyond distinguishing truth from fiction.
Trump followers who have believed most of his lies for almost four years won’t quit believing them just because their health and the health of the nation is at stake. They reside in Trump’s dangerous fantasy world where real news is fake news, where Democrats are wild-eyed Marxists, where Joe Biden will destroy the country, and where the deadliest pandemic in over a hundred years is no big deal and will one day magically disappear.
They believe that the coronavirus poses no imminent threat to them, that Trump knows more about the virus than Dr. Fauci, that masks do more harm than good, and that ignoring all health protocols is a courageous expression of personal freedom. As a result, they are the people primarily responsible for perpetuating the spread of the virus throughout the country that continues to infect millions and kill thousands of Americans with no end in sight.
Bringing Trump’s followers back into the real world is a lost cause. Most true believers don’t abandon their demagogue even after his downfall, their sense of self so dependent on clinging to their mythical belief that they they’ll never accept having been royally duped. An overwhelming conviction of Trumpsters is that Trump always “tells it like it is” when in reality he almost always tells it like it isn’t. When they believe wholeheartedly that down is up and wrong is right, no amount of facts, evidence, or common sense will convince them otherwise.
As long as Trump is in office, Trumpsters will follow his lead and continue to prolong the pandemic with their cavalier response and make it much worse than it could have been: more infections, more deaths, more economic upheaval. While over half of America is doing everything possible to contain the virus, Trump’s followers, unwittingly or otherwise, are doing everything possible to assist it.
It is easy to heap the blame on the Trumpsters, but they are little more to blame for their unfathomable actions than Jim Jone’s followers who suicidally swallowed the cool aid or Keith Rainiere’s MXIVM female cult members who willingly submitted to being branded. They are just blindly doing what they think is right in the eyes of their leader.
Trumpsters are ultimately the victims of their demagogue like the followers of all demagogues. They may be physical victims, like Jim Jone’s followers, Keith Raniere’s followers, or the Trumpsters who are infected and who die from the virus by following his lead.
There are always psychological victims, those whose perspective of reality is permanently distorted and who lack the mental and emotional grounding to resist the wooing of the next demagogue. There are also those who will carry with them the guilt and the self-doubt of the decent Germans who supported Hitler, the decent Russians who turned a blind eye to Stalin’s reign of terror, and the decent Trump supporters who are assisting him in causing the needless infections and deaths of countless Americans.
Another residual effect of Trump’ presidency on his followers results from how morally compromised they have had to become to support him. They have simply ignored Trump’s lies that were too egregious for anyone to swallow, and somehow absolved him of all of his worst character flaws: the misogyny, the racism, the bullying, the bragging, the infantile rants, the cruel vindictiveness.
Many Trumpsters, then, have supported and enabled someone whose values are the antithesis of their own, and once so compromised, they may carry with them a lifetime of guilt or be tainted by the corruption that has stuck to many Trump allies. They have followed the pied pier over the moral cliff.
Trump Virus
There is no question that the coronavirus pandemic originated in China and made its way to America via Europe. However, since it reached US shores, one person’s fingerprints have been all over America’s horrendous number of infections and deaths and the continuing surge of the virus: Donald Trump. Make no mistake. In America, this is the Trump virus.
Trump downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic from the beginning, enabling the virus to spread its tentacles to many regions and launch its insidious mission without resistance. By the time Trump was forced to respond, the seeds of destruction had been planted. This is the Trump virus.
As the virus spread, Trump said it would just one day disappear, promoted magical elixirs, and gave people false hope that churches could fill by Easter. As the infection and death toll rose, he dismissed the findings and recommendations of medical experts that contradicted his rosily false narrative. This is the Trump virus.
As some states began to flatten the coronavirus curve, Trump jumped on the chance to exhort them to reopen their economies and for people to return to normal. Most states were nowhere near the level of containment to begin reopening, resulting in a summer resurgence of infections and deaths that has continued unabated into the fall. This is the Trump virus.
While medical experts such as Dr. Fauci implored people to wear face masks and social distance to contain the virus, Trump flouted mask wearing and social distancing. He set the most subversive example by holding indoor and outdoor mass rallies without mask wearing or social distancing, openly inviting the virus to infect and kill more Americans. This is the Trump virus.
States that mandated mask wearing and social distancing were undermined by Trump, who encouraged people to resist state or local mandates as an expression of personal freedom. People who followed Trump’s example continued to infect themselves and others as the American death toll rose inexorably throughout the summer. This is the Trump virus.
Coming into the fall, the pandemic was under no better control than it was eight months before, with no national plan for containment. Desperate to get the economy untracked to boost his dwindling reelection chances, Trump encouraged people to ignore the pandemic: reopen the economy and reopen the schools and colleges. Schools and colleges reopened, states loosened business restrictions, people lowered their guard, and daily coronavirus infections hit record highs. This is the Trump virus.
Not surprisingly, Trump himself contracted the virus along with a number of equally irresponsible allies. Instead of finally acknowledging the dangers of contracting the virus and the need to take all necessary precautions, Trump doubled down on the lethal idiocy that the virus was nothing to fear. He astonishingly celebrated his recovery by hosting a no mask, no social-distancing rally in Florida, where coronavirus cases were spiking. Trump’s message to Americans: go out and infect yourself like I did. It’s no big deal. This is the Trump virus.
It didn’t have to be this way as medical experts have lamented. With America’s wealth and medical and scientific expertise, we should have been a world leader in combating the pandemic instead of one of the worst examples. The only thing that we lacked was a leader with the character, intelligence, compassion, and respect for science needed, a leader dedicated to the welfare of the American people rather than to his political agenda. This is the Trump virus.
Donald Trump has made the coronavirus pandemic infinitely worse than it should have been. Millions of Americans have been infected and tens of thousands have died because of Trump’s negligence, dishonesty, and egocentrism. Experts predict that if we do all of the right things in the upcoming months, which means following the medical experts’ recommendations and ignoring Donald Trump, the death toll could still be an astounding 400,000 by February. This is the Trump virus.
President Trump will continue his monstrous behavior until he is removed from office, encouraging his gullible followers to walk defenselessly into the teeth of the virus. This is the Trump virus, a crime against humanity unimaginably perpetrated against the American people by their own president.
Aftermath of Improbable Trump Victory
What would an improbable yet possible election victory by President Trump mean for the US? It’s not a pretty picture.
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Trump could win even if he loses the popular vote by up to five million votes courtesy of our undemocratic electoral college. The elitist Founding Fathers intended for the electoral college to prevent America’s voting rabble from directly electing someone they found unacceptable. Ironically, two hundred and fifty years later, it could allow a minority of Americans to elect a president the Founding Fathers would have found repugnant.
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Of the world’s 96 democratic countries, only nine elect their president through an electoral college. Donald Trump would lose the election by losing the popular vote in the other 87 countries where democracy is rightly based on majority rule.
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The majority of Americans whose will was subverted by the undemocratic electoral process in 2016 quietly took their lumps. However, after enduring four years of the horror that has been the Trump presidency, they will be greatly inclined to exercise their extra-electoral legal rights if he is undemocratically reelected.
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The movement would begin among younger Americans who historically are most idealistically committed to changing an unacceptable status quo. College campuses would awaken with a fervor not seen since the Vietnam War, beginning in more liberal states and spreading throughout the country. Social media would create a powerfully coordinated student movement employing a technology unavailable in the 60’s.
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The movement would also erupt among minorities and wouldn’t be limited to the black protest movement of the 60’s. Most minorities have been under assault in Trump’s America with hate crimes increasing against blacks, Latinos, Asian-Americans, Jews, Muslims, and the LGBTQ community. The grievances felt across minority communities would weld together a powerful coalition that would include millions of white Americans.
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While not active participants in the protests, the majority of middle-class Americans would be strong supporters who share the same anger, frustration, and desire for change. They would help lend credibility to the movement as would the support of many legislators and prominent Americans.
The great advantage of the movement over the 60’s anti-war movement is that most Americans wouldn’t have to be convinced of the justness of the cause. The greatest task of the anti-war movement was to change people’s minds. Today, the majority of Americans would already be on board.
The greatest disadvantage is that while the Vietnam anti-war movement had a single issue to prosecute, today’s movement would have many potential targets: Donald Trump, the electoral college, racial injustice, climate change, the rise of white supremacy, gun violence, the assault on democracy, truth, and science.
Most successful movements have a clarity of purpose and a single-minded goal that unite its members. The movement would have to figure out its overarching goal, one that would achieve the greatest all-encompassing good. The vaguely purposed, short-lived Occupy Wall Street movement could serve as an example to learn from.
While the movement would attract a huge majority of peaceful protestors, there is always the potential for violence, particularly when peaceful assembly is met with an overly aggressive governmental response. Movements can also turn more violent when protestors see their just demands for change fall upon deaf ears for a prolonged period.
The greatest threat of violence today could come from armed counter-protestors. There were counter-protestors during the Vietnam anti-war movement, but they didn’t carry AK-47s and belong to violence-prone hate groups preparing for the boogaloo, a second American civil war. Under Donald Trump, the seething anger in the country, his encouragement of an armed citizenry, and the rise of violent white-supremacist hate groups create a charged atmosphere where a single match could ignite a conflagration.
The chances for a Trump victory remain slight, but it will be devastating if the electoral college vote doesn’t reflect the majority popular vote. If it doesn’t, a massive movement of the majority rarely seen in America will form and expand with an outcome impossible to predict.
It would, however, be a justifiable, even essential response to an undemocratic electoral system that would allow the minority to deliver a gut blow to our democracy by reinstalling a dangerous incompetent in the White House.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/14/more-than-half-of-countries-are-democratic/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_college
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/hate-crimes-fbi-report.html
Trump, Family, and Allies
It is impossible to exaggerate the willful stupidity of President Trump, his family, and members of his Republican inner circle. They have consistently ignored the seriousness of the pandemic and publicly flouted their disdain for mask wearing and social distancing at numerous events.
These people have risked their own health, the health of everyone they come in contact with, and the health of the American people. Shamelessly, they have worn as a badge of courage their smug, unmasked faces and chummy physical proximity, flaunting their disdain for the advice of medical scientists and the millions of Americans who adhere to it.
The images are disgusting. Here is Trump’s family sitting unmasked at the indoor presidential debate in open, contemptuous violation of the debate guidelines. Here is the tightly packed crowd at the White House gathering for Amy Coney Barrett, among them a mix of unmasked Trump appointees and Republican legislators mingling jollily.
Here are the sickening images of Trump’s indoor and outdoor super-spreader rallies showing thousands of people congregating without masks or social distancing. Here are Trump and his debate preppers, including the now infected Christie, Conway, and Stepien, meeting indoors for hours without masks or social distancing.
We now know the most prominent people to date who have been recently infected through their reckless interactions. We have no idea how many others will test positive or how broadly the ripples of contagion will spread to ensnare hundreds, perhaps thousands of others.
That the White House has become a coronavirus hotbed is stunning, alarming, and predictable. These people believed that disavowing the seriousness of a contagious disease would somehow make them magically unsusceptible, and they paid for it. As they shared and spread their irrational belief to others, the nation paid.
For seven months, there has been a concerted effort by the White House and its minions to undermine the truth about the seriousness of the pandemic, the reliability of medical science, and the importance of following basic health protocols. The White House coronavirus outbreak blew their deceitful scheme to smithereens.
For anyone yet under the delusion that playing fast and loose with the virus won’t eventually catch up with you, the president’s infection provided the starkest evidence. No one played faster and looser than President Trump nor encouraged others to do the same. The president’s portrayal of the pandemic has proven a complete fraud from the beginning, and tragically, over 7 million Americans have been infected and over 200,000 have died as a result.
Trump clearly deserves the lion’s share of the blame for his deceitful mishandling of the coronavirus and its disastrous consequences. He has betrayed the trust of every American.
However, Trump’s inner circle and family members, all of whom were publicly onboard with the deadly campaign of dismissal and defiance, share culpability. They followed Trump like mindless robots, ultimately infecting one another with the virus and also infecting the minds of half the nation who followed their irresponsible, dangerous examples.
Add to the infamy the names of the majority of House of Representative and Senate Republicans who by their deafening silence shared complicity in the greatest assault on truth in American health history. They sacrificed the welfare of their constituents to protect their political hides and will at some point pay the price.
One thing should be clear to the vast majority of Americans. Donald Trump and company, with no pushback from the Republican establishment, sold the American people down the river like no other administration. As a result, nearly 1,000 Americans are still dying every day. That is ten times the daily number of auto fatalities, over twenty times the number of gun murders, over ten times the number of deaths in the Viet Nam War, and nearly five times the number of deaths in World War II.
President Trump’s coronavirus infection could be a watershed moment in American history. It is now clear to the world that the White House has treacherously ill-represented the American people at immeasurable human cost. President Trump and his feckless toadies will soon be history, and with renewed hope, we can begin as a nation to find our way out of this darkest epoch in modern times.
The Inevitable Finally Happened
It was bound to happen. For seven months President Trump has dared the coronavirus to come and get him. It finally did.
Trump has treated the virus like any other adversary: ridicule its strength, bully it into submission. Trump envisions himself stronger, smarter, and more viciously effective than any adversary. He just came up against one more relentlessly vicious than himself.
I wish Trump a full recovery as America’s president and fellow human being, but truth be told, he ended up getting exactly what should have been expected. His contracting the virus was completely avoidable if he hadn’t flouted every health precaution that medical scientists implored him and all Americans to take.
I hope the president will reflect on the suffering that he has caused millions of other coronavirus victims now than he is among them. His arrogant disregard for the seriousness of the pandemic, eschewing the wearing of masks and social distancing, holding potentially super-spreading rallies, and exhorting Americans to go blithely about their daily lives has increased dramatically the spread and destructive impact of the virus.
Perhaps even his most ardent followers will see that Trump has been leading them unarmed into the maw of the pandemic. He has led them to believe that the virus was just an irritant, nothing to lose sleep over or take precaution against. His falsehoods have resulted in the infections and deaths of many of his most blindly loyal followers.
Hopefully Trump’s contracting the virus will be a watershed moment in America’s battle against the pandemic. It comes at a time when the virus is surging in a majority of states with a predicted third wave on the horizon as colder weather settles in.
If all Americans were ever going to take the deadly pandemic seriously, now is the time. Through Trump’s contracting the virus, we see that no person is beyond its reach, not even the President of the United States. We see that any person can be struck down who doesn’t heed the basic health precautions: wearing masks, social distancing, washing our hands.
Ironically, it is possible that in contracting the coronavirus, President Trump has helped America’s efforts to combat the pandemic. Albeit without intention, Trump has exposed the truth for all to see about the pandemic’s pervasive presence and the price one pays for ignoring it.
The Trump administration will never mandate the wearing of masks and social distancing nationwide. However, in the wake of Trump contracting the virus, it should send an unequivocal message to every American that wearing face masks and social distancing is the only way that we will ever get the virus under control.
For the next months, nationwide public messages should air regularly imploring Americans to take the necessary health precautions. At the least, President Trump should admit that he has not done everything he should have to protect himself or to help protect his fellow Americans.
Knowing the president as most Americans do, however, his natural inclination will be to spin his infection in self-serving ways. He could downplay its seriousness, use his recovery to tout his physical and mental strength, and show Americans that contracting the virus isn’t as calamitous as left-wing scientists would have them believe.
That response would be most consistent with the false messaging that Trump has employed throughout the pandemic. It would no doubt register positively with his supporter and prolong and heighten the pandemic nightmare for months to come.
President Trump’s coronavirus infection is stunning yet predictable. It provides a learning moment for all Americans about what could happen to any person who ignores the seriousness of the pandemic and the importance of adhering to the simple, basic health precautions.
Hopefully President Trump will have a full recovery and send an honest, constructive message to the country. Hopefully he will be more fortunate than the 200,000 Americans who have died and the millions who suffer lingering effects.
If anything good comes from this, it will be that we finally unite as a country and commit ourselves to taking all necessary precautions against contracting or spreading the virus. President Trump has shown us what happens if we don’t.
View from Outside America
The US is arguably the most watched and analyzed country in the world. How does the outside world view the US today?
They see a profusion of mass protests against racial injustice exploding across America’s cities, protests which underscore the racial and political divides that tear apart the country. They see rifle-armed vigilantes patrolling the streets, reminiscent of scenes from the most lawless, poverty-stricken countries.
They see a once revered democracy in tatters, its government broken by dysfunctional partisanship, its free press distrusted by half its citizens, its elections infiltrated by foreign adversaries, its president a ranting, corrupt buffoon enamored of dictators.
They see a nation ravaged by a deadly brew of hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, droughts, floods, and blizzards. Better than many Americans, they understand that this hellish environment is fueled by climate change, which the US ignores while pumping out more CO2 than any nation except China.
They see the US as a dangerous country, its rate of gun murders and mass shootings far surpassing other advanced nations. They see a dramatic increase in hate crimes targeting all minorities. They are reluctant to visit the US, accounting for a significant drop in tourism.
They see a country ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, its number of infections and deaths the highest in the world. Seven months into the pandemic, they see the virus surging in the US with no plan for containment, its citizens banned from visiting many of the countries in which they live.
They see a country with a broken health care system, its citizens paying more for health care and prescription drugs than anywhere in the world, and with nearly 30 million Americans uninsured. They compare this to their own countries where health care is a human right, not a privilege.
They see America, a nation of immigrants, walling up its southern border, separating refugee parents from their children and putting children in cages. They see a country that has welcomed and thrived on the contributions of immigrants sending an anti-immigration message to the world, a “not welcome” sign draped over the Statue of Liberty.
They see an America that has the greatest concentration of wealth among the fewest and the largest percentage of poor people among all advanced nations. The see two diametrically different Americas, one for the haves and one for the have nots.
They see an America on the decline in the world, abandoning its allies and further empowering brutal dictators. They see Russia and China extending their influence to fill the vacuum created by America’s “go it alone” isolationism. Respondents to an international Pew Research Center poll viewed President Trump as less trustworthy on world affairs than either Russia’s Vladimir Putin or China’s Xi Jinping.
In short, much of the outside world has lost faith in the US to lead the free world or be the exemplary democracy to which nations aspire. They see a country in decline both internally and internationally, the power balance in the world shifting as a weakened America no longer exerts the moral authority or demonstrates the reliability that it once did.
Since America is a transparent country and access to news is instantaneous and worldwide, the world view of the US is relatively accurate: what you see is what you get. We are the country that the world sees, and the world view of the American condition is little different from the view of many Americans.
I believe it is also true that most of the world is rooting for America to be better, to shrink the gap between the ideal and the real that the Trump administration has widened significantly.
America can rebuild its democracy, repair its relations with allies, reengage effectively in the world, promote racial justice, fix our broken health care system, reduce economic inequality, create a just immigration system, combat climate change, and reduce gun violence. The American “can do” spirit is far from dead.
Electing a new US president can be the beginning of an American renaissance that brings transformative change and inspires the world once again to turn its eyes to America for hope and leadership. We are just an election away.
https://stacker.com/stories/3377/natural-disasters-linked-climate-change
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-u-s-gun-deaths-compare-to-other-countries/
https://www.godsavethepoints.com/usa-tourism-slump-2019-record-drop/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/hate-crimes-fbi-report.html
https://www.epi.org/publication/ib339-us-poverty-higher-safety-net-weaker/
Home to Roost
For decades climate scientists have warned of the existence of man-made climate change and the danger of ignoring it. Well, our day of reckoning is upon us. The chickens have come home to roost.
Wildfires are burning millions of acres in California, Oregon, and Washington, causing horrific deaths, untold destruction, and unbreathable air, and sending smoke as far as Virginia, New York, and Vermont. Tornadoes have killed more than four dozen Americans in 2020, the worst tornado season in almost a decade.
The current hurricane season has been predicted as one of the worst ever. Hurricane Laura recently brought the strongest winds in 170 years to Louisiana and Texas. Following on its heels, Hurricane Sally has caused tremendous flooding in Texas with yet another potential hurricane already brewing in the Gulf of Mexico.
Record-breaking flooding has occurred in Midwestern states in areas along the Mississippi River. Rising ocean levels along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts have caused an extraordinary increase in coastal flooding in recent years.
Every year we are experiencing hotter weather throughout the US and the world. Summers are growing longer and winters are dramatically shrinking and becoming milder. Western states are experiencing less rainfall, and droughts are becoming the most severe in decades.
Influenced by climate change, wind speeds are increasing worldwide, with the West Coast’s wildfires driven by fiercely high winds. Taken on whole, according to meteorologists, the US has the most ferocious stew of weather extremes in the world, including hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, wildfires, blizzards, heat waves and cold snaps.
One would have to be astonishingly uninformed to believe that this onslaught of environmental disasters is merely nature taking its course. The frequency, simultaneity, and severity of these catastrophic events is most unnatural, the fingerprints of climate change on every disaster. And if the CO2 emissions that cause climate change are not drastically reduced, climate scientists predict the worse is still to come. They have yet to be wrong.
The impact of these unnaturally frequent and powerful disasters is devastating: the loss of lives, the destruction of property, the billions of dollars of damage, the loss of homes and displacement of families, the loss of jobs and income. In addition, water supplies, wildlife, agriculture, ecosystems, and human health are all dangerously imperiled by the effects of climate change.
To combat climate change, drastically reducing carbon dioxide emissions worldwide is critical, and through the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, 197 nations agreed to do just that. However, since CO2 emissions can remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, reducing the level of emissions will only slow the acceleration of disasters fueled by climate change, not eradicate them.
Along with reducing CO2 emissions, most climate model scenarios indicate we will also need to remove billions of metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually to decelerate the deadly warming trend. While there are a variety of methods available for CO2 removal including rebuilding degraded ecosystems, the task is monumental in scale and will require an equally monumental commitment.
Climate scientists are certain that the devastating natural disasters occurring with numbing frequency in the US will continue and escalate unless reducing CO2 emissions becomes a national priority. That is pretty well guaranteed.
Tragically, we have a president who not only doesn’t believe in climate change but whose rollback of Obama-era climate regulations is increasing CO2 emissions. While 197 nations are committed to reducing emissions, Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Accord, and along with China, is the greatest emitter of CO2 in the world.
President Trump is clearly a huge part of the problem and for that reason, his reelection is unthinkable. By ignoring climate change, he shares responsibility for the death, destruction, and economic woe that climate change-fueled disasters are causing in the US.
The most galling images on television are those of a concerned President Trump visiting areas of the US devastated by hurricanes or wildfires when he helped plant the seeds of destruction himself. A new administration is clearly our only way out of this environmental nightmare. Failure is not an option.
https://weather.com/storms/tornado/news/2020-04-14-tornado-outbreaks-united-states-2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/09/18/tropical-storm-wilfred-greek-letters/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-end-in-sight-for-record-midwest-flood-crisis/
https://www.foxnews.com/us/coastal-flooding-us-sea-level-rise-high-tide-flood-weather-climate-noaa
https://www.c2es.org/content/drought-and-climate-change/
https://www.weathernationtv.com/news/drenching-downpours-soak-central-us/
https://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/maps/annual-rainfall-increasing-in-most-us-states
https://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2013/05/16/extreme-weather-north-america/2162501/
https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/climate/climate-change-impacts
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jan/16/greenhouse-gases-remain-air
https://e360.yale.edu/features/rebuilding_the_natural_world_a_shift_in_ecological_restoration
https://e360.yale.edu/features/rebuilding_the_natural_world_a_shift_in_ecological_restoration
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/17/trump-climate-rollbacks-increase-emissions-417311
Worst of the Worst
Donald Trump is the worst president in US history, in an absolute class by himself. It is not a difficult case to make.
The presidential criteria on which I base my conclusion include character, competence, performance, trustworthiness, upholding democracy, and acting for the general good. No former president fails worse than Trump.
Trump’s pathological lying, deep-rooted corruption and hateful vindictiveness most clearly define his character. They also explain why Trump is the most unpopular president in 84 years of polling history, the only president never to get a positive approval rating during his presidency.
Trump’s performance as president has been abysmal. This stems from his colossal incompetence revealed by numerous inside sources including General James Mattis and former Secretary of State John Bolton and his harboring the narcissistic delusion that he is the smartest person in the room.
All of his failures required negotiating skills and savvy that Trump doesn’t possess: no improved Iranian nuclear agreement, no North Korean denuclearization agreement, no improved Paris Climate Accord agreement, no Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, no health care reform, no immigration reform, no anti-gun violence regulations, no infrastructure deal, a disastrous Chinese trade war, sabotaged relations with our closest allies.
Trump’s assault on America’s democracy stands out as his greatest betrayal of the country. Whether welcoming interference by foreign adversaries in our elections, relentlessly attacking the free press, flouting the rule of law, undermining the integrity of our judicial system, or accepting the word of a dictator over the findings of America’s intelligence agencies, Trump’s subversion of our democracy would have been incomprehensibly treasonous to former presidents.
Trump’s multiplicity of lies makes him the least trustworthy president in history. His constant lying, distorting, misinforming, and wildly exaggerating have made it impossible for the vast majority of Americans to believe anything he says. An astounding 68% of Americans don’t trust anything that Trump says about the coronavirus, having no faith in the leader of the country in its time of greatest crisis.
At no time has a president acted against the greater good of Americans like Trump has done during the coronavirus pandemic. Rather than doing everything possible to contain the virus with the least loss of life and suffering, Trump has made the situation infinitely worse, responsible for incalculably greater infections and deaths, greater economic devastation, a resurging virus seven months into the pandemic, no national plan, and no end in sight. Trump has heartlessly sacrificed the lives of tens of thousands of Americans for the sake of his warped political self-interest.
Trump has been one of the most divisive presidents in US history, using his racist attacks on minorities and embracement of white nationalism to appeal to his political base. As a result, hate crimes have risen dramatically during his presidency. Mexican-Americans, African-Americans, Muslims, Jews, and Asian-Americans have all been victimized by hate crimes, committed most frequently by white supremacists as well as other right-wing Trump supporters. By his own making, Trump will leave America a more divided, wounded, disheartened, and dangerous country than at any time in modern history.
Of course, Trump has been ranked as the worst or among the worst presidents in US history in many surveys or polls including US News, Quinnipiac University Poll, Siena College Research Institute Survey, and a Boise State survey of 170 political scientists. What separates Trump from the rest of the most infamous presidents, however, is his across-the-board failings and the impact they have had on the country.
Just One Election Away
America is one election away from ushering in an era of monumental progress that will improve the lives of all Americans for many decades to come. It all comes down to one vital, concerted effort by the American people on November 3rd: voting Democratic.
A Democratic majority in the House and Senate and Joe Biden in the White House will enable our representative democracy to function as the Constitution intended: working on behalf of the welfare of all Americans and guided by the will of the majority.
Democrats are poised to take action on every major issue of importance to the American people that has been stymied for four years by President Trump and a Republican-controlled Senate. Without Republican obstructionism, here is what will occur in the next four years.
The long overdue renovation of America’s aging infrastructure will begin. From roads and bridges to freight rail, ports and aging dams to electrical grids and broadband expansion, America will construct a 21st century infrastructure worthy of the wealthiest nation in the world, creating millions of new jobs, reinvigorating the economy , and making all Americans safer and more secure.
Health care reform will finally become a reality. A public health insurance option will be available alongside the current private options, health care and prescription drugs will become more affordable as a result, and the 28 million uninsured Americans will receive coverage.
America will rejoin the international community of nations committed to combatting climate change. Currently a shameful outlier, America will become a world leader in reducing CO2 emissions and impeding the onslaught of deadly hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, and wildfires that ravage our country.
America will become a leading investor in clean, renewable energy including solar, wind, hydroelectric, and biomass. As a result, we will decrease our dependence on dirty fossil fuels, reduce air and water pollution, and create millions of good-paying “green” jobs throughout the diverse environmental sector.
Immigration reform will finally be enacted. It will put an emphasis on 21st century, high tech border security, provide a path to citizenship for the undocumented workers that many American industries rely upon, and provide a process for employers to hire these workers legally.
Quality public education, the key to escaping poverty and achieving the American dream, will become a propriety rather than a governmental stepchild. Federal spending will be increased in districts with low-income children, universal pre-school will be adopted, college will be made more affordable for all, and student loan debt will be forgiven.
To reduce America’s epidemic rate of gun violence and mass shootings, sensible gun regulations will be enacted such as banning assault rifles and closing background-check loopholes. No longer will violent criminals and terrorists be able to buy the most lethal weapons with impunity, improving the safety of all Americans.
To help close the income gap in America, the federal minimum wage will be raised to $15 and equal pay for women will be vigorously enforced. Taxes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations will increase, tax breaks will be provided for the middle and lower classes including increasing child and dependent care credit, and increased funding for childcare will allow working-class Americans to keep more of their income.
With a Democratically controlled Congress and Joe Biden in the White House, every one of these issues will be acted upon during the next four years. On every issue, Democrats are in step with the vast majority of Americans while the current Republican leadership is intent on walking the country backwards.
As a great added benefit, America will elect a president who returns honesty, decency, and dignity to the White House, strengthens our weakened democracy, unites and heals our troubled nation, reestablishes America as the respected leader of the free world, and provides the leadership to bring us out of the pandemic as swiftly and safely as possible with the least loss of life.
A Democratic sweep on November 3rd is the only way that Washington will work effectively to improve the lives of all Americans in life-changing ways. We stand at the most critical crossroads in modern American history, the future of our country, our children, and our grandchildren resting in the hands of every voter.
Where’s the Vaccine Azar?
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President Trump is desperate to get a vaccine up and running before November. Here is Trump’s secretly taped conversation with HHS Secretary Azar.
Look Azar, we’ve gotta get a vaccine revved up before election day. Come on. Someone inoculate me today and if I’m not dead by Friday, we give it to everyone.
Of course, don’t really inoculate me with a real vaccine. I’ve got heel spurs. Just shoot a little water in me for a big photo op if you want to keep your job. If you get caught, I’ll pardon you before you’re even sentenced. A pardon by Trump is better than the Congressional Medal of Honor to Trumpsters.
Look, if this current vaccine isn’t moving along, try other stuff. Have you tried ethanol? What about battery fluid? That’s pretty strong stuff. Try the rabies vaccine. The China virus can’t be stronger than a rapid squirrel bite, which I got from that squirrel Melania gifted me.
Or try the polio vaccine. Maybe it’s a two-in-oner: you won’t get the China virus and you won’t walk around like Frankenstein. Has anyone looked into gargling with a little liquid heroin which I’d definitely try? How about injecting Reese’s Pieces which at a minimum would be a good sugar rush? Is anyone but me thinking outside the box?
All that’s riding on getting that pre-election vaccine Azar is the fate of the world. Can you imagine the world without Donald Trump as president? China would invade America by Christmas and force every American to perform tik-tok dances. America’s cities would be burned to the ground by radical left-wing, anarchist, Antifa, Communist, Satanist, and Methodist thugs. Stalin would run the world from Stalingrad, or maybe his daughter. And people say I don’t read.
In Biden’s socialist dystopia, every American would have to go to one doctor. Can you imagine the lines? And drugs would be so expensive you’d have to go to Cuba with Michael Moore to buy aspirin. The government would control every aspect of your lives, including allowing only four toilet-paper squares per wipe.
Kamala would house millions of refugees from shithole nations in government-confiscated Trump hotels. Every American restaurant would be required to sell tacos and enchiladas. Great American patriots would have to assemble their own assault rifles from black market militia kits. Ugly women would take over Congress and freely roam the streets. Picture that Azar!
So get that vaccine ready before November even if it only works on rhesus monkeys and three-toed sloths. Then give it to kids first. Kids you know can’t get the virus anyway because of their height and when they reach puberty they have hormonal protection provided they use prophylactics. Scott Atlas gave me the research.
So even if the vaccine doesn’t work, that won’t show up on the kids and then we’ll give it to every friggin’ woman over seventy. If the vaccine fails, thinning out those hags could help with my new slogan: “Make America beautiful again.” If that doesn’t work, there could be an executive order for mandatory euthanasia starting with Pelosi.
Biden’s ahead of me Azar. Who could believe that Trump the Magnificent (you can call me that) is losing to a really old, slow-witted political has-been? He wouldn’t have lasted one show on The Apprentice. I’m a winner Azar. I always win. Once as a kid my brother beat me in a game of marbles and I sued his ass for using oversized steelies. If you don’t get that vaccine out, I’ll have you indicted for treason and confiscate your mail-in ballot.
Sorry to have to threaten you Azar but that’s how I roll. I’m counting on that vaccine before the election making Americans forget 7 million infections and 200,000 deaths, which I’ve already done. I’m a compartmentalizing genius.
I’ve also got a conspiracy theory rocking that there were really only 20,000 deaths and the other 180,000 aren’t really dead. Dr. Fauci had them kidnapped from hospitals and shipped to a deserted island where he’s starting a utopian society run by a medical oligarchy. So it’s all going to work out fine, Azar. Just fine. Now get humpin’ before I replace you with the Dr. Stella Immanuel.
Trump Creates Perfect Storm
With less than sixty days until the presidential election, a perfect storm of tumultuous conditions rock the US simultaneously like at no other time: a resurgent pandemic, a race to find a vaccine, a ravaged economy, racially charged protests across the nation, deadly natural disasters creating havoc.
What goes less noticed is the role that President Trump has had in either creating these conditions or making them worse. Without the toxic influence of the president, America could be in a much better place.
Were it not for Trump, we would have had significantly fewer infections and deaths from the coronavirus and would be entering the fall in a much better place rather than with the pandemic under no better control than it was seven months ago. Trump’s early dismissal of the seriousness of the pandemic, false claims, and misinformation contributed to the needless infections and deaths of countless Americans in March, April, and May.
As states began having some success in controlling the spread of the virus, Trump exhorted them to reopen their economies prematurely, eschewed the need for face masks and social distancing, and held rallies without precautions. As a result, the pandemic surged and spread in the summer, the infection rate and death toll once again mounting.
Early in the summer, the president essentially pulled himself from the field of battle and left the governors to fend for themselves. To this day there is no national plan to combat the pandemic, the US functioning haphazardly as a loose confederation of states.
The president has given up trying to contain the virus, musing on the efficacy of herd immunity and putting all of his chips on having a politically rushed vaccine before election day. He has left seven million Americans infected and over 200,000 dead in his political wake and is counting heavily on mass voter amnesia.
Trump’s hateful, often racially charge rhetoric the past three and half years has raised the national temperature, a period of time in which hate crimes have risen dramatically and an astonishing 9 of the 18 deadliest mass murders in modern history have occurred. Trump also gave the green light to police brutality against criminal suspects in a speech to New York policemen and has welcomed the presence of right-wing militia at protests.
Of course, the president wasn’t directly responsible for the horrific death of George Floyd, the ensuing national protests, the policeman shooting Jacob Blake 7 times in the back, or the 17 year old Trump supporter killing two unarmed protestors with an assault rifle. That they all occur on Trump’s watch, however, is far more than coincidence.
