Wind the Clock!

 Former president Grover Cleveland, nos. 22 & 24 must have been rooting for Donald Trump nos. 45 & 47. They are the only presidents in our long history elected to the presidency twice, but not to consecutive terms. Election night 2024 brought tears of joy and tears of despair to our divided nation. The polls predicted a nail-biter. Reality was a bloodbath.

The election results punctuated the divide between the “educated coastal elite” and everyone else. It is wide and it is deep. It has built over decades but ignored by the degreed and urban bound. David Brooks notes that our education policies pushed people toward four-year college and let vocational training wither.[i] The well-educated migrated to the urban areas where other well-educated worked and socialized, and where they thought well of themselves and not of the under-educated, the working class, and the rural. Brooks said that the sucking sound we heard on election night was the redistribution of respect. Trump heard them, Harris, not so much.

It was the sound of Hispanics moving toward Trump, of men  migrating right, of suburban women sliding right while voting pro-abortion, of Catholics genuflecting to the right without an abortion priority. Ultra-liberal California made a significant move to the Republican side of the ballot in over 70% of the counties. Several congressional districts are too close to call. There was a loud clang for the working class, led by a supposed billionaire.

Ruy Teixeira[ii] laments that today's Democratic coalition is not fit to win. Republicans consistently dominate in rural areas, working-class neighborhoods, and among men and young women. He says it is no longer the party of the ordinary American, the common man, and the women.

Bernie Sanders was not surprised by the Harris loss. He suggests that the Democratic Party, which has abandoned the working class, should not be surprised that the working class  abandoned them.[iii] He noted that 60% of households live paycheck to paycheck and that wages adjusted for inflation are lower than fifty years ago. He is not optimistic that the Democratic Party will be able to understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing. An independent who caucuses with Democrats raised the ire of Nancy Pelosi who is adamant that they are the party of the working class, all evidence to the contrary.

For many, dreams were shattered when a woman wasn’t elected President when a Black woman wasn’t elected, when someone supportive of LGBTQ+ issues wasn’t elected, when a supporter of trans people lost.

The view in the rearview mirror is pretty clear and closer than it appears. A twice impeached, convicted felon and sexual predator, who tried to overturn the last election that he lost, who speaks of being a dictator on the first day and maybe thereafter based on his focus on tearing the country apart won the election overwhelmingly. He won the predictable red states, he won in the blue-wall states, he moved the needle toward red in nearly every state, he captured a large percentage of  the Hispanic vote in Texas, he won the Black men and Hispanic men, suburban women, and the majority of votes nationwide. When referring to the MAGA movement, Americans can’t say,  “That’s not who we are.” It is, regrettably.

The famous essayist E. B. White received a letter from a man who had lost faith in humanity. He responded this way: “Mr. Nadeau, As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness…Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope, And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.” [iv]

Today is the other day. The clocks need winding. How can the decimated and leaderless Democratic Party, or anyone who can’t fathom or tolerate the election results try to bring order and steadfastness to the chaos we are about to experience?

Without sounding too cliché, a little retrospection would be helpful. The nation is redder than at any time in the last few decades. Exit polls confirm pre-election focus group responses. A vast number of people don’t trust our most trusted institutions anymore. They don’t trust the government. Large unions failed to endorse the most pro-union party. At least one pundit has suggested that Democrats need to go county by county and talk to the people who didn’t vote for them. They need to learn why.

Others have suggested replacing all the octogenarian politicians. At age sixty, Harris was pressed into service to represent the new and younger generation of her party. She is at least fifteen years too late. The average age in the U.S. is thirty-five to forty years old, depending on the state in which you live. There are lots of young Democrats in the House and Senate, in the Mayor’s offices, and in the Governor’s offices who can take the reins of a defeated and leaderless party. They need to lead the charge. They have the ideas. They have the ear of the local folks. Many of the current leaders need to get out of the way.

Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat, won reelection to her House seat in a very red district. The 36-year-old mother and business owner told the NYT that “Democratic condescension has to go… It is going to take parents of young kids, people in rural communities, people in the trades running for office and being taken seriously.” Seth Moulton, a 46-year-old House member from Massachusetts said that “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone.” Both called for a rebranding of the party.

