Hate!

 I hate America!

I didn’t know that until a few weeks ago. I didn’t come to it on my own, the Speaker of the House told me… I wasn’t singled out, mind you. It runs in the family, all four generations. Lots of my neighbors and nearly eight million others got the message at the same time. Speaker Mike Johnson told us that anyone who participated in a No Kings protest hated America. And you know me; I thought it was the other way around.

I don’t follow AOC on Instagram or Facebook; she is a bit progressive, you know, but she noted recently that calling someone who disagrees with your position on an issue un-American is the very definition of un-American.

On the other side, a young man slain for his beliefs, Charlie Kirk, garners thousands of chapters for his Turning Point organization that, in the name of saving democracy, spews views that are the antithesis of what America should represent.

A lot of what constitutes the new good is the opposite of what has defined America for generations. Affirmative Action is once again considered discrimination against white folks. A good education is no longer considered a worthwhile goal because we need more tradespeople. Why can’t we have both? Evangelical Nationalism, a growing segment of Christianity preaches the opposite of Christianity, calling us to turn to a theocracy instead of our tradition of advocating for the free exercise of any religion.

I’m registered as “No Party Preference.” I can speak out of both sides of my mouth. I’m usually just a bit left of center, but not enough to be called a leftie. I’m worried about our democracy. I’m told I shouldn’t worry about it; it’s what older folks do. Nobody cares, really. Worry about the important things, the pundits say, affordability, the new buzzword.

The recent government shutdown illustrates the dichotomy weaving its way through the country. While millions are worried about the price of health insurance, the lack of healthcare, and the price of food, other millions are worried about maintaining power and crumbling all the institutions that seem to be bothering them: universities, education in general, safety nets for the less fortunate, libraries, science research, gold-standard economic reporting, and even classic architecture. Have you noticed what they have done to desecrate the Oval Office and the White House in general?

The younger members of the Democratic Party are calling for new leadership. Those in their seventies and eighties have lost control of the narrative and ability to lead. They had the wind at their backs during the shutdown and blew it. They fought for affordability and gave in to easier flying schedules. They are a party with no discipline and no cohesive or catchy message aimed at the younger generations, arm wrestling against a supercharged and highly organized party of zealots.

The national movement to return to an affordable but democratic nation has begun. Prodded by young people and supported by folks of all ages, the nation is starting to awaken to the travesty thrust upon them in the last several months.

The first nationwide No Kings rallies a couple of years ago attracted only a few million people. The rallies last June attracted about five million people. The protests in October attracted more than seven million people.

Erica Chenoweth, a distinguished professor at Harvard, has studied the history of anti-authoritarian movements around the globe. She found that movements that achieved their goal usually represented three and a half percent of the population of the country. That is a lot of people. If the trend continues, twelve million Americans protesting against the current regime isn’t hard to imagine.

If you are a pessimist, the chances of success for No Kings are slim to none. An optimist thinks it’s possible with a little effort. It will take a lot of effort, but worth a try. But it will fail if it doesn’t bring forth a highly respected national leader.

Today, it has an organizer, Indivisibles’ Ezra Levin, but no leader. The civil rights movement had MLK. The current effort to restore our democracy needs a national leader who can rally the populists to do what is needed and what is right.

How do we know when we are in trouble?

When a nation sends its army against its own citizens, democracy is lost. When a nation sends masked secret police against its people, democracy fades. When national leaders turn the Department of Justice into a personal law firm to prosecute political enemies, democracy is done. When a nation tries to tell its universities what to teach and how to teach it, democracy is history. America was once the model of a modern democracy. Why did we let it lose its way?

We are told that it is always the economy that drives people’s feelings and their votes. Recent elections around the country tell a mixed story. The people of the State of New Jersey and the Commonwealth of Virginia elected Democratic governors. They both ran on an economic agenda, but the President’s agenda was on the ballot as well.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania returned three justices to its Supreme Court despite the opposition of the President. The Vice President’s brother lost an election in the very red State of Ohio.

The most interesting election to me was California’s Proposition 50, which reconfigures its congressional districts to offset the redistricting efforts in Texas. Not one person was on the ballot, and economics wasn’t on the ballot; it was all about the future of democracy. It garnered sixty-four percent approval from the voters. That is what a mandate looks like. Why did millions turn out to vote on one issue? Because the President had asked the State of Texas to Gerrymander their congressional district to make it easier to elect five more Republicans to Congress. When California retaliated by designing districts that would likely elect five more Democrats to Congress, the President instructed the Department of Justice to sue the state because it was an unfair tampering with the system; audacious is an understatement.

One must ask if a few elections in blue states equate to a national repudiation of the current administration’s efforts to undo our democratic processes. Maybe not. But all long marches begin with the first step.

It could also be a wake-up call for the administration. It might just let them know that their methods for achieving their economic and cultural objectives are just too severe, or just not the way we customarily do things. Masked men whisking people off the streets into unmarked cars is not the American way. It is the way of Russia and Hungary, or earlier, Chile, or Argentina. We have an annoying history of insisting on due process, even for hardened criminals.

It could be a reminder that government officials who take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution ought to follow its provisions.

But we know that this administration has no intention of protecting and defending the Constitution. They told us during the campaign that they would implement the Project 25 programs. It was a nine-hundred-page outline for changing the country from three equal branches of government to a country with a strong executive branch. It was a plan for increasing the power of oligarchs and moving us toward autocracy with a strong military dispersed among the citizenry. If it succeeds, the country is lost. If it succeeds even a little, we will not see our greatness again.

 

I don’t hate America, but I am concerned about the current state of affairs. Nobody runs for office with the promise to change nothing,  but change must be done within the norms of our longstanding institutions and culture. But people should not live in fear. Parents should not be afraid that when they send their kids to school, they may never see them again. People who follow the rules and go to the immigration office as scheduled should not be deported for following the law. Our police services, who pride themselves on serving and protecting themselves should not be forced to wear masks and walk the streets with weapons of war. Members of Congress should not be prevented from performing their oversight duties at detention centers. I don’t hate America; I just want it to be America again.

 

Taking Back!

 Someone once said that writing is easy; finding the right words is hard. I’ve struggled with that most of this year.

I’ve written a lot of first paragraphs. Then something else sets me off. I write a new first paragraph on a different subject, and something else sets me off. I seldom get to the second paragraph.

If you can’t guess what and who is setting me off, you haven’t been paying attention.

Project 2025 called for as many massive disruptions to the government as possible, as quickly as possible. The strategy was to overwhelm the legislature, the press, citizens, and foreign allies. It is working, and that isn’t a good thing for the country, its citizens, or the world.

Where to start? 

My current lament is with three interknitted areas: Democracy, Government, and the Presidency.

We have done a reasonable