How different things would be if Trump was a uniter rather than a divider, a supporter of racial justice rather than an indifferent observer, a calming rather than inflammatory influence, an outspoken critic rather than supporter of police brutality and white militias with assault rifles “patrolling” streets filled with predominantly black protestors. Trump is a big part of the problem and no part of the solution.
Dr. Fauci vs Trump
President Trump has taken to attacking Dr. Fauci regularly as part of his reelection push, a dubious strategy at best.
Most recently in talking with Laura Ingraham, Trump said disparagingly that he “inherited” Dr. Fauci, and “I don’t agree with him that often but I like him.” In July he said that Dr. Fauci has “made a lot of mistakes,” and that he “disagreed” with Dr. Fauci that the US was in a bad place with the coronavirus, a month in which the US had its highest rate of daily infections and over 25,000 Americans died.
Trump’s problem in attacking Dr. Fauci is that polling consistently shows that most Americans trust Fauci and not Trump. It is doubtful that at this juncture, with over 185,000 American deaths, no national plan for containment, and no end to the pandemic in sight, Americans are suddenly going to shift gears and believe the man who suggested injecting Lysol to treat the coronavirus.
Trump uses the scattergun approach to wound any target whom he perceives might dim his reelection chances. Fauci is just one of those targets. He figures the attacks on Dr. Fauci will at the least be popular with his anti-science base and give his three amigos at Fox News plenty of pro-Trump propaganda for their prime-time viewers.
Trump’s bigger game, of course, is to get America back to “normalcy” and turn the economy around before November 3rd. Trump is trying to get Americans to ignore the dire warnings of Dr. Fauci that there is no returning to normalcy with the pandemic surging, throwing a wet blanket on Trump’s attempt to prime the economy at any cost.
If this sounds like déjà vu, it is. This is a retread of Trump’s March exhortation for states to open their economies prematurely, which resulted in the summer pandemic surge, the needless deaths of tens of thousands of Americans, and the US being in relatively the same miserable place that it was 6 months ago.
In a transparently political moves, Trump has brought onboard as a pandemic advisor Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist from Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution think tank. Atlas, who has no background in epidemiology, will serve as a counterweight to Dr. Fauci, throwing caution to the wind and advocating for everything Trump wants: opening the economy, opening the schools, starting college sports.
Atlas has also pushed the “herd immunity” strategy, meaning waving the white flag and surrendering to the coronavirus, allowing it to sweep unimpeded through the population until everyone is infected and by virtue inoculated. Of course, this means hundreds of millions of Americans would be infected and millions would die, a virtual American genocide and unspeakable crime against humanity.
It’s not shocking that Trump could embrace herd immunity since he left the coronavirus battlefield months ago to focus on his reelection. Already responsible for the needless deaths of tens of thousands of Americans, Trump is now considering recommending to Americans the same protection against the coronavirus that Europeans in the Middle Ages had against the black plague: none.
Thank goodness Dr. Fauci can’t be muzzled by Trump and will continue speaking truth to power, courageously standing in the way of Donald Trump leading the US into a national health holocaust. America must ignore Trump and follow Dr. Fauci and the science in taking the only path to containment: wearing face masks, social distancing, and not congregating in large groups.
Trump now has his own medical mouthpiece, which Dr. Fauci refused to be, and trusting Scott Atlas on the coronavirus is no different than trusting Donald Trump. There is no daylight between them, their only goal being Trump’s reelection at whatever cost to the American people.
For six months, Dr. Fauci has done nothing but provide the best possible medical expertise to all Americans and suggest a course of action which, if followed by Trump, could have cut the death toll in half and mitigated the economic devastation. Dr. Fauci is an American hero, leading a corps of pandemic experts battling for the lives of all Americans against both the pandemic and a president who says in the face of over 185,000 American deaths, “It is what it is.”
President Trump’s Record
President Trump wants the American people to give him four more years in the White House. Let’s evaluate what Trump’s America looks like before mailing in our ballots.
Six months into the coronavirus pandemic, Americans are being infected and dying at a rate that is among the worst in the world. The situation in the US is no better today than it was six months ago, and there is no national plan to contain the virus. While the US has 4.7% of the world’s population, it has 25% of the world’s coronavirus deaths. This is Donald Trump’s America.
Last week Hurricane Laura pounded Southern states with the strongest winds in 150 years, and during Trump’s presidency, 6 other massive hurricanes have resulted in 3318 American deaths and over $300 billion in damage. Wildfires that have burned over a million acres in California continue to rage. In 2020 alone, over 30 Americans have been killed by tornadoes, and coastal communities are experiencing record-setting high-tide flooding. Climatologists concur that climate change, which President Trump denies exists, is an indisputable factor in fueling these powerful, destructive natural disasters. This is Donald Trump’s America.
Hate crimes are on the rise in America according to FBI reports, and by 2019, the number of hate groups had reached an all-time high of 1,020. The targets of violent hate crimes have included Muslims, Jews, African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, and the LBGDQ community. The greatest number of hate crimes are committed by right-wing extremists, including white supremacists according to Anti-Defamation league data. This is Donald Trump’s America.
Pro-Trump right-wing militia with assault weapons “patrol” American cities, an act of unfathomable lawlessness in any other advanced democracy in the world. In the US, any terrorist, violent criminal, or violently deranged individual can purchase assault rifles online, at gun shows, or through private dealers without a background check. Among all advanced democracies, the US has by far the highest rate of gun murders and the laxest gun-control regulations. This is Donald Trump’s America.
Nine of the eighteen deadliest mass shooting in modern US history have occurred during Trump’s presidency: Las Vegas, Orlando, Sutherland Springs, El Paso, Parkland, Thousand Oaks, Virginia Beach, Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburg, Santa Fe, and Dayton. Among the targeted victims include high school students, university students, Mexican-Americans, gay men and women, and Jews. In the wake of the mass shootings, President Trump has routinely encouraged more Americans to take up arms, and the federal government has not banned assault weapons, closed background-check loopholes, or required firearm licensing. This is Donald Trump’s America.
The US is the only developed country in the world that does not provide paid maternity leave for women. Americans face among the highest childcare costs among developed nations, yet our federal government spends among the least on childcare. 44 million Americans don’t have health insurance, and despite having the most expensive health care system in the world, the US ranks only 29th among nations in access to and quality of health care according to a study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This is Donald Trump’s America.
Demonstrations have erupted across the country to protest the killing of Floyd George by police as well as other unarmed African-Americans and to call for racial justice. While the vast majority of protestors are peaceful, President Trump focuses his anger on an unlawful minority, showing little empathy for the pain suffered by African-Americans or concern over racial injustice.
Trump reserved his empathy for 17-year old Kyle Rittenhouse, charged with murdering two unarmed protesters in Kenosha with an AK-47 assault rifle he was carrying illegally. In Louisiana Trump said, “So it’s terrible what’s happening to Kyle folks. Terrible.” He also said, “Maybe we’ll have kids patrol the cities and we can call them the ‘Trump Youth,’” chillingly reminiscent of the Nazi’s Hitler Youth movement. This is Donald Trump’s America.
As president, Donald Trump has failed our country and has proven to be a part of the problem rather than the solution in addressing the greatest challenges that America faces. His reelection would be an unthinkable nightmare.
To fact check and confirm accuracy:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/31/economy/europe-economy-gdp-recession/index.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/tornado-season-2020/
https://www.foxnews.com/us/coastal-flooding-us-sea-level-rise-high-tide-flood-weather-climate-noaa
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/hate-groups-have-reached-all-time-high-new-report-says-n973636
https://americanindependent.com/violent-crime-white-supremacists-decade-high-under-trump/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/06/rightwing-vigilante-armed-antifa-protests
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-u-s-gun-deaths-compare-to-other-countries/
https://www.businessinsider.com/deadliest-mass-shootings-in-us-history-2017-10
https://www.insider.com/maternity-leave-around-the-world-2018-5
https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/08/health/child-mortality-rates-by-country-study-intl/index.html
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/04/these-countries-have-the-most-expensive-childcare/
https://www.pbs.org/healthcarecrisis/uninsured.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/right-wing-extremists-killed-38-2019-anti-defamation-league/
The Tinpot Despot of Malevonia
It is not difficult to imagine a tinpot despot in an unstable third-world country with a sham democracy trying to rig an election. Here is a possible scenario.
As Malevonia’s incumbent head of state, the despot first sows seeds that if he happens to lose the election, the results would be bogus because of millions of corrupted ballots from mail-in voting. He lays the groundwork for refusing to be cheated out of office and fighting the fraudulent results.
Next, the despot takes steps to suppress mail-in voting which he feels favors his opponent and could cost him the election. He rails without evidence against fraudulent mail-in ballots and discourages citizens from voting by mail and provinces from implementing mail-in voting, suing one providence and threatening others.
Next, since many provinces routinely use mail-in voting in the country’s national elections, he determines to subvert the process to keep mail-in ballots from being counted. He hatches a diabolical plan to prevent the country’s postal service from being able to deliver and return voters’ ballots by election day.
First, he appoints a political crony with no postal experience to run the postal service into the ground and slow dramatically the flow of mail. Then he tells the country that the post office doesn’t have the resources to handle an avalanche of mail-in ballots to discourage voters from using mail-in voting for fear of disenfranchisement.
Next, he thwarts any legislative attempt to provide additional funds needed by the financially starved postal service to ensure its normally efficient handling of mail-in ballots which the despot is sabotaging. In addition, he has the country’s servile top cop back up the false claim that mail-in voting would lead to voter fraud to discourage voters further.
Without a scintilla of scruples, the despot doesn’t stop there. He determines that there is at least one province where mail-in voting could help his reelection given its subservient governor and large population of senior-citizen supporters who vote by mail. He brazenly says that voting by mail in this province would be just fine but that voter fraud exists in the other provinces, most notably those with disloyal governors.
Malevonia’s tinpot despot determined that by scaring people into believing that their mail-in votes wouldn’t count, hamstringing the postal service from delivering and returning mail-in ballots on time, using his leverage with loyal province governors to help suppress mail-in voting, green lighting mail-in voting in provinces where it could help him, and crying “fraud” and “rigged election” if he lost, he had devised a wickedly cunning strategy for reelection and a justified plan of attack if he lost.
Accustomed for years to the despot’s outrageous, anti-democratic, lunatic behavior, many Malevonian citizens just shrugged their shoulders or shook their heads, knowing that there was no lie too great, no act too despicable for the despot to get what he wanted. Many citizens had heard his lies so often that they believed them, completely losing touch with reality. A sense of gloomy resignation pervaded the land, a disconcerting belief that the despot would pull off his dastardly election coup.
The tinpot despot of Malevonia did his dirty work in the light of day, completely transparent in his efforts to steal the election and daring anyone to do anything about it. And all of this transpired while the nation was being stalked by a deadly virus, making mail-in voting critical and adding to the despot’s mounting record of cruelties against his own people.
Of course, such a scenario is reserved for countries badly beaten down by poverty and years of governmental corruption and brutal quasi-dictators where rigged elections and stunning power grabs are the rule rather than the exception. We would pray for the people of every Malevonia in the world and hope that some day they would enjoy the same type of stable, exemplary democracy and ethical, unimpeachable leadership that we enjoy in the United States. May our great good fortune one day be theirs.
Trump’s Top Ten
Here are the top ten reasons Donald Trump must not be reelected president.
Mishandling of the coronavirus: Through Trump’s downplaying the seriousness of the pandemic, his false claims and disinformation, encouraging states to reopen prematurely, supporting resistance to wearing face masks and social distancing, and having no national plan to contain the virus, Trump is responsible for the needless infections and deaths of countless Americans. The deadly nightmare will only continue if Trump is reelected.
Degradation of the environment. Trump’s administration has rolled back over 70 environmental deregulations leading to increased air pollution and CO2 emissions. Americans are dying from numerous pollution-related diseases including asthma, lung cancer, leukemia, pneumonia, and cardiovascular disease. The country has experienced more frequent, deadlier natural disasters fueled by climate change including hurricanes, flooding, droughts, and wild fires. Trump’s reelection would result in incalculable environmental devastation resulting in tremendous loss of life and property.
Weakening America abroad. By cozying up to dictators, undermining relations with our allies, and pulling troops out of vital regions, Trump has weakened America’s influence internationally, empowered Russia and China to expand their power, and given credibility to ruthless dictators like Putin and Kim Jong Un. Trump’s reelection would result in America ceding its place as the leader of the free world and in the greater spread and influence of authoritarian regimes.
Weakening America’s democracy. By constantly attacking the free press, welcoming foreign interference in our national elections, flouting the rule of law,
ignoring FBI, CIA, and NSA intelligence reports, and undermining the credibility of the judicial system, Trump has bludgeoned the foundations of our democracy. Four more years of Trump would leave our democracy on life support and preyed upon by foreign adversaries.
Dividing the country. Through his racist, inflammatory rhetoric and embracing of white nationalism, Trump has made America more dangerous for all minorities, resulting in a significant increase in hate crimes, frequently committed by white supremacists. Four more years of Trump would make America an even more deeply divided, troubled, and dangerous country.
Pathological mendacity. No president has ever lied with the frequency and ease of Donald Trump. When the US president lies constantly, the office of the presidency is debased and Americans’ faith in government is diminished. The American people need protection from their own president, whose lies have cost countless lives during the pandemic. Four more years of Trump’s mendacity would obliterate truth in government and cause irreparable harm to our country.
Cabinet appointments. Trump appointed Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, a private-school advocate, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former anti-environmental regulations’ lobbyist, and Department of the Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, a former oil lobbyist, to subvert their departments’ core missions. As a result, public education has been undermined, the EPA has assisted in rather than deterred environmental degradation, and the Department of the Interior has assaulted rather than protected and preserved our public lands. Trump’s reelection would keep the foxes in the henhouse.
Supporting the gun culture. Trump has encouraged Americans to buy more guns and has opposed gun regulations common in other advanced democracies with low gun-violence rates. Astonishingly, during his presidency, 9 of the 18 worst mass shootings in modern history have occurred, and Trump’s solution is to arm more Americans. If Trump is reelected, no gun-control laws will pass, gun proliferation will continue, and mass murderers will have access to the most lethal assault weapons without presidential objection.
Character. No president has set a worse example for America’s children than Donald Trump. Trump embodies everything that parents don’t want their children to be: dishonest, boastful, arrogant, hateful, vindictive, egotistical. It is impossible to say what deleterious effects Trump’s reelection would have on America’s younger generations, and hopefully we’ll never have to find out.
America’s future. The reelection of Donald Trump would put America’s future in grave peril. America is not the same today as it was when Trump took office - more divided, more isolated, more dangerous, more intolerant, less trusted, less respected, less welcoming, democratically weakened – and will continue its downward trajectory if Trump is reelected. America will have truly lost its way, a country difficult for Americans to take pride in or the world to admire.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks.html
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/08/683258294/u-s-carbon-dioxide-emissions-are-once-again-on-the-rise
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/24/climate/air-pollution-increase.html
https://thestacker.com/stories/3377/natural-disasters-linked-climate-change
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/activity/natural-disasters-and-climate-change/
https://www.oxfam.org/en/5-natural-disasters-beg-climate-action
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/trump-russia-report-2020-election-dni-coats-2020-8
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/09/trump-flaunts-his-indifference-to-the-rule-of-law.html
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/22/politics/trump-justice-barr-rule-of-law/index.html
https://americanindependent.com/violent-crime-white-supremacists-decade-high-under-trump/
https://time.com/4765410/donald-trump-betsy-devos-atf-public-education/
https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/how-betsy-devos-is-using-the-pandemic-to-get-what-she-wants/
https://www.govexec.com/management/2019/08/epa-exceeded-trumps-deregulatory-expectations/159114/
https://www.nrdc.org/experts/theo-spencer/interior-secretary-zinkes-assault-americas-public-lands
https://www.businessinsider.com/deadliest-mass-shootings-in-us-history-2017-10
https://www.2greenenergy.com/2019/06/01/more-guns/
The Tragic Politics of Donald Trump
According to a recent Hill-HarrisX poll, 82% of Americans support a national mask-wearing mandate to prevent the contraction and spread of the coronavirus, including 93% of Democrats. Sadly, those statistics doom any chance of Trump implementing a national mandate.
First, Trump won’t do anything that has nearly unanimous Democratic support. To Trump, that would mean selling out. If the Democrats had wanted a wall, Trump would have dug a moat. If they had wanted a trade war with China, he would have launched one against Grenada. If they supported the oil industry, he would have bought a Tesla Roadster.
Trump always rides with the minority because they are his supporters. Whether the issue is gun-control, abortion, immigration reform, or climate change, Trump ignores the will of the majority and supports the right-wing minority position: anti-gun control, anti-abortion, anti-path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, anti-climate change.
That 18% minority who are against a national mask-wearing mandate are his people, their belief stemming from Trump’s defiance of wearing a face mask and encouraging people to resist state mandates. His supporters expect Trump always to be the outsider giving the middle finger to convention and science and so-called experts – and he’s not going to change that image just to save tens of thousands of lives.
41 countries around the world have at some point made wearing face masks mandatory, yet another good reason for Trump not to require masks. Trump’s America doesn’t care what other countries do. America does its own thing, goes it alone, and to hell with other countries. That 9 European countries have required wearing face masks ends the discussion. We’re not going to do anything those European welfare states do because Trump’s America does everything better.
As if Trump doesn’t have enough reasons not to support a mask-wearing mandate, there’s Joe Biden. Biden said back in June that if elected, he will mandate that face masks be worn as an essential requirement for containing the coronavirus. Thanks for nothing Joe. Trump’s not going to go along with anything that Biden supports first just to contain the virus. You’re not going to make Donald Trump look bad.
No, Trump isn’t going to mandate wearing face masks because to himself and his merry band of malcontents, that would mean siding with the medical experts and Nancy Pelosi and other countries and state enforcement Nazis and the vast majority of Americans who Trump has thumbed his nose at for three and a half years. What would be best for the country doesn’t even enter the picture.
Trump has boxed himself in. His dismal performance as America’s leader in a time of crisis has soured the majority of Americans on his reelection. Even if he implements a national mask-wearing mandate at some point, he’s not going to win a lot of those voters over, most of whom would view it for the political ploy it would be.
If he does require masks, he’s going to lose a portion of his badly needed hard-right base who would consider him a sellout. Since he’s not going to win the election on his pandemic response, he might as well keep his base, forget the face masks, and campaign for the next 3 months on everything but the pandemic.
The great tragedy, of course, is that an editorial like this should ever need writing or reading. We know what we need to do to contain the virus: wear masks in public, social distance, and don’t act like idiots. That is no sacrifice at all.
82% of the American people agree that we should all be required to wear masks, but because we have a president whose political calculations weigh against a national mandate, we are going to continue losing the war against the coronavirus. Hundreds of thousands more Americans are going to be infected and tens of thousands are going to die needlessly. The economic devastation will continue and our children’s education will remain in limbo.
A national mask-wearing mandate can help change the course of the pandemic and America’s future. Only Donald Trump, the President of the United States, stands in the way. Nothing could be more treasonous.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/countries-wearing-face-masks-compulsory-200423094510867.html
Conspiracy Theories
President Trump loves conspiracy theories. Here’s one that actually makes a lot of sense. Perhaps he’ll pass it on.
Trump is a Russian operative whose job is to do whatever it takes to help Russia: undermine America’s democracy, divide the nation, weaken the US internationally, and make Putin look good. Putin recruited Trump at a secret meeting at his Sochi dacha before the 2016 election. When Trump leaves office, he will be made rich beyond imagination through untraceable off-shore accounts and a string of Kremlin-financed hotels from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok.
Here were Putin’s instructions.
“Donald, I will get you elected, it’s not your concern how. When your intelligence agencies smoke out Russia’s infiltration, deny any interference and in a press conference, say you know of no reason why Russia would interfere. Later say you meant “wouldn’t interfere” instead of “would” to provide cover. Your followers will believe anything.
You will talk me up, Donald, as a strong leader that you admire and a good guy. Tell the world that you want Russia back in the G-7 and invite me to the G-7 conference in the US to enhance my credibility. To maintain your cover, go along with a few meaningless US sanctions against Russia and intimate there may have been some Russian election meddling but do absolutely nothing about it.
Begin undermining NATO under the pretext that allies aren’t paying their fair share. Make the US an unreliable partner its allies can’t trust. In year four remove 12,000 US troops from Germany to strengthen my hand. You will also pull US troops out of Syria to give Russia free rein. Later we’ll offer bounties for killing US soldiers in Afghanistan. Just say you were never briefed.
At home, Donald, do everything possible to divide the country and best-case scenario, incite a race war. Build a wall. Call Mexicans murderers and rapists and prominent blacks low IQ and sons of bitches. Cozy up to white supremacists and inspire rage so they will commit violent hate crimes. Take advantage of mass killings to encourage Americans to buy more guns and turn America into a shooting gallery.
Donald, you are going to crush America’s democracy like I did Russia’s. Attack the free press mercilessly so that Americans won’t trust it, and replace truth with propaganda, something you have a natural talent for. Attack the court system, turn the Senate into a rubber stamp, and run roughshod over your constitution. Make a shambles of your democracy so the world will mock America and welcome Putin’s outstretched iron hand in a velvet glove. Can you say ‘world dominance’ my friend?”
And then the pandemic struck.
“Donald, we must make the most of this opportunity to spread human and economic destruction across America. Pretend that the coronavirus is no big deal, that it will just miraculously go away. Help spread the virus as fast as possible and for cover, blame the governors. Talk nonsense about sham treatments and contradict the health experts. Discourage people from wearing masks or keeping a safe distance. Hold mass rallies to help spread the infection and bully the states to reopen in the middle of the pandemic. Encourage schools to reopen prematurely so that we can thin out the younger generations.
Of course, you will lose the 2020 election Donald. But use it to advantage by spreading propaganda that the election is rigged, using voting-by-mail as the culprit. Convince your followers that when you lose the election, you were cheated, not voted, out of office. Don’t accept the results, encourage your followers to rebel, and hope for the worst. You will have done your job, comrade.
Donald, in America you will go down as the worst president in history, but in the Kremlin, you will go down as one of our greatest operatives. Your matchless asset – unmitigated greed – made no job too reprehensible for you. For that we are brothers. A dacha the size of Rhode Island awaits you on the Black Sea.”
Now there is a conspiracy theory actually supported by evidence and providing the best explanation for Trump’s nefariously anti-American activities unless you believe, like Trump’s favorite doctor, in demonic possession. Pass it on.
Minority Rule
The coronavirus pandemic has brought into sharp focus President Trump’s incompetence in leading the nation in a time of crisis. His mishandling of the pandemic is enough in many Americans’ eyes to disqualify him for reelection. However, we should also not lose sight of the fact that Trump is at odds with the majority of Americans on most critical issues. He represents the minority.
On abortion, nearly 70 per cent of Americans support a woman’s right to choose and Roe vs Wade. Trump sides with the 30% minority that is anti-abortion and if given the opportunity, will appoint another pro-life Supreme Court judge who could be the deciding vote in overturning Roe vs Wade.
According to a CBS News poll, 66% of Americans favor the creation of a national, government-administered health insurance plan similar to Medicare. Trump aligns with the 33 per cent who are against a government program and supports the current private, for-profit system that has left over 20 million Americans uninsured. Trump opposes the Affordable Care Act but currently has no plan to replace it. If reelected, he no doubt would veto any health care legislation containing a public option.
While 61 per cent of Americans favor stronger gun-control laws like banning assault weapons and closing background-check loopholes, Trump aligns with the 39% minority who oppose gun control. While the rate of gun violence and mass murders in the US is among the highest in the world, no federal gun regulations to restrict access to firearms would be implemented if Trump were reelected.
According to a Fox News poll, 83 per cent of Americans support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Trump stands with the 17% who are against a path to citizenship and has used anti-immigration rhetoric to vilify undocumented Mexican immigrants. If Trump is reelected, the chances for comprehensive federal immigration reform including a path to citizenship appear nil.
While a CBS News poll revealed that 64% of Americans believe that climate change is a serious problem, President Trump is a climate change denier. Not surprisingly, 65% of Pew Research Center respondents said the government was doing too little to address the problem. The Trump administration has done nothing to curb the rise of CO2 emissions that cause climate change, and if he is reelected, there is every indication that climate change will grow worse.
Race relations is another major concern for Americans. In a July NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 70 per cent of respondents said that race relations in the US today are bad compared to 26% who said they were good. According to an ABC News/Ipsos poll, just 32% believe President Trump is doing a good job with race relations. Given Trump’s racist-tinged rhetoric and the rise of hate crimes against minorities during his presidency, Trump’s reelection would be a foreboding sign that race relations will continue to deteriorate.
Income inequality is another major concern in an America where the top 1% holds 42.5% of the nation’s wealth. Trump has opposed most of the commonly held solutions supported by most Americans for narrowing the gap: universal pre-school education, making college affordable for everyone, raising the minimum wage, providing universal health care, and raising taxes on the wealthy. During his term, income inequality has grown and will continue to do so if he is reelected.
64% of Americans support voting by mail in presidential elections while Trump is among the 36% minority who oppose it. Trump in fact has attacked voting by mail as leading to massive fraud and “rigged” elections with absolutely no evidence to support his claim. Since states have the prerogative to use mail-in voting, Trump can’t prevent it. However, his influence over Trump-supporting governors could weaken their states’ efforts to facilitate mail-in voting, leading to de facto voter suppression.
On every issue that polls reveal are most important to Americans, Trump’s position is contrary to the majority. If reelected, there is no reason to believe that those positions will change. He will continue to work at cross-purposes with the most Americans, vetoing legislation they would support and attempting to push through his minority agenda. Fortunately, the will of the majority will prevail on November 3rd.
https://www.rt.com/usa/372614-roe-v-wade-support/
https://politicalwire.com/2019/10/15/most-americans-want-a-national-health-plan/
https://fortune.com/2018/11/15/obamacare-americans-with-health-insurance-uninsured/
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2019/08/number-hate-crimes-spike-record-levels-trump-administration/
Trump’s Pandemic Travesty
President Trump has retaken to television for coronavirus briefings to try and resuscitate his flatlined reelection campaign, this time without any annoying health experts alongside to contradict him. The problem is, the vast majority of Americans neither care nor believe what Trump has to say about the resurging pandemic that he is chiefly responsible for.
No, Trump didn’t bring the coronavirus to America, but since it arrived, he has made it infinitely worse from the beginning. All of Trump’s failings have been well chronicled: the downplaying of the pandemic’s seriousness, the false claims and misleading assurances, his resistance to mask wearing and holding coronavirus-spreading rallies, his pushing states to reopen prematurely and the resultant summer resurgence, his encouraging resistance to states’ coronavirus mandates with the “free Minnesota” rhetoric, his threatening to withhold funds from schools who don’t reopen with the pandemic raging across the country.
In May, Trump literally took himself out of the battle against the coronavirus to concentrate on the economy and his reelection, leaving the states and governors to handle the crisis and then sniping at their responses. For weeks our national leader was MIA during the coronavirus war, only to reemerge Tuesday on television in a desperate attempt and for the sole purpose of shoring up his plummeting poll numbers.
The American people are no longer buying what Trump has to sell. He can’t lie away the fact that hundreds of thousands of Americans have been needlessly infected and tens of thousands have needlessly died as a direct result of his disgraceful mishandling of the pandemic. While countries through Europe and Asia along with Canada and Australia have the coronavirus under control, the pandemic is raging out of control in the US with absolutely no national plan to combat it.
It didn’t have to be this way. Given America’s wealth, governmental resources, medical and scientific expertise, and health care system, we should have been one of the most successful nations in containing the virus rather than one of the worst. We should have had the virus under control by late spring, our current infection and death rates should be extremely low, the economy should be opening with the necessary precautions, and children should be returning to safe school environments in the fall. That is where many countries are today and where the US would be were it not for Donald Trump.
The signs of Trump’s downfall as a president were evident from the start. No person as corrupt, pathologically dishonest, ignorant, and self-serving as Trump could fool the vast majority of Americans for three and a half years or succeed as the leader of the free world. Tragically, however, it took a national health crisis for Trump to bring the country down with him, to devastate the lives of millions of Americans and needlessly end the lives of tens of thousands. And we are nowhere near the end of the nightmare.
There is no question that Trump will not be reelected in November because we are not a nation of fools and masochists. In the next five months, we can only hope and pray that he will do no more harm. Trump has been singularly responsible for the needless sickness and death of more Americans than any president in history. Presidents have sent American soldiers into questionable wars, but no other president has callously sacrificed the lives of thousands of Americans for calculated political gain. His disregard for human life is monstrous.
Joe Biden will be elected president in November and he has the easiest possible act to follow yet the most difficult challenge ahead: to lead America out of the devastating health crisis that Trump has hugely exacerbated and to unite the most divided America in modern history. Trump’s lasting legacy will be his utter failure as president during America’s worst national health crisis, and the American people will suffer the consequences for decades.
Freedom vs Reponsibility
People who believe that wearing masks and social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic infringes on their freedom have a warped, selfish, and dangerous sense of what personal freedom means. No person’s freedom gives him the right to undermine the health and welfare of others.
Our personal freedom may allow us to endanger our own lives but not that of our fellow Americans. We can fill ourselves with drugs, frolic with crocodiles, spend late nights in perilous haunts, or pound our heads with a two-by-four. We have the freedom to act as stupidly or recklessly as we want as long as we aren’t doing harm to others.
However, our freedoms are sharply proscribed by law when they undermine the welfare of others. Spousal or child abuse is a felony as is smashing someone in the nose out of anger. It is against the law to knowingly or recklessly transmit an STD or other communicable disease or to endanger the lives of others through criminal negligence.
Whenever people refuse to wear a mask or social distance in public, they are imperiling the health of others. They are running the risk of contracting and spreading the coronavirus to anyone they come in contact with, and they are responsible for the sickness or death of those they infect. If they are super-spreaders, they may infect untold numbers of people through their negligence.
Nothing could be more irresponsible or immoral than spreading the coronavirus to others in the name of personal freedom. It is difficult to make a criminal case against such people because of the impossibility of tracing the infection of one person indisputably to another. If it were possible to trace, in most states these people would be criminally prosecutable for knowingly or recklessly spreading a communicable disease.
In times of national crisis, governments may impose legal restrictions on people and businesses that abridge their normal freedoms. During World War II, the government compelled automobile factories to switch from car manufacturing to military production, put a ceiling on prices for most staple goods, limited food consumption and clothing purchases through rationing, and allowed families about three gallons of gasoline per week.
During World War II, Americans sacrificed greatly for five years until the war finally ended. They were united in their commitment to doing what was necessary at home to help the war effort abroad. They did their patriotic duty without whining about their personal freedom being infringed upon by the government. They did what was needed to help America win the war.
Now we have a war upon our own shores with the deadly coronavirus pandemic, and few countries have handled the war worse than the US. During World War II, Americans made much greater sacrifices for five years than the sacrifices that we have made for just five months. Part of the reason for our failed effort is that it is being undermined by people unwilling to make the very small sacrifice of wearing masks and social distancing because it infringes upon their so-called “freedom.” During World War II, such people would have been considered traitors to the war effort.
Of course, the rise of personal-freedom dissidents has been fomented by a president who has eschewed the importance of wearing face masks and social distancing and encouraged his followers to rebel against state and local health mandates. The coronavirus could not have handpicked a better president to assist it in its deadly mission. Trump has done as much to divide the country and create resistance to the pandemic effort as FDR did to unite the country and foster overwhelming support during World War II.
Americans who protest against doing what is necessary to combat the virus are a small minority, but unfortunately, they have the insidious ability to spread the virus among the great majority of patriotic Americans who are doing what is right. Perhaps we could find an isolated island where Trump could govern and these freedom-loving malcontents could happily congregate and party and infect each other with abandon without harming anyone else. That is one freedom they should be allowed.
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/is-it-a-crime-to-intentionally-get-someone-sick.html
https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/history/info-2020/world-war-ii-rationing.html
Small Sacrifice, Huge Results
It borders on the unbelievable that if we just do a simple thing like wearing face masks in public, we can help get the coronavirus back under control until a vaccine becomes available. Isn’t that the least that any American should do?
Health experts agree that aside from sheltering at home, mask wearing and social distancing are the best way to prevent people from contracting and spreading the virus. Countries whose citizens have faithfully worn masks have had the greatest success in containing the virus. Countries like the US where millions of people have not taken mask wearing seriously have reaped the deadly consequences.
If all Americans begin wearing masks in public and social distancing, we can begin reducing the surging infection and death rates in a matter of weeks. In a matter of months, we can begin seeing the kinds of success rates that many countries have enjoyed since spring.
In Canada, for example, the daily infection rate has stabilized at around 500 and the death rate around 7. Adjusted for population differences, that would be equivalent to a remarkable daily rate of 4,500 infections and 63 deaths in the US compared to the over 60,000 infections and 1,000 deaths we are experiencing. If we all wear masks and social distance, we can begin driving down the infection and death rates like Canada has done.
Containing the virus as other countries have done will allow us at some point to do what they are doing: cautiously reopening their businesses, sending their children safely back to school, getting workers back to their jobs, beginning to rebuild their economies. With the coronavirus surging, we are nowhere close to doing any of that responsibly, but we can get there by conscientiously wearing masks in public and social distancing.
It is rather amazing how little sacrifice we have to make to alter dramatically the course of the pandemic, save countless lives, and put us on a path towards normalcy. During World War II, Americans lived on rationed food, gasoline, and heating fuels for five years to help the war effort abroad. During our war on the coronavirus, we’re being asked to wear masks in public for a few months until a vaccine is available. That is no sacrifice at all.
This is not a time for finger pointing over how we got to where we are and why we haven’t done much better. We must remember the past five months’ experience only so as not to relive it. We must immediately get beyond the nonsense of mask wearing as a political choice or an infringement upon anyone’s personal freedom. We must act upon what we know: wearing masks and social distancing is our only way out of this nightmare.
Historically, Americans pull together in times of national crisis. The coronavirus pandemic is one of the greatest crises we have experienced on our own shores. If we cannot unite in common cause to defeat the virus, we are an America that past generations who truly sacrificed wouldn’t recognize.
While such troubled times cry out for strong national leadership, we can’t wait for it. There will be no national mandate to all citizens to wear masks in public. State and local mandates will be hit and miss. For most Americans, wearing masks is going to be a matter of personal responsibility. If we do the right thing, we can save America from a future that will be even more catastrophic than the present.
Since we don’t have a national plan to get us out of this mess, individually and collectively we must make the patriotic commitment to help pull our country through. We can take it upon ourselves to wear masks in public and social distance, making the smallest sacrifices to rescue our country from the clutches of this ruthless, deadly enemy.
We are at a life-and-death crossroads in our battle with the coronavirus. History will record how we respond for future generations. What we do today and every day forward for the next months will determine our country’s fate, and we know that wearing face masks is essential to our success. It’s that simple.
Those Phony Polls
Trump spokesperson Hogan Gidley said on Fox and Friends that he doesn’t trust any of the polls that show Biden leading Trump, including Fox polls, because Democrats are overrepresented in the polling. There’s absolutely no evidence of such poll skewing, and a number of highly credible polls have for months been getting very similar results.