There is plenty of blame to go around in the Harris-Biden campaign organizations. They fell into Trump's trap. He called them names and they called him names. They focused on Trump’s personality and his wild incoherent rants and rambles at his rallies instead of ignoring him and talking about kitchen table issues. Harris never sold whatever plan she had to reduce the cost of groceries and gas, the two issues that mattered. The blue bloods need to provide specific plans for improving the economy.

The current administration did a lousy job of communicating its achievements. Televised focus groups of young men who worked on infrastructure-related manufacturing jobs didn’t know that the funds were part of the administration's infrastructure bill. They didn’t know that their insurance was related to the ACA. They didn’t know that the administration was the most pro-union in generations. They don’t listen to regular TV news or read legacy newspapers. Trump trumped them on X,  Tic Toc, and other social media networks. His interview on the Joe Rogan podcast was viewed by twenty-eight million people in two days. The Dems need to speak to the folks where they live and get their information: TikTok, Instagram, and the other hundreds of websites unknown to forty-year-olds and older.

The media can take some responsibility for the election day outcomes. Daily for the last few years, the press was more interested in Trump’s silly verbal outpourings than in either party’s policies. Harris was an Oh by the way. The media, with few exceptions, is not journalism anymore; Fox News and MSNBC are neither fair nor balanced and they don’t pretend to be. They both carry the stench of partisanship as their mission. They and their ilk are much to blame for the vast divide that streams through the nation. On the other hand, that isn’t where most people get their news anymore. The Dems need to become more astute at messaging.

Lincoln supposedly said that. "Anyone can suffer adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”[v] We have tested Trump's character and found it faulty and lacking grace, yet he was elected by a large margin. But adversity allows the other side to evaluate their character. It must ask itself if this is who we want to be. If not, there is much that can be done to save democracy.

Shakespeare said it differently in Hamlet when the hero laments “The time is out of joint. O cursed spite,/ that ever I was born to set it right!”[vi] So, how to set it right? Democrats need to do several things quickly: Analyze why they lost, develop a modern communications strategy, select national committee leadership and local committee leadership who can go beyond data analysis and get with the people, and quickly hand the reins of Senate leadership to a younger generation and recruit candidates up and down the ticket who are small business owners, tradespeople and others that understand the needs of their neighbors and run on those issues.

Democrats need to listen to the people instead of telling them what’s good for them. Focus group after focus group told the pollsters that grocery prices and gas prices were the kitchen-table issues, both hugely more important than the social issues the Democrats favored.

What the disheartened can’t do is sit at home and fret. That is doing nothing to bring about change. We know that Trump will do what he told us he would do. He will try to deport huge numbers of people, he will tear asunder our public health care system, he will put loyalists in positions of authority instead of qualified people, he will implement the 2025 project without too much noise, he will allow a ban on reproductive rights, he will try to destroy Social Security and Medicare, he will do what he said he would do.

Those of a different view will have to use every tool available to them to ensure that we don’t become an authoritarian country. They will have to convince their neighbor and their uncle that democracy is worth the fight in the courts, in the halls of government, and if needed in the streets.

“Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock."

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[i] David Brooks, “Voters to Elites – Do You See Me Now? New York Times, 11.07.2024

[ii] Ruy Teiseira, The Shattering of the Democratic Coalition, The Liberal Patriot, 11.07.2024

[iii] Bernie Sanders, Statement released 11.6.2024, Burlington, Vermont

[iv] E. B. White, Letter from Mr. Nadeau, 3.30.1973

[v] The quote “If you want to test a man's character, give him power” is commonly attributed to Abraham Lincoln, but it does not appear in any of his documents. The quote is likely attributed to American politician Robert G. Ingersoll, who said similar things when describing Lincoln in 1883

[vi] Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, in the Prologue, Tim Duggan Books,2017

A Few Words Tell Volumes!

  

You are biased when you want one candidate to do better than the other in a political debate. Ninety minutes later you feel great, sad, or have mixed emotions. My assessment was different from what I had hoped for. But the bias remains. It’s like a boxing match, you start counting jabs and counter punches hoping that your favorite will land the knockout punch.