Of course, Gidley is just spouting the Trump party line, repeating what Trump always says about any negative polling he gets. The internal White House polling, completely credible and unbiased, always reveals very different, positive results for Trump.
This is all good. Let Trump and his followers believe, really believe, that the real polls are all wrong and that he is winning. Let them believe that he is on the road to another stunning victory like 2016 when all the pundits got it so wrong.
Let Trump believe that the 2016 victory playbook is still operative. Let him believe that all he has to do once again is whip his base into an angry lather against minorities, Democrats, the press, RINOs, the deep state, foreigners, protestors, the disabled, unattractive women, crooked judges, the swamp, traitorous allies, DC elitists, environmental wackos, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, and BBC, and anyone who isn’t gaga over The Apprentice or Ivanka.
Let Trump and his followers believe that all he has to do is smash Biden to smithereens like he did Marco and Jeb and Ted and Carly and Chris and Hillary. Let them believe that in the debates Trump will mop the floor with that senile Biden who will be so much cannon fodder for the stable genius.
Let Trump and his followers believe that enough Americans share their biases and ignorance and hatred and xenophobia and victimization to get Trump easily reelected. Let them believe that the huge groundswell of support from 2016 has never gone away and that Trump will easily revive and build upon it with a few wild rallies without masks or social distancing.
Let Trump and his followers believe that most Americans are still on the same page with Trump, that they are okay with Putin and Kim Jong Un, that America’s intelligence agencies can’t be trusted, that climate change is a hoax, that a wall takes care of the immigration issue, that our allies are ripping us off, that the pandemic will one day go just away, that Democrats will destroy the country, and that Stone and Manafort and Flynn and Gates are really good guys.
Let Trump and his followers continue to believe that most American don’t believe all of the Fake News on the “lamestream” media and that they get their truth from Sean and Laura and Tucker and Rush. Let them believe that most Americans reside in the same echo chamber and that they will think and believe and vote the way that Sean and Laura and Tucker and Rush tell them to.
Let Trump and his followers continue to believe that all of the polls favoring Biden are bogus and that the internal White House polling tells the real story. Let them believe that there is no need to even try to expand the base to reach out to disaffected Republicans, suburbanites, or vacillating independents because all they need is each other.
Let Trump and his followers believe that 2020 will be 2016 redux, that lightning will strike twice, that the master conjurer will escape like Houdini, and that Americans will hold Trump blameless for the massive suffering and death that the China virus wrought. Let Trump and his followers believe that most Americans think that the master dealmaker will yet denuclearize North Korea, broker an Israeli-Palestinian two-state agreement, negotiate better Iranian anti-nuclear and Paris climate-change accords, and bring millions of manufacturing jobs back to the US. Just give him four more years.
Let Trump plow the same political fields he did in 2016 to beat Hillary Clinton because it worked then and it’s going to work again. And given those credible, unbiased internal White House polls and those crooked, biased Fox, Gallup, CNN, Quinnipiac, Rasmussen, IBD/TIPP, and ABC News/Washington Post polls, everything is going to be just fine. Four more years of Donald Trump in the bag.
Joe Biden Will Lead
The election of Joe Biden as president is our best hope if not our only hope of bringing the coronavirus pandemic under control. Biden will do the one essential thing that President Trump has proven utterly incapable or unwilling to do in a time of national crisis: lead.
First, President Biden will rely on health experts to help plot the future course that we must take as a nation to get a handle on the virus before it can escalate any further out of control. This is what every president has done throughout the world whose country has been successful in containing the virus: listen to the experts and follow their advice.
Second, President Biden will work hand-in-hand with the states and governors to execute a national plan that will neither allow nor force states into doing their own thing due to a lack of national leadership. We will no longer have a crazy patchwork of conflicting state responses to a virus nor suffer the consequences.
Third, President Biden will provide a consistent, honest appraisal of where we are as a nation regarding the pandemic and what we need to do to one day return to normal. He will not sugarcoat the remedy, no matter how difficult it may be, and he will clearly explain to Americans exactly why the national plan measures are being undertaken and what the results will be based on expert causal analysis.
Fourth, President Biden will unite the country behind the national plan by instilling confidence in the vast majority of Americans that the steps being taken are both necessary and in their best interests. Countries that have had the greatest success in containing the virus have had a high degree of “buy-in” from their citizens, who have willingly made the sacrifices necessary to first flatten the curve of infections and second keep the virus from resurging.
Fifth, President Biden will provide genuine compassion to all Americans who are suffering or who succumb to the virus and to their families, a critical aspect of uniting the country behind a leader whom they believe truly cares about their welfare. He will likewise provide much needed hope for a bright future based Americans’ united commitment to defeating the coronavirus and the internationally gleaned evidence that the national pandemic plan will lead America to that future.
Having helped lead America out of the Great Recession inherited by the Obama administration and into eight years of tremendous economic recovery, President Biden will do everything possible to get America back on its feet economically. However, he will do it in a prudent, health-conscious way that doesn’t create a resurgence of the virus, which as we’ve seen, leads to huge increases in infections and deaths and ultimately sets the economy back even further.
Finally, President Biden will take responsibility for what happens regarding the coronavirus under his watch, admit when mistakes are made, rectify those mistakes, and move on. Citizens don’t expect perfection from their presidents, but they most respect and follow those who are big enough to admit their errors and learn from them. President Biden has always been a person big enough to do that.
How President Biden would respond to the virus and how President Trump has responded is a study in contrasts. Trump abdicated leadership in fighting the pandemic and left it to the states and governors to do their own thing. He constantly presented false and misleading information that left Americans confused and divided.
Trump fought with the governors, blamed Democratic governors for mishandling the pandemic, and undermined their efforts by sending the message that masks weren’t that important and freedom-loving Americans shouldn’t follow their safety mandates. He held rallies without social distancing or mask wearing and pushed the states into opening prematurely with the resultant huge surge in infections and deaths. To this day, he lies that that the surge was the result increased testing.
Trump has never taken responsibility for his failings and blamed anyone and everyone for America’s horrendous infection and death rates. He has ignored the health experts when their advice conflicted with his political agenda. He has divided rather than united the country by pandering to his base rather than getting all Americans on the same page. He has absolutely no plan to get the current surge under control. He continues to show no compassion for the over 145,000 American who have died from the coronavirus.
Joe Biden possesses everything that is sorely lacking in President Trump to lead us successfully during this horrible health crisis: honesty, courage, compassion, intelligence, and the ability to unite and lead a country. Let’s hope that after the November 3rd election and until January 1st, Americans listen to and follow the advice of the president-elect Biden regarding the coronavirus and ignore a president who has made the pandemic infinitely worse than it should have been.
America Cleansed
For America to be cleansed of the hatred, corruption, mendacity, and immorality that has emanated from the White House and hung like a toxic cloud over the entire country, one thing must occur on November 3rd: Donald Trump must be crushed.
He must be crushed in the blue states, the red states, and the purple states. He must be crushed in Pennsylvania and Michigan and Minnesota and Wisconsin, in Florida and Georgia and Texas and Arizona. He must be crushed in the cities and the suburbs and the small towns.
He must be crushed by voters from 18 to 100, by Republicans, Democrats, and independents, by Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, and atheists, by people of all colors, economic classes, and walks of life. He must be crushed by a vast patchwork quilt of Americans who share the unifying bond of human decency.
And we must vote. We must vote by the hundreds and thousands and millions and hundreds of millions. We must vote by mail and at the polls. We must trek to the voting booth by car or bus or bike or feet and endure block-long lines and hours’ long waits. We must not be deterred by frigid cold, sweltering heat, flood, hurricane, earthquake, or pandemic. We must not let one vote be suppressed by forces who would influence the election by denying groups of Americans their Constitutional right to vote.
We must crush Trump on November 3rd for the sake of our democracy, our national sanity, and our national pride. We must crush Trump for the sake of our environment, our health, our safety, and our unity, and for the future of our children, our grandchildren, and their grandchildren. We must crush Trump for the sake of every person living freely in the world and all oppressed people looking to America for hope.
We must crush Trump to relight the Statue of Liberty and restore our historical place as the leader of the free world. We must crush Trump to revive that precious commodity of truth which is the life breath of every democracy and to restore the good in America without which no country can be great.
We must crush Trump on November 3rd to send a clear message around the world that we unequivocally renounce the presidency and the person of Donald Trump, whose corruption, immorality, and dishonesty are antithetical to who we are as Americans and the qualities we expect in a president. We must crush Trump so thoroughly that racists have no place in America, that they either reject and repent their vile bigotry or crawl back into the sewers from which Trump beckoned them.
We must crush Trump on November 3rd to do our patriotic duty. This election must be a wholehearted testament to the American people’s belief in the values of honesty, humility, compassion, human dignity, equality, fairness, and generosity. The vast majority of Americans share those values no matter their political affiliation, religion, race or ethnicity, or economic status. Such core values unite all Americans and transcend the differences that Trump has exploited to try and divide and conquer the country.
The political destruction of Donald Trump on November 3rd must be momentous, ranking among the most lopsided losses in presidential history. His ignominious defeat must be in proportion to how he has degraded the office of the presidency, weakened our democracy, weakened our influence abroad, divided our nation, deceived the American people, and failed to lead the country during the pandemic, resulting in needless suffering and death.
After three and a half years, we know who Donald Trump is, someone we wouldn’t want for a neighbor, relative, or friend, let alone a president. We hate what he has done to the country, and we worry about the damage he could still inflict in the next five and a half months.
However, we can mitigate that damage on November 3rd by showing the world that Americans overwhelmingly reject Donald Trump and the destructive direction that he has taken the country, rendering him the lamest of lame ducks. All we have to do is vote like the future of America depends on it, which it does.
Holding Trump Accountable
Who is going to hold Donald Trump accountable for the needless deaths of tens of thousands of Americans from the coronavirus? It no doubt will be left to the American people on November 3rd. Trump has knowingly and willingly sacrificed the lives of American men, women, and children in his callous, heartless quest for reelection.
Trump has provided ample evidence of a dangerously warped mind throughout his presidency: the chronic, compulsive lying, the wacko conspiracy theories, the false, self-aggrandizing claims, the constant petty vindictiveness, the grandiose deal-making disasters, the persecution complex, the absence of compassion, the overweening self-absorption, the sociopathic lack of conscience. This was the president who was going to lead America through its worst national health crisis in over 100 years.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has been responsible for the needless deaths of Americans at every turn. First, he dismissed its seriousness for over two months, addressing it only after its spread made it impossible to ignore. By then the virus had ravaged the Northeast and gained an American foothold that it never relinquished. Had the government acted aggressively even a week or two sooner as did nations that controlled the virus from its onset, thousands of lives would have been saved.
Once Trump responded to the pandemic, his lies, misinformation, and false claims only made things worse. According to Trump, the virus was under control. It would go away miraculously. The country could be “back to work” by Easter. Hydroxychloroquine could prevent coronavirus infection. Lysol injections may be a great treatment. Spouting outrageous malarkey has been Trump’s stock in trade, but now it was resulting in the sickness and needless deaths of thousands of Americans.
As the death toll mounted, Trump spinelessly sought the exit, leaving the states to battle the virus and then blaming governors for the disaster. Every state handled the situation differently, and governors aligned with Trump downplayed the pandemic like their leader with the same disastrous results. The lack of a national plan, which requires presidential leadership, has been a huge detriment and continues to result in more needless infections and deaths.
Trump further contributed to the spread of the virus and resultant deaths by subverting the work of the states to control the pandemic. He refused to wear a mask, sending the message that state or locally mandated mask wearing wasn’t necessary. He supported protesters who claimed state mandates infringed upon their “freedom” to act irresponsibly with his “Liberate Minnesota” tweet, a clear call to Americans to ignore state and local mandates and the CDC guidelines.
Despite Trump’s subversive behavior, enough states had tenuously “flattened the curve” for Trump to claim a false victory over the pandemic. He exhorted the states to open their economies and get back to normal. He held rallies in Phoenix and Tulsa without social distancing or mask wearing, contributing to the local spread of the virus and sending the insane message that there was nothing to fear. Today we are living with the consequences of that reckless, premature return to normal: a record rate of infections and a mounting death toll, compliments of Donald Trump.
According to Trump, the summer infection and death rates are the result of increased testing, not a surge in the pandemic. In other words, Americans, keep behaving like everything is perfectly normal as the pandemic rages. This may be the deadliest lie Trump has ever told. In his twisted mind, economic recovery and reelection will follow closely behind the rising infection rate and death toll of his creation.
Trump has not only cost untold lives and shattered families but devastated the economy by enabling the pandemic to continue to thrive in America. Now he is bullying school districts to reopen in the fall whether it is safe or not, endangering the welfare of millions of children and their teachers. Anything to create the deadly illusion of normalcy.
Trump has not only proven himself an incompetent, deceitful, cowardly leader in a time of crisis, his behavior has been monstrous, destroying the lives of countless men, women, and children for his maniacal self-gain. No president has betrayed the American people like Donald Trump, and he couldn’t care less.
https://www.fox9.com/news/president-trump-tweets-liberate-minnesota
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-guidelines-on-opening-up-america-leave-much-up-to-governors/
Orango The Super Villain
Here’s a sci-fi movie script looking for a producer. I picture a low-budget, B-grade movie, PG rating. Check out the plot.
A super villain named Orango, a Marvel comic-type bad guy, is out to destroy the strongest country on the planet Zoor: Lightana. Orango, recognizable by his flaming mane of orange hair, has special mind-control superpowers that have induced normal, law-abiding Lightanans to walk zombie-like to the polls and elect him President of Lightana.
With his mind control, Orango turns his every lie into truth in the ears of decent Lightanans, creating a false reality for them to inhabit. However, fortunately for the country and the movie, many Lightanans are impervious to his mind control based on reverse magnetic fields in their regions of the country. While they don’t know that he is a super villain, they have their suspicions, an early bit of foreshadowing.
Like any good arch villain, Orango ultimately wants to control the planet, but he must start by destroying the strongest country. He enlists the support of countries with the most brutal dictators, who will gladly collude with him against their democratic enemy, Lightana. He verbally assaults and turns his back on Lightana’s loyal democratic allies, whom he presumes will not try to rescue the country that abandoned them.
Orango sows the seeds of a race war in Lightana by turning his mind-controlled purple Ligthtanans, the majority-colored citizens, against minorities of all colors: blue, red, green, and multi-colored. He verbally attacks every minority and sows hatred and fear in his followers against all non-purple citizens as well as non-purple outsiders who seek refuge in Lightana. Thousands of the most vile purple Lightanans inspired by Orango crawl up from the sewers to attack and kill non-purple Lightanans. The match has been lit.
Orango then uses the propitious emergence of a deadly planet-wide virus as a means to destroy many Lightanans and the Lightanan economy. He convinces mind-controlled Lightanans that the virus is no threat to them and that it will go away, relishing the wildfire spread of the virus and the mounting body count. When it appears that Lightanans impervious to his mind control are beginning to make headway against the virus, he convinces mind-controlled Lightanans that everything is under control and to return to normal activity, creating a renewed, deadly spread of the virus which Orango is counting on killing millions more Lightanans and gutting the economy.
Orango simultaneously works to weaken Lightana’s democracy and ultimately destroy it. He borrows the playbook from former and current dictators in the countries of Malruski, North Rottenkor, and Germinfesto by undermining Lightana’s free press, coopting its legislative branch, sowing distrust in government among mind-controlled Lightanans, and infecting national elections through foreign infiltration. To help accomplish his purpose, he surrounds himself with the most immoral, spineless sycophants and turns Germinfesto former dictator Hitelsnot’s Night of the Long Knives into a perpetual Lightanan nightmare.
Of course, this is just a Marvel-type movie, so we know that Orango is going to be brought down in the nick of time, his evil plan uncovered, the country of Lightanan saved, its democracy reinvigorated, colluding dictators brought to justice, and alliances renewed and strengthened. The only difference in this movie is that there aren’t any male and female superheroes uniting to bring Orango down in a high-tech, battle-royale finale.
In this movie, it is all the honest, hard-working Lightanan citizens who prevail against Orango. The more outrageous Orango’s behavior in executing his evil plot, the more his mind-control powers weaken, freeing hundreds, then thousands, then millions of mind-controlled Lightanans from his mental clutches. In huge numbers they awaken and unite with the millions who were on to Orango from the beginning and, great rule-of-law democracy that Lightana is, they destroy him at the ballot box. Unspectacular but inspiring. The optional ending of launching Orango into planetary orbit didn’t fit the projected budget.
Of course, if not a Marvel-type happy-ending movie, this could have had a disturbing, dystopian 1984 conclusion with Orango as Big Brother. Either way, it’s just fantasy, an arch comic-book villain attempting to destroy some fictitious country on a fictitious planet. Nothing to take seriously.
New Trump Family Reality Show
When President Trump gets unceremoniously bounced from the White House on November 3rd, he is bound to surface again on reality television. He’s got a built-in audience of followers who would buy a multi-channel upgrade just to keep watching the Trump Travelin’ Snake Oil Show.
The title of the reality show will be “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire.” It will be shown on the same channel as Honey Boo Boo and My Big Redneck Wedding. Trump will be the game show host decked out in a white suit, blue shoes, and a red MAGA cap.
At the beginning of each show, Trump will put his hand to his cap bill and ask the audience, “Want me to take it off? Want me to take it off?” The first two queries will be greeted with a loud chorus of “No!” and a third query with a thunderous, well-rehearsed “Never!” at which Trump grins broadly, his MAGA-capped audience going wild.
Here’s the show. Three contestants come on individually and talk to the panel of judges: Ivanka and Donald Jr., along with his girlfriend Kimberly to boost the ratings. Each contestant tells an outlandish story, but two out of the three stories are actually true! Only one contestant tells a lie. (Yeah, it’s an old game-show redo, but that’s television.) Each panel member votes for the contestant that he or she thinks is lying. The contestant that gets the most votes wins an all-expenses paid weekend at Mar-a-Largo!
Here’s how the liar is revealed to the audience and judges: his pants literally burst into flames! He runs around the stage yelling (wearing fire-retardant long-johns) with Trump chasing him with a fire extinguisher. Everyone is doubling over with laughter and after a couple of laps, Trump extinguishes the flame with a massive blast of orange Trump-patented foam. Then he bends over and pants audibly for a few seconds, the audience believing it part of the act.
But that’s not the end of the show. The finale is yet to come, and you know who’s going to be a participant. For the grand prize, the winner competes against Trump in the “greatest liar” showdown. If the contestant wins, his weekend stay at Mar-a-Large is extended to a full week and a round of golf with a Donald Trump look-alike! If Trump wins, he chases Don Jr’s girlfriend around stage in a faux attempt to kiss her, with Don Jr. eventually intervening and planting one on Kimberly. Trump gives a theatrical palms up “Oh well,” and envelops Ivanka in an awkward fatherly embrace.
Just before the lie-off showdown, Trump always says to the contestant, “You know who you’re up against!” and the contestant always responds, “I’ve got my work cut out for me!” as the audience laughs and the judges smile knowingly.
Trump always goes first and tells a whopper of a tale, and the winning contestant follows with his own whopper. For the showdown, the judges put their heads together and come up with a single deciding vote, not risking any difference of opinion that might smack of disloyalty. Sometimes Trump wins, sometimes the contestant wins. When the liar’s pants burst into flame, in a continuing bit role Melania rushes in with a fire extinguisher and gives the pants a good foaming.
When Trump wins, in a great show of benevolence that confuses his audience, he grabs the loser and says, “Hey, you’re going to Mar-a-Largo for the full week anyway. The Donald’s gonna take care of you!” Waves of applause and a completely incongruous chant of “Lock her up!” erupt, a bittersweet tribute to Trump and hankering for the good ol’ days of euphoric mob hysteria. Trump joins in wistfully.
At the end of each show, the Trumps plus Kimberly come to center stage, put their arms around one another and sway back and forth singing the show’s theme song, King and Country’s “It’s Not Over Yet,” the audience cued to sing and sway along. Finally, Trump and the audience simultaneously toss their MAGA caps high into the air, captured on super slow motion, the caps hanging magically in the air as the credits role. Seen nightly on the Delusion Channel.
An Independence Day to Mourn
Today is perhaps the least exhilarating Fourth of July I’ve experience, with little to celebrate and much to be saddened over. It felt more for me like a day of mourning, beginning with remembering the 131,549 Americans who have lost their lives to the coronavirus and continuing with the tattered state in which we find our country.
Celebrations like President Trump’s mass gathering in South Dakota, which endangered the lives of thousands of Americans who neither social distanced nor wore face masks, were more inappropriate than patriotic. His divisive rhetoric at the gathering, pitting Americans against Americans, was a perversion of Lincoln’s admonition that “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
While on the Fourth we honor the brave Americans for whom we owe our nation’s independence, we have a president who would have been a Tory, enamored of the sovereignty of kings and hedging his bets against a loss by the colonies. No president was less suited to deliver an Independence Day message than one who puts his political welfare above that of the American people, who has no understanding of what sacrificing for the country means.
This Fourth of July doesn’t feel like a time to celebrate America’s greatness. A nation of immigrants, we no longer welcome “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” A great and reliable ally in two world wars, we no longer have the backs of our democratic brethren who have trusted us for over a hundred years. A nation historically feared by brutal dictators, we have a president who enhances their credibility and furthers their nations’ global ambitions through an isolationist foreign policy.
It is difficult to celebrate our great democracy when we have a president who tramples on it very foundations. Trump undermines the free press, ignores the Constitution, violates the rule of law, welcomes foreign interference in our elections, attacks our judicial system and intelligence agencies, and spreads “Deep State” conspiracy theories that erode people’s faith in government. Our democracy is being weakened from within and without, a cause for growing alarm, not celebration.
It is hard to celebrate the Fourth in a nation that is more divided than at any time in modern history. President Trump has turned the cracks that tend to divide Americans along racial, ethnic, religious, and political lines into massive fissures through his hateful rhetoric. Hate crimes have increased dramatically, white supremacy is on the rise, ethnic and religious minorities are living in greater fear, and any common ground between parties where political solutions once lay has been obliterated.
It is difficult to find cause for celebration when America’s place of preeminence in the world is in decline. Our historical status as a beacon of hope for the oppressed people of the world is badly tarnished. Our traditional allies are forging their own alliances and agreements without America. We are not among the world’s leaders in quality of health care, life expectancy, infant-mortality rate, or safety-net programs to protect the most vulnerable.
We are, however, among the leaders in the rate of gun murders, the percentage of poor people among advanced nations, the greatest concentration of wealth among the fewest people, the most expensive health care system, and the greatest number of uninsured among advanced democracies. America’s “exceptionalism” has taken a nasty turn.
While this year’s Fourth of July doesn’t feel like a time to celebrate, it is a time for us to commit to a rebuilding of America that is clearly within our reach: strengthening our participatory democracy, uniting our divided country, providing affordable health care for all Americans, recommitting to our allies, making our children safer from gun violence, reengaging in the world in ways that strengthen all democracies, reducing the poverty level, and making the American dream a reality for future generations.
There is nothing that we can’t do as a country when we are united in common cause to improve the lives of all Americans. I have no doubt that Joe Biden can heal and unite our country and help lead us to a future where our greatest potential can be realized. America will rise again, and that is cause for hope if not celebration on this day of independence.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/02/trump-immigration-policy-five-charts/
https://hillreporter.com/times-donald-trump-praised-dictators-and-controversial-leaders-31009
https://www.jpost.com/international/iran-russia-china-turkey-celebrate-collapse-of-us-630051
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/oct/23/how-trump-disparages-the-constitution/
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/22/politics/trump-justice-barr-rule-of-law/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/14/politics/andrew-mccabe-donald-trump-department-of-justice/index.html
https://www.foxnews.com/us/hate-crimes-in-us-on-the-rise
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/06/latinos-trump-hate-crimes-el-paso
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-04-01/coronavirus-anti-asian-discrimination-threats
https://www.jta.org/2018/11/13/united-states/hate-crimes-jews-rise-37-fbi-reports
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/best-healthcare-in-the-world
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/countries-most-generous-welfare-programs-110004319.html
Doing More Harm Than Good
The coronavirus is surging in states across the country as President Trump told unmasked attendees at his June 23rd rally in Phoenix that this is “hopefully the end of the pandemic.” The complete disconnect between the alarming reality of the coronavirus spread and Trump’s false rhetoric highlights how after five months into the pandemic, the Trump administration continues to do more harm than good.
While the coronavirus sickens and kills growing numbers of Americans, the Trump administration has moved on. While its leadership on the pandemic throughout March, April, and May was erratic and disorganized, there was at least an effort to provide Americans with sound advice from epidemiological experts and to encourage us to take the proper safety measures. Those days are over.
Trump has shifted into full reelection mode, and the White House has washed its hands of the pandemic, leaving states to handle whatever happens on their own. Not only has Trump abandoned the leadership role any responsible president would assume until the crisis ends, he has made it infinitely worse through his irresponsible behavior: refusing to wear a mask, holding mass rallies without social distancing and mask wearing, encouraging states to reopen prematurely and people to return to normal.
Never in history has a president abandoned the American people in a time of national crisis, washed his hands of the whole mess and proceeded to make it worse. Trump has walked away from the field of battle, led Americans to believe that the war is over, and encouraged us to walk incautiously and unprotected into a battlefield littered with coronavirus mines.
Countries that have had the greatest success in containing the coronavirus have had strong, consistent presidential leadership and implemented a comprehensive national plan. America has had neither, and now our president has gone AWOL, abdicating his responsibility as commander-in-chief and leaving our governor/generals to go it alone, devising whatever coronavirus war plans they see fit. Imagine during World War II FDR telling his generals, “I’m really tired of this damn war, it’s about over anyway, and I need to concentrate on my reelection. Do whatever the hell you think might work.”
No one can blame the European Union for putting a ban on American travel. We are in greater disarray today that ever. Our daily number of coronavirus cases are setting record highs, we have no national plan to contain the spread, governors’ efforts are unconcerted and unevenly effective, Trump followers ignore the alarms of public health experts, and our president says, “What pandemic? Go out and congregate!” With our continuously high rate of coronavirus infections, banning travel of Americans to other countries is a no brainer.
At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, we are a country without a leader. However, given our current president, maybe that’s a good thing. A June poll by The New York Times and Siena College showed only 26 percent of respondents believed Trump was a reliable source of information on the coronavirus. That means that 74% of respondents aren’t going to trust his leadership anyway.
A 50-state poll of 22,000 respondents conducted April 17-26 by researchers from Harvard, Northeastern, and Rutgers Universities revealed that every single governor had a higher rating for handling the coronavirus than Trump did in their state. The average gap between Trump and the governors’ approval rating was a whopping 22 points, with Trump at 44 percent nationally and governors at 66 percent on average. Clearly, Americans trust their governors much more than the president on the pandemic and are more like to follow their leadership. The more that Trump stays out of the picture, the better.
Regarding the coronavirus pandemic, America is a rudderless ship in stormy seas, its captain counting the buttons on his pea coat. We can only hope and pray that America’s governors follow the advice of pandemic experts and lead us wisely through these precarious summer months until Trump is relieved of duties on November 3rd and honest, compassionate, competent leadership is restored in the White House. May the next four months pass with the speed of Hermes.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/all-50-governors-handling-coranavirus-better-than-trump.html
Coronavirus Facilitator
At President Trump’s June 23rd Arizona rally, thousands of young Republicans were packed into a Phoenix church without face masks or social distancing. Trump had created the ideal conditions for the attendees to contract and spread the coronavirus.
Aside from being shocking and morally repugnant, Trump’s willingness to sacrifice the health and safety of these young people for political gain was an act of criminal negligence. Under these circumstances, the Maricopa County DA has the power to prosecute the President of the United States.
Criminal negligence is a statutory offense that arises when someone puts someone else's life or body at risk of harm by meaningfully disobeying a law that's in place to protect people. Maricopa County, wherein the rally at the Phoenix church was located, mandates wearing masks in public to protect people. Neither the young rally attendees nor Trump wore a mask, violating the County mandate. Trump’s disobeying the mandate is legally equivalent to disobeying a law.
There is no question that Trump put every young person’s “life or body at risk of harm” by creating the perfect conditions for people to be infected: a large, indoor gathering without social distancing or mask wearing. Trump was also violating the County’s mask-wearing mandate, which was put in place to “protect people,” and allowing others to do the same. By “meaningfully disobeying” the mandate and as a result putting the attendees’ “life or body at risk of harm,” Trump was criminally negligent by definition.
Of course, Trump will never be prosecuted for criminal negligence no matter how guilty he is. A Maricopa County DA won’t bring down a president who has violated the rule of law with impunity for three and a half years. The only thing that can stop Trump is the American people on November 3rd. We will be the judge and jury that Trump will never face in court and cast an overwhelming vote of “guilty.”
The criminality of Trump’s behavior in Phoenix goes to the core of who Trump is: a person who will do anything for personal gain. He had no problem scamming people out of their life savings who attended fake Trump University. He welcomed the help of foreign adversaries like Russia and China to get him reelected. He tried to coerce Ukraine into digging up dirt on his political rival by withholding military aid. He dismissed the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic from January to mid-March with devastating results.
Endangering the lives of young Americans at the Phoenix church for political gain, however, takes Trump’s immorality to a new level. He was fully aware that he was welcoming thousands of young men and women into an environment where they could contract and spread the virus: a crowded, indoor space with no social distancing or mask wearing. He was endangering their lives and anyone with whom they came in contact, and he simply didn’t care. And astonishingly, this at a time when Arizona was experiencing a powerful resurgence of coronavirus cases.
Beyond that, Trump was sending a message to the nation that the coronavirus pandemic is practically over, that wearing masks and social distancing isn’t necessary, that crowding unprotected into indoor spaces is fine. He sends this message as the number of coronavirus cases is spiking across the country with the reopening of states, his dismissive ignorance adding immeasurably to the potential number of new infections and deaths. After all, for patriotic Americans to sacrifice for the common good – Trump’s reelection – no amount of human suffering is too great.
Never has there been a president with such a callous disregard for the welfare of all Americans which presidents have been honor-bound to protect since George Washington took the oath of office. But Donald Trump has no honor, no sense of obligation to others, no concern beyond what best serves his warped agenda. What kind of heartless miscreant would stuff thousands of young people into a church for 90 minutes at the height of a state’s pandemic to suffer whatever fate awaited them? No answer could be more inconceivable or appalling then, “the President of the United States.”
Defeating Donald Trump
If the Democrats cannot defeat Donald Trump in November, they will be wandering in the wilderness for a long time. They will have been beaten by an incumbent who is in one of the weakest positions in history for reelection.
Biden’s latest June approval rating is 51%, and no candidate with an approval rating of 50% or greater in June has ever lost an election since Gallup began its presidential polls in 1936. Biden also holds a double-digit lead over Trump in June, and no presidential candidate with a June double-digit lead has ever lost in the twenty presidential elections since 1936. A Biden defeat would defy the results of 86 years of presidential election polling.
The US economy is in recession resulting from the coronavirus pandemic and exacerbated by President Trump’s desultory response. Since the Civil War of 1861, only one incumbent, William McKinley, has won reelection with a recession occurring within the last two years of his presidency, and the 1899-1900 recession was considered mild. Given the current deepening recession, Trump’s chances of duplicating McKinley’s feat are close to nil.
Leaders who guide the nation ably through periods of crisis increase their public standing: Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, FDR during the Great Depression, JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis, George. W. Bush after 9/11. According to the latest ABC/IPSOS poll, 58% of Americans disapprove of President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic crisis. Failing the greatest leadership test of his presidency is another devastating blow to Trump’s reelection chances.
Trump also has gotten low grades for his handling of the national anti-racism protests following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis policeman. Polls from CBS News, Emerson College, Reuters/Ipsos, and
Monmouth University have shown a majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s inflammatory response. In addition, the latest Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll found that 61 percent of voters believe Biden would be better at solving issues of race and policing, yet another nail in Trump’s reelection coffin.
Scathing tell-all books and public critiques of Trump’s presidency by respected insiders like General Mattis and John Bolton have done irreparable damage. The first-hand accounts are remarkably similar in depicting Trump as a shockingly ignorant, incompetent, overmatched, undisciplined, self-serving buffoon. Trump’s blanket condemnation that his former appointees are all “liars” holds little weight in the court of public opinion.
A president who has never been popular with a majority of Americans, his highest approval rating reaching only 45%, now faces a perfect storm of conditions which will be difficult if not impossible to survive. A candidate with Biden’s June approval rating has never lost a presidential election. Only one incumbent in 159 years won reelection with the country in recession. A majority of Americans view Trump as a failed leader in a time of crisis. Respected Trump appointees have laid bare for the world Trump’s fatal flaws that make him unfit for office.
Of course, there are those who believe that Trump can pull off another miraculous upset like he did against Hillary Clinton. However, Trump’s victory wasn’t miraculous at all. First, Hillary’s June approval rating of 42% was 9% lower than Biden’s, and only five candidates in 20 years of presidential elections have won with a 42% or lower June approval rating. Second, Clinton only led Trump by 2% in the end-of-October Gallup poll, certainly not an unsurmountable lead. Third, voters didn’t know Trump nearly as well then as they do today, and three and a half years of Trump have not worn well on most Americans.
Trump’s victory over Clinton was not miraculous, but a victory over Biden would be. Not one indicator for evaluating his reelection chances is working in his favor, and adding insult to injury, prominent PACs within in his own party are working to defeat him: the Lincoln Project, Republicans for the Rule of Law, and the Right Side. If Biden and the Democrats lose this election, Thomas E. Dewey will rise from his grave in vindication.
https://www.newsweek.com/58-percent-americans-disapprove-trumps-handling-coronavirus-poll-1512388
https://www.newsweek.com/heres-all-presidents-re-elected-during-recessions-1493467
https://www.newsweek.com/58-percent-americans-disapprove-trumps-handling-coronavirus-poll-1512388
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_polling_for_United_States_presidential_elections
Mask Wearing Not Ideological
I read articles that I believe wrongly characterize the wearing or not wearing of masks as an ideological divide based on differing views of what personal freedom means. I beg to differ.
The wearing or not wearing of masks is the difference between right and wrong, knowledge and ignorance, selflessness and selfishness, compassion and heartlessness, science and superstition. To suggest whether to wear a mask is a matter of differing ideological perspectives of equal value is like drawing a moral equivalency between the racist, white supremacist protestors and the counter-protestors in Charlottesville.
Wearing a mask means that you believe the medical experts who say a mask is the best way not to catch or pass on the coronavirus. It means you respect the orders of your national, state, or local governments that are based on these experts’ advice. It means that you care about the welfare of your fellow Americans and will do nothing knowingly to endanger their health. It means you understand that your personal freedom doesn’t give you the right to infringe on the freedom of others.
Wearing a mask means that you are doing everything possible to protect your loved ones and friends from contracting the virus. It means you understand the gravity of the pandemic that has infected over 2 million Americans and killed over 120,000 and that no one is immune to its spread. You understand that wearing a mask is a critical part of the national containment effort that can only be effective if every American cooperates. You understand that you are doing your part in helping America to get back to a safer normal.
Wearing a mask means that the minor discomfort and inconvenience you put up with means nothing and that you care enough about your own health not to jeopardize it needlessly when it takes so little effort. It means you are a patriot, concerned about the welfare of every American and willing to do what is best for the greater good of your country.
Not wearing a mask means you don’t believe the medical experts who say that mask wearing is crucial to your health, the health of others, and containing the spread of the virus. It means that despite over 2 million infections and over 120,000 deaths in the US from the coronavirus, you don’t think it’s a big problem and refuse to take it seriously. It means that you are willing to risk the chance of infecting other Americans and of people dying because of you, an immoral if not criminally negligent act. You believe you are above the law in refusing to comply with national, state, or local mandates for wearing masks.
Not wearing a mask means that you don’t care about stomping on the rights of others whose health you are endangering by exercising your selfish “right.” It means you are willing to take the chance of exposing your loved ones and friends to the virus that you may infect. It means that you don’t care whether your personal actions may further the spread of the virus, prolong its impact, and increase the suffering and deaths of Americans.
Not wearing a mask means that you follow the lead of Donald Trump, who doesn’t wear a mask, ponders the value of injecting Lysol, has ingested hydroxychloroquine which the FDA banned for coronavirus treatment, and said the virus would disappear like a miracle. Along with your leader, what you consider to be a brave and fearless act of defiance against an encroachment on your rights is in fact an irresponsible, morally repugnant act that endangers the welfare of your fellow Americans and your country.
Of course, refusing to wear a mask is just one symptom of a deeper problem. Most people who don’t wear masks don’t trust their government, don’t believe in accepted science, believe in conspiracy theories, mistake irresponsibility for freedom and stupidity for courage, lack patience and foresight, and are willingly led by a demagogue whose own misguided ignorance validates their own. There is absolutely no space between Trump and these followers and little hope for the social distancing that might contain the spread of the ignorance and bias that is infecting the country.
I
Trump Hater
I will be the first to admit it. I’m a Trump hater. A never Trumper. An anybody-but-Trump supporter. A One-Term-Trump sloganeer. A Trump = Nixon – brains believer.
I’m not a hater. I’m not a Republican, but I’ve never hated a Republican president in my life. Not Ford, not Reagan, not Bush senior, not “W,” not even Nixon. I didn’t agree with their politics, but I never hated them. Hatred eats up the hater, makes us bitter and ill-tempered, and accomplishes nothing. Yet my hatred for Donald Trump is real and raw and unbridled. It eats at my craw like acid and doesn’t touch a fiber of Trump’s being.
I hate Trump for who he is and what he is doing to the country. I hate how he treats people. I hate that he brags insufferably, lies like a sociopath, takes credit for anything within arms’ reach, and blames anyone including the Pope for his failures. I hate his sickening self-adoration. I hate that as America’s president he provides our children with the worst possible example of human decency.
I hate that Trump spreads racism like napalm, destroys the careers and reputations of people ten thousand times better than him, and uses demagoguery to appeal to the darkest angels of his gullible followers. I hate that he is the personification of unadulterated greed and that he absolutely revels in his breathtaking ignorance.
I hate how Trump is ravaging the environment with his pro-pollution deregulations. As a result, dirty industries are emitting toxic filth with impunity, killing children and adults with respiratory ailments, and shortening the life span of all Americans. I hate Trump’s anti-science stupidity, intent on eradicating scientific research in government and brushing off any scientific conclusions that expose the dangers of his business-at-all-cost agenda.
I hate that Trump’s climate-change denying deregulations are dramatically increasing CO2 emissions, fueling more frequent and powerful hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, and wildfires. As a result, thousands of Americans are being killed, large swaths of homes and businesses are being destroyed, and the cost in damages and human misery is astronomical.
I hate that Trump assaults America’s free press on a daily basis, a tactic Hitler used to crush German newspapers under the jackboot of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry. I hate that Trump is undermining the foundations of our democracy by inviting foreign interference in our elections, sowing distrust in our judicial system, impugning the veracity of our intelligence agencies, and ignoring the rule of law.
I hate that Trump is more concerned about his coronavirus-briefing TV ratings than the people who are dying. I hate that he casts himself as the biggest victim of the coronavirus, unfairly attacked by Democrats and the lamestream media who try to sully his perfect pandemic response to steal the election.
I hate that Trump is snuffing out the light of the Statue of Liberty, greeting “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses” with a Not Welcome in America sign. Under Trump, the Land of Immigrants is becoming the land of nativists, fearful and hostile towards outsiders. Trump’s America is no longer Reagan’s “Shining city upon a hill” that gave all oppressed people hope.
I am a Trump hater, and it goads me that I spend far too much time stewing in my hatred. The Bible tells us to love one another, but it tells also us to hate evil. Trump is clearly evil by definition - profoundly immoral and wicked.
My hatred biblically vindicated, I shall use it for the greatest good: doing everything within my limited power to help oust Trump from the White House in November. Hatred, like a dream deferred in Langston Hughes’ poem, can “fester like a sore,” or “stink like rotten meat,” or “sag like a heavy load,” or “explode.” If Trump haters don’t want Trump to be an object of cankerous hatred for four more years, we must explode with action for the next five months to save our country from a dark, dangerous, declining future.
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20190725/dirty-air-kills-30000-americans-each-year#1
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20191008/air-pollution-kills-as-many-people-as-cigarettes
https://phys.org/news/2018-10-air-pollution-children-year.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/28/climate/trump-administration-war-on-science.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/13/best-people-trump-hired-then-attacked/
https://time.com/4375262/history-demagogues-donald-trump/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-trump-idUSKCN1QM2KC
https://americanindependent.com/trump-free-press-attack/
https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/gop-primaries/265335-trump-im-very-greedy
The Evil of Donald Trump
President Trump’s luring Americans to his mass rallies without masks or social distancing is not just irresponsible and outrageous. It’s pure evil.
Thousands attended Trump’s Tulsa rally where neither face masks nor social distancing were required. Thousands more attended a Trump rally in a packed Phoenix church without social distancing and face masks. Trump is attending a South Dakota celebration on July 3rd where many thousands of Americans will gather without social distancing or face masks.
Trump is sending a message counter to almost every public health officials’ admonitions against Americans attending large gatherings, especially without social distancing or face masks. He is doing so at a time when the number of coronavirus cases are spiking across the US, in large part because of Trump recklessly encouraging states to open up prematurely and people to go about their lives as if the pandemic is over.
Trump is literally in collusion with the enemy – the coronavirus – and doing everything possible to ensure its spread. Not only is he doing nothing to keep the enemy from growing stronger, he is aiding and abetting its deadly mission to sicken and kill every possible American, a clear act of treason in a time of war.
Evil is defined as profoundly immoral and wicked, that which causes harm, misfortune, or destruction. What could be more evil than Trump willfully putting thousands of Americans who attend his virus-friendly rallies at risk of contracting the coronavirus and dying? What could be more evil than exhorting people to ignore the pandemic and engage blithely in normal activity with the virus raging around them? What could be more evil than endangering the lives of millions of Americans for Trump’s selfish political gain?
How do Trump’s defining characteristics compare to those most frequently associated with evil people? You can check off every box: inveterately dishonest, manipulative, vindictive, remorseless, heartless, egoistic, without conscience. Every characteristic fits Trump implicitly as he has revealed throughout his presidency. However, as America’s president in a time of national health crisis, Trump had the opportunity to act for the greater good of the country, but instead he chose evil, sacrificing American lives to the coronavirus in the hopes of reviving the economy and winning reelection.
​
Fortunately, Trump’s vile reelection ploy has destroyed any chance he may have had of winning, his moral bankruptcy obvious to everyone except the hopelessly brainwashed or those who share his twisted state of mind. Trump’s downfall will be of historic proportions but in no way tragic, a man who was destined to fail spectacularly from the beginning. Sadly, it took a devastating national health crisis for Donald Trump to be unmasked to the world as a man so obsessed with personal gain that no means were too evil to achieve his end, even sending Americans unarmed into the teeth of the enemy.
Throughout his presidency, Trump’ behavior has been characterized as shocking, mind-boggling, unfathomable, beyond belief. Nothing that Trump does, however, should surprise anyone anymore because there are absolutely no limits to his capacity for evil. For Trump, there was no great leap between his destroying people’s careers who got in his way and destroying people’s lives if it could help him get reelected. With the American death toll from the coronavirus mounting daily this spring, Trump said, “I take no responsibility.” No, but the American people will hold Trump accountable and send him into political oblivion.
There may be no hell for evil people, and there will be no personal hell for Trump because he has no conscience. Trump will learn nothing from what’s he’s done but hopefully we the American people will.
All of the warning signs of Trump’s capacity for evil were there from the beginning: the chronic lying, the hateful rhetoric, the vindictiveness, the complete lack of humility, the willingness to use any means to achieve his end. Enough Americans were willing to turn a blind eye to these horrible character flaws to get Trump elected. Hopefully we will never be so foolish as to elect such a person again, the one good thing that could come out of the Trump presidency.
Trump’s Crime Against Humanity
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That Donald Trump’s dismissive, dilatory response to the coronavirus epidemic cost American lives is indisputable. That his words and actions to this day continue to cause Americans to die needlessly from the coronavirus is criminal.
Columbia University researchers estimated that 83% of US deaths could have been avoided if a national lockdown had been imposed by March 1. Epidemiologists Britta L. Jewell and Nicholas P. Jewell estimated that 90% of coronavirus deaths could have possibly been avoided if social distancing had begun by March 2nd. Estimates of the number of coronavirus deaths that could have been avoided if social distancing had begun just one week earlier in March range from 36,000 to 53,000.
On January 22, referring to the coronavirus pandemic, Trump said, “We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It's going to be just fine.” On January 24, Trump said, "China has been working very hard to contain the coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well.”
On February 10th, Trump said, "Looks like by April … when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” On March 5th, Trump said, “It's going to all work out. Everybody has to be calm.” On March 10, Trump said, “This was unexpected. ... And we're prepared, and we're doing a great job with it. And it will go away." And on March 16, Trump said, “…we will rally together as one nation and we will defeat the virus. And we're going to have a big celebration all together.”
Today it’s June 26, there have been over 125,000 coronavirus deaths, four months of ongoing national mourning, and 180,000 deaths predicted by October by the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Because Trump lied and happy-talked his way through January, February, and half of March, the US has among the worst coronavirus death and infection rates in the world, and only the ghouls are celebrating.
Astoundingly, Trump is at it again, telling young Republicans crammed into an Arizona church on June 23rd without masks or social distancing that this is “hopefully the end of the pandemic,” exactly the same kind of lie that led to thousands of needless coronavirus deaths in April, May, and June. While the virus is resurging across the country due to the premature reopening of states at Trump’s urging, he was telling young people to behave like the pandemic is over. Like lemmings to the sea, Trump is exhorting Americans to march unarmed into the teeth of the coronavirus for the greater good: his reelection.
Trump has the blood of more Americans on his hands than died in the Korean War. He is responsible for more American deaths than the carnage of all the mass shootings and serial killings in the last 50 years combined. The number of number coronavirus deaths at Trump’s doorstep would rank among the top ten leading causes of annual deaths in America. And that number will continue to rise in July and August and September and October as Trump urges Americans to act like the pandemic that is still raging around them doesn’t exist.
Donald Trump has committed heartless crimes against humanity and continues to endanger the lives of every American. He will be tried in the court of public opinion and found guilty. He will be drummed from office on November 3rd by a furious American electorate, destroyed by his grisly reelection ploy. And if he has even a shred of conscience, he will live the rest of his days in a personal hell, tormented by the fact that to try and win an election, he sacrificed the lives of tens of thousands of Americans.
At the June 23rd rally at the Phoenix church, Trump said of his response to the coronavirus pandemic, ““Someday it’ll be recognized by history.” Will it ever.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-deaths-social-distancing-36000-week-earlier/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-forecast-idUSKBN23V335
https://soapboxie.com/government/Dirty-Dozen-Americas-12-Worst-Serial-Killers
https://www.mdlinx.com/article/top-10-causes-of-death-in-the-us-in-2020/MNpEowpA8DXKBUNcbmkpY
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-arizona-rally-coronavirus_n_5ef2913ec5b6045b101975a0
Trump Abandons Americans in Time of Crisis
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The coronavirus is surging in states across the country as President Trump told unmasked attendees at his June 23rd rally in Phoenix that this is “hopefully the end of the pandemic.” The complete disconnect between the alarming reality of the coronavirus spread and Trump’s false rhetoric highlights how after five months into the pandemic, the Trump administration continues to do more harm than good.
While the coronavirus sickens and kills growing numbers of Americans, the Trump administration has moved on. While its leadership on the pandemic throughout March, April, and May was erratic and disorganized, there was at least an effort to provide Americans with sound advice from epidemiological experts and to encourage us to take the proper safety measures. Those days are over.
Trump has shifted into full reelection mode, and the White House has washed its hands of the pandemic, leaving states to handle whatever happens on their own. Not only has Trump abandoned the leadership role any responsible president would assume until the crisis ends, he has made it infinitely worse through his irresponsible behavior: refusing to wear a mask, holding mass rallies without social distancing and mask wearing, encouraging states to reopen prematurely and people to return to normal.
Never in history has a president abandoned the American people in a time of national crisis, washed his hands of the whole mess and proceeded to make it worse. Trump has walked away from the field of battle, led Americans to believe that the war is over, and encouraged us to walk incautiously and unprotected into a battlefield littered with coronavirus mines.
Countries that have had the greatest success in containing the coronavirus have had strong, consistent presidential leadership and implemented a comprehensive national plan. America has had neither, and now our president has gone AWOL, abdicating his responsibility as commander-in-chief and leaving our governor/generals to go it alone, devising whatever coronavirus war plans they see fit. Imagine during World War II FDR telling his generals, “I’m really tired of this damn war, it’s about over anyway, and I need to concentrate on my reelection. Do whatever the hell you think might work.”
No one can blame the European Union for putting a ban on American travel. We are in greater disarray today that ever. Our daily number of coronavirus cases are setting record highs, we have no national plan to contain the spread, governors’ efforts are unconcerted and unevenly effective, Trump followers ignore the alarms of public health experts, and our president says, “What pandemic? Go out and congregate!” With our continuously high rate of coronavirus infections, banning travel of Americans to other countries is a no brainer.
At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, we are a country without a leader. However, given our current president, maybe that’s a good thing. A June poll by The New York Times and Siena College showed only 26 percent of respondents believed Trump was a reliable source of information on the coronavirus. That means that 74% of respondents aren’t going to trust his leadership anyway.
A 50-state poll of 22,000 respondents conducted April 17-26 by researchers from Harvard, Northeastern, and Rutgers Universities revealed that every single governor had a higher rating for handling the coronavirus than Trump did in their state. The average gap between Trump and the governors’ approval rating was a whopping 22 points, with Trump at 44 percent nationally and governors at 66 percent on average. Clearly, Americans trust their governors much more than the president on the pandemic and are more like to follow their leadership. The more that Trump stays out of the picture, the better.
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Regarding the coronavirus pandemic, America is a rudderless ship in stormy seas, its captain counting the buttons on his pea coat. We can only hope and pray that America’s governors follow the advice of pandemic experts and lead us wisely through these precarious summer months until Trump is relieved of duties on November 3rd and honest, compassionate, competent leadership is restored in the White House. May the next four months pass with the speed of Hermes.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/all-50-governors-handling-coranavirus-better-than-trump.html
Biden in the Cat Bird Seat
If the Democrats cannot defeat Donald Trump in November, they will be wandering in the wilderness for a long time. They will have been beaten by an incumbent who is in one of the weakest positions in history for reelection.
Biden’s latest June approval rating is 51%, and no candidate with an approval rating of 50% or greater in June has ever lost an election since Gallup began its presidential polls in 1936. Biden also holds a double-digit lead over Trump in June, and no presidential candidate with a June double-digit lead has ever lost in the twenty presidential elections since 1936. A Biden defeat would defy the results of 86 years of presidential election polling.
The US economy is in recession resulting from the coronavirus pandemic and exacerbated by President Trump’s desultory response. Since the Civil War of 1861, only one incumbent, William McKinley, has won reelection with a recession occurring within the last two years of his presidency, and the 1899-1900 recession was considered mild. Given the current deepening recession, Trump’s chances of duplicating McKinley’s feat are close to nil.
Leaders who guide the nation ably through periods of crisis increase their public standing: Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, FDR during the Great Depression, JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis, George. W. Bush after 9/11. According to the latest ABC/IPSOS poll, 58% of Americans disapprove of President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic crisis. Failing the greatest leadership test of his presidency is another devastating blow to Trump’s reelection chances.
Trump also has gotten low grades for his handling of the national anti-racism protests following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis policeman. Polls from CBS News, Emerson College, Reuters/Ipsos, and
Monmouth University have shown a majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s inflammatory response. In addition, the latest Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll found that 61 percent of voters believe Biden would be better at solving issues of race and policing, yet another nail in Trump’s reelection coffin.
Scathing tell-all books and public critiques of Trump’s presidency by respected insiders like General Mattis and John Bolton have done irreparable damage. The first-hand accounts are remarkably similar in depicting Trump as a shockingly ignorant, incompetent, overmatched, undisciplined, self-serving buffoon. Trump’s blanket condemnation that his former appointees are all “liars” holds little weight in the court of public opinion.
A president who has never been popular with a majority of Americans, his highest approval rating reaching only 45%, now faces a perfect storm of conditions which will be difficult if not impossible to survive. A candidate with Biden’s June approval rating has never lost a presidential election. Only one incumbent in 159 years won reelection with the country in recession. A majority of Americans view Trump as a failed leader in a time of crisis. Respected Trump appointees have laid bare for the world Trump’s fatal flaws that make him unfit for office.
Of course, there are those who believe that Trump can pull off another miraculous upset like he did against Hillary Clinton. However, Trump’s victory wasn’t miraculous at all. First, Hillary’s June approval rating of 42% was 9% lower than Biden’s, and only five candidates in 20 years of presidential elections have won with a 42% or lower June approval rating. Second, Clinton only led Trump by 2% in the end-of-October Gallup poll, certainly not an unsurmountable lead. Third, voters didn’t know Trump nearly as well then as they do today, and three and a half years of Trump have not worn well on most Americans.
Trump’s victory over Clinton was not miraculous, but a victory over Biden would be. Not one indicator for evaluating his reelection chances is working in his favor, and adding insult to injury, prominent PACs within in his own party are working to defeat him: the Lincoln Project, Republicans for the Rule of Law, and the Right Side. If Biden and the Democrats lose this election, Thomas E. Dewey will rise from his grave in vindication.
https://www.newsweek.com/58-percent-americans-disapprove-trumps-handling-coronavirus-poll-1512388
https://www.newsweek.com/heres-all-presidents-re-elected-during-recessions-1493467
https://www.newsweek.com/58-percent-americans-disapprove-trumps-handling-coronavirus-poll-1512388
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_polling_for_United_States_presidential_elections
Trump's Criminal Behavior
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At President Trump’s June 23rd Arizona rally, thousands of young Republicans were packed into a Phoenix church without face masks or social distancing. Trump had created the ideal conditions for the attendees to contract and spread the coronavirus.
Aside from being shocking and morally repugnant, Trump’s willingness to sacrifice the health and safety of these young people for political gain was an act of criminal negligence. Under these circumstances, the Maricopa County DA has the power to prosecute the President of the United States.
Criminal negligence is a statutory offense that arises when someone puts someone else's life or body at risk of harm by meaningfully disobeying a law that's in place to protect people. Maricopa County, wherein the rally at the Phoenix church was located, mandates wearing masks in public to protect people. Neither the young rally attendees nor Trump wore a mask, violating the County mandate. Trump’s disobeying the mandate is legally equivalent to disobeying a law.
There is no question that Trump put every young person’s “life or body at risk of harm” by creating the perfect conditions for people to be infected: a large, indoor gathering without social distancing or mask wearing. Trump was also violating the County’s mask-wearing mandate, which was put in place to “protect people,” and allowing others to do the same. By “meaningfully disobeying” the mandate and as a result putting the attendees’ “life or body at risk of harm,” Trump was criminally negligent by definition.
Of course, Trump will never be prosecuted for criminal negligence no matter how guilty he is. A Maricopa County DA won’t bring down a president who has violated the rule of law with impunity for three and a half years. The only thing that can stop Trump is the American people on November 3rd. We will be the judge and jury that Trump will never face in court and cast an overwhelming vote of “guilty.”
The criminality of Trump’s behavior in Phoenix goes to the core of who Trump is: a person who will do anything for personal gain. He had no problem scamming people out of their life savings who attended fake Trump University. He welcomed the help of foreign adversaries like Russia and China to get him reelected. He tried to coerce Ukraine into digging up dirt on his political rival by withholding military aid. He dismissed the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic from January to mid-March with devastating results.
Endangering the lives of young Americans at the Phoenix church for political gain, however, takes Trump’s immorality to a new level. He was fully aware that he was welcoming thousands of young men and women into an environment where they could contract and spread the virus: a crowded, indoor space with no social distancing or mask wearing. He was endangering their lives and anyone with whom they came in contact, and he simply didn’t care. And astonishingly, this at a time when Arizona was experiencing a powerful resurgence of coronavirus cases.
Beyond that, Trump was sending a message to the nation that the coronavirus pandemic is practically over, that wearing masks and social distancing isn’t necessary, that crowding unprotected into indoor spaces is fine. He sends this message as the number of coronavirus cases is spiking across the country with the reopening of states, his dismissive ignorance adding immeasurably to the potential number of new infections and deaths. After all, for patriotic Americans to sacrifice for the common good – Trump’s reelection – no amount of human suffering is too great.
Never has there been a president with such a callous disregard for the welfare of all Americans which presidents have been honor-bound to protect since George Washington took the oath of office. But Donald Trump has no honor, no sense of obligation to others, no concern beyond what best serves his warped agenda. What kind of heartless miscreant would stuff thousands of young people into a church for 90 minutes at the height of a state’s pandemic to suffer whatever fate awaited them? No answer could be more inconceivable or appalling then, “the President of the United States.”
Why Trump Is Drowning
Polls show President Trump’s approval rating dropping dramatically in June after remaining relatively constant throughout his presidency despite all that has gone on during three and a half tumultuous years. Three significant factors have permanently moved large numbers of Americans away from Trump.
First is the lack of leadership that Trump has displayed throughout the coronavirus epidemic and during the national firestorm resulting from the choking death of George Floyd by a Minneapolis policeman. Great leaders respond similarly in times of national crises to guide their nation: forthright, calm, steady, decisive, unifying, inspiring, and humble.
Trump, however, has been his usual fractious, undisciplined, dishonest, egotistical self, all traits that have been magnified the past five months. Americans are seeing for the first time how Trump conducts himself as America’s leader in a time of crisis, and most don’t like what they’ve seen and heard. Understandably, a large majority of Americans don’t want to go through another crisis with Trump as president.
Second, although Trump’s behavior and policies have been detrimental to the country before, they have never had the direct, visceral impact on people that his failed response to the coronavirus has had. Most Americans hold Trump at least in part responsible for the unnecessarily great number of infections, deaths, and unemployed workers which continue to stagger the country.
In the past, Trump’s environmental deregulations have increased pollution and CO2 emissions, putting Americans at greater health risk and in the path of more frequent and deadlier climate-change fueled disasters. His refusal to support gun control regulations assures any terrorist or madman access to the most lethal assault weapons, and nine of the fourteen deadliest mass murders in the past twenty years have occurred since 2016. His racist-tinged rhetoric and catering to white nationalists corresponds to a dramatic increase in hate crimes since he took office. Many Americans however, have never laid any of these tragic results at Trump’s doorstep.
That all changed with the coronavirus. It was obvious to a majority of Americans that Trump’s dilatory, dismissive, erratic response to the pandemic made it much worse than it should have been: hundreds of thousands more infections, tens of thousands more deaths, and millions more unemployed Americans. Trump can’t lie or spin away the cold, hard numbers that show how badly the US continues to do to this day: still 20,000 new infections and 1,000 deaths a day. The virus is currently spiking alarmingly in 19 states, yet Trump desperately exhorts America to “open up” to resuscitate his dwindling reelection chances.
Finally, the third thing that soured most Americans permanently on Trump was his lack of compassion for the victims of the coronavirus, the victims of police brutality, or the millions of protesting African-Americans who have seen the killing of unarmed black men by police go unaddressed for years.
If a president were ever to show compassion, it would be during a national pandemic that has killed more Americans than the Viet Nam and Korean Wars combined. Astonishingly, during his nationally televised coronavirus updates, Trump crowed excitedly about his TV ratings while giving short shrift to the daily suffering and deaths of thousands of Americans.
When the nation was yearning to be consoled, Trump was talking gibberish about the virus miraculously disappearing, treating the infected with Lysol injections, and insanely predicting that the pandemic would reach a screeching halt by Easter. When the nation needed a healing voice during the nationwide protests, Trump responded with rage against a lawless minority of protestors and showed neither compassion nor concern for the anger, frustration, and suffering of African-Americans.
While Trump has been Trump for three and a half years, it took the last five months for it to hit enough Americans on the head to change unalterably the course of the election. Donald Trump has proven a weak, erratic leader, he is responsible for the needless deaths of tens of thousands of Americans during the pandemic, and his lack of compassion is both unfathomable and unforgiveable.
Today, most Americans know exactly who Trump is, and they won’t forget. For them, November 3rd can’t come soon enough.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/25/opinion/sunday/trump-coronavirus.html
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-trump-idUSKCN1QM2KC
https://www.businessinsider.com/deadliest-mass-shootings-in-us-history-2017-10
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2019/08/number-hate-crimes-spike-record-levels-trump-administration/
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/16/politics/white-supremacists-cheer-trump-racist-tweets-soh/index.html
https://www.newsweek.com/2019/08/09/charlottesville-donald-trump-speech-terry-mcauliffe-1451610.html
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/05/will-americans-forgive-trump
Impact of Small-Donor PACs
Now there are three anti-Trump Republican Super PACs who will be attacking Trump mercilessly and helping Joe Biden for the next four months: The Lincoln Project, Republicans for Rule of Law, and the Right Side PAC. Who knows what other PACs might germinate in coming weeks or months to fire withering broadsides at Trump from within his own party?
This certainly isn’t politics as usual. It’s highly abnormal if not precedential for PACs to be created by members of a presidential candidate’s own party to try and defeat him. There are always prominent party members who may not prefer their party’s candidate, but how often do they band together in PACs to work openly for the candidate of the other party? Apparently it takes a once-in-a-lifetime candidate like Donald Trump.
None of the PACs have the monetary firepower to launch an all-out war on Trump, so they are doing strategic guerilla hits through battleground-state media ads. And the attacks are vicious, as scathing as any Democratic ads that you will see. The impact of the ads, however, is significantly more far-reaching than the limited-market exposure that the PAC budgets can afford.
The Internet has completely changed the reach of campaign advertising. For example, a given anti-Trump ad by the Lincoln Project may reach a few million people who happen to watch TV while the ad is playing in a state. And that number is greatly reduced by people like myself who record every show to fast-forward through all ads.
According to a 2019 Pew Research center survey, 81% of Americans check the Internet every day, and 28% say they are online “almost constantly.” At some point, they will probably see one of the anti-Trump TV ads from the Lincoln Project or the Republicans for Rule of Law or an article about the ad which includes every down-and-dirty detail.
That means that the 81% - over 260 million Americans - are likely to see the ad or the article, and that the 91 million Americans who are online “almost constantly” will certainly see it. Out of curiosity or anger, many Trump supporters will check out the ad, and every Democrat will devour it gleefully along with a sizable chunk of Independents.
The Internet viewing audience for the ad could be 10 to 25 times greater than in the limited television market where it airs, and a $100,000 ad could have the market- penetration value of a $1,000,000 – to $2,500,000 ad. With the help of the Internet, a relatively modest PAC can have the far-reaching political impact of a King Kong super PAC.
Every anti-Trump ad will make its way onto the Internet. That is a huge part of anti-Trump PACs’ strategy: to get the greatest bang for their bucks by their ads migrating across the US and around the globe. And there is a sense of fairness to that in the crazy, grotesque world of US campaign financing.
Smaller-money PACs can now compete against the large-donor corporate super PACs for campaign exposure thanks to the voluminous message spread of the Internet and a public more likely to glean information from the Internet than other media sources. Until serious campaign finance reform is enacted, which may be never, the Internet helps to neutralize the super PAC Goliaths by providing the small-donor PAC Davids with a powerful, high-infiltration political weapon.
The oddity this election year is that these modest PACs are being used by Republicans to skewer their own president to the delight of Democrats who can sit back and watch the Republican Party self-destruct. In the madcap, chaotic world of Trump politics, what could be more apropos than Trump being blown up by Republican explosives?
Can the anti-Trump Republican PACs knock out Trump to save the Party? Are these disaffected PAC Republicans so out of touch with the party of Trump that their efforts will only strengthen him? Will Biden’s support from prominent Republicans hurt his credibility with progressives? Will a million ads on TV and the Internet change one person’s vote in our impossibly polarized political world? Stay tuned.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/25/americans-going-online-almost-constantly/
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Biden’s June Lead and History
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Joe Biden supporters are no doubt heartened to see their candidate’s lead in the polls growing over President Trump in June. But can much be made of June poll numbers with the election five months away?
Biden stood above the 50% approval rating in early June polls and has a double-digit lead over Trump. Biden’s approval rating is also at least eight points higher than Hillary Clinton’s 2016 June rating of 42%, another promising indicator for Biden supporters.
Biden’s June approval rating also compares well to presidential candidates who went on to win their elections. Since 1936, when Gallup began its presidential polling, every candidate that had an approval rating above 50% in June won the election: FDR, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and George W. Bush (second term election). That’s a powerful precedent: 100% of candidates with a 50% or better approval rating in June winning their election. A Biden defeat would buck the results of 20 years of presidential election polling.
In addition, out of the twenty elections since 1936, only five candidates that had a lower approval rating than their opponent in June went on to win the election. The shocker, of course, was Harry Truman, who had an 11% lower approval rating than Thomas Dewey in June and won the election. The others were Richard Nixon (first term), George H.W. Bush (first term), Bill Clinton (first term), and Donald Trump (first term).
Not surprisingly, every candidate who held a double-digit lead over his opponent in June went on to win the election. And of the eight candidates since 1936 with over a 50% approval rating in June, seven retained a 50+% approval rating in October, with only Jimmy Carter dropping to 48%.
A June double-digit polling lead by candidate Biden puts him in rare presidential company. Out of twenty elections, only six presidents since 1936 enjoyed double-digit leads in June: Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon (second term), Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush (first term). Each went on to win handily except Bush, who won the election but lost the popular vote.
Of the six presidents who enjoyed a double-digit lead in June, only Jimmy Carter’s and George W. Bush’s lead shrunk below double-digits by the end of October. The other presidents polled consistently high from June through October. Whether Biden is able to maintain a double-digit lead, of course, remains to be seen, but the fact remains that all candidates since 1936 who held double-digit leads in June were elected president.
The results of twenty years of election polls by Gallup clearly put candidate Biden in the catbird seat for the November election. Since 1936, every candidate with a June approval rating over 50% has won the election. Every candidate with a double-digit polling lead in June has won the election. Candidate Biden has both. In addition, at this point Biden is polling much more strongly against Trump than Clinton did in 2016.
Of course, there are those who believe that polls are pretty much meaningless and not to be trusted. However, the Gallup Poll provides evidence from 20 presidential elections of a strong consistency among the polling numbers of winning candidates. Since 1936, every candidate with a 50% or greater approval rating in June went on to win the election. Biden’s 50+% June approval rating puts him in powerful historical stead.
There are also those who would argue that today’s conditions are so uncertain with the pandemic and the national protests that in the next few months the current approval ratings of Biden and Trump could be turned on their head. However, practically every presidential term is marked by one or more serious problems – war, runaway inflation, recessions and depressions, terrorist attacks, protests and riots, scandals, assassinations. Yet through it all, for 20 presidential elections since 1936 the evidence provided by the Gallup Polls has proven consistent: get to 50% approval by June and you win the election.
If the 2020 election doesn’t provide a dramatic break with polling history – literally a presidential election first – Biden wins. And if that makes Biden supporters feel the least bit comfortable or complacent, history could well be in the making.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_polling_for_United_States_presidential_elections
Reopenings Spike Coronavirus Cases
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In June, 20 states have seen a renewed spike in coronavirus cases after opening for business. President Trump’s premature, emphatic appeal to states to open their economies is already beginning to wreak havoc.
Florida, California, North Carolina and Arizona have seen the largest one-day spikes: 1698 news cases in Florida, 3593 new cases in California, 1370 new cases in North Carolina, and 1579 new cases in Arizona. Florida’s average number of infections the last seven days is about equal to its peak in early April. In Arizona, the number of daily new reported cases increased by 211 percent over the past two weeks. In Texas, Houston is considering reimposing lockdown orders due to a resurgence of cases.
This early “second wave” of infections is tied directly to the states’ reopenings which Trump has been pushing for since late April, when he said many states were moving “safely and quickly” to reopen. It is clear that there was no “safe” way to reopen with the virus still vigorously lurking everywhere.
True to form, Trump has tried to deflect any blame from himself and his determination to prime the economy, saying that the increases were the result of increased testing, not new infections. Trump said, “By the way, when you do more testing, you have more cases. We have more cases than anybody because we do more testing than anybody. It's pretty simple.”
Public health experts disagree, saying that the dramatic spikes are due to the states reopening. “The surge numbers are real,” according to Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the Columbia University National Center for Disaster Preparedness. While increased testing will inevitably capture more positive tests, “to deny the fact that we're having an ongoing pandemic with continued spread is contrary to all evidence.”
Public health experts, whom Trump routinely ignores, had warned that reopening the country too early could potentially lead to a second wave of the coronavirus outbreak, and they were right. As further evidence, some of the first states to begin reopening also saw the first spikes in coronavirus cases, including Tennessee and Texas. The correlation between states opening up and suffering significant increases in infections is indisputable.
Evidence provided by America’s experience with the Spanish flu in 1918 foreshadowed such results. By October of 1918, San Francisco had recorded 20,000 cases of the Spanish flu and 1,000 deaths. As the days went on, the city saw a dip in recorded cases and began to reopen businesses and rescind the mask-wearing order. Three weeks later, San Francisco saw a dramatic resurgence of cases.
In Denver, a similar resurgence in cases occurred after people were allowed to congregate before the flu was under control. Gunnison, Colorado, by contrast, kept restrictions in place much longer and was spared the worst of the pandemic. Philadelphia prematurely ended its quarantine to throw a parade in order to boost morale during World War I, and within 72 hours, every bed in Philadelphia’s 31 hospitals was filled with flu victims. The pattern was clear: cities that opened up prematurely saw a resurgence of the flu similar to what states are seeing with the coronavirus surge today.