The debate between the vice presidential candidates last week was a highly hyped event. There had been one debate between presidential candidates. The media had told us this would be the last big event before the election. Forty-three million folks tuned in. For the most part, it was a sleeper. Unlike the presidential debate which was loaded with personal name-calling and personality-driven answers, the VP candidates were reasonably friendly and policy-driven.

It turns out that J.D. Vance’s friendliness was a deliberate strategy to throw genial Tim Walz off his game. It worked for the most part. There is no question that Vance won the style points. His elite school education and schmalz came through. He wasn’t the nasty grenade thrower he tends to be on the campaign trail.

Vance can make the most egregious mistruth seem true. He is good at it. He even admitted that he made up the story about Haitians eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio. It is such a good lie that it is a mainstay of the MEGA movement’s campaign rhetoric.

At one point in the debate, when he espoused a fairly obvious lie, one of the moderators fact-checked him. His response was telling: “Margaret, the rules were that you were not going to fact check …” Sometimes a few words tell volumes!

People are more likely to believe a giant lie than a little one. They wouldn’t tell a major untruth, so they don’t question the big one even if data proves it's wrong. It’s a classic political ploy used by authoritarians across the world. You can read about the idea in Mein Kampf.

Saul Alinsky, the radical activist of the ‘sixties published Rules for Radicals in 1971 that included “Ridicule is a man’s most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also, it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.” J.D. is good at it, almost as good at it as his dear leader. Oddly, these two reactionaries are experts in the methods of radicals.

Immigration is a major issue in this election. The MAGA movement seems to have the upper hand for now, to a great degree because of the misinformation they broadcast each day creating a fear among a segment of the population that white domination of the nation is ebbing. It is a continuing effort to divide us.

On Nelson Mandela’s first state visit to the U.S., President Clinton welcomed him by saying, “Every day, you teach the world that those who build triumph over those who tear down; that those who unite can actually prevail over those who would divide … We know, and you know, that diversity and progress can go hand-in-hand. Indeed, that they must do so if we are to give all our people the chance to fulfill their God-given potential.” We could learn from the work of Mr. Mandela! After years in prison for his views about apartheid, he revolutionized the culture of his country and brought it into the democratic world.

President Biden won the 2020 Electoral College vote and was inaugurated President. Former President Trump still litigates his loss at nearly every campaign stop or rally. Even his staunch surrogates admit Biden won but they won’t say that Trump lost.

In the VP debate, Tim Walz asked J.D. Vance directly if Trump lost the 2020 election. Vance responded that he was focused on the future, not the past. To which Walz said that “That was a damning non-answer.”

Sometimes a few words tell volumes!

Most people don’t make their electoral choice based on the vice presidential debate or even on the vice presidential candidate. They make their choice based on the presidential candidates; policy is important, and character is more important. Support for the rule of law is important. Willingness to stand by the oath to support and defend the Constitution is a must.

Our vote will tell volumes about us!

 

Sometimes a few words tell volumes!

 

 

 

Shocking!

Truth be told, I’m somewhat of a political junkie. It began back in high school. Some of you may remember when we took Civics in our freshman year, U.S. History in our junior year, and something called Problems in American Democracy in our senior year, all three of which were required for graduation. Each required keeping up with the world, reading newspapers and news magazines, and preparing for the current events quiz every Friday. I’m sure they still teach history but I wonder about Civics.

We knew the Constitution, memorized parts of the Declaration of Independence, and could name our senators and local representatives, the governor, and other state officials. We learned how a Bill became a Law. We knew stuff.

I know a few folks who aren’t particularly interested in the day-to-day combat between political parties and special interest groups, but they remember stuff. I mention this because I was shocked three times this week: I found out everyone isn’t interested in the current campaign for president, some don’t know much about either candidate's position on major issues nor had they come face-to-face with basic civic practices in their lives. Shocking!