Trump’s response to the renewed surge in coronavirus cases reveals an unspeakable disregard for the welfare of the American people. It is not just that Trump is baldly lying that there really is no surge, that the spikes in 20 states are just the result of increased testing. That is just boilerplate mendacity for a man who lies as effortlessly as most people breathe.
The real treachery is in the message behind the lie. Keep opening up the country because it is safe to do so. Trust me, there is no surge. Trump is intentionally sending Americans into harm’s way, to stand an ever-greater chance of being infected and dying, and to what end? To do whatever it takes to get the economy going for Trump’s political survival. No sacrifice is too great, including American lives.
In Trump’s deranged mind, the end always justifies the means, including endangering the welfare of the American people for his self gain. For an American president, that is the ultimate betrayal.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-touts-states-opening-safely-quickly
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/24/coronavirus-us-infection-public-health-experts
https://www.denverpost.com/2020/03/29/pandemic-1918-spanish-flu-colorado-coronavirus/
Ignorance Our Greatest Threat
The biggest problem facing the country today isn’t Donald Trump. It’s the ignorance of millions of Americans that Trump has cunningly exploited. It may be Trump today and another bombastic, deceitful demagogue tomorrow who feeds into the fears and biases of the most ignorant, sending America farther down the path of decline.
Ignorance is fed by intellectual and moral torpor: people who don’t want think for themselves and rely on others to think for them. There is no excuse for ignorance in today’s world. The Internet brings the world to our fingertips. There is little that we can’t learn and nothing that we can’t track down to discover where the truth lies.
Ignorance is so prevalent among a good chunk of Trump supporters that if Trump said the moon was made of silly putty, they’d scramble to purchase coveted cans. Like Trump, they question the existence of manmade climate change despite decades of indisputable scientific evidence. They favor creationism over evolution, which is accepted science and has been taught in US schools since the 1960’s.
Most of them believe along with Trump that the answer to the horrendous scourge of mass shootings is more armed Americans when the US is already the most heavily armed country in the world. Logically, countries with the lowest rates of gun ownership and fewest guns in circulation have the lowest rates of gun murders, but logic is without value among Trump adherents.
When Trump calls Mexican immigrants murderers and rapists, his followers envision hoards of marauders overrunning the country. In truth, the crime rate among undocumented immigrants in the US is significantly lower than among Americans, and Trump’s supporters have the most to fear from their fellow citizens. Trump also feeds into the fear that undocumented immigrants are taking Americans’ jobs. However, most Americans disdain working in the sweltering fields, the slaughterhouses, the poultry plants, and the garment-industry sweat shops where the undocumented toil for low wages.
Many Trump supporters aren’t knowledgeable enough to realize that Trump’s growing authoritarianism and the Senate Republicans’ acquiescence threaten the checks-and-balances system our democracy is based on. They don’t understand how Trump’s constant assault on the free press follows a pattern used by Putin and Hitler to discredit independent news sources and control public messaging.
There are the preposterous conspiracy theories that Trump feeds his most ignorant followers. Obama is not a native-born US citizen. Childhood vaccines cause autism. The Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 US presidential election. Climate change is a Chinese hoax. Voter fraud cost Trump the 2016 popular vote. Such debunked conspiracy theories are dangerous lies, but many Trump followers gobble down whatever absurd drivel Trump serves up.
It is not just that American ignorance contributed to the election of Donald Trump. In office, Trump couldn’t do many of the things that have hurt the country without the support of the ignorant. Since climate change is not a problem for them, they support Trump undoing environmental regulations, causing increased CO2 emissions that fuel environmental disasters that kill people.
They support Trump opposing a ban on assault weapons and the closing background check loopholes which could help keep school children safer from mass murderers and keep more guns out of the hands of criminals. They are bullish on Trump’s trade war with China which has hurt US manufacturers and consumers.
Trump’s devotees welcome every move that he has made to ruin the careers of respected public servants and weaken the government. They have no problem with Trump separating migrant families at the border and putting children in cages because that is how you treat menacing invaders. They believe the thousands of lies Trump has told them because they want to.
No, Donald Trump isn’t our biggest problem because there will Donald Trumps in the future who try to hoodwink the ignorant by telling them what they want to hear and believe rather than the truth. Ignorance is the greatest threat to America’s future, and as Thomas Jefferson said, “Those who expect to be both ignorant and free, expect what never was and never will be.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6145115/BBC-says-Manmade-climate-change-indisputable.html
https://slate.com/business/2007/01/what-are-the-jobs-americans-won-t-do.html
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-tweet-echo-mein-kampf/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-trump-idUSKCN1QM2KC
Leaderless America
In the past five months, President Trump has had two opportunities to display his leadership ability in times of crisis: during the coronavirus pandemic and the nationwide protests stemming from the chocking death of George Floyd by a Minneapolis policeman. In both cases, he has failed miserably.
It is not surprising that Trump was unable to transcend the fatal flaws he has shown throughout his presidency and become the leader that the country so desperately needs. Not even a visit by Ebenezer Scrooge’s Ghosts of Christmas could have produced such an extraordinary transformation.
During a crisis, great leaders show genuine compassion, feeling deeply the suffering of others and doing everything possible to relieve that suffering. Instead, during his national coronavirus updates, Trump crowed about his great TV ratings while showing little interest in the 30,000 Americans who were being infected and the 2,000 who were dying every day. During the national protests, Trump has shown no compassion for the deep pain and anger that African-Americans are justifiably feeling. Instead, he has lashed out at the small minority who mar the protests with violence, threatened to bring in the military, and goaded “weak” governors to turn loose the Bull Conners on the protestors.
During a crisis, great leaders provide a calm, steady presence from which people draw strength. Instead, during the pandemic, Trump has spent his time sparring angrily with governors and the press and sending wildly mixed and misleading messages. Instead of being the voice of calm during the protests, Trump has matched the protestors’ rage with his own, throwing oil on the fire and escalating tensions instead of reducing them.
During a crisis, great leaders are trusted by the people who believe in them and follow their leadership. Trump has misled people so frequently during the pandemic that the majority of Americans trust little that he says and instead rely on the direction of governors and medical experts. During the protests, Trump’s angry focus on a lawless minority has people equating the protests with the violence as Trump never acknowledges nor commends the vast majority of peaceful protesters.
During a crisis, great leaders unite the people in common cause. During the pandemic, Trump has pitted people following social distancing orders against those who believe their “freedom” is under attack with his irresponsible “liberate Minnesota” message. He refuses to wear a mask to score political points with his right-wing base and anger the rest of the country. During the protests, Trump has not uttered one word that would help bring the nation together or give people hope that we can ultimately end up in a better and more just place.
During a crisis, great leaders take responsibility and command the moment. Instead, when the coronavirus death toll rose, Trump looked for an exit, calling the national government a “back-up” and putting leadership in the hands of the governors. When he realized that his national televised messaging was hurting his reelection chances, he just stopped doing it. And now eleven days into the protests, Trump has yet to speak to the nation and make any effort to help lead us through this troubled time.
During a crisis, great leaders show their selflessness, making it all about the people and never about themselves. During the coronavirus pandemic, personal political calculation plays into everything Trump says and does, his eye always on the November 3rd prize. During the protests, Trump had a group of peaceful protestors tear gassed and dispersed in Washington to clear his way for a Bible-holding photo op in front of a badly burned church. Narcissism never takes a holiday.
One thing that we have surely learned is that during times of crisis, Donald Trump couldn’t be less equipped to be our national leader. He possesses none of the strengths of great leaders: compassion, honesty, responsibility, selflessness, steadiness, calmness, a unifying presence. As dangerous as it has been to have Trump as president during the coronavirus epidemic and the national protests, imagine how catastrophic it could be for Trump to be president during a time of war. For every voter not to keep that in mind on November 3rd could be fatal to our country.
Electoral College and Democracy
With the presidential election just five months away, there is the looming concern that because of the electoral college, the election could again be won by the candidate receiving the fewest Americans’ votes. That is how two of the last three presidents were elected: George W. Bush and Donald Trump.
Among Americans polled, presidential candidate Joe Biden currently leads President Trump by 10% nationally. If that percentage held up, Biden would easily win the popular vote but could still lose the election. While 114 of the 123 democracies in the world elect their presidents by popular vote, the US is one of just 10 countries that has an electoral college along with Burma, Burundi, Estonia, India, Madagascar, Nepal, Pakistan, Trinidad and Tobago, and Vanuatu.
In the US, members of Congress are elected by a majority of the popular vote. Governors are elected by the popular vote. State legislators, mayors, county and city council members, county sheriffs, and district attorneys are elected by the popular vote. Only the president is elected through the electoral college.
There is no defensible rationale for electing the president of a democracy by any means other than the popular vote. That is how democratic elections are decided around the world: by the will of the majority. There is no more basic tenet in a democracy than majority rule, yet in electing its president, the world’s greatest democracy doesn’t do it democratically.
Most of the Founders of the Constitution were well-to-do, educated elitists who did not trust the masses, meaning us regular folks, with the responsibility of electing a president. They feared that the American people might not elect the type of person that they believed should lead the country, someone similar to themselves. Therefore, they put the decision-making in the hands of electors chosen in most states by their legislature who could override the will of the people by voting for whomever they felt would best represent the nation.
The overriding purpose of the electoral college was to keep the ultimate decision of electing a president in the hands of an elite class of citizens. The crumb thrown to the smaller states guaranteeing them a minimum number of electoral votes was one of the compromises needed to ensure constitutional ratification.
The electoral college is an antiquated, elitist system of electing a president that has no place in a modern democracy, and 114 out of 123 democracies worldwide concur. It is further flawed by the fact that all of the electoral votes in a state go to one candidate whether he or she receives 50.1% or 90% of the votes. In addition, there is the highly probable absurdity that out of about 140 million voters, the results of a presidential election will come down to a few thousand voters in a couple of “battleground” states.
The biggest problem, of course, is that a candidate can lose the popular vote and still win the election, thwarting the will of the majority. 55% of Americans polled agree that the electoral college should be abolished. If they are a Republican in a heavily blue state or a Democrat in a heavily red state, their vote currently counts for nothing. They want the presidential election decided by their direct votes, not by a system that gives all of the votes in a state to just one candidate.
If Democrats control the House and Congress and win the presidency in November, there will no doubt be legislation to abolish the electoral college and elect future presidents by the popular vote, which is favored by a majority of Americans and 92% of the world’s democracies. A constitutional amendment would ultimately go to the states for a vote, and 2/3 of the states must ratify the change.
The constitutional amendment probably will not pass the first time. Landmark amendments that were just and fair were a long time coming: abolishing slavery, giving women the right to vote, denying no American the right to vote based on race or color, electing senators by popular vote. In time, an amendment to abolish the electoral college will also be ratified. It is the democratic thing to do.
Wither Path Forward America?
If Donald Trump is reelected in November, what will that mean for our country and for who we are as Americans?
First, it would mean that jobs and the economy outweigh all other considerations, a strong economy being Trump’s overriding hope for reelection. The economy has taken a beating with the coronavirus, but a resurgence this summer may be all it takes to get Trump reelected.
It would mean that Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and racially divisive rhetoric appeal to or don’t bother half of voting Americans. It would mean that millions of Americans don’t care enough about how Trump verbally abuses women, minorities, and his critics not to vote for him.
It would mean that millions of Americans expect no honesty out of a president and don’t care if they are frequently lied to. It would mean they believe that what virtually every major newspaper and television news outlet reports about Donald Trump is fake news.
It would mean that half of voting Americans don’t care that our democracy is being attacked by adversaries like Russia who interfered in the 2016 presidential election and by a president who welcomes foreign interference to help him get elected. It would mean they don’t care if Trump weakens the foundations of our democracy by attacking our free press, the judicial system, and our intelligence agencies and ignoring the rule of law.
It would mean that millions of voters don’t care about foreign policy. They are indifferent to Trump cozying up to brutal dictators, attacking and abandoning allies, pulling America out of vital international agreements and organizations, and strengthening China’s and Russia’s hand through increased US isolation.
It would mean that half of voting Americans don’t care about the environment or how we leave the planet to future generations. They don’t care that Trump’s environmental deregulations have allowed dirty industries to pollute the air and water with impunity. They don’t care that his climate-change denial has killed Americans and destroyed businesses by boosting CO2 emissions that fuel deadly hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, and wild fires.
It would mean that millions of Americans don’t care what the rest of the world thinks of us. It would mean that they approve of Trump fostering a “go-it-alone” image for America, an America that needs no one, looks out for number one, and believes the rest of the world is ripping us off.
It would mean that half of voting Americans don’t care how much Trump debases the office of the presidency with his hateful rhetoric, his corruption, has chronic lying, and his lack of compassion and respect for his fellow man. It would mean that they don’t care if the American president is a terrible role model for their children, the last person they would ever want their sons and daughters to emulate.
It would mean millions of Americans accept the horrific rate of daily gun murders and mass shootings in the US that will continue unabated with an NRA-controlled president. It would mean that they don’t care that our children go to school every day worried that they could be shot and that their would-be assailant - terrorist, criminal, or madman - will continue having access to the most lethal assault weapons.
It would mean that half of voting Americans don’t care whether over 25 million men, women, and children are without health insurance and that the skyrocketing cost of health care is unsustainable for millions of families. It would mean that they support the current extraordinarily expensive for-profit system and quashing any chance for universal coverage.
It would mean that millions of Americans support or don’t care about Roe vs Wade being overturned, which would result in a return to barbaric abortion practices, unwanted babies primarily born into poverty without fathers, and a fiendish male-dominated government controlling women’ bodies in a dystopian nightmare.
If Donald Trump is reelected, it would mean that America will continue to decline: weaker, more divided, more racist, more selfish, more hateful, more isolated, less democratic, less respected, less trusted, less influential. It would mean the end of American greatness, a hollowed-out world power that has tragically lost its way.
Biden’s June Lead and History
Joe Biden supporters are no doubt heartened to see their candidate’s lead in the polls growing over President Trump in June. But can much be made of June poll numbers with the election five months away?
Biden stood above the 50% approval rating in early June polls and has a double-digit lead over Trump. Biden’s approval rating is also at least eight points higher than Hillary Clinton’s 2016 June rating of 42%, another promising indicator for Biden supporters.
Biden’s June approval rating also compares well to presidential candidates who went on to win their elections. Since 1936, when Gallup began its presidential polling, every candidate that had an approval rating above 50% in June won the election: FDR, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and George W. Bush (second term election). That’s a powerful precedent: 100% of candidates with a 50% or better approval rating in June winning their election. A Biden defeat would buck the results of 20 years of presidential election polling.
In addition, out of the twenty elections since 1936, only five candidates that had a lower approval rating than their opponent in June went on to win the election. The shocker, of course, was Harry Truman, who had an 11% lower approval rating than Thomas Dewey in June and won the election. The others were Richard Nixon (first term), George H.W. Bush (first term), Bill Clinton (first term), and Donald Trump (first term).
Not surprisingly, every candidate who held a double-digit lead over his opponent in June went on to win the election. And of the eight candidates since 1936 with over a 50% approval rating in June, seven retained a 50+% approval rating in October, with only Jimmy Carter dropping to 48%.
A June double-digit polling lead by candidate Biden puts him in rare presidential company. Out of twenty elections, only six presidents since 1936 enjoyed double-digit leads in June: Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon (second term), Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush (first term). Each went on to win handily except Bush, who won the election but lost the popular vote.
Of the six presidents who enjoyed a double-digit lead in June, only Jimmy Carter’s and George W. Bush’s lead shrunk below double-digits by the end of October. The other presidents polled consistently high from June through October. Whether Biden is able to maintain a double-digit lead, of course, remains to be seen, but the fact remains that all candidates since 1936 who held double-digit leads in June were elected president.
The results of twenty years of election polls by Gallup clearly put candidate Biden in the catbird seat for the November election. Since 1936, every candidate with a June approval rating over 50% has won the election. Every candidate with a double-digit polling lead in June has won the election. Candidate Biden has both. In addition, at this point Biden is polling much more strongly against Trump than Clinton did in 2016.
Of course, there are those who believe that polls are pretty much meaningless and not to be trusted. However, the Gallup Poll provides evidence from 20 presidential elections of a strong consistency among the polling numbers of winning candidates. Since 1936, every candidate with a 50% or greater approval rating in June went on to win the election. Biden’s 50+% June approval rating puts him in powerful historical stead.
There are also those who would argue that today’s conditions are so uncertain with the pandemic and the national protests that in the next few months the current approval ratings of Biden and Trump could be turned on their head. However, practically every presidential term is marked by one or more serious problems – war, runaway inflation, recessions and depressions, terrorist attacks, protests and riots, scandals, assassinations. Yet through it all, for 20 presidential elections since 1936 the evidence provided by the Gallup Polls has proven consistent: get to 50% approval by June and you win the election.
If the 2020 election doesn’t provide a dramatic break with polling history – literally a presidential election first – Biden wins. And if that makes Biden supporters feel the least bit comfortable or complacent, history could well be in the making.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_polling_for_United_States_presidential_elections
President Scum?
Did Senator Ed Markey just call the President of the United States “scum?” Wow. How often has that most execrable of pejoratives been used to describe a president? Markey called Trump scum for “fueling racist hate and violence in our country.”
Scum is a truly ugly word, a cringing example of onomatopoeia: a word that sounds like its meaning. The Merriam-Webster definition of scum – “a dishonest, unkind, or unpleasant person” - doesn’t begin to capture its repugnant stench. Any number of people might be considered dishonest, unkind, or unpleasant but never have that odious label attached to them.
No, “scum” is reserved for the lowest of the low, the dregs of society. The word itself sounds disgusting and filthy, a perfect lexicological pairing of sound and substance. I don’t know a lot about Senator Markey, but I would guess it is not a word that he throws around lightly. Rather than a response to a few Trump protest tweets, my guess is that it bubbled to the surface after three and a half years of mounting anger, frustration, and disgust towards the president.
Of course, the use of the word “scum” is right in Donald Trump’s wheelhouse. Trump would have absolutely no problem calling a political enemy or critic “scum” and no doubt has on numerous occasions. In calling the president “scum,” Markey stooped to Trump’s level, which Trump goads his critics into doing, getting down in the mud where Trump has the advantage of longtime residency.
There are many people including myself who have called Trump any number of things including liar, braggart, bully, bigot, narcissist, and hater. I think there’s ample evidence to support that Trump is all of these. Markey, however, took it to a new level, compressing every known negative characteristic of Trump into one all-encompassing derogative: scum. When you put liar, braggart, bully, bigot, narcissist, and hater in a blender, does it turn to scum?
Is it wrong for any president of the United States to be called “scum,” even if that president is wont to call others as bad or worse? No president should get a “scum” pass, and certainly not Donald Trump. Respect should not be automatically awarded any man, not even a president. Respect is earned or in Trump’s case, colossally squandered.
There is a case to be made for Trump being scum-worthy. He has destroyed the careers or reputations of many dedicated public servants who are a thousand times better than he. He has called women despicable names and mocked the disabled. He has supported police brutality by encouraging police to treat arrested “thugs” roughly.
Trump has fanned the flames of racism, verbally attacking Mexicans and African-Americans while currying favor with white nationalists, who consider Trump “their” president. As a result, hate crimes have risen dramatically, the majority perpetrated by white nationalists. In addition, nine of the thirteen deadliest mass murders in the past twenty years have occurred since Trump was elected, yet Trump has ignorantly opposed strengthening gun regulations that could keep our children safer from such wanton violence.
By 2020, Trump had lied to or mislead the American people 20,000 times, making him the most mendacious and untrustworthy president in American history. Some of his lies have resulted in the deaths of Americans: denying disaster-fueling climate change exists and doing nothing to eradicate it, claiming against all evidence that more guns will make Americans safer, lying about the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic and leaving the country ill-prepared and vulnerable.
The case for Trump’s scum-worthiness goes on and on: cozying up to brutal dictators and attacking our allies, undermining America’s free press, refusing to reveal his tax returns to the American people, scamming fake Trump University victims out of their life savings, blaming anyone and everyone for his failings, and making his presidency all about himself rather than the American people he is supposed to serve.
Scum is a very strong word, and it sticks to a person like lint on cheap corduroy. Does it apply fairly to Donald Trump? That of course requires a subjective response, but if any president were ever of the character and behavior to be called “scum,” Trump would be a strong contender.
Abolish Electoral College
​
With the presidential election just five months away, there is the looming concern that because of the electoral college, the election could again be won by the candidate receiving the fewest Americans’ votes. That is how two of the last three presidents were elected: George W. Bush and Donald Trump.
Among Americans polled, presidential candidate Joe Biden currently leads President Trump by 10% nationally. If that percentage held up, Biden would easily win the popular vote but could still lose the election. While 114 of the 123 democracies in the world elect their presidents by popular vote, the US is one of just 10 countries that has an electoral college along with Burma, Burundi, Estonia, India, Madagascar, Nepal, Pakistan, Trinidad and Tobago, and Vanuatu.
In the US, members of Congress are elected by a majority of the popular vote. Governors are elected by the popular vote. State legislators, mayors, county and city council members, county sheriffs, and district attorneys are elected by the popular vote. Only the president is elected through the electoral college.
There is no defensible rationale for electing the president of a democracy by any means other than the popular vote. That is how democratic elections are decided around the world: by the will of the majority. There is no more basic tenet in a democracy than majority rule, yet in electing its president, the world’s greatest democracy doesn’t do it democratically.
Most of the Founders of the Constitution were well-to-do, educated elitists who did not trust the masses, meaning us regular folks, with the responsibility of electing a president. They feared that the American people might not elect the type of person that they believed should lead the country, someone similar to themselves. Therefore, they put the decision-making in the hands of electors chosen in most states by their legislature who could override the will of the people by voting for whomever they felt would best represent the nation.
The overriding purpose of the electoral college was to keep the ultimate decision of electing a president in the hands of an elite class of citizens. The crumb thrown to the smaller states guaranteeing them a minimum number of electoral votes was one of the compromises needed to ensure constitutional ratification.
The electoral college is an antiquated, elitist system of electing a president that has no place in a modern democracy, and 114 out of 123 democracies worldwide concur. It is further flawed by the fact that all of the electoral votes in a state go to one candidate whether he or she receives 50.1% or 90% of the votes. In addition, there is the highly probable absurdity that out of about 140 million voters, the results of a presidential election will come down to a few thousand voters in a couple of “battleground” states.
The biggest problem, of course, is that a candidate can lose the popular vote and still win the election, thwarting the will of the majority. 55% of Americans polled agree that the electoral college should be abolished. If they are a Republican in a heavily blue state or a Democrat in a heavily red state, their vote currently counts for nothing. They want the presidential election decided by their direct votes, not by a system that gives all of the votes in a state to just one candidate.
If Democrats control the House and Congress and win the presidency in November, there will no doubt be legislation to abolish the electoral college and elect future presidents by the popular vote, which is favored by a majority of Americans and 92% of the world’s democracies. A constitutional amendment would ultimately go to the states for a vote, and 2/3 of the states must ratify the change.
The constitutional amendment probably will not pass the first time. Landmark amendments that were just and fair were a long time coming: abolishing slavery, giving women the right to vote, denying no American the right to vote based on race or color, electing senators by popular vote. In time, an amendment to abolish the electoral college will also be ratified. It is the democratic thing to do.
https://www.thoughtco.com/presidents-elected-without-winning-popular-vote-105449
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/500318-poll-biden-widens-lead-over-trump-to-10-points
https://www.borgenmagazine.com/many-democratic-nations/
https://people.howstuffworks.com/10-countries-besides-us-have-electoral-colleges.htm
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/23/trump-founding-fathers-elitists/
https://apnews.com/a80eba04186f4416a8c3d198d4023b31
https://www.americanheritage.com/electoral-college-how-it-got-way-and-why-were-stuck-it
https://www.britannica.com/event/United-States-presidential-election-of-1789
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_Fathers_of_the_United_States
https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/post-election-2016/voter-turnout
Silence of the Lambs
Senator Lisa Murkowski responded to General Jim Mattis’ powerful rebuke of President Trump by saying, “When I saw Gen. Mattis's comments yesterday I felt like perhaps we're getting to the point where we can be more honest with the concerns we might hold internally and have the courage of our convictions to speak up.” And that was the strongest response of any congressional Republican aside from Mitt Romney.
​
Murkowski’s response seemed that of a long-abused adult. Perhaps, she cautiously suggests, it is time to be a little more honest and have the courage to speak up against Donald Trump after three and a half years of cowed silence. Where, Senator Murkowski, have your honesty and courage been hiding for three and a half years? Her response provides a slight glimpse into the house of horrors the Republican Senate must be for anyone like Murkowski who has at least a scrap of conscience.
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Why wouldn’t we expect anyone we elect to Congress to be honest with their concerns and have the courage of their convictions from day one? Aren’t those two of the essential qualities that we should expect from any elected office holder? When it takes three and a half years and a strong condemnation of Trump by a four star general for one senator to speak out, what does that say about the rest of the mute flock of sheep that is the Republican senate?
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As mild as Murkowski’s response was, it was still welcome in a senate full of the most cowardly Republican lawmakers in modern history. And no doubt Murkowski will pay a price for not towing the party line: no matter what Trump says or does, either keep your mouth shut or defend the indefensible. Picture a long row of grim-faced male senators, arms locked together tightly, and Senator Murkowski trying unsuccessfully to poke through any small opening. For three and a half years.
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Congressional Republicans have hitched their reelection star to Donald Trump and will do nothing to incur his wrath. Their only concern is for their moldering political hides, and if that means prostrating themselves before the unclothed emperor, so be it. They have abdicated their responsibility to defend the Constitution and provide a congressional check on executive overreach or misconduct, and are complicit in all that Trump says and does through their tacit silence or groveling approval.
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Congressional Republicans have allowed Trump to attack with impunity the cornerstones of our democracy including the free press, the judicial system, the Constitution, and the rule of law. They have responded to his duplicity, his divisiveness, his ignorance, and his incompetence with maddening silence. Congressional Republicans may as well be ensconced in the White House as they have failed to discharge their sworn congressional duties and relinquished their vital role as an independent branch of government.
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With no Congressional Republican pushback, Trump has been allowed to expand his anti-democratic authoritarianism. Under Trump, the Senate has become as toothless as Russia’s Council of the Federation under Putin, and the House of Representatives would follow suit were it not for a Democratic majority. Our democracy is taking a beating from within, and like Germany’s Reichstag under Hitler, Congressional Republicans are sitting timorously in their chambers and allowing it to happen.
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To say that the Republican senate needs a thorough cleaning out is an understatement. The question that remains for Republicans, however, is whether there are any candidates out there who can be honest and have the courage of their convictions as long as Trump occupies the White House. Since many of the most principled Republican leaders have been marginalized or left the Party in disgust, where does one turn to find a candidate whose commitment to country and flag is greater than his cringing fidelity to Trump?
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Perhaps Senator Murkowski’s long-overdue appeal for Republican senators to speak out honestly against President Trump will stiffen some spines, but I doubt it. Trump has already attacked Murkowski viciously, and not one senator has come to her defense. That is who Murkowski’s fellow senators are and why our democracy is in peril. We are being led by a wannabee tyrant and his pathetic band of bootlickers. Will November 3rd change anything?
Abnormal America
After three and a half years of the Trump presidency, we may tend to forget how abnormal things are today compared to past years. With the presidential election only five months away, we need to keep reminding ourselves of that difference.
While our politics have been polarized for some time, it had not reached the current level of anger and animosity that not only characterizes Washington politics but relationships between relatives and friends for whom political talk has become verboten. To Democrats, Trump Republicans are idiots and racists. To Republicans, Never-Trump Democrats are elitist jerks and socialists. CNN/MSNBC and Fox News watchers live on different planets where commonly held beliefs or truths don’t exist. Washington gridlock has results in 82% of Americans disgusted with their representative government.
Racism has always existed in America but never in recent history has it been as raw and palpable. Every minority is fair game for right-wing haters: Latinos, African-Americans, Jews, Muslims and most recently, with Trump’s “China virus” rhetoric, Asian-Americans. Hate crimes are increasing, many of which are committed by white nationalists. Xenophobia is on the rise bringing fear and loathing of “outsiders” and of Americans who may look like outsiders to white bigots.
Astoundingly, 9 of the 13 deadliest mass murders in the US in the past 20 years have occurred since Trump took office in 2016: Las Vegas, Orlando, Sutherland Springs, Parkland, El Paso, Thousand Oaks, Virginia Beach, Tree of Life Synagogue Pittsburg, Santa Fe. Today, children across the country are rationally fearful that any day they go to school they could be shot. Mass murders have become deadlier and more frequent, the grimmest and most heartrending abnormality of American life.
Lack of truth in the Trump presidency is a colossal, historical abnormality. Trump lies more frequently and unabashedly than any former president, Trump defenders coining the term “alternate truth” in a bizarre attempt to make truth a relative commodity. Trump Republicans, however, view Trump and Fox News as the real truth tellers and believe that the rest of the free press are purveyors of fake news. Never in modern times has there been such a vast, insuperable chasm between what Democrats and Republicans perceive to be the truth, and Trump has marooned Republicans on the “alternate truth” side of the chasm.
The most grotesque, disgusting abnormality is the daily barrage of tweets emanating from the President of the United States: from outrageous to false to hateful to boastful to racist to vengeful to conspiracy-laden to crazed. Never have Americans been subjected to such an onslaught of mind-numbing prattle by a president. As a result, a majority of Americans have questioned Donald Trump’s character, sense of decency, intelligence, and mental competence like with no other president.
A final abnormality during the Trump presidency is the sense that America has been diminished in many ways. Our democracy has taken a broadside both from without by Russia’s successful interference in our national election and from within by Trump’s attacks on the free press, the judicial system, our intelligence agencies, and the rule of law.
Our standing in the world has also declined. Trump’s America has proven itself an untrustworthy ally and boon to brutal dictatorships. It has removed itself from almost every multi-national agreement and organization and has sent the message that America is a “go it alone” nation out solely for its own good. Finally, the world no longer views Trump’s America as a welcoming land for people seeking freedom from oppression, a huge “Not Welcome Here” banner draped over the Statue of Liberty.
No, the America under Trump’s presidency is far from normal: more divided, more racist, more violent, more intolerant, less respected, less trusted, less believed, less welcoming. A return to normalcy won’t happen overnight, but a change in presidents on November 3rd will begin the healing and rejuvenation process.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/196268/ahead-elections-congress-approval.aspx
https://www.businessinsider.com/deadliest-mass-shootings-in-us-history-2017-10
https://www.foxnews.com/us/hate-crimes-in-us-on-the-rise
Trump's China Ploy
President Trump’s latest full-frontal attack on China wreaks of pure political intent. Trump is creating a scapegoat for his failed leadership during the coronavirus epidemic and providing himself an enemy to rail against for the next five months to try and rescue his sagging reelection chances.
Trump, who in three and a half years has shown little interest in human rights or democratic freedoms, is suddenly the champion of Hong Kong autonomy, responding heroically to China’s intent to tighten its grip on the city. In response, Trump is stripping Hong Kong of special trade status with the US, which will undoubtedly hurt Hong Kong and have no effect on China, but he’s counting on the political mileage his gambit could produce.
In the second prong of the attack, Trump is putting all of the blame for the coronavirus on China in a desperate attempt to absolve himself of responsibility for the horrendous rates of infection, deaths, and unemployment in the US. For the same reason, Trump is pulling the US out of WHO by falsely claiming that it is a mere puppet of China. Never mind that WHO has helped countries worldwide prepare and respond to the coronavirus, trained and mobilized frontline health workers, and ensured that vital resources reach them. Trump is making this anti-humanitarian move to further impugn China by bringing its “co-conspirator” down with it.
Trump is not only attacking the Chinese government, he is attacking the 360,000 Chinese students who study in the US. Trump’s intent to withhold visas for Chinese graduate and post-graduate students will no doubt end up preventing all Chinese college students from returning to the US. A sweeping Chinese student ban is nothing for a president who sought a worldwide Muslim ban.
My granddaughter’s boyfriend is one of the 360,000 student victims of Trump’s war on China. They met this school year as undergraduates at a California university. He returned to China when the university went online during the pandemic with hopes of returning this fall, but now that won’t happen. Of course, why would he or any Chinese student want to return to an America made hostile by this president? They would rightly fear for their safety in a country where hate crimes are increasing and white bigots feel menacingly empowered to vent their prejudices against all minorities.
Why has Trump made China his political scapegoat while never saying an unkind word about Russia? Russia has tried to undermine our national elections and weaken our democracy, invaded Ukraine and annexed the republic of Crimea, and supported anti-American countries in the Middle East. Why is all of Trump’s scorn heaped on China while Russia is given a free pass? For Trump’s racially groomed supporters, China provides a much better scapegoat than Russia. Trump is hoping to ride a strategically created tide of anti-Chinese sentiment to a November victory, and if Asian-Americans suffer collateral damage by association, so be it.
Like Trump’s trade war with China, his latest broadsides will produce little if any benefit for the US, and China’s proven ability to retaliate will once again leave it unscathed economically. His Hong Kong response will ultimately hurt Hong Kong economically and do nothing to weaken Beijing’s will. But Trump’s end game has nothing to do with economic gains or losses or Hong Kong’s autonomy and everything to do with political survival.
Trump must make Americans believe that it was China’s fault and not his failed leadership during the pandemic that resulted in America’s tragic level of infections, deaths, and unemployment. He must make Americans believe that he truly is an international soldier for democracy despite doing more than any modern-day president to weaken our own democracy by undermining the free press, the judicial system, America’s intelligence agencies, and the rule of law.
He must also make Americans believe that he is the firewall against a China that is the scourge of the earth and that its US-matriculating students are here for espionage rather than a great education. Finally, he must make Americans believe that the timing of his all-out-assault on China just five months before the election with his chances for reelection dwindling is just mere coincidence. That’s a lot to believe.
https://www.deccanchronicle.com/world/america/190520/who-a-puppet-of-china-says-donald-trump.html
https://www.voanews.com/student-union/chinese-grad-students-banned-trump-order
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/21/opinion/sunday/trump-russia-intelligence.html
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/09/trump-flaunts-his-indifference-to-the-rule-of-law.html
Conspiracy Theory Madness
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I heard about an article claiming that 44% of Republicans who voted for Donald Trump and watch Fox News believe that Bill Gates is planning to use a future COVID-19 vaccine to implant microchips in billions of people in order to monitor their movements. At first, I thought the article must be a joke, a satire from some left-wing writer poking fun at right-wingers preoccupied with nutty conspiracy theories. It wasn’t a joke.
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The findings came from a survey of 1,640 adults by YouGov for Yahoo News. 44% of Republicans who support Trump and watch Fox News do in fact believe that Gates is up to some kind of bad science-fiction mischief. Under normal circumstances, that so many Republicans would harbor such an extraordinarily wacko belief would be shocking. However, in Trump’s topsy-turvy world where most Republicans reside, down is up, wrong is right, lies are truth, madness is normalcy, and why, just about anything is possible!
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There have always been Republicans on the fringe right who are big on conspiracy theories. However, when 44% of Trump Republicans are in the grip of such nonsense, and another 31% can’t say for sure whether Bill Gates is a somewhat nerdy Lex Luthor, isn’t it time to station men in white coats at the doors of the Republican National Convention?
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It’s probably not surprising that many millions of Republicans are losing touch with reality. After all, their leader is the consummate conspiracy theorist. Conspiracy theories are just a form of lies, and Trump’s appetite for lying is insatiable. Since Trump Republicans believe every falsehood he tweets, it’s no stretch for them to swallow every conspiracy theory.
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Trump Republicans also want to believe the conspiracy theories. Trump targets his enemies and critics with the most vicious conspiratorial attacks, and Trump’s enemies are Trump Republicans’ enemies. Of course President Obama could be a foreigner and Muslim. Bill Clinton no doubt was involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s death. That bastard Joe Scarborough was certainly capable of murdering his staffer. In the fact-free world of Trumpland, where facts, evidence, logic, and common sense don’t exist, just leave your brain at the entrance and go with your gut.
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Republicans are also becoming less educated. According to a Pew Research Center poll, 54% of college grads today identify with the Democratic Party and 39% with the Republican Party, an exact reversal of percentages from twenty-five years ago. When you include post-graduate education, 63% identify as Democrats and 31% as Republicans.
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A study conducted in the Netherlands measuring people’s belief in conspiracy theories revealed that better educated participants had a lower level of belief. They were more inclined towards analytical thinking and had greater ability to detect nuances in arguments. Based on the study, the corresponding increase in the percentage of Republicans embracing conspiracy theories and in the percentage of less-educated Republicans isn’t mere coincidence.
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None of this bodes well for the Republican Party moving forward. One would think and hope that people who have trouble separating fact from fiction, fantasy from reality, and nonsense from common sense would have little role in determining the future direction of our country. Since such people are beginning to represent an ever-larger percentage of the Republican Party, it would seem that following these Republicans down the rabbit hole could be a descent into national madness.
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All said, Bill Gates still seems a rather peculiar target for Republican conspiracy theorists. Here’s a guy that helped bring the world to our fingertips, that is a great philanthropist and humanitarian, and that comes across as a genuinely nice guy. The problem, I suppose, is that he is so opposite of Trump that he must fall under suspicion: generous rather than greedy, honest rather than deceitful, brilliant rather than ignorant, compassionate rather than hateful, selfless rather than selfish. Now there’s a guy to be watched. In the meantime, Trump Republicans face a future dilemma: whether to get the vaccine and have Bill Gates plant a microchip in their brain or put their faith in herd immunity.
Trump's False Comparison
Most recently, President Trump has compared the US’s success in handling the coronavirus pandemic to Germany’s, which has been lauded for its pandemic response and has the lowest rates of infections and deaths in Europe. Let’s see how that comparison stacks up.
As of May 23, the US had 1,656,906 recorded infections and Germany had 179,986. Germany has roughly one-fourth the population of the US, so adjusting for population differences, Germany would have had 719,944 infections. Therefore, if the US had been as successful as Germany in containing the virus, it would have had 719,944 infections by May 23 instead of 1,656,906, and nearly 1,000,000 fewer Americans would have been infected.
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As of May 23, the US had 97,414 recorded deaths from the coronavirus and Germany had 8,366 deaths. If Germany’s population were equal to the US’s, it would have had 33,463 deaths. If the US had been as successful as Germany it too would have had 33,463 deaths by May 23 instead of 97,414, meaning 63,961 Americans would still be alive.
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There is no question that given the US’s 1,656,906 infections and 97,414 deaths from the coronavirus, every American would love to have Germany’s results when adjusted for population: 719,944 infections and 33,463 deaths. That still represents far too much suffering and death, but it pales by comparison to what America is going through.
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President Trump, who is preternaturally given to exaggeration, cannot exaggerate away the cold, hard numbers. When it comes to America’s and Germany’s success in dealing with the virus, there is no comparison. Had we done as well as Germany, we would have 2.3 times fewer infections and nearly 3 times fewer deaths. The reduction in the number of infections and deaths would have been profound, and we would be heading into the summer in a far better place.
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There is also no comparison in the degree of economic hardship that American and German workers have endured. The German government implemented a payment system which provides up to two-thirds of workers’ wages so companies can avoid layoffs. As a result, the vast majority of Germans have kept their jobs, and the unemployment rate had risen to just 5.8% by the end of April. By contrast, the US unemployment rate exceeded 20% by the end of April, the federal stimulus packages failing to curtail the loss of jobs. Had the US matched Germany’s unemployment rate, 22,137,000 unemployed American workers would still have their jobs.
Trump’s attempt to compare America’s success in dealing with the coronavirus to Germany’s instead shown a harsh light on the dramatic differences: significantly higher rates of infection and deaths and much greater economic upheaval in the US. In fact, regarding rates of infection and deaths, the US is similar to European countries with the most tragic outcomes: Italy, Spain, and the UK.
A final disparity between the US and Germany is how the public views their leader’s response to the pandemic. Angela Merkel’s popularity had reached record highs by the end of April. More than 90% of Germans supported the tight lock-down orders that were imposed nationwide, and early, widespread testing had flattened the infection curve like few other nations. Most Germans trusted that their leader was taking the correct and necessary measures, and the result proved them right.
On the other hand, by the end of April, only 23% of Americans polled highly trusted what Trump was telling them about the coronavirus. Trump’s slow, dismissive initial response to the pandemic has been wide criticized. There is a strong sense that Trump’s response has consistently been guided more by politics than science, resulting in the number of infections, deaths, and unemployed being much higher than they could have been.
Manuela Milbradt, a ground-crew worker at Berlin’s Tegel Airport who is at home with her income and job protected, summed up the comparison from a German perspective: “The average German doesn’t have to worry about anything. The state has stepped in to support companies and workers and small businesses, and to make sure the healthcare system is working as it should. You just can’t compare the situation to America. In Germany, no one feels like they’re being left alone to deal with this crisis.”
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https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200402/why-germany-has-fewer-covid-deaths-than-neighbors
https://www.onenewspage.com/n/Business/1zlreqwjt4/German-Unemployment-Increases-Sharply-In-April.htm
Republican Hypocrisy
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Congratulations to the NRCC and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy for distancing themselves from Republican House candidate Ted Howze (California’s 10th Congressional District) for having posted several racist, slanderous, and religiously biased comments. Tom Emmer, NRCC chair, said “These statements are unacceptable and not indicative of the Republican Party . . . and we have pulled our support.” McCarthy called Howze’s posts “disappointing and disturbing” and said, “Bigotry and hateful rhetoric have no place in the Republican Party.”
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A Politico story revealed a number of Howze’s disturbing social media posts. He accused the Clintons of having “a trail of bodies as long as the Mississippi River behind them.” He called Islamic prophet Muhammad a rapist and a pedophile and said “the Western world … should be suspicious of ALL MUSLIMS.” He accused African-American Representative Maxine Waters (Democrat-Calif.) of “hitting the crack pipe too hard.”
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As heinous as Howze’s posts are and welcome are McCarthy and the NRCC’s condemnation, one would have to be blind not to see the similarities between Howze’s social media posts and President Donald Trump’s tweets. Their vile, false attacks have common targets and are equally repugnant.
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Trump has called prominent African-Americans “low IQ,” “dumb,” “low life,” and “dog,” and protesting NFL African-American football players “sons of bitches.” He has called Mexicans “murders and rapists.” He has implicated Ted Cruz’s father in President Kennedy’s assassination, Bill Clinton in the death of Jeffrey Epstein, and suggested that Joe Scarborough was a murderer. He claimed that there were Arab-Americans cheering in New Jersey when the World Trade Center came down. His son Don Jr. suggested that Joe Biden was a pedophile, no doubt with his father’s approbation or even goading.
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If Emmer and McCarthy view Howze’s posts as unacceptable, disappointing and disturbing, bigoted and hateful, and having no place in the Republican Party, how do they feel about Trump’s equally disturbing, bigoted, and hateful rhetoric? How can they condemn Howze and pull their support for him while at the same time not condemning Trump and continuing to support him faithfully? Does Howze’s vile rhetoric have no place in the Republican Party while Trump’ vile rhetoric has a very prominent place, accepted through the tacit silence of Emmer, McCarthy, and the vast majority of Congressional Republicans?
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Howze is a minnow in the Republican world and Trump the biggest whale, and of course Trump’s corrosive influence is a million times greater. However, Trump has welcomed the Howzes of the twisted fringe right into the Republican tent with open arms, speaking their language, attacking their mutual targets of hatred and prejudice, and even calling some of their ilk “very fine people.” He has brought them from the fringe of the Party into the mainstream where they feel empowered to speak their bigoted piece and run for political office, supported by like-minded right-wing haters.
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Republican leaders like Emmer and McCarthy need look no farther than Donald Trump to understand how people like Ted Howze have gained a degree of prominence in the latter-day Republican Party, a significant block of supporters that Trump needs to win reelection. The former fringe right, released from the murky shadows by Trump, are recasting the image of the Republican Party in darker tones: more racist, more ignorant, more hateful, less inclusive.
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Until Donald Trump became president, it would have seemed unfathomable that a Republican Congressional candidate condemned and rejected for his hateful, racist rhetoric and the President of the United States spoke the same language. Today it isn’t surprising at all. Equally disturbing is that Congressional Republicans have bit their tongues and tacitly approved the president’s vile tweets, telling the world that contrary to Mr. Emmer’s statement, such rhetoric is in fact both acceptable and quite indicative of today’s Republican Party.
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The worst possible thing that could happen to the Republican Party is for Donald Trump to be reelected. It is badly in need of a thorough detoxification that only Donald Trump’s defeat can produce. The problem with Emmer and McCarthy is that they went after the street-corner pusher of hatred and bigotry, afraid to take on the kingpin of national distribution.
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https://www.romper.com/p/the-4-worst-things-trump-has-said-about-muslims-so-far-2569
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The Making of Don Jr.
Joe Biden described Donald Trump Jr’s spreading vicious, false innuendo suggesting Biden was a pedophiliac as “sick,” but it goes well beyond that. It’s also vile, disgusting, and deranged. No person with a normal conscience could live with himself.
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The one thing it is not, however, is shocking. Don Jr. is cut from the same cloth as his father. Don Jr. undoubtedly experienced severe psychological damage growing up with a deviant father who made every negative behavior acceptable in pursuit of success: lying, cheating, conning, and destroying others.
Don Jr.’s mind is so twisted that he thinks saying “hey, I was only joking” excuses his behavior. No normal person accuses someone of pedophilia as a joke. All he cared about was planting a destructive seed that will germinate on many far-right websites and no doubt please his father. He is no more acquainted with remorse than Donald Sr., whose latest sicko insinuation is that Joe Scarborough committed murder. There is nothing too reprehensible for father or son to concoct to destroy anyone in their way.
To be fair, Don Jr. never had a chance. He never knew that people who were honest, fair, humble, and decent could be successful. Those were the kind of people his father ate for breakfast. He learned the world like John Gotti Jr. learned it: through fathers for whom the norms of society didn’t pertain. The realities of the worlds in which each son was raised were ruinously warped.
According to psychology, a person’s behavior is classified as abnormal if it violates the unwritten rules about what is acceptable behavior in a particular society. What seems acceptable to an abnormal mind is often incomprehensible to others. How could Don Jr. possibly have stooped so low, we ask incredulously. For Don Jr., however, it was perfectly normal behavior for someone who learned by example his entire life to behave abnormally.
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Behavioral psychologists believe that all behavior is learned, normal and abnormal, and a child’s development is shaped foremost by the power of parental influence. This it would seem explains who Don Jr. is today rather than any type of genetic predisposition. The good news is that if such behavior is learned, it can also be unlearned, which explains how adults who were abused as children can break the tragic cycle of abuse with their own children.
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Don Jr. will remain essentially a pathetic carbon copy of his father unless he at some point sees him for who he is. Over a long period of time, John Gotti Jr. slowly gained the understanding that his father wasn’t someone to revere and pattern his life after, and he eventually made a clean break with his past and his father. Is it conceivable that Don Jr. could do the same?
I can’t begin to understand the dynamics between Donald Sr. and Jr. Having lived with a narcissistic father, Don Jr. may have suffered many of the effects that plague such children, according to psychologist Dr. Karyl McBride: more valued for what they do than who they are, believing image is more important than authenticity, developing an unhealthy need to please the never-satisfied parent. Such effects may tie the child as an adult to the parent in inescapable and disturbing ways.
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The ugliness of Don Jr.’s behavior may be so deeply ingrained that it will always define him. The gnawing conscience required to change his life may no longer function thanks to his father’s influence. He may never reassess his life unless his father takes a mighty fall, which many people believe to be imminent.
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Understanding to an extent what made Don Jr. who he is in no way excuses what he does. Charles Manson’s childhood was horrific, but he still chose to make the decisions that led to his monstrous crime. Don Jr. must also face the consequences of his decisions.
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Don Jr.’s hideous slander of Joe Biden will have no long-term effect on Mr. Biden but tars Don Jr. with an execrable, lingering coat of self-abasement. Most parents praise their children for doing good things, but in Donald Trump’s sick universe where Don Jr. has always resided, the greatest praise comes from doing your absolute worst.
Will of the People
If Americans want the Congress and president elected in November to address major issues in a way that a large majority of Americans favor, it is imperative that Democrats control Congress and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is elected. If that doesn’t occur, the will of the majority will continue to be ignored.
Democratic lawmakers and Democratic candidate Biden are in agreement with most Americans on how to address the issues that polls reveal are of greatest concern to Americans: immigration, health care, gun violence, climate change, income inequality, racism, and government dysfunction. Republican lawmakers and President Trump are not.
On immigration, 64% of Americans support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, which a Democratically controlled Congress and White House would pass into law. Republican lawmakers have consistently viewed such citizenship as “amnesty” and have never supported it. 58% of Americans oppose President Trump’s border wall, which Democratic lawmakers and Mr. Biden would halt construction on.
58% of Americans support some form of universal health care that covers all Americans. Joe Biden’s proposed public option moves the country significantly in that direction and would be supported by a Democratic Congress. Republicans have shown no interest in universal health care or a public option, and support maintaining the current for-profit private health insurance system.
To address the extremely high rate of gun violence and mass murders in the US, 60% of Americans favor stronger gun-control laws including closing loopholes on universal background checks and banning assault weapons, both of which would become law with a Democratic Congress and Mr. Biden. Siding nearly 100% with the NRA, Republican lawmakers have consistently thwarted all efforts to implement any gun-control measures.
66% of Americans believe that climate change is a serious problem with damaging consequences. With Democratic control, regulations to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases would be implemented, America’s reliance on CO2-emitting fossil fuels would decrease, and development of renewable clean-energy sources would be funded. Republican lawmakers have either been climate change deniers or dismissive of its seriousness and have not supported legislation to address the issue.
America has the greatest income inequality among all advanced nations, and only 39% of Americans say they have enough savings to cover a $1000 emergency. To address the issue, 76% of Americans support increasing taxes on the wealthy, and 67% support raising the minimum wage to $15.00, which would increase the income of nearly half of all working Americans. A Democratically controlled Congress and Mr. Biden would raise taxes on the wealthy and pass a $15.00 minimum-wage law. In 2017, Republican lawmakers reduced taxes on the wealthiest Americans and have never supported raising the minimum wage to $15.00.
56% of Americans believe that racism has become worse under President Trump, and 66% believe that it has become more common for people to express racist views. Race-related hate crimes hit a 16-year high in 2019, including a rise in violent hate crimes among white supremacists. Arguably, racism and racial violence would become less pronounced if President Trump weren’t reelected and Congressional Democrats, who closely reflect the racial and ethnic make-up of the country, were in the majority.
Finally, Americans are frustrated and disillusioned by the gridlock in Washington, and the job approval rating for Congress in 2019 was 18%, a shocking commentary on how Americans have lost faith in their government working for them. Frankly, Republicans have been the major obstruction, thwarting all efforts to pass any of the legislation that most Americans support on the major issues.
If there were a Democratically controlled Congress and Democratic president, the gridlock would evaporate and major legislation would pass on a number of issues with the support of a large majority of Americans. Our democracy would once again begin to work in a positive, effectual way powered as it was intended: by the will of the people.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/poll-majority-americans-favor-path-cit
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-6-in-10-favor-tougher-gun-laws/
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/sep/15/americans-climate-change-crisis-cbs-poll
https://fortune.com/2019/02/04/support-for-tax-increase-on-wealthy-americans-poll/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minimum-wage-2019-almost-half-of-all-americans-work-in-low-wage-jobs/
https://www.newsweek.com/racism-america-donald-trump-1390518
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/hate-crimes-fbi-report.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/18/few-americans-have-enough-savings-to-cover-a-1000-emergency.html
A Credential-Carrying Trump Hater
I will be the first to admit it. I’m a Trump hater. A never Trumper. An anybody-but-Trump supporter. A One-Term-Trump sloganeer. A Trump = Nixon – brains believer.
I’m not a hater. I’m not a Republican, but I’ve never hated a Republican president in my life. Not Ford, not Reagan, not Bush senior, not “W,” not even Nixon. I didn’t agree with their politics, but I never hated them. Hatred eats up the hater, makes us bitter and ill-tempered, and accomplishes nothing. Yet my hatred for Donald Trump is real and raw and unbridled. It eats at my craw like acid and doesn’t touch a fiber of Trump’s being.
I hate Trump for who he is and what he is doing to the country. I hate how he treats people. I hate that he brags insufferably, lies like a sociopath, takes credit for anything within arms’ reach, and blames anyone including the Pope for his failures. I hate his sickening self-adoration. I hate that as America’s president he provides our children with the worst possible example of human decency.
I hate that Trump spreads racism like napalm, destroys the careers and reputations of people ten thousand times better than him, and uses demagoguery to appeal to the darkest angels of his gullible followers. I hate that he is the personification of unadulterated greed and that he absolutely revels in his breathtaking ignorance.
I hate how Trump is ravaging the environment with his pro-pollution deregulations. As a result, dirty industries are emitting toxic filth with impunity, killing children and adults with respiratory ailments, and shortening the life span of all Americans. I hate Trump’s anti-science stupidity, intent on eradicating scientific research in government and brushing off any scientific conclusions that expose the dangers of his business-at-all-cost agenda.
I hate that Trump’s climate-change denying deregulations are dramatically increasing CO2 emissions, fueling more frequent and powerful hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, and wildfires. As a result, thousands of Americans are being killed, large swaths of homes and businesses are being destroyed, and the cost in damages and human misery is astronomical.
I hate that Trump assaults America’s free press on a daily basis, a tactic Hitler used to crush German newspapers under the jackboot of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry. I hate that Trump is undermining the foundations of our democracy by inviting foreign interference in our elections, sowing distrust in our judicial system, impugning the veracity of our intelligence agencies, and ignoring the rule of law.
I hate that Trump is more concerned about his coronavirus-briefing TV ratings than the people who are dying. I hate that he casts himself as the biggest victim of the coronavirus, unfairly attacked by Democrats and the lamestream media who try to sully his perfect pandemic response to steal the election.
I hate that Trump is snuffing out the light of the Statue of Liberty, greeting “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses” with a Not Welcome in America sign. Under Trump, the Land of Immigrants is becoming the land of nativists, fearful and hostile towards outsiders. Trump’s America is no longer Reagan’s “Shining city upon a hill” that gave all oppressed people hope.
I am a Trump hater, and it goads me that I spend far too much time stewing in my hatred. The Bible tells us to love one another, but it tells also us to hate evil. Trump is clearly evil by definition - profoundly immoral and wicked.
My hatred biblically vindicated, I shall use it for the greatest good: doing everything within my limited power to help oust Trump from the White House in November. Hatred, like a dream deferred in Langston Hughes’ poem, can “fester like a sore,” or “stink like rotten meat,” or “sag like a heavy load,” or “explode.” If Trump haters don’t want Trump to be an object of cankerous hatred for four more years, we must explode with action for the next five months to save our country from a dark, dangerous, declining future.
Trump's Coronavirus Failure
President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic has come under sharp criticism. He waited over six weeks to respond to the seriousness of the situation after it hit American shores, and now fifteen weeks into the pandemic, the level of testing and contract tracing still remains inadequate for assessing and controlling the spread of the virus according to most epidemiological experts.
How much did the Trump administration’s dismissive, dilatory response to the coronavirus affect the number of Americans who have been infected and who have died? The best way to quantify the effect is to compare America’s numbers to those of countries whose response to the pandemic was much more successful.
Let’s take six countries that are often cited for their uniformly impressive response and success in containing the virus: New Zealand, Taiwan, Germany, Finland, South Korea, and Denmark. The responses of these countries have much in common: honest communication, decisive action, widespread testing and contact tracing, sufficient medical and protective equipment, and a well-organized national response. Their leaders approached the pandemic much differently than the Trump administration and with much different results.
Let’s compare the number of infections and deaths in each country compared to the US using Bing Covid-19 daily statistics from governmental sources around the world. As of May 13, the US had 1,400,000 reported infections. Here are the number of infections in each of the six countries if they had the same population as the US: New Zealand 40,600, Finland 350,000, Denmark 622,222, South Korea 70,300, Taiwan 88,000, and Germany 700,000. The average number of infections in the six countries was 337,283 on May 13 compared to 1,400,000 in the US. If the US had been equally successful in responding to the pandemic, we could have nearly four times fewer infections than we currently have.
As of May 13, the US had 84,700 reported deaths from the coronavirus. Here are the number of deaths in each of the six countries factoring in their populations: New Zealand 1512, Finland 17,287, Denmark 32,576, South Korea 1045, Taiwan 105, and Germany 31,486. The average number of deaths in the six countries was 14,001 compared to 84,700 in the US. If the US had been equally successful in responding to the pandemic, we could have had nearly six times fewer deaths than we currently have.
The number of infections and deaths in these countries compared to the US presents a shocking contrast. The number of infections and deaths in the US is much higher than it would have been if the Trump administration had responded to the pandemic similarly to these countries’ leaders. If we had matched the average number of infections and deaths in those countries, on May 13 we could have had somewhere near 338,000 infections instead of 1,400,000 and 14,000 deaths instead of 84,700 by taking early, aggressive national action. A tragic amount of human misery and death would have been averted, and we would be in a dramatically better place today in our battle against the pandemic.
Trump administration supporters may argue that circumstances in the US are different than in those countries, but that simply doesn’t wash. The US had as much foreknowledge as these other countries regarding the international spread of the coronavirus and its extreme seriousness. The US certainly has as much scientific and medical expertise as these other countries and the vast resources to respond as well or better than any country. There is also no excuse for not being just as prepared after our historical experience with the Ebola and SARS viruses and the AIDS’ epidemic.
The US would be in a very different place today had we responded to the pandemic as we were certainly capable. Hundreds of thousands of Americans would not have been infected and tens of thousands would not have died. We would be entering the summer in relatively good shape, beginning to open the country safely, returning students to school in the fall, and experiencing a less catastrophic economic future. Unfortunately, that is not close to where we are today. As a result, the number of infections and deaths continues to mount inexorably, and President Trump bears much of the responsibility.
The Anti-Science Party
It is absolutely jaw-dropping to think that a major American political party in the 21st century is anti-science. But that is exactly what the Republican Party of Donald Trump has become.
Let’s begin at the top. Although man-made climate change is an indisputable, internationally accepted fact, Trump is a climate-change denier. So is Vice President Mike Pence. Against all medical evidence, Trump has said that vaccines that protect millions of children against deadly infectious diseases can cause autism. Pence doesn’t believe that condoms are effective in preventing STD’s.
Trump believes wind farms, a major international source of clean energy, are hazardous to people’s health. Pence believes that evolution, which has been taught in schools for over fifty years as accepted science, is merely an unsubstantiated theory. Trump ponders whether swallowing or injecting yourself with Lysol may be an effective coronavirus treatment. Pence has said that homosexuality is a “choice” or “learned behavior.”
It’s hard to say whether Trump’s and Pence’s false anti-science beliefs stem more from gross ignorance or political pandering, whether they actually believe the idiocy they spout or assume the beliefs of their most ignorant followers for political benefit. Either way, they represent an unprecedented devolution of scientific belief in Republican leadership that is evident in every aspect of Republican thought and action.
The Republican Party’s anti-science bias has translated into destructive federal policy-making. For decades, the Environmental Protection Agency has followed a science-based process for setting health-based air pollution standards. The Trump Administration has sabotaged this process, first by implementing faster timelines, less review, and shorter documents and then by disbanding the Particulate Matter Review Panel. Trump has also proposed sweeping budget cuts at the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation.
Trump defied climate-change experts by pulling the US out of the Paris Climate Accord with the Republican-controlled Congress’s blessing. Against overwhelming opposition from environmental scientists, the Trump administration repealed the Clean Water Rule and replaced the Clean Power Plan with the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, which eliminated standards for capping industrial emissions. The administration has also undone the Obama administration's auto fuel efficiency and emissions standards.
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The science division of the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House had nine employees under President Obama who dealt with policy issues involving STEM education, biotechnology and crisis response. Now it is empty – zero employees. Trump has no interest in scientific research or opinion which may run counter to his business-at-all-cost agenda. The Trump administration views all scientists’ concerns with skepticism or denial, epitomized during the coronavirus pandemic which Trump took seriously only after the horrific spread of infections and death made it impossible to dismiss.
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Finally, Trump’s appointments to head the EPA and Department of Energy were made with the intent of gutting the agencies. To head the EPA, Trump appointed Scott Pruitt, the former Oklahoma attorney general who has long opposed environmental regulations and questioned the science behind climate change. As Oklahoma’s attorney general, he sued the EPA 13 times. For Director of Energy, Trump appointed Rick Perry, who advocated dismantling the agency during his 2012 presidential run. Former Texas governor Perry, a non-scientist, replaced a Stanford University physicist, who had replaced an MIT physicist.
Republican politicians have meekly fallen in line with the Trump administration’s anti-science onslaught, and most Republican Party members appear willing to believe the administration’s lies on any scientific subject. It doesn’t help that many of the brightest conservatives who could offer pushback against the anti-science balderdash have left the party of Trump, and that 61% of Republicans today are not college graduates and arguably less able or willing to refute the nonsense their leaders serve up.
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America desperately needs a pro-science president and Congress in today’s highly advanced world. We need people who don’t spread dangerously ignorant misinformation and who understand the essential role that science plays in protecting the environment, reducing climate change, furthering critical medical and technological advancements, forging a forward-thinking 21st century economy, and keeping Americans safe and healthy. Today’s Republican Party and its current leadership are moving America towards the anti-scientific Dark Ages of the modern era, and we are already beginning to pay a heavy price.
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Trump the Demagogue
President Trump says that he is confident that there will be a coronavirus vaccine by year’s end. After Mr. Trump’s nearly three and a half year performance as president, does anyone ever take seriously what he thinks?
One thing we know for certain. Mr. Trump has only the slightest passing acquaintance with the truth. It is best just to ignore what he says and rely on infinitely more credible, corroborated sources. Short of that, whatever Mr. Trump says, it is wisest to expect the truth to be somewhere near its opposite.
We have a president who traffics in outright lies, half-truths, gross exaggerations, conspiracy theories, false assurances, and optimism grounded in ignorance.
A goading question that still plagues half the 2016 electorate is how the other half voted Mr. Trump into the White House. He was the same outrageously deceitful buffoon during his pre-election campaigning that he is now, yet half of the electorate voted Mr. Trump into the Oval Office.
Dr. Saul Levine, a psychology professor emeritus at the University of California at San Diego, provided arguably the best answer in a Psychology Today article on the appeal of demagogues. Demagogues are political leaders who seek support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of people rather than by using rational argument. They are often charismatic and bombastic. Donald Trump certainly fits the bill.
Demagogues use their oratorical skills to appeal to the baser, more negative feelings in people: prejudice, suspiciousness, resentment, hatred, racism, aggression, violence, paranoia and ultra-nationalism. Mr. Trump has stoked feelings of prejudice and racism by among other things, demonizing Mexican immigrants and Muslims, calling protesting African-American NFL players “sons of bitches,” and calling the caravan of refugee asylum-seekers an “invasion.”
He has fomented hatred, aggression, and violence through his racially charged diatribes, vicious attacks on his political opponents, whipping his campaign crowds into an angry lather, and encouraging violence against protesters. He has fed into the suspicions and paranoia of people who believe Mexican immigrants are taking away their jobs and unleashing vicious crime waves. He has created racially tainted ultra-nationalism with his “America first” rhetoric, singularly promoting America’s interests in a zero-sum battle against a threatening outside world.
In seeming paradox, the louder that demagogues bellow, the angrier they become, and the more hateful their words, the more popular they become. According to Dr. Levine, it worked for Hitler, Stalin, Joseph McCarthy, Huey Long, and Mussolini and certainly explains how Trump’s vile, angry bombast does nothing to weaken his popularity among his base.
Demagogues also rage against imminent threats from within and without and convince their impassioned audiences to see these menacing bogeymen as their own. No one envisions more dastardly threats to himself or by extension his supporters than Mr. Trump: the “fake news lamestream media,” the Democrats, RINOs, America’s intelligence agencies, prejudiced judges, the deep state, creeping socialism, invading hordes of immigrants, China, and allies that have been ripping off America forever.
Dr. Levine cautions that all humans are capable of darker sentiments, especially in times of personal or social turmoil. People who are particularly susceptible to the persuasive skills of a demagogue are often demoralized, frustrated and angry. They often feel alienated from those who are more fortunate, especially the better educated, the wealthy and the political elite. When they hear persuasive speeches from a demagogue that feeds their prejudices and provides simple answers to their problems, they want to believe.
People who follow a demagogue, according to Dr. Levine, seek a savior who will “destroy their enemies, bring back ‘the old values,’ and help them feel better about themselves and their world.” However, as American historian Richard Hofstater warned in his book The Paranoid Style in American Politics, the harm that demagogues do to citizens and society is often severe and lasting. They lust for power, relentlessly deliver a false, destructive narrative, and fail their followers on a grand scale.
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Demagogic dictators like Hitler and Mussolini weren’t thwarted until they brought their countries down with them. Fortunately, in a democracy, a demagogue can be brought down by the ballot box before he does irreparable damage. The only person that Donald Trump cares about saving is himself.
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Republican Senate Capitulation
The most sickening spectacle at the president’s State of the Union address was Senate Republicans rising in unison, save Mitt Romney, and robotically chanting “Four More Years!” as Orwell’s Big Brother looked on approvingly.
Four more years of presidential corruption. Four more years of foreign interference in American politics. Four more years of blatant lies. Four more years of divisive, hateful rhetoric. Four more years of on-the-fly foreign policy. Four more years of chaos. Who wouldn’t want four more years?
Republican congressmen have not lost their moral compass, they have smashed it to smithereens. They have hitched their star to a bloviated miscreant who has long inhabited the seamy, amoral underbelly of capitalism where the only rule is don’t get caught. In Trump world, anything goes in business or politics, whether scamming Trump University victims out of their life savings to make a buck or welcoming foreign countries to help him steal an election.
Tragically, Republicans are okay with all of that. Morality in politics? A quixotic notion. Foreign interference? The means justify the ends. Family values? So yesterday. Honesty and integrity? Where does that get you? These Republican congressmen just want to keep their jobs, and if that means publicly declaring obeisance to the poster boy for the seven deadly sins, so be it.
Republican congressmen have stripped away even the thinnest veneer of respectability and decency, laying naked their moral cowardice and loyalty to party over country. They have abandoned the slightest pretense of caring about our constitution, democracy, or values. They are willing to jeopardize the very future of our country to try and save their moldering political hides.
Democracies rot from within. It often begins with a corrupt leader supported by sycophantic minions taking a meat cleaver to democratic norms. Putin did just that, transforming Russia’s fledgling democracy under Boris Yeltsin into an oppressive dictatorship, undermining and then silencing the free press, eviscerating Russia’s Federal Assembly and turning the Supreme Court into a rubber stamp.
Does anyone believe that an unrestrained Trump wouldn’t take the same route to consolidate power, emasculate the legislative and judicial branches, and subvert the free press? Isn’t Putin his most admired strongman role model? Does anyone believe a Republican-controlled Congress would do anything in response but keep their heads down and mouths shut?
In 1951, Czeslaw Milosz, a Nobel Prize winner who defected to the U.S. from Soviet-satellite Poland, wrote “The Captive Mind,” which explained how formerly proud, free nations lost their freedom and “gradually submitted to the compulsion of others.” Of those political minions surrounding a corrupt, authoritarian leader, Milosz wrote, “Some tried not to show how much his favor meant to them; some were openly servile. In a short time, he was surrounded by a court of yes-men who frowned when he frowned and guffawed loudly whenever he deigned to tell a joke.” Isn’t that exactly the behavior of today’s Republican congressmen?
For Republican congressmen to have no problem with Trump encouraging foreign interference in an American election or withholding military assistance to an ally for personal benefit is a dagger to the heart of our democracy. Tainted elections destroy the legitimacy of a democracy in any country. Congressional capitulation to a lawless president destroys the checks and balances which make our democracy work as the Constitution intended.
As Milosz contended, the changes that kill democracy don’t occur all at once. They will happen slowly, almost imperceptibly, and begin with a weakening of the will to resist. They are already beginning to happen in the U.S. Will American voters wake up to that reality and stop the authoritarian assault on our democracy? Will they oust all of those in Washington who are spinelessly complicit in allowing it to happen? These are dangerous days, and the future of our republic is in the hands of every American.
Environmental Criminal
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While there are many reasons why Donald Trump must not be reelected president, one of the most critical is that Trump is a dangerous environmental criminal. Trump is intent on leaving America’s children with the most toxic, deadliest, and most devastated environment since an asteroid killed off the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
Although Trump claims climate change is a hoax, he knows full well of its existence, as does any 4th grader after completing his or her science unit. The difference is that 4th graders care deeply about the impact that climate change will have on their future while Trump doesn’t care.
Trump is in bed with the big polluters: Big Oil, Big Coal, automakers, and other major pollution-spewing industries. He is rewarding their support by pushing for greater American dependence on oil, coal, and gas-powered vehicles and giving oil companies carte blanche to drill and frack anywhere and everywhere with impunity. Trump is opening the floodgates for increased climate-changing CO2 emissions at a time when the vast majority of countries are intent on reducing them.
During his term of office, Trump has rolled back 95 environmental rules according to a New York Times analysis based on research from Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School, and other sources. There have been 25 rollbacks on air pollution and emissions’ regulations, 19 on drilling and extraction, 10 on water pollution, and 8 on toxic substances.
Among the 95 deregulations, Trump has cancelled a requirement for oil and gas companies to report methane emissions, scuttled the Clean Power Plan which would have set strict limits on carbon emissions from gas and coal-fired power plants, revoked California’s power to set its own more stringent emission standards for cars and light trucks, and loosened a Clinton-era rule designed to limit toxic emissions from major industrial polluters. In addition, Trump has sought a 2020 70% budget cut to federal renewable energy funding according to a Bloomberg report.