Alex Wagner is a talking head on MSNBC. Don’t let that bother you if you normally watch Fox News. She went to Michigan to interview a group of skilled union workers. I thought the questions were softballs, but the answers were grounders. The panel appeared to be in their young twenties to mid-thirties. But most young folks look eighteen to me, so I’m guessing. They were generally unaware of the candidate’s position on nearly every issue, or what the issues were in this close race.

One or two on the panel remembered something about a group of people storming the Capitol a few years ago: it wasn't something they thought about. They weren't aware that the infrastructure bill provided the basic funding for their jobs. They were not engaged in the complexities of governance in a democratic nation. They seemed to lack a basic understanding of the requirement or mandate for them to pay attention to what was going on around them. The lack of information and the lack of interest in the nation were appalling and cause for concern for the future of the country. It's not their fault.

A recent study by the Bill of Rights Institute[i] found that only 22% of eighth graders scored proficient or better in Civics on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. It reported that most elementary school children receive less than twenty minutes of civic study each week. I’m sure that it varies a lot by school district.

The Institute noted that schools reflect our priorities and we have demanded so many other priorities that the schools don’t have time to spend on Civics. So it’s not really the school’s fault or the teacher’s fault, but our fault.

If we believe that citizens should be well versed in how the government works, in how a democracy works, and about the important issues of the day, then we need to let the school systems know that it is a priority. Some states have noticed the lack of civic training in the schools and have passed laws to require more thorough instruction in Civics. But it is not an easy row to hoe.

Several decades ago, I taught junior high school and senior high school Social Studies: Civics, U.S. History, World History, and Government. We went beyond basic facts. We discussed the effects of events and the value of various political positions.

Forty-one states require that Civics and/or history be taught in their schools. That should be a good thing. But there are too many obstacles to the process. A recent article indicates that “30 percent of principals said the idea that Civics is too political or controversial was a ‘challenging’ or ‘very challenging’ barrier.”[ii]

There is a resurgence of requirements for teaching Civics with specific guidelines attached. In Florida for example, a new curriculum, designed in great part by professors from Hillsdale College emphasizes memorization as early as the first grade and a different approach to historical facts. A course designed for and attended by thousands of teachers “features video lectures that contradict what mainstream historians tend to teach about the founding. The lectures state that the founding fathers were influenced by Christianity more than the secular Enlightenment and its ideas, such as Montesquieu’s theory of the separation of powers.”[iii]

It obscures the fact that Jefferson, Washington, and other Founders lived at the height of the Age of Reason and were influenced by its thought leaders. At least at the senior level of high school students should be able to discuss Locke’s ideas of government by the people or maybe even Voltaire’s concepts about reason as a force for good government. Florida’s efforts to create a curriculum of alternate facts aren’t helpful.

There was a fine line between indoctrination and education that is easily crossed in Social Studies classes. Yes, we want students to know and appreciate the Founding Documents and the thinking that brought them about, but to also understand their dichotomies and how those ancient documents give direction to the current needs of society. Students should discuss and form convictions about our history and form of government. They need to know that many of those who designed our way of life were slave owners. They need to understand that Manifest Destiny involved taking land from native inhabitants who had lived on it for centuries. We have a rich heritage that is balanced by some bad deeds that make the melting pot that makes us great. But if students can’t discuss these things, they will not learn them and they will not be ready for leadership.

Yes, we want students to know about the Civil War and the Gettysburg Address, but they should also understand that slavery is the nation’s original sin. Yes, we want students to know about the evils of the Third Reich’s attempt to take over Europe, but to also understand the horrors of the Holocaust and why it should never be allowed to happen again.

Learning facts alone doesn’t prepare someone to be an active and contributing citizen. That takes discussion, analysis, postulation, decision-making, and aspiration. Without that, people will follow faulty leaders, choose the simple over the demanding, and settle for comfort rather than the hard work of preserving a democratic republic.

 

Shocking!

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[i] David Bobb, Do They Even Teach Civics Anymore? Bill of Rights Institute, printed in the Sacramento Bee, September 25, 2024

The Institute is financed by the Koch Brothers Charity Foundation and is associated with Hillsdale College. I find little that the Koch Brothers support that I agree with and little that comes out of Hillsdale College that is in the best interest of the country.  On this issue, however, I give them a pass.