What will the effects be of Trump’ assault on the environment through his deregulations? Climate change will fuel more frequent and powerful hurricanes and storms, more devastating wild fires, increasingly hotter weather and more extreme weather events, greater flooding, longer, more persistent droughts, and rising sea levels.
Due to the disasters fueled by climate change, thousands of people have died, cities and countrysides in the wake of the disasters have been ravaged, and people have lost their homes and businesses. Rising sea levels have resulted in eroding coastlines, destructive floods, increased soil salinity, loss of beach areas, habitat loss for animals, and forced human migration from low-lying coastal areas. As climate change grows worse, its effects that we are now experiencing on a regular basis will only become more severe and destructive.
Trump knows all about climate change and its disastrous effects. He doesn’t care about Planet Earth or the kind of horrific environmental conditions we may leave to our children and their children. All he cares about is Planet Trump and its political and business welfare.
If getting reelected with polluters’ support means a few more killer hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, or floods, so be it. If increased pollution means more adverse birth outcomes and more damaged cognitive and behavioral development, respiratory illness, impaired mental health, and cancer development among children, that’s the way it goes. If Trump’s contributing to increased CO2 emissions and other pollutants is at odious odds with the worldwide community seeking to reduce climate change and its impact, that’s just the way Trump likes it.
Trump is an environmental criminal who if reelected will do disastrous, irreversible environmental damage to our country from which our children and their children cannot escape. On that basis alone, his reelection is absolutely unthinkable.
Democracy in Decline
Our great democracy is in decline and rapidly losing the faith of the American people for whom it is supposed to serve.
The current Congress and president ignore the will of the majority of Americans on major issues, subverting the principle of democratic representation. The vast majority of Americans want the government to act on sensible gun regulation, address climate change, enact immigration reform that includes a pathway to citizenship, ensure affordable health care for all Americans, and safeguard Roe vs. Wade. The Republican-controlled Senate and Republican president have been invariably unresponsive, bending to the will of the minority on every issue.
Russia interfered aggressively in the 2016 presidential election and is already beginning to meddle in the 2020 election. The president has welcomed and even encouraged such foreign interference and Republican senators have turned a blind eye. The integrity of our election process which is essential to the legitimacy of any democracy is at its greatest risk in history.
With Congress paralyzed by partisan politics and unwilling to do its job, the president has filled the vacuum and assumed greater power. The Republican-controlled Senate has essentially relinquished its constitutional check on the executive branch, creating an imbalance of power that leads to increasingly autocratic rule. Compliant, non-functioning representative bodies are window dressing for every de facto dictatorship in the world.
As Americans lose faith in our democratic government, so does the rest of the world. When the current administration blurs the distinction between our adversaries and allies, between duly elected leaders and brutal dictators, and between democracies and autocracies, democracy suffers and dictators are emboldened. When America is no longer viewed as the champion of democracy and our own democracy is no longer exemplary, a disillusioned world has lost what President Reagan called “that shining city upon a hill” that has provided hope and inspiration for all oppressed people.
Our democracy is in grave danger. When many Americans no longer trust the free press that is essential to any democracy, when friends and relatives are often in such opposite camps that political talk is scrupulously avoided, when Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of the job that elected federal officials are doing, when Congress is in the perpetual throes of sclerosis, and when the president has “the right to do whatever I want,” the health of our democracy could not be in greater jeopardy.
We are at a critical point in the history of our country. Our democracy is being eroded from both without and within, and only we the people have the power to change the current dangerous trajectory. A little more than half of America’s registered voters decided the election outcome in 2016 for the half who stayed home. All Americans that care about the future of our country must exercise our right and responsibility to vote in the upcoming election.
By our vote in November, we will determine whether our country turns away from the democratically destructive path we are currently on. Beyond that, it will determine whether we use the ballot box to revitalize our democracy, protect and preserve our cherished freedoms, and resurrect America’s standing as the democratic leader of the free world.
In a representative democracy, we the people have the power to ensure that Lincoln’s belief that a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth” remains America’s greatest lasting achievement. The future of our democracy is in every American’s hands.
Putin’s Campaign to Reelect Trump
Along with Trump’s Republican base, his leading supporters for reelection are Vladimir Putin and the Russian government. Ronald Reagan must be rolling in his grave.
As reported by the Washington Post, at his end-of-year press conference, Putin said that the impeachment charges against Trump were “completely fabricated reasons.” Sound familiar? Russian government propagandist Vladimir Soloviev defended Trump on his evening television show and said, “I can’t understand for what reason Democrats don’t like Trump.” Also sound familiar?
On his Sunday night program on state-sponsored television, anchor Dmitry Kiselyov said that Hollywood had joined the Democrats in being against Trump, portraying him as “always on the dark side.” And the state-sponsored Russian news channel recently presented segments of Rudy Guliani’s interview on One America News which promoted Trump’s (and Russia’s) debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
Borrowing Republican talking points, Putin’s pro-Trump campaign has the same goal as the covert Russian election interference in 2016: get Trump reelected, sow greater discord between Republicans and Democrats, and weaken our democracy. This, of course, is the same Putin that shut down the free press in Russia, has his political enemies jailed or killed, annexed Ukrainian Crimea, and continues his bloody invasion of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
Putin’s support of Trump is understandable. Trump took Putin’s word over U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia didn’t interfere in the 2016. He continues to advance the debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was the major interloper in the 2016 election.
Trump has provided no pushback to Putin’s USSR-styled annexation of Crimea, continues their chummy relationship despite Putin’s invasion of eastern Ukraine, and withheld military support to Ukraine for months to Russia’s decided advantage. Trump’s pulling U.S. soldiers out of Syria also enhanced Russia’s strategic and military role in Syria and the Middle East and by virtue weakened U.S. influence in the region.
Trump has spruced up the brutal dictator’s image by showing unflagging respect and admiration despite Russia’s most belligerent, provocative acts. He supports Russia’s reinstatement in the G7, which was kicked out after its invasion of the Crimea in 2014. Trump has invited Putin to the White House, further raising Putin’s international standing, and wants to invite Putin to the U.S.-hosted G7 summit. Is it any wonder that Putin and the Russian government are all in on Trump’s reelection?
It doesn’t really matter that most Americans are appalled by Trump welcoming Putin’s support and influence in the 2020 election and his strengthening Russia and weakening the U.S. internationally. What matters most is how undecided voters in battleground states feel about it.
Will Trump essentially being in league with America’s greatest adversary be the final straw for those independents who constitute 38% of the electorate? It comes down to the undecideds in three or four battleground states whose vote, thanks to our not-so democratic electoral college, will decide the fate of the presidential election for the rest of us.
When Trump asked Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden for his political benefit and was impeached, the political needle on Trump’s favorability remained unmoved. Given that, would Trump welcoming Putin’s latest effort to influence his reelection make any difference? Perhaps as long as the economy is doing well, Attila the Hun could get reelected. Perhaps many voters are so cynical about American politics that it doesn’t matter which crook occupies the White House. Perhaps Trump has perverted the norms of the presidency so frequently that people have become anesthetized.
Trump has basically said to Russia or any other foreign power, “Come on in and help me get reelected,” an act that our constitutional framers most greatly feared. If “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” as Thomas Jefferson wrote, we have fallen asleep on our watch and put our democracy and freedom at dire risk. Do enough Americans care?
Towering Greta, Tiny Trump
President Trump reached a new low in his careening descent to the bottom of the human decency scale by mocking Times’ Person of the Year, 16 year old Greta Thunberg, the courageous teen advocate for worldwide climate-change reduction. “So ridiculous,” Trump tweeted of Greta’s honor. “Greta must work on her anger management problem. She should go to a good old-fashioned movie with a friend. Chill Greta, Chill.”
Where does one start in condemning the president for verbally attacking a young girl who is championing a cause that doesn’t sit well with Trump? It doesn’t sit well with his denial of climate change despite its undisputed existence and devastating effects, making him an ignoramus nonpareil. It doesn’t sit well with his agenda to increase rather than reduce CO2 emissions by drilling and fracking America’s way back to the 20th century.
One can also add “ageist” and “ableist” to Trump’s list of bigotries. Trump believes that children like Greta really shouldn’t meddle in adult affair, have nothing to offer, and should spend their time doing kid things like watching movies. That’s blatant ageism. Greta also has Asperger’s Syndrome, a neurological disability that she has not allowed to hinder her crusade for climate-change justice or weaken her effectiveness. Trump has no problem attacking a child with a neurological disability, just as he had no problem mocking the disabled reporter at one of his rallies. Trump is a reprehensible ableist bereft of empathy.
Of course, as we know Trump, he is plainly jealous of Greta receiving Time’s Person of the Year award when clearly the person most deserving was Donald Trump. Remember, Trump previously threw out his name as a potential Nobel Peace Prize recipient, self-promotion his stock-in-trade. Greta receiving the Times’ award was “ridiculous,” Trump fumed, because his accomplishments dwarfed Greta’s and, after all, she was just a kid! Trump remains the poster boy for small-minded pettiness.
Greta, the real adult in the room, didn’t respond to Trump in kind, taking the higher road with which Trump is unfamiliar. Greta tweeted back in her Twitter biography, “A teenager working on her anger management problem. Currently chilling and watching a good old fashioned movie with a friend." That was a wonderful response – not angry, not venomous, no personal attack – and highly effective. Of course, it is dripping with sarcasm, but it wasn’t personally offensive and had a nice touch of humor. It almost sweetly conveyed the message that the last thing she would do is forsake her cause or take to heart the advice of Donald Trump.
Trump has gotten into Twitter wars with just about everyone in America who isn’t an Always-Trumper, and now he’s taken on a young girl who may be the greatest teen heroine since Joan of Arc. Greta has raised the international consciousness on climate change like no other person, and she is already playing a significant role in helping to vanquish the greatest man-made existential threat to the planet.
When it comes to taking on Greta, Trump is badly overmatched. She has the respect and admiration of the entire world while Trump is a laughing stock. She has the courage of her convictions while Trump is a “do me a favor” transactionalist. She is a unifying leader around a noble cause while Trump is a divisive leader whose greatest cause is his personal success. She is on the winning side of the climate change issue while Trump is on the anti-science losing side. She may well go down in history as a great person who helped change the world for the better while Trump will go down in history as one of America’s worst presidents.
Next time, Trump would do well to take on someone his own size. By attacking Greta, he has just made her even bigger and himself even smaller. Thank you, Greta, for your courage, your inspiration, and your towering strength.
Trump Will Not Be Reelected
Recently several editorialists have opined that Donald Trump will likely be reelected as president, citing the historical reelection success of incumbent presidents presiding over a strong economy. I disagree with them and believe that Trump will be defeated next November due to one powerful, overriding consideration: human decency.
The vast majority of Americans are honest, decent, hard-working people. They aren’t bullies, braggarts, or cheaters. They have respect for others, don’t make fun of people’s looks or mock their disabilities, show compassion, and help out others in need. They are good people.
Of course, no human is perfect. Good people make mistakes, hurt others with thoughtless remarks or deeds, do things they later regret. But they show genuine remorse for their misdeeds and are big enough to admit when they are wrong. Their imperfections don’t define who they are.
The vast majority of Americans also try to instill in their children the values they strive to live by: honesty, humility, kindness, respect for others, the courage to do what’s right. They try to set examples for their children by how they live their own lives, by practicing what they preach.
On the other hand, by most standards, Donald Trump ranks near the bottom of the human decency scale. He is a chronic liar who doubles down on his most blatant fabrications. He brags incessantly, bullies and insults his critics, makes fun of women’s looks, and mocks the disabled. He never admits to being wrong and never apologizes for anything offensive that he says or does. His gross imperfections clearly define who he is: a most despicable human being.
The vast majority of Americans will vote Trump out office because of who he is. They will not reelect a person who is the moral antithesis of who they are and whom they hope their children to be. They will not reelect a person who in no way represents the character of the American people or the values that most Americans cherish. They will not reelect a vainglorious blowhard to represent America as the leader of the free world.
The vast majority of Americans are so much better than Donald Trump that their sense of decency will outweigh any economic considerations when they send Trump packing next November. They are also smart enough to know that Donald Trump is riding an economic wave that has been growing for ten years. And if an improving economy is the sole criterion for judging the leader of a country, let’s give Hitler, Mao, and Hirohito their due.
In an op ed in the evangelical magazine Christianity Today, editor Mark Gailli broke with Trump, castigating him for his corruption and moral turpitude. This schism in Trump’s steadfast evangelical base is just the first indication of growing disgust even among even his most ardent defenders. It is much more palpable among the majority of Americans who don’t view Trump through a distortedly favorable lense.
Donald Trump will not be reelected president. The vast majority of Americans are too decent and honest to let that happen. And after Trump’s ouster, the stench that will have hung over the country and the American people for nearly four years will begin to dissipate, and we will all breathe more deeply.
If Trump Hadn’t Won
How would things be different if any Republican presidential candidate other than Trump had won the nomination and been elected in 2016?
First, there would be no impeachment of a sitting president and the political and national upheaval that comes with it. No other Republican president would have been so audaciously corrupt as to solicit a foreign nation’s help to enhance his election chances by asking Ukraine to dig up dirt on a presidential political rival.
Second, there would be no conflicting viewpoints on Russian interference in the 2016 election: Trump’s, who questions Russian interference and promotes a debunked Unkrainian-involvement conspiracy theory, and the FBI, CIA, and NSA’s, who provided irrefutable evidence that there was significant Russian interference. Unlike Trump, any other Republican president would have accepted the evidence and put his weight behind ensuring that such interference didn’t happen in 2020.
Third, there would have been no weakening of America’s relationship with our allies and commitment to NATO, and no propping up and lending credibility to brutal dictators. No other Republican president would have regularly insulted the leaders of our closest allies, questioned whether we would respond if Russia attacked a small neighboring NATO country, or pulled the U.S. out of American/allied supported agreements like the Paris Climate Accord and the Iran nuclear deal. No other Republican president would have had cringing bromances with the likes of Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Erdogan, all of whom have brazenly pursued agendas contrary to U.S. interests.
Fourth, while no president is beyond an occasional deceit, no other Republican president would have lied on a nearly daily basis to the American people to the point that nothing that he said could be trusted. Such lying, according to Thomas Jefferson, “subverts democracy at its most important link: the ability of the people to obtain the truth and light.” No other Republican president would have destroyed the truth like Trump.
Fourth, white supremacy and white-supremacist hate crimes, including increased attacks on Muslims, Jews, and Mexicans, would not be on the rise in America. No other Republican president would have installed nativists like Steven Miller and Steve Bannon in the White House, catered to the hate mongers of the far right fringe for political gain, nor made blatant racists remarks against minorities, emboldening the most violent white supremacists to act on their hateful impulses.
Fifth, no other Republican president would have shamelessly attacked, insulted, and vilified anyone who criticized him as does Trump through his outrageous twitter rants. And no other Republican president would have twittered out policy decisions to the world, often without consulting anyone, only to reverse direction frequently, leaving both the domestic and international direction of the country jarringly uncertain and unstable.
What wouldn’t have changed if any Republican president other than Trump would have been elected? The economy would have continued to grow and unemployment to decline as they had through the previous eight years under the Obama administration. The one thing that Trump crowingly takes full credit for – a robust, growing economy inherited from the previous Democratic administration - would have occurred under any president, Republican or Democrat.
All of the bad stuff, however – the impeachment, the weakened relations with allies, the increased credibility of brutal dictators, the rise of white supremacy, the heightened racial discord and violence, the unpredictable, wavering direction of US domestic and international policy, the coarse, virulent discourse that Trump has made commonplace, the complete lack of trust in what the president says – would not have occurred under any other Republican president of the candidates who were running in 2016. And as a result, all Americans, our nation, and the world would be in a much better place.
Republican Party in Decline
Like the erstwhile Federalist Party in the early 1800’s, today’s Republican Party is sinking into oblivion, perilously out of step with a growing majority of Americans.
The Republican Party simply doesn’t have much going for it. 26% of Americans describe themselves as Republicans, 31% as Democrats, and 38% as independents according to Pew Research Center surveys. Among independents, six in ten are Democratic leaning and favor Democratic Party positions on most major issues. The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll also shows that an astonishing 18% of Republicans believe that their own Republican president should be impeached.
87% of Republicans are white while Democrats have grown increasingly diverse, with just 55% of Democrats being non-Hispanic whites. All racial and ethnic minorities are growing at a faster rate than whites according to U.S. Census Bureau data. In addition, in 2016 only 28% of voters under 30 supported Donald Trump according to Pew Research, and less than 30% of millennials wanted Republicans to retain control of Congress in 2018. Both age and ethnic demographics portend ominously for Republicans.
According to 2018 exit polls by the National Election Pool, women favored Democratic candidates by 19% (59% to 41%) while men favored Republican candidates by just 4% (51% to 47%), a huge Democratic advantage. And as more Americans are becoming college educated, the number of college-educated Republicans is shrinking. According to the Pew Research Center, in 1994 54% of college degree holders were Republicans while 39% of degree holders were Democrats. By 2017, those numbers were reversed.
The Republican Party also holds positions on major issues contrary to those of the majority of Americans. Most Americans favor gun regulations like banning assault weapons and closing background check loopholes. Republican lawmakers consistently block all gun-control legislation. According to a Reuters survey, 70% of Americans favor a Medicare-for-all approach to health care with the availability of a public option. Republicans cling tenaciously to the traditional for-profit system.
According to an NPR/PBS News Hour poll, 77% of Americans support upholding Roe vs. Wade. The Republican Party seeks to overthrow Roe vs Wade through appointing conservative Supreme Court justices. A recent AP survey revealed that 70% of Americans believe that climate change is real and a growing danger. Republicans either deny the existence of climate change or discount its impact. Most Americans support legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $15.00 and to guarantee equal pay for women. Republicans consistently block both measures in the Republican-controlled Senate.
A large majority of Americans support the development of clean, renewable energy sources and reducing America’s dependence on fossil fuels. The Republican Party fosters America’s reliance on oil and coal and has cut federal renewable-energy funding. Most Americans view air and water pollution as significant health issues. According to National Geographic tracking, the Trump administration has loosened industrial regulations on toxic air pollution, rolled back energy-sector regulations to reduce carbon emissions, and relaxed federal auto fuel-economy standards.
According to a Fox News poll, 83% of Americans support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. The Republican Party opposes any such “amnesty” for law breakers. More than two-thirds of Americans support same-sex marriage according to the latest Gallup Poll. The Republican Party has consistently rejected the validity of same-sex marriage. Most Americans have a favorable view of labor unions according to a Business Insider poll. Republicans have a history of union busting.
Republicans have never been farther out of step with the majority of Americans, stuck in a bygone era of gas-guzzling cars, less tolerant mores, and white hegemony. Their only shot at relevancy is if Democrats careen wildly to the left, leaving the political center up for grabs. Even then, Republicans would have to moderate their position on almost every major issue, alienating much of their hard-right base. Today’s Republican Party suffers from built-in obsolescence, a first-generation iPhone functioning on a single bar.
Sources for fact checking:
https://www.people-press.org/2019/03/14/political-independents-who-they-are-what-they-think/
https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/economic-demographics-republicans/
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/the-republican-party-has-an-older-voters-problem.html
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/22/democrats-more-educated-republicans-pew-research-c/
https://planetsave.com/2012/10/19/70-of-americans-believe-in-global-warming-now/
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/03/how-trump-is-changing-science-environment/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/05/23/same-sex-marriage-poll-americans/638587002/
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/30/union-membership-2/
https://www.businessinsider.com/americans-favorable-view-labor-unions-2019-9
Who’s Afraid of Universal Health Care?
In advance of the 2020 election, Republican politicians are attempting to depict Democratic-proposed universal health care as some kind of dangerous, prohibitively expensive, socialistic system that won’t work in the US. It appears, however, that most Americans aren’t buying the negative propaganda. In fact, a 2018 Reuters survey revealed that 70% of Americans favor a Medicare-for-all approach.
Universal health care - a system that provides government-provided health coverage to all citizens – exists in 32 out of 33 major industrialized countries, the US being the only exception. Japan has had universal health coverage since 1938, Great Britain since 1948, Sweden since 1955, Canada since 1966, and Australia since 1975. The United States doesn’t provide universal health care along with the poorer nations of Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.
Polls have consistently shown that Americans are not satisfied with our current hodge-podge health care system and the exorbitant cost of medical insurance. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the US spends twice as much on health care annually compared to other wealthy democratic countries. The greater expense, however, doesn’t translate to better health care. The US doesn’t even rank among the top sixteen nations for quality of health care according to the 2017 study by the global Prosperity Index. Most of the countries within the top sixteen including Canada, France, Norway, New Zealand, Belgium, Germany, Israel, Australia, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Japan have universal health care.
There are also 27.5 million uninsured Americans today, including 3.9 million children, and the number of uninsured has increased by 7 million since Donald Trump took office. By comparison, in the 32 advanced democracies where health care is considered a human right, every man, woman, and child have government-provided health care. It is difficult to fathom how the wealthiest country in the world can’t do the same. When it comes to health care, the US is a backwards nation whose citizens are suffering the consequences.
There’s the Republican-propagated myth that universal health care would dramatically increase every American’s taxes. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) analyzed the total tax revenue of 34 industrialized countries, all of whom have universal health care except the US. The annual tax average per adult for all countries was $12,911 while the annual tax per adult in the US was $11,365. For paying just a little more in taxes, residents in the other countries receive free cradle-to-grave health care. In addition, the cost of universal health care in the US would undoubtedly be spread among both all American taxpayers and the thousands of businesses who would no longer have to provide health insurance for employees.
It is past time for the US to join the modern world by providing universal health care. With for-profit health insurance companies out of the picture, the multi-billion dollars they reap annually from insured Americans would vanish and health care costs would drop significantly. All private employers and public institutions would welcome being out of the health care business but would help subsidize the cost of health insurance through an increased payroll tax.
The cost of prescription drugs would also be reduced, given the tremendous bargaining leverage of the federal government with its gigantic pool of 325 million Medicare-for-all participants. And the 27.5 million currently uninsured men, women, and children would finally be covered like residents in all other advanced democracies.
Bernie and Elizabeth and 32 out of 33 advanced democracies are right: universal health care is definitely the way to go. Other Democratic presidential candidates are on the same path but propose keeping the private option available as an intermediate step towards Medicare-for-all, allowing for-profit health insurance to die a natural death. Republicans, who cling to the failed for-profit model, are not in the ball game.
Whether universal health care is done in one fell swoop or phased in, it is undoubtedly where America’s health care is heading, and better late than never. With 70% of American adults favoring the Medicare-for-all approach, Democrats clearly have the mandate needed to make it happen and the experience of 32 other advanced democracies to benefit from.
Sources for fact checking:
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2019/demo/p60-267.html
https://truecostblog.com/2009/08/09/countries-with-universal-healthcare-by-date/
https://www.businessinsider.com/healthiest-countries-in-the-world-2017-1
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/07/canadians-may-pay-more-taxes-than-americans-but-theres-a-catch.html
The Incredible Shrinking Republican Base
Donald Trump is going down in flames and taking no one with him but his fast-dwindling base and those sycophantic Republican legislators. The rest of the American public and the country will be just fine.
Who’s actually left in Trump’s base of supporters from the 2016 election? Certainly not the many Independents who took a chance on voting for a political outsider only to rue the day. Certainly not disgruntled Bernie Sander’s supporters who voted for Trump in retaliation for Hillary’s nomination. Certainly not blue collar workers who believed Trump’s hogwash that he’d return hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs to the US when in fact companies offshored a record number of jobs in Trump’s first year.
Farmers are no longer a united Trump bloc, realizing that being “great American patriots” meant taking a terrible economic hit for a president who doesn’t know soybeans from jelly beans. Women aren’t too fond of Trump’s blatant misogynism, with 70% polling their dislike of the president, including millions of disaffected Republican women.
Moderate Republicans who still believe there is such a thing as conservative Republican values have abandoned Trump, including conservative leaders who spend much of their time opining on CNN and MSNBC. Even FOX News commentators not named Hannity, Carlson, or Ingraham have gone after Trump, creating a small schism among FOX’s spoon-fed viewing audience.
A segment of the middle class who bit on Trump’s promise to reduce their taxes won’t be fooled twice after double-checking their paltry or nonexistent 2018 tax rebates. And when you’ve even got Wall Street bankers fed up with Trump for creating market instability and donating to Democratic presidential candidates, the jig may be up.
Finally, there are the former Trump voters who are just worn down from trying to defend his indefensible behavior and sick of the daily lies, bragging, personal attacks, and chaos. They just want some return to normalcy and a little peace in their lives which they know they won’t get with four more years of Trump.
So who’s left in Trump’s dwindling base? Well, we have your white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and Clan members who view Trump as a fellow traveler. There are the chronic malcontents to whom Trump gives voice with his hateful, vile rhetoric and shared sense of victimization. There are the ignorant and fearful minority who have nightmares of creeping socialism and invading hoards of immigrants. There are the crazy conspiracy theorists that co-inhabit Trump’s crazy conspiracy universe.
Many single-issue evangelicals are still hanging with Trump because of abortion and apparently conclude that Christian virtue doesn’t apply to presidents or themselves. There are the corporate heads and wealthiest 1% who Trump takes care of and the 2nd Amendment fanatics more concerned with their “right” to shoulder an AK-47 then with the lives of America’s children.
Finally, there are the Republican legislators whose public support of Trump often belies the private disdain of many who might summon an ounce of courage in the privacy of the voting booth. And that’s about what is left of Trump’s 2016 voting base, stripped of millions of clear-thinking Americans who are loathe to make the same mistake again.
Trump’s dwindling base may plateau near its current level, but it is difficult to envision any regrowth given the increasing percentage of Republicans supporting the House impeachment inquiry. The motley crew that is left doesn’t have the numbers to deliver another head-scratching Trump victory, and those who richly deserve the label of “deplorables” will fade into the political background until the next demagogue comes along to tap into their perpetual grievances and biases. The rest of America will move forward with great alacrity, freed from the appalling, never-ending fiasco that has been the Trump presidency.
Sources:
https://dailycaller.com/2016/04/01/poll-70-percent-of-women-dont-like-trump/
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Name That Country Quiz​
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Here is a little “name that country” quiz for readers with time on their hands. This is an open-book quiz, so participants may access any credible sources they choose.
Among advanced democracies, what country has the most expensive health care, the highest percentage of uninsured citizens, and the highest rate of infant mortality?
Aside from Syria and Nicaragua, what is the only country in the world that is not a member of the Paris Climate Accord, that has loosened industrial restrictions on climate-warming CO2 emissions, and whose leader denies the existence of climate change?
What country has the highest incarceration rate in the world, the largest number of prisons, and a minority that comprises 12% of the nation’s population but 33% of its prisoners?
Among advanced democracies, what country does not elect its president by a majority of the popular vote, that has had presidents elected who lost the popular vote, and whose voter turnout is among the bottom 10%?
Among advanced democracies, what country has the highest rate of mass murders, of overall gun-murders, of gun-suicides, and of gun ownership per capita, and the most lenient gun-control laws?
What country has recently started an international trade war that is having a negative impact on world commerce, on US exports and the industries that depend on them, and on its country’s consumers who pay higher prices for goods?
Among advanced democracies, what country’s leader has developed friendly relations with brutal dictators, taken their word over his/her country’s intelligence agencies, and welcomed and solicited foreign interference in the country’s elections?
Among advanced democracies, what country has major industries that have relied on the cheap labor of undocumented immigrants for decades but provides no legal pathway for them to become citizens?
What is the only country to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord, the Iranian denuclearization agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the UN Human Rights Council, and UNESCO?
Among advanced democracies, what country has the highest percentage of child poverty and the greatest concentration of wealth among the smallest percentage of people?
Among advanced democracies, what country has the highest average college tuition cost and students with the greatest college loan debt?
What country has the largest trade deficit in the world and among advanced democracies, the third largest fiscal deficit as a percentage of the GNP?
In reading down the questions, you no doubt realized that the answer to every question was the same: the United States. Yes, this was a poorly disguised faux quiz aimed at driving home a point: as a country, we’ve got a lot of work to do.
Of course, every country has its problems, but we must acknowledge that the US certainly has its share, and they are only growing worse with a dysfunctional Washington government that does nothing to help solve them. None of the problems, however, is insurmountable, evidenced by their relative lack of severity in many other advanced democracies.
Given today’s polarized political climate, working across the aisle to solve serious problems is a fantasy, and we certainly can’t rely on the private sector. Therefore, as a nation of voters, in 2020 we must put the party in power – Republican or Democrat - that we believe is most committed to tackling those problems.
What party is most committed to making our children safer from gun violence, making health care more affordable for all, reducing childhood poverty, making college more affordable, addressing our gross economic inequalities, fixing our broken immigration system, combating destructive climate change, paring down the huge federal deficit, and protecting our democracy against foreign interference? Whichever party that is, we need to go all in in 2020 to ensure its success.
Passing the nation’s problems on to future generations would be a crime. Instead, our goal must be to leave them with a better America in every way possible. That is our moral obligation.
Sources:
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/comparing-us-mass-shootings-the-rest-the-world
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-highest-rate-of-gun-ownership.html
https://everytownresearch.org/firearm-suicide/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/illegal-immigrants-us-jobs-economy-farm-workers-taxes/
https://www.alternet.org/2015/04/numbers-are-staggering-us-world-leader-child-poverty/
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/here-are-202-companies-hurt-trumps-tariffs
https://www.trtworld.com/americas/trump-s-top-five-withdrawals-from-international-agreements-18543
The Dying Fervor Over Mass Killings
The national furor over the most recent spate of mass murders has dissipated as it has done after every horrific mass murder going back to the Columbine massacre twenty years ago. As a result, once again the window has essentially closed on the federal government passing laws to address gun violence including expanding background checks and banning assault weapons.
Were Washington controlled by Democrats, no doubt such sensible gun regulations would have passed. However, the Republican playbook on responding to mass murders never differs because it works: express great sympathy for the victims, show some interest in discussing possible gun-regulation legislation, wait for the furor to die down, and ultimately do nothing. No federal gun-regulation laws have passed in the last twenty-three years.
Over 90% of Republican Senators receive an “A” grade from the NRA for voting against all gun-regulation legislation. Over 80% of Democratic Senators receive an “F” grade. President Trump received a $30 million campaign contribution from the NRA, and NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre met with Trump after the shootings to remind him that gun control wasn’t a popular issue with his constituents or the NRA.
It is doubtful that even the most sustained public outcry would have changed the current political calculus in Washington. Mitch McConnell, who receives one of the largest annual NRA contributions of any senator, ensures that any House-generated gun legislation will die in the Senate with President Trump’s blessing. The vast majority of Republican legislators and President Trump will never cross the NRA, fearful of losing its support and jeopardizing their political careers.
The safety of America’s children shouldn’t be a partisan issue, but it is. Republican lawmakers are more concerned with protecting the rights of gun owners and getting reelected than about our children being murdered in their schools and their neighborhoods. Their callous disregard for human life is a powerful indictment, yet they continue to get reelected. The outrage among Americans after mass shootings that could sweep them out of office always wanes.
How many more mass murders will it take for our government to pass gun laws that are common in other advanced democracies? We’ve been asking ourselves this question for years as the death toll of American men, women, and children has risen to an unfathomable level. We must also ask ourselves this soul-searching question: what kind of a country are we to allow such a slaughter of innocents to go unaddressed? That is exactly what has happened, yet we keep reelecting the same people who do nothing and share responsibility for the escalation of mass murders in the country.
Many issues currently engage our minds: impeachment, climate change, health care, trade wars, a looming recession. The recent mass murders have become a fleeting concern. We don’t expect Congress to do anything because they never do. We harbor the false hope that maybe the worst is over, that the future won’t duplicate the past. We feel hopeless that there is anything individually we can do and do nothing. We admire those in the youthful anti-gun movement but remain on the sidelines.
Gun violence in America, including the horrific rate and magnitude of mass murders, should be a critical election issue for 2020. Which candidates will support sensible gun regulation? Which candidates are backed by the NRA? Which candidates have made reducing gun violence central to their campaigns? Which congressmen up for reelection have consistently opposed gun regulation?
The only way that we can get federal gun laws passed that are common among countries with extremely low gun-murder rates is to elect representatives, senators, and a president who will support them. In today’s political world, that means electing Democrats and ousting NRA-supported Republicans. Hopefully, it won’t take more mass murders between now and election day to regenerate Americans’ demand for action and to elect candidates who are committed to making a difference.
Never again should any child go to school afraid that this is the day he or she may be shot. If we don’t do everything humanly possible to protect our children, what kind of a country are we?
Sources:
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?id=d000000082
http://www.margieroswell.com/map_of_nra_grades_for_senators
Trump Being Trump
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Surely the weakest excuse from President Trump’s Congressional apologists for his more egregious behaviors is the oft-invoked, “That’s just Trump being Trump.” It was last used to try and explain away Trump’s phone call to the Ukrainian president asking for dirt on Joe Biden that could help Trump’s reelection chances. Republican senator Ron Johnson said dismissively, “You’ve heard President Trump talk. That’s President Trump.”
Of course. And Richard Nixon covering up the Watergate break-in was just Nixon being Nixon. And Bernie Madoffs bilking thousands of victims out of their life savings was just Bernie being Bernie. No doubt Communist propagandists justified Stalin’s annihilation of millions of his countrymen as just good ol’ Joe being Joe.
Is there anything wrong with Trump being Trump? Well, what about his bragging about grabbing women’s private parts, the accusations of sexual misconduct against Trump by a dozen women, and his affair with a porn actress and attempt to buy her silence? No big deal. That’s just Trump being Trump, and we all know boys will be boys. Who got hurt?
Ok, what about his calling undocumented Mexican immigrants “rapists and murderers,” black NFL football players “sons of bitches,” women “fat pigs, dogs, and slobs,” and cruelly mimicking a disabled man? Again just Trump being Trump. Heck, he belittles his friends and associates just as badly or worse. Trump’s an equal opportunity antagonist, spreading around his venom to anyone and everyone.
Well, what about the vicious conspiracy theories Trump raises, like President Obama not being a US citizen, Ted Cruz’s dad being involved in JFK’s assassination, and Bill Clinton somehow having a role in Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide? Clearly that’s just Trump being Trump. Don’t take everything he says so seriously. Sometimes he just throws things out there to get a rise from people. He likes to play head games, stable genius that he is. Is that so bad?
So how can anyone justify Trump’s audacious lying, like saying his inaugural crowd was the biggest in history, that nobody knows for certain whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election, that millions of illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election, that Trump would release his tax returns as soon as his audit was completed, that Trump isn’t for cutting taxes on the wealthy, and on and on. Once again, that’s just Trump being Trump. There is some truth in everything he says if you view it through the right lense, which his detractors are unwilling to do. And as Trump has clearly revealed, one man’s truth may be another man’s fiction. It’s all relative, so who’s to judge?
It seems, then, that “just Trump being Trump” pretty well whitewashes his every immorality, his rampant dishonesty, his lack of common decency, his racism, misogyny, and ableism, and his lawlessness. Are we somehow to believe that “Trump being Trump” is okay, that he just marches to the beat of a different drummer? Of course it’s not okay, and it is tearing at the social and democratic fabric of our country.