[ii] Sarah Schwartz, Civics is Getting Harder to Teach, Education Week magazine, September 6, 2024

[iii] Dana Goldstein, For Republican Governors, Civics is the Latest Battleground, New York Times, September 30,2023.

 

It's Official!

Taylor Swift has spoken. A few minutes after the presidential debate last week. the most famous diva of our time, the headliner of The Eras Tour, posted her endorsement of Harris for President. It included a picture of herself with a cat – The Childless Cat Lady. Thankfully, her tour doesn’t take her to Springfield, Ohio. J.D. Vance says cats and dogs don’t stand a chance in that town. Anyway, it’s official now. The candidates can begin the campaign.

Does Swift’s endorsement really have an effect on the electorate? That depends to whom you speak. She has 284 million followers on X. Four hundred thousand responded positively within one hour of her posting. The November vote count will tell us.

The debate was a runaway win for Harris, but Trump thought it was his best debate. One wonders if it will have any effect on the final vote count. It is possible both candidates made some inroads with the undecided voters of the country, although only a little movement, based on network interviews just after the debate. So why bother?

The 2020 election was decided by less than one hundred thousand votes. Some pundits suggest that it will be even closer this year. That means the election comes down to a few precincts in a few states. All of the polls are within the margin of error.

Pope Francis said recently that we should do two things – vote and vote for the candidate we think is the lesser of two evils. That doesn’t give a lot of people a lot of comfort. He spoke from the point of view of the leader of the world’s largest Christian denomination and as an Argentinian, which gives him a different perspective on U.S. politics. So what are we to do?

Most voters believe they have an easy decision; nearly fifty percent want Trump again and nearly fifty percent want Harris. Half of the voters will be disappointed with the results. The candidates represent two different views of America. One wants to go back to a time when rural life and conservative values permeated the nation; the other wants to move forward to a more perfect union. One has been remarkably successful as the stormtrooper for those who consider themselves the forgotten, the passed-over, the regular folks. The other is seen as the representative of the coastal elites. Two things are true about those thoughts: only 17 percent of the U.S. population live in non-urban areas so their needs are often forgotten or unrecognized by the 50 percent who live within fifty miles of the coasts and/or the 83 percent who live in urban areas.

So it is going to be a close call. The emotions are high. Because we are a democracy we are subjected to contrary views every day, and that is ok. What I don’t like is the obvious way in which many in the Republican Party are buying into the lies spewed by many of the former president’s surrogates and the conspiracy theories that abound. Millions are convinced that undocumented immigrants are voting in big numbers and they support new laws to keep them from voting. It is illegal in every state for a non-citizen to vote and there is no evidence of undocumented immigrants voting. Some states are creating new procedures for reviewing all votes before the results are certified based on lies about fake votes and illegal voters. It goes on.

The election should be about the character of the candidates. Trump doesn’t meet the high bar required of a president. He didn’t the first time and he doesn’t now. Did I mention that he was a convicted felon awaiting sentencing and trial for another 30-plus felony indictments?

The election should be about policies and programs. Trump’s former staff, hundreds of them, helped the Heritage Fund write Project 2025, a 900-page plan to tear down our democracy and replace it with a strong autocratic form of government. Trump has demonstrated his willingness to favor the rich over the poor in tax codes and safety-net programs. He doesn’t measure up to the needs of the nation.

The election should be about the Constitution. Trump said he would ignore the sacred document on his first day in office. He has said that he would use the military to quell protests, which is against the law. He has demonstrated that he is unwilling to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic. He showed that on January 6, 2020. He demonstrated that by his friendship with the dictators of North Korea, Russia, and Hungary to name a few, all known enemies of America or its institutions. He hasn’t met the high bar required of a president.

Kamala Harris has demonstrated a willingness to support the Constitution, to fight for the middle class, to disrupt our trek to oligarchy, and protect our civil rights. She may not be the perfect candidate but she seems to be honest and focused on more than the upper one percent of the population.

What are we to do?

First, we must vote. That is what a democracy is all about. In his book On Tyranny, Yale professor Timothy Snyder references a hero in a David Lodge novel who says that you don’t know when you make love for the last time, that you are making love for the last time. Voting is like that. Consider the Germans who elected an autocratic government who then started WW II. Consider the Czechs and Slovaks elected an autocratic Tito, or the Russians who continued to elect an autocratic leader. Even if we are unhappy with our current state of affairs, we must vote to protect our democracy, to prevent the destruction of our institutions. We may not all agree on how to do those things, but we know that those who don’t vote allow bad leaders to win.

But, we have a choice. If we want to keep  America great, if we want to preserve our democracy, if we want to write a new chapter for our country, and if we want to ensure that it is not the last vote, or the next to the last vote, the choice seems easy to make. Vote for Harris.

 

And Then There Were None!

 Ten Little Indians, a play by Agatha Christie, takes place on Indian Island where ten dandies are gathered for a weekend soiree. Things go along smashingly until one of the guests turns up murdered, and then a second one, and then another. Panic was everywhere as those still standing tried to solve the mysterious murders. And then another and another. And then there were none. I was reminded recently of that play, in which I played a minor dandy in a college production.

I drove Bev to the nail shop the other day. I didn't know what they did in there but always returned home satisfied. I waited in the car. Just the thought of, much less watching someone play with your toes and do lethal harm with scissors and other surgical instruments is more than my sensitivities could manage, being a fragile flower and all. I stayed in the car, read the NYT, and did my daily Wordle, then the Mini crossword, and Connections. After what seemed like most of the morning, I spotted her through the window, standing at the checkout counter. A few minutes later she was still standing there.

What could go wrong? The credit card is good. There is a debit card if she needs it. What could go wrong? I could help, but that seldom bodes well for me.

I left the car's safety, walked a few steps to the front door of the “spa” and went to the rescue. I had no idea places like that existed. There must have been fifteen or twenty chairs, each with a customer dangling a hand, getting a manicure. Anyway, there was a lot of hand-holding, scraping, and painting going on. That was the half of it. There was another section with huge lounge chairs and buckets of water for customers to put their feet in.

Herself was the first in line at the checkout counter after the shopping center's internet went down and her credit card was useless. There was no sense in me trying to do a workaround when twenty under-thirty-year-olds were working in the place. Not to worry though because doesn’t everyone have a hot spot on their phone? If credit cards don’t work, maybe the debit card will work. Nope. One down.

The lady behind us knew how to make the system work with the help of her toe cutter. Nope. Two down.

“Don’t worry” says the third in line. She knew how to do it. Nope. Three down and you could see the panic set in among the customers checking out and the workers hoping to spend the day cutting and scrapping. Around the entire “spa” you could feel the panic in the air, you could see panic on faces, and you could see people entering a world they didn’t understand.

A woman over thirty, based on her solution, suggested that we all just use cash. Panic! Another world nobody understood. Four down. Five down. Six down. Seven down... Someone suggested writing a check. Ten down. “And then there were none.”

I learned a lot in that thirty minutes.  Women are willing to suffer pain and pure brutality to look good. I know I’m not supposed to say that. Let me just say that if it were a choice between the county jail or the “spa” you know which one I would take.

I also learned how an enemy could shut down this country in a flash – blow up the electric grid, the cell network, or just shut down Wi-Fi. We are very vulnerable without our phones and cards. As we Americans try to catch up to the rest of the world by transferring everything to our phones and paying for everything with our phones, we become increasingly dependent on technology that we can’t control.

I suppose that I could just go to the ATM from time to time or ask for cash back at the grocery store, but what would I do with it. To be honest, I do carry a five-dollar bill in my money clip just so that people won’t think that I don’t have five dollars to my name, but it usually stays there for months. I think Bev has a checkbook somewhere. Maybe we should carry a blank check for emergencies. Nah!

By the way, the “spa” solved the problem much like we used to manage difficulties like this. They assumed their customers were honest. They took our phone numbers,  called us a few hours later and we gave them our card number. Done!

 

 

We Have A Choice

 The conventions are over! We have the candidates. In early November we should know who won the election for the most important job in the world. How so? The President of the U.S.A. is the leader of the first democratic country in the world, the most powerful country in the world, and the most relied upon country to help keep the world peace.

The first duty a President assumes, no matter the political party is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. That is the sacred oath that they take. They don’t take an oath to a god, they don’t take an oath to support a person, but they do take an oath to support the Constitution. It is their job to protect our democracy and in this age to ensure that a democratic form of government delivers for the people.

The nationalist populism movement is afoot across the globe and many in the U.S. have been sucked into its beliefs. Populism contains two primary claims: “True people” are locked into conflict with outsiders, including establishment elites, and nothing should constrain the will of the “true” people.[i] Nationalist movements generally fall into three groups: anti-establishment, socio-economic, and cultural. We see the Nationalism movement led by Viktor Orban in Hungary, Recep Erdogan in Türkiye, Donald Trump’s MAGA movement in the U.S., and Evo Morales in Bolivia, to name a few. Just last June, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party won enough seats in the Parliament to make a coalition government almost impossible. On September 1, the far-right Alternative Fur Deutschland Party won an election in the eastern states, the first time since the Nazis were ousted at the end of WWII. Nationalist Populism is a direct confrontation with our Constitution. But, because it is a worldwide movement and because MAGA has so many adherents in the U.S., we easily could lose our democracy and be subjected to an authoritarian administration that we elected, just as the Germans did in the 1930s. We expect our president to push back on these movements.

The second job of the President is to preserve and defend our alliances designed to keep the world at peace, and to fight against attempts of one country to invade others.

After World War II the U.S. led an effort to create the United Nations and NATO. Both were charged with keeping the world at peace and forming a new world order that included the notion that one country should not invade another. That world order was held until February 2014 when Russia invaded the Crimea. Again, in February of 2022, they pushed troops inland attempting to occupy the rest of Ukraine. Two years later they still hold only a small part of the country. Ukraine is receiving aid from most of the NATO countries even though it is not yet a member because if Ukraine falls, the rest of Europe is at risk of invasion. Article 5 of the NATO Charter states that if one country is invaded all of the other members will come to their aid. They came to the aid of the U.S. on 9/11.

The third job of the President is to uplift the people of the country, to be the adult in the room. They are asked to continue to build a more perfect union. They do that by supporting the institutions that weld the citizenry, which make us who we are. They uplift people by treating them with respect, by providing for the common good. And yet, even today we hear a candidate tout the axioms of the 1920s Klan boast that whites are “of this superior blood”… “upon whom depends the future of civilization.”[ii]

We are supposed to be that shining city on the hill, the beacon that beckons others, the glow from our torch invites even the wretched refuse of teeming shores[iii] to join our trek to a unified set of values. Those whom we welcome do not poison the blood of those currently living here.

If the sacred oath calls for the president to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, they need to do that. They can’t boast that they will be a dictator on their first day in office. They can’t ignore the non-political status of the Department of Justice; they can’t say they will use the armed forces to control the people who disagree with them or march in opposition to a government mandate. If they do any of those things they disqualify themselves from the position.

The U.S. is a traditional leader of the free world. Our treaties, pacts, and behaviors are designed to create a free world order where each nation respects the sovereignty of the other. A president should not say that they will ignore those institutions and encourage an enemy nation to do ”whatever the hell you want” to our allies. A person who would do that is not qualified to be president.

The nation's leader is responsible for at least trying to ensure that we are a united nation rather than trying to separate people, make them unhappy with others, heap scorn on civil servants, and try to upset the peaceful transfer of power and other institutional upheavals. If they can’t encourage us to experience the “joy that comes in the morning,[iv] why bother to run for the job.

We can stipulate that the price of groceries is too high and that gas prices are too high and that that makes making ends meet each month a difficult task. But those strains pale in comparison to what is at stake in this year’s election.

The Greeks taught us centuries ago to reach deep into the soul of our leaders. Socrates would be appalled by the current state of affairs. No candidate is a perfect choice for president, so we have to decide by comparing what we see deep down in the candidates.

One candidate is a convicted felon, found guilty of sexual abuse, accused of trying to overthrow the government, falsifying business and personal information to secure loans as well as interfering with vote counting in the last presidential election. And yet, he has tens of millions of people who support his candidacy. Millions of people are buying into the Populism charade plan, a reflection of the gap in perceived equal treatment in this country, distrust of the “establishment” and dislike of immigrants and minorities. They have heard the same lies so often that they believe them. Nearly half the country is willing to vote against our democratic values and accept the torches of the far-right to better themselves. They are willing to vote for a man who could not pass the background check for a minimum-wage job.

National Populism flies in the face of everything American. We have seen its destructive power that nearly wiped out the “greatest generation.” We have seen how it tore our nation apart years ago in the time of the Robber Barons and in the McCarthy era. We have never in our history had a serious candidate for president who was awaiting sentencing for felonies and awaiting trial for more offenses against our government. 

We have a choice.

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[i] Populists in power around the world, Institute for Global Insights, 11/17/2018

[ii]The Klan of Yesterday and of Today – Proceedings of the Second Imperial Klonvocation Held at Kansas City Missouri 1924, Hiram Wesley Evans

[iii] “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Poem on Statue of Liberty – Emma Lazarus, 1885

[iv] Psalm 35.5

There is a difference!

Interstate 5 splits the spine of the great inland valleys of California from Oregon to Mexico, mostly with views of bare ground - desert really, except for large industrial farms growing produce and tree products where water flows,  supplied by massive and expensive aqueducts that drain the Sacramento and American rivers up north. The exception to this boring north-to-south highway is the Pacific Coast Highway -PCH, and the east-to-west roads through the Sierra and coastal mountains, those with even numbers. One has to be in awe of the majestic giants that cover the hillsides and the Sierra. But …

Transplanted to the western edge of the continent over fifty years ago, I unknowingly acclimated to the vast stretches of little or nothing interesting going north or south, of roads that go for miles upon miles with only the slightest of curves, bumper to bumper at seventy miles per hour, or those cheek to jowl to subdivision homes themselves cheek to jowl.

A recent return to the colonial side and a nostalgiac day trip back to upper Vermont rebounded memories long sidelined and feelings long forgotten It is a different world settled in a different time; towns far apart, houses far apart. Farms hewn from forest land raise a collection of stones each spring, material for walls that make good neighbors. The farms, the homesteads, and the towns big or small are all forest clearings. 

Vermont is eighty percent forest.  The four lanes, the two lanes, and the one lane cut through the trees, leaving towns and cities unseen, for the most part, creating surprising vistas at every turn, meeting other cars every mile or so. No doubt left that you are in the midst of a full-on forest.

The Boreal forest differs from much of the country, even other areas with many trees. This biome that circles the global north, generally above the 50^th parallel, dips ever so slightly into the upper reaches of the Northeast Kingdom and then extends across New Hampshire’s North Country into Maine.

The West Coast has two seasons each year, summer and winter. The northern sector of the East Coast has the usual four seasons, more if you include the black-fly season, January thaw, mud season, and the fourth of July. It was spring. The trees were beginning to leaf out, the distant mountains still more black than green, but forest upon forest of hardwoods and softwoods building strength day by day, anticipating the reds and yellows of fall. Red maples, white and yellow birch, beech, hemlock, and balsam create woodlands hard to see through, with saplings growing where old growth fell during the harsh winter. So different from the western states.

The Northeast Kingdom’s two-thousand square miles, also over eighty percent forest, encourage life in small towns - fifty-five of them, for its sixty-five-thousand inhabitants who get to and from mostly on unpaved roads.

It is a different feeling, being in a forest completely surrounded except for the occasionally cleared farmland, the small towns with white-spire churches, and few houses. You are enveloped in your environment, you sense the closeness, and you wonder where the people are and where they work. You know where they hunt and fish.

They say you are what you were when. You once tramped these woods, hunted these forests, fished those ponds, drove the dirt roads, and lived the life that people live who live in the boreal forest. It made you independent, uncomfortable in crowds, with a preference for the rural drive rather than the interstate.

Back now, within miles of the Pacific, life demands a return to the crowded roads, the life in the fast lane, missing the new memories of the boreal forest. Readjustment came much too quickly.