If Trump’s Congressional apologists had had the courage to confront Trump early on for his misdeeds, perhaps through some miraculous transformation he would have become less Trumpian and more of a president. Unfortunately, their “just Trump being Trump” capitulation has allowed him to grow evermore dangerous, defiant, and lawless, resulting in the final straw in House Democrats’ estimation: his transparent attempt to get a foreign power to insinuate itself into America’s election process for Trump’s benefit.
Perhaps we should not, however, be too hard on Trump’s Congressional enablers who have allowed Nero to fiddle while Rome burned. They are, after all, just the current crop of Republicans being Republicans. What more should we expect?
Trump’s Impeachment Ploy​
Trump has been daring House Democrats to impeach him for some time. The Mueller report provided ample ammunition for an obstruction-of-justice charge but not enough for moderate members from states that Trump won in 2016 to buy in. Trump had to take an even more brazen step to produce that final straw that left House Democrats with no choice but to impeach.
Trump’s soliciting the Ukrainian government to help his reelection chances by digging up dirt on a Democratic presidential candidate blatantly violates campaign finance laws. Even for a president that routinely flouts the rule of law this was an act of open defiance – I can do whatever the hell I want - which left House Democrats with two choices: come after him or look like utter weaklings for once again not pushing back.
There is the argument that Trump believes that he is untouchable, doing the kinds of things he’s always gotten away with by ignoring legal niceties. However, in this case, Trump knew he had goaded House Democrats into finally taking action and welcomed the upcoming battle. What better way to rally his base and deflect focus from the myriad failures of his presidency with the 2020 election looming.
Trump’s base gets most excited when he is in attack mode, whether he is going after Hillary or Barack, those murderous Mexican immigrants, the fake-news press, those terrible judges who rule against him, those radical socialist Democrats, or anyone large or small who has the audacity to criticize him. Many of his base get vicarious enjoyment from Trump attacking his perceived enemies which they have adopted as their own. Nothing would fire up his base more than fourteen months of Trump launching venomous broadsides against those horrible Democrats and their disgraceful witch hunt.
Trump loves playing the victim and with his impeachment, he can play it to the hilt for the next year. The Democrats, with the help of the press, have been out to get him since day one. No president has ever been subjected to such vile slander, has ever been treated so unfairly. These evil forces are out to get him and by extension, are out to get everyone who supports him. An attack on Trump is an attack on his base, on the true American patriots. What better way to rally those true believers?
The more Trump can deflect from his record the better, and impeachment, an excruciatingly long process, is the perfect vehicle. During the impeachment spectacle, Trump’s failures will remain in low focus: his failure to get infrastructure improvements, to move the needle on health-care reform, to get Kim Jong Un to denuclearize, to support gun control to make America’s children safer, to bring jobs back to America, to provide the middle class with tax relief, to build a Mexico-financed wall, to negotiate better deals than the Iranian nuclear agreement, the Paris Climate Accord, or the Trans-Pacific trade agreement that he pulled the US out of. Trump will make more hay attacking his attackers than trying to defend his dismal record.
Trump set the impeachment trap from which House Democrats couldn’t escape for his perceived advantage. He will use it to excoriate Democrats, their candidate for president, and the press in a manner unprecedented in modern political history. He will do and say anything to win – lie, slander, exaggerate, misconstrue – and he will cry that the ones who should be investigated are his corrupt, lawless accusers. His base will eat up every word and spur him on at rallies to ever-greater heights of blustering indignation.
Of course, with his approval rating below 40%, one wonders whether twelve months of Trump bellowing like a gored bull will win over any adherents beyond his die-hard base. There may be more Independents and moderate Republicans who are weary of Trump’s act and believe that his solicitation call to the Ukrainian president warranted his impeachment.
In daring House Democrats to impeach him, Trump is performing a high-wire act without a net. If he falls, his political death will produce more relief than mourning among most Americans, including his tacit Congressional supporters who hope one day to regain their self-respect.
Social Programs vs Socialism
Donald Trump and his right-wing political minions are attempting to link social programs to socialism to try and scare people out of supporting Democrats committed to helping improve the lives of all Americans. Fortunately, knowledge is the best anecdote for allaying fear rooted in ignorance.
Socialism is a political and economic system in which the means of production, distribution, and exchange are owned by the government. Private ownership of businesses and property doesn’t exist. Two examples of socialist countries were Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China, where in the aftermath of revolutions, the governments confiscated all private property and nationalized all industries. Citizens became residents in state-owned properties and workers in state-owned industries.
Socialism has historically been imposed upon a people by force rather than consent in Communist and totalitarian countries. Citizens become faceless cogs in the state’s industrial machinery, stripped of their freedoms and right to self-determination. Socialism has failed as a political and economic system because it is created and sustained only by force, it demands subjugation of the people and subservience to the state, and it destroys the two pillars of economic success – hard work and ingenuity - by not allowing people to own property or businesses or profit from their labors. That is the reason both Russia and China have shifted towards capitalism in recent decades and become more prosperous as a result.
Social programs, on the other hand, are government-subsidized programs designed by a country to meet the needs of its citizens. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are three examples of social programs in the US. They are approved by Congress and signed into law by the president, and all have proven popular among the majority of Americans.
Social programs are common among capitalist democracies in Europe and Asia as well as Canada and Australia. Most have universal health care that covers all citizens, a number have government-subsidized pre-school education and child care for working parents, and some have free college tuition. All of the social programs proposed by Democratic candidates for president already exist in other capitalist democratic countries.
Social programs in capitalist democracies, including those in the US, are examples of governments working for the welfare of their citizens, a critical function of any democratic government. How extensive those programs are is largely dependent upon a country’s electorate, who put into office legislators and a president who reflect their opinion on the value of such programs.
Compared to other capitalist democracies, the US resides somewhere in the middle regarding the scope and effectiveness of its social programs. Its government-subsidized public education system is one of the best in the world, but its health-care system is extraordinarily expensive and fails millions of uninsured citizens. Certainly we can do better in areas such as college affordability, pre-school education, and child care, but Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security have proven to be essential safety-net programs.
The discussion moving towards the 2020 election should be on whether or how we expand our social programs. We should weigh all proposals put forth by presidential candidates, evaluate them based upon the needs that they address balanced against their fiscal feasibility, and support candidates whose ideas make the most sense to us.
The red herring to be dismissed out of hand is the possibility that expanding social programs could lead to socialism, a ridiculously false claim spread by right-wing propagandists, including the president, to scare the most ignorant and easily duped among us. Even historically hardcore socialist countries like China and Russia have embraced capitalism and free enterprise. To imagine that the US or any capitalist democracy would move towards a socialist system is beyond ludicrous.
Not coincidentally, many of the right-wing politicians employing these scare tactics are no fans of our current social programs and have sought legislatively to curtail Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Their “limited government” vision calls for a significantly reduced role for the federal government in providing the safety-net programs upon which a majority of Americans rely. Their agenda goes well beyond scaring people out of voting for Democrats, just the first step in seeking ultimately to dismantle the traditional government-subsidized social programs that Democratic candidates seek to protect and augment.
Lessons Learned from Trump Presidency
While Donald Trump’s presidency has been a major disaster in the opinion of millions of Americans, there are lessons to be learned in order to avoid, as Santayana warned, repeating history.
Lesson one is rather intuitive. Beware any presidential candidate who creates a sham university, lies and brags his way through life, spreads false conspiracy theories, bullies his critics, ridicules women’s looks and the disabled, commits adultery with a porn actress, files for bankruptcy four times, refuses to provide his tax returns, and surrounds himself with crooks. That, it seems, would be the type of candidate to steer clear of.
Lesson two, don’t become enamored of political outsiders. Being a political insider is deemed an anathema to some people. However, regarding “political insider” presidents, former congressman Abe Lincoln abolished slavery, former New York state senator and governor and Assistant Secretary to the Navy Franklin Roosevelt brought the country out of the Great Depression and gave us Social Security, and consummate back-room politician Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act that outlawed racial segregation and gave us Medicare and Medicaid. Not bad for three political insiders.
Instead of buying into the “insider bad, outsider good” falsehood, reminiscent of Animal Farm thought, we should judge all presidential candidates on their character, their position on critical issues, and their commitment to helping all Americans achieve the American Dream. Inside-the-beltway politicians like Lincoln, FDR, and Teddy Roosevelt became great presidents, but presidents who had never held public office like Grant and Eisenhower also served their country well. Look deeply into the substance of each political candidate, and give no credence to meaningless labels like “insider,” “outsider,” “elitist,” “populist,” or “socialist,” all used by manipulative politicians to feed into their supporters’ fears or biases.
Lesson Three, don’t equate wealth with virtue. We Americans are arguably the most wealth-adoring people on earth. Everyone wants to be a millionaire, and we spend over $70 billion annually on lottery tickets reaching for the brass ring. Certainly, there are wealthy people like billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates who are terrific human beings, but there are also slimy billionaires like Bernie Madoffs who bilked thousands of victims out of their life savings. Wealth or lack thereof should never be a criterion by which to judge any presidential candidate. And beware a candidate like Donald Trump who bragged “I’m really rich!”, equating wealth with greatness and foreshadowing the abject poverty of his presidency.
Lesson Four, let’s think of our children when evaluating presidential candidates. “Role model” is part of the presidential job description, or it should be. We want our president to emulate the values we seek to instill in our children: honesty, compassion, humility, respect for others, the courage to do what’s right. When our president constantly lies, brags, and bullies, parents can only use him as an object lesson: “Adults make mistakes, sometimes whoppers. We elected a president who doesn’t represent who we are as a people or what a president should be like. Next time we will do better and elect a president that you can be proud of, someone who is worthy of your admiration and respect.”
Finally, lesson five. When considering presidential candidates, let’s look beyond our own parochial interests and think about what’s best for the country. Who is the candidate that will try his or her best to bring a divided nation together, to heal the racial, religious, and political divides that tear us apart? Who will make our far-too-dangerous country safer for all Americans? Who has the compassion for the poor to truly want to improve their lot? Who has the courage to take on the powerful forces that perpetuate America’s gross economic inequalities? Who is guided by his or her core values and won’t shift with the political winds? Whose word can we trust and steadfastness can we count on?
When all is said and done, none of us knows for certain whether the candidate of our choice will be the great president that we hope for. However, the lessons we can learn from the Trump presidency will help to ensure that we elect the candidate that we truly believe in our hearts and minds to be that person.
Trump’s Assault
Here are some of the things national and international that Donald Trump has launched an assault on in his two-and-a-half years as president.
The environment Trump ignores climate change and its devastating environmental and human effects, supports dirty energy over clean, renewable energy sources, and weakens endangered species protection.
Public education Trump appoints a private school/voucher-supporting woman with no public education experience as the Secretary of Education to weaken federal-government support of public education.
Our democracy Ala Stalin and Lenin, Trump calls America’s free press the “enemy of the people,” undermines U.S. intelligence agencies and our court system, cozies up to brutal dictators, and denies obvious Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election.
Our allies Trump attacks the heads of state of our staunchest allies, makes the U.S. an unreliable NATO partner, claims allied nations have been “ripping us off in trade” for years, and pulls the U.S. out of ally agreed-upon international accords.
Civil discourse Trump has severely degraded social and political discourse through his constant name-calling, verbal attacks, profanity, and character assassinations, making the most vilely unacceptable rhetoric commonplace.
Family values Trump has set the worst possible example for America’s children by constantly lying, bullying, bragging, and verbally attacking, representing the antithesis of the values that most Americans instill in their children.
Republican Party As the party of Trump, the GOP is no longer recognizable, its brand as a proud, principled promoter of conservatism demolished, its politicians reduced to cravenly enablers.
Minorities By soft-pedalling the threat of white supremacy, finding “good people” among their racist ranks, calling Mexicans “murderers and rapists, calling African-American NFL players “sons of bitches,” and calling African nations “shithole countries,” Trump has fanned the flames of racism, made the country more dangerous for minorities, and emboldened violence-prone white supremacists to kill.
The middle class By giving huge tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations and tossing crumbs to the middle class, Trump has shown clearly where his loyalty lies and left the vast majority of Americans twisting in the wind.
Women Through accusations of sexual misconduct by fifteen women, well-documented affairs with women while he was married, making fun of women’s looks and calling them “pigs,” “slobs,” and “dogs,” and bragging about “grabbling women by the pussy,” Trump has insulted and demeaned every woman in America.
All Americans By refusing to support sensible federal gun-safety regulations and encouraging people to buy more guns in the wake of mass shootings, Trump has made every American man, woman, and child increasingly vulnerable to random gun violence and ensured that domestic and international terrorists continue to have access to the most lethal assault weapons.
Truth By calling any news coverage critical of him “fake news,” lying 1,950 times in his first year of office alone according to the Washington Post’s fact checker, calling climate change a “Chinese hoax,” and fueling a raft of conspiracy theories such as tying Bill Clinton to the Jeffrey Epstein suicide and Ted Cruz’s father to JFK’s assassination, Trump provides a fictitious alternate reality for his followers and, according to Thomas Jefferson’s belief, “subverts democracy at its most important link: the ability of the people to obtain the truth and light.”
Unity Trump has richly earned the reputation as the “great divider” or “divider in chief.” At no time in modern history has America been more divided along racial, political, and religious lines, and Trump has played a major role by demonizing people of color, Muslims, and political foes, by playing upon and fomenting the most racist impulses of his “base,” and by his bitter, venomous rhetoric, widening the political divide to the point where there is no common ground left to find, no common values left to build upon.
Christian Religion Trump’s presidency calls into question the religious grounding of every Christian that continues to support him and the value of Christian faith in today’s America. As Trump casually flouts most of the Ten Commandments regularly, his hoard of Christian supporters twist themselves into pretzels trying to justify their support of a man who ridicules the Christian values they try to live by. Trump’s presidency has been a litmus test for millions of Christians who have essentially forsaken their religious beliefs to follow the incarnated anti-Christ.
American psyche Trump’s presidency has led millions of Americans to question who we are as a people, having elected a president so antithetical to everything America has stood for in the ideal: a vibrant democracy, positive world leadership, a beacon of light to immigrants, proudly diverse, virtuous, kind, generous to a fault. Trump’s presidency raises the question of whether the basic goodness of the American people that most of us believe in squares with today’s reality. Are a significant percentage of Americans more fearful, more bigoted, more hateful, more ignorant, more morally compromised than we or the rest of the world want to believe? The 2020 election will provide powerful testimony to who we are as a people and where we are headed as a nation.
Undocumented Immigrants’ American Role
If you were to believe the histrionics about undocumented immigrants emanating from Donald Trump and the conservative right, you might conclude that most Americans share their disdain for these Latino immigrants. That is not the case, however.
A 2016 national Pew poll found that 76% of Americans believe that undocumented immigrants are as honest and hard-working as American citizens, and 71% said that they mostly fill jobs that Americans are unwilling to do. Likewise, a 2017 Cornell University poll found that 75% of New Yorkers believe that undocumented workers make “generally positive impacts” upon America, up from 62% in 2008. Millions of undocumented workers have lived among Americans for over a half century, and their American-born descendants are often our friends, neighbors, relatives, and co-workers.
As a child living in the San Joaquin Valley in the 1950’s, in the evenings I could hear Mexican music coming from the barn beyond the vineyard where Mexican laborers lived during the grape harvest. For over sixty years, such undocumented immigrants have worked in the fields and orchards of California, Texas, Washington, and Florida. They have been recruited and employed by thousands of farmers who depend on their labor. The great success of America’s agricultural industry has been built on the backs of hard-working undocumented Mexican workers, who comprise 60% of all U.S. farmer laborers according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Along with agriculture, today’s undocumented workers, over half from Mexico, work in construction, in meat and poultry processing plants, on dairies, in millinery shops, in hotels and restaurants. They work across the country from the garment district in Los Angeles to the meat-packing companies of Dodge City, Kansas to the food-processing plants in Morton, Mississippi to the dairies in Lowville, New York. In addition, they take care of Americans’ yards, clean our houses, wash our cars, and provide care for our children.
The reality has been the same for decades. U.S. employers recruit and hire undocumented Mexican workers in industries that are dependent on their labor while the government looks the other way. A just-porous-enough border greases the wheel. This wink-and-nod system has benefited American industries, thousands of employers, millions of undocumented workers and their descendants, American consumers, and the U.S. economy, to which undocumented workers contribute $11.6 billion annually according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).
Hiring low-wage undocumented workers has essentially served the purpose of industries that can’t outsource their work to other countries. You can build American cars in Mexico but you can’t grow American grapes or process American meat and poultry. Such industries bring third-world employees to them rather than sending their farms and plants to third-world countries. If there is a better system, the industries, its employers, and the government haven’t figured it out for half a century.
Like the story of all immigrant populations, undocumented workers in the U.S. labor to provide a better life for their children. The sons and daughters of undocumented Mexican workers, and their sons and daughters, become American school teachers, business owners, social workers, counselors, attorneys, judges, mayors, state and federal legislators, and candidates for president. The vast majority of them trace their lineage to their undocumented grandparents or great-grandparents or great-great-grandparents, and theirs is an American success story repeated time after time.
The current vilification of Latino immigrants by the Trump administration is a vicious attack on millions of undocumented workers present and future and on all Mexican-Americans. In addition, Trump’s “wall up the border” tactic, if successful, would devastate major American industries dependent on undocumented laborers and cripple the economy. At some point, unbigoted politicians who understand all aspects of the immigration situation and its history must sit down and figure out the best course forward, one which recognizes and respects the valuable role that millions of undocumented workers and their American-born descendants play in our country.
Sources:
“Undocumented Immigrants Contribute Over $11 Billion to Our Economy Each Year,” The Nation https://www.thenation.com/article/undocumented-immigrants-contribute-over-11-billion-to-our-economy-each-year/
“Why care about undocumented immigrants? For one thing, they’ve become vital to key sectors of the US economy.” The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/why-care-about-undocumented-immigrants-for-one-thing-theyve-become-vital-to-key-sectors-of-the-us-economy-98790
“Dodge City, Kansas relies on undocumented immigrants—from meatpacking workers to the city’s assistant finance director,” The Atlantic.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2016/07/ernestor-de-la-rosa/489977/
“680 undocumented workers arrested in record-setting immigration sweep,” CNN https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/07/us/mississippi-immigration-raids/index.html
“Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States,” Migration Policy Institute
“LA garment industry rife with sweatshop conditions,” Aljazeera America http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/9/9/sweatshop-conditions-in-la-garment-industry.html
“Farm Workers and Immigration,” National Farm Worker Ministry http://nfwm.org/resources/farm-workers-immigration/
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The Faux President
It strikes me that Donald Trump has never seemed in many people’s mind to be the real president of the US. He is more like a faux president, a ridiculous character playing the commander-in-chief on some satirical sit-com or in a Leslie Nielson movie.
I’m reminded of Genesis’ “Land of Confusion” video featuring a wildly funny Claymation Ronald Reagan. While the real Reagan was obviously more presidential than the satirical version, Trump seems more a Claymation character than a real president. He is a walking self-satire, whether fawning over a love letter from Kim Jong Un, crazily doctoring an NWS weather map with a black Sharpie, or gushing over compliments he received from Mexican president Nieto and the president of the Boy Scouts of America in phone calls that never occurred.
Nothing feels real about the Trump presidency. Presidents don’t call white supremacists and neo-Nazis good people. They don’t have bromances with brutal dictators and castigate our closest allies. They don’t spread vicious conspiracy theories like President Obama not being a US citizen or Ted Cruz’s father be involved in JFK’s assassination. They don’t throw a public hissy fit every time someone criticizes them. Trump is president in some alternate-reality bizarro world where good and bad, fact and fiction are turned upside down.
We’ve all run across a Donald Trump or two in our lifetimes. The guy that never lets a real or perceived slight go unaddressed. That brags about and exaggerates accomplishments big and small. That believes he is always the smartest person in the room. That is so tone deaf that he doesn’t know how others perceive him. That is too self-absorbed to be anyone’s real friend. These are the guys we keep at arm’s length, that we don’t want for a friend, relative, or neighbor. These are guys we’d never dream in a million years would be President of the US, and yet here one is.
Unfortunately, we still must live out another 18 turbulent months with Trump, his wacky video-game presidency having real-life consequences. For example, Trump’s pulling the US out of the Iran nuclear agreement has destabilized the Middle East and put us on a potential military collision course with Iran. The most realistic dripping-with-irony solution is Iran agreeing, with US approval, to abide once again by the original Obama-supported nuclear agreement that Trump called the “worst deal in history.”
This is just one example of Trump having no idea what he’s doing. Early in his presidency, he said an Israeli-Palestinian agreement would be “easy” to reach. He was certain that North Korea would denuclearize due to his chummy relationship with Kim Jong Un. He would bring China to its knees with his trade war and tariffs. Mexico was definitely going to pay for his border wall. He was going to negotiate a better deal than the Paris Climate Accord. His tax-cutting windfall for corporations would bring thousands of jobs back to the US. Of course, none of these things has happened or ever will with a president who makes Inspector Clouseau look like a mastermind.
Donald Trump is president in name only, a dangerous imposter residing in a White House that has seen many great men who have admirably led the nation. After all, what kind of a president weakens our democracy by attacking our judicial system, our intelligence agencies, and the free press, makes our country more dangerous with mass murders and hate crimes on the rise, foments racial and religious strife through his hateful rhetoric, and welcomes foreign government interference in our elections? Only one out of forty-five.
All one needs to know about this faux president can be summed up in two of Trump’s most telling statements: “I’m really rich!” and “I’m a stable genius.” Donald Trump is a president who will be written off by historians in a second but analyzed by psychiatrists for years.
A Case for Revising the Electoral College
Abolishing the electoral college is an intriguing yet somewhat quixotic notion at this point in our history. While 114 out of the 123 democratic countries in the world elect their president by a majority of the popular vote, the U.S. clings steadfastly to its electoral college as do Burundi, Burma, Estonia, Madagascar, Nepal, Trinidad and Tobago, and Vanuatu.
One change to our electoral college, however, would bring it more in line with the popular vote and 93% of the world’s democracies. Our current electoral college system’s fatal flaw is that it allows a candidate to lose a majority of the popular vote yet still win the presidency. Five U.S. presidents have been elected by a minority of voters, which strikes at the core principle of a democracy: majority rule. However, we can prevent that from happening without abandoning the electoral college.
Each state would retain the number of electoral votes provided them by the constitutional formula, which ensures that smaller states receive a minimum of 3 electoral votes. However, the current “winner take all” electoral votes in a state, whether the candidate wins by 1% or 80% of the popular vote, would be discarded. In its place, each presidential candidate would receive the number of electoral votes that reflected his or her percentage of the popular vote in that state, a much fairer and more accurate assessment of each candidate’s performance. For example, in a state with 40 electoral votes, if candidate one received 70% of the popular vote and candidate two received 30%, candidate one would receive 28 electoral votes and candidate two would receive 12 electoral votes.
This proportional electoral college system would be far better than the current system. First, the number of electoral votes a candidate received in a state would be based on his or her percentage of the popular vote, so the chances of a candidate winning the presidency with a minority of voters would be extremely slim. Second, every citizen’s vote would count for something, which isn’t currently the case. Today, if you are a Republican in a heavily blue state or a Democrat in a heavily red state, whether or not you vote is of little consequence.
However, with the revised electoral college system, every Republican vote in a blue state and every Democratic vote in a red state would help increase the proportion of electoral votes your candidate would receive. Every vote would have meaning, which should be intrinsic to any democratic election process. The incentive for citizens to vote in every state would be greatly magnified.
Today, the election of a president often turns on which candidate fares the best in a few key “battleground” states. Solid red and solid blue states aren’t even on the campaign map, their electoral-vote distribution a given, and candidates don’t waste their time or money campaigning there. What a difference the proportional electoral college system would make.
Every state would become a “battleground” state, and every voter would help determine how well his or her candidate fared in that state. There would be electoral votes to win for both candidates in every state, and campaigns would become national rather than regional. A Republican candidate would need to pry every electoral vote he could out of West Coast states, and a Democratic candidate who ignored the South would do so at his or her peril.
The proportional electoral college would bring an excitement to the presidential race that has been sadly lacking, with an astounding 40% of eligible voters currently staying home on election day. More importantly, the proportional electoral system would ensure that every citizen’s vote counted in electing our president, and that the electoral college system would closely reflect the will of the majority, the foundational tenet of our democracy.
No, the proportional system does not abolish the electoral college, but it improves it significantly. It seems more plausible to amend the current system than to discard it, and the proportional system would bring the vote of every American citizen into play as never before in electing our president. That in itself should make it worthy of consideration.
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Sources:
https://people.howstuffworks.com/10-countries-besides-us-have-electoral-colleges.htm
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​Donald Trump and Captain Queeg
In the movie The Caine Mutiny, Captain Queeg calls his officers together in the middle of the night to investigate the case of the missing strawberries while the life-and-death responsibilities of the World War II battleship Caine are put on hold. Parallels can be draw between Captain Queeg’s strawberries’ incident and president Trump’s recent doctored-map incident: the bizarreness of the acts, the growing mental infirmity that the incidents suggest, the belief that normal people would actually go along into them.
Captain Queeg “proved . . . with geometric logic that a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox did exist,” and Trump proved with his freshly drawn black circle on the weather map that Alabama was in Hurricane Dorian’s path. Queeg and Trump inhabit the same psychotic universe in which delusion abounds.
Of course, Trump has lied and trafficked in conspiracy theories throughout his presidency, but his behavior had arguably not revealed a true psychosis. Psychosis is a mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality. Captain Queeg’s fixation on getting to the bottom of the missing strawberries’ mystery revealed his faltering grip on reality, his actions perfectly sane and reasonable only to himself. Trump’s doctored weather map, created by his obsession with trying to prove himself right, is also perfectly sane and reasonable only to Donald Trump.
Trump felt he somehow had to cover up the mistake of announcing that Alabama was one of the states in Hurricane Dorian’s path. Trump could have simply admitted that he made a mistake, or perhaps said that the weather map he had read wasn’t accurate. Either correction would have resolved the situation, allowing everyone in Alabama to rest easily and all attention and resources concentrated on where the hurricane would hit.
Of course, Trump did neither. Queeg’s obsession with the strawberries became more important than his responsibility as commander of the Caine. Trump’s obsession with trying to prove himself right became more important than the oncoming Hurricane Dorian and the millions of Americans situated in its wake. And with the assistance of one black Sharpie, Trump revealed to the world that he had gone completely off the rails.
Psychosis may be accompanied by late-night hallucinations. Perhaps Queeg had been suffering from hallucinations the night of the strawberries’ incident, where strawberries bloomed into hand grenades and the strawberry thief became a German spy intent on destroying the ship. Perhaps in Trump's late-night hallucination, all of the world leaders were sitting on his bed in pajamas chortling uncontrollably at his Alabama hurricane gaffe and sing-songing "Little Dummy Donny" with CNN cameras rolling. Who's to say.
Whatever the crazed motivation, Trump drew the perfect black circle on the National Weather Service map, showed the doctored map to the world, and everyone cringed. That anyone wouldn’t see the doctored map for what it was is unfathomable. That the President of the United States would doctor the map to try and cover up a mistake is stuff for a crazy-president sit-com. Pete Buttigieg said he felt sorry for the president, as one would feel for a person who has completely lost touch, an object of pity, not scorn. Others were less merciful.
Trump’s doctored-map fiasco is the most transparent and disturbing of his cover ups, the manifestation of a troubled, sick mind. In Captain Queeg’s reality, his officers surely viewed the all-night strawberries’ investigation the same way he did. In president Trump’s reality, surely everyone saw that beautifully round black circle as proof that he was right about Alabama. Captain Queeg was relieved of duty, which was both in his and the navy’s best interests. President Trump can be relieved of duty through the 25th amendment, but the chances of that occurring are extremely slim.
In the meantime, hopefully those around Trump will try and keep the ship America on as even a keel as possible with a crazed captain, as did the crew of the Caine with their captain. Sadly, there appears to be no end to the president's pathological self-absorption, and no doubt there are more metaphorical black circles looming ahead.
Going Ballistic on the NRA
The San Francisco City Council went ballistic on the NRA, passing a resolution labeling it a domestic terrorist organization. There is no evidence that the NRA “incites gun owners to acts of violence,” a major justification for the Council’s action, and it is doubtful that the resolution will gain much traction beyond the Bay.
That being said, the NRA remains the greatest obstacle to reducing the horrific level of gun violence in the U.S., which far exceeds that of any other advanced democracy in the world. In 2018 alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive, there were 268 mass shootings in the U.S., defined by the FBI as at least four people killed in a single incident. The sites of the most horrendous mass murders and the enormity of the tragedies are seared in our memories: Waco, Columbine, Newtown, Virginia Tech, Aurora, San Bernardino, Orlando, Las Vegas, Parkland, El Paso, and Dayton, the list growing at an unfathomable rate.
The NRA has opposed and helped to kill all federal gun-regulation legislation in the last twenty-four years, regulations common among advanced democracies with extremely low gun-murder rates. In 2004, the NRA helped to quash the 10-year federal ban on assault weapons by opposing its renewal. Since then, it has helped to block all federal gun-regulation proposals including legislation requiring hand guns to have a trigger-lock mechanism, expanding background checks to include gun show and online gun buyers, banning bump-stocks, and prohibiting the sale of guns to anyone on the government’s terrorist watch list. In short, the NRA has successfully opposed all legislation that could reduce the sale of guns and make it more difficult for mass murderers and other criminals to obtain them.
Gun control works. Australia hasn’t had one mass shooting since it banned assault weapons and implemented a gun buy-back program in 1996 after 35 people were killed in a horrendous mass shooting. Great Britain strengthened its gun regulations after mass shootings in 1988 and 1997, banning most types of firearms and implementing a $200 million buy-back program. For a comparative snapshot, there were 59 gun murders in England compared to 12,664 in the U.S. in 2011, and there were 26 gun murders in England compared to 11,004 in the U.S. in 2016. Not surprisingly, countries such as Australia and Great Britain with the strictest gun-control laws have among the lowest gun-murder rates, and states with the strictest gun-control laws have the lowest gun-murder rates within the U.S.
The Second Amendment is not the impenetrable bulwark against gun regulations that the NRA would have supporters believe. In Heller vs District of Columbia in 2008, conservative justice Anthony Scalia opined that “like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” That opinion has not been successfully challenged since, and states such as California, Hawaii, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania have passed numerous gun regulations. NRA legal efforts to overturn state-enacted gun laws have met with little success.
Through opposing all sensible gun regulations and sponsoring gun-proliferation measures, the NRA shares responsibility for the avalanche of mass murders that have left families and communities shattered and all Americans shocked, sickened, and heartbroken. The blame, however, must be shared with the Republican lawmakers and president who do the NRA’s bidding, cowering in fear of its political retribution, and American voters who continue to reelect them. The NRA is not going to change its stripes, but it is possible to reduce its Washington influence to a trickle. By ousting all Congressmen and a president beholden to the NRA and electing candidates that the NRA can’t get its hooks into, sensible federal gun regulations could finally see the light of day.
The NRA is not a domestic terrorist organization, but San Francisco’s City Council has given expression to the mounting furor against the NRA rising across the country. The NRA has proven to be a most reliable friend of every domestic or foreign terrorist, mass murderer, spousal abuser, violently unhinged person, aggrieved, vengeful employee, or violent criminal. It has ensured that America’s gun candy store remains open 24/7 to anyone and everyone.
Sources:
https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/mass-shootings-2018/
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/02/15/11004-gun-murders-us-vs-26-equiv-130-england-annually
All One Needs to Know
Donald Trump’s August 27 tweet on the tropical storm heading for Puerto Rico encapsulates everything that most Americans have known for some time about the current president. The tweet reads, “"Wow! Yet another big storm heading to Puerto Rico. Will it ever end? Congress approved 92 Billion Dollars for Puerto Rico last year, an all time record of its kind for 'anywhere.' "
First, Trump’s tweet shows that he has no empathy for people, a common flaw among narcissists. He shows no concern for what the Puerto Rican people may endure, particularly after the devastating loss of life and property during Hurricane Maria. Rather, Trump frames the approaching storm as yet another nuisance that he doesn’t want to deal with. Although the people of Puerto Rico may suffer, it won’t compare in Trump’s eyes to what their misfortune may put him through.
Second, all Trump cares about is money. He bemoans the fact that Congress approved $92 billion for Puerto Rican aid after Hurricane Maria, and now the government may have to fork out even more money. Trump sees Puerto Rico’s imminent peril as no more than a costly expense for the government. His comment “Will it ever end?” clearly means “Will we have to keep bailing them out forever?” With Trump, it’s all about the money, which he begrudges paying out whether for disaster relief or helping nations in need.
Third, Trump lied to distort the financial situation. The $92 billion relief figure for Puerto Rican aid is wildly false. Congress allocated $41 billion for disaster relief according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, and by the end of 2018, Puerto Rico had received just $11.2 billion according to FEMA. Trump lied egregiously about the amount of aid money to make it look like supporting Puerto Rico was a huge financial drain.
Fourth, Trump’s racism again raises its ugly head. Helping the people of color of Puerto Rico obviously holds little interest for Trump. In fact, he doesn’t even mention the Puerto Rican people in his tweet. To him, they are just a faceless mass whose travails are likely to cause him trouble. Trump’s previous tweet that he’d gladly trade Puerto Rico for Greenland underscores his contempt for the island and its people of color.
Fifth, Trump’s breathtaking ignorance is on display. What is fueling these more frequent, powerful, and devastating storms? The scientific community has agreed for years that climate change creates the atmospheric and oceanic conditions that produce the monster storms and hurricanes. The answer to Trump’s “will it never end?” whine is “no,” as long as the climate-change denier in the White House not only stymies efforts to reduce CO2 emissions but supports dirty energy sources that increase global warming. Trump is part of the problem, his ignorance helping to ensure that Puerto Rico as well as other Caribbean islands and the Gulf States will continue to be in the path of more frequent, devastating storms.
Six, no matter the situation, Trump always latches onto something to brag about. He ends by saying that the $92 billion he claimed that government approved for Hurricane Maria aid was “an all-time record of its kind for 'anywhere.'” Of course, the $92 billion figure was a lie to begin with, but Trump’s regular boasts based on lies and exaggerations are something Americans have become accustomed to. That Trump ends his tweet on a boast rather than on showing any concern for the Puerto Rican people speaks volumes.
Of course, nothing in Trump’s tweet surprises or shocks any American. He has posted thousands of equally outrageous, inappropriate, small-minded tweets. The Puerto Rican-storm tweet, however, captures everything we know about Donald Trump: the lying, the narcissism, the boasting, the racism, the ignorance, the money obsession, the lack of empathy. As far as trades are concerned, if America could trade Trump straight-up for just about any other democratic leader in the world, would there be any takers?
Source for Puerto Rico financial aid information:
https://www.factcheck.org/2019/04/trump-misleads-on-aid-to-puerto-rico/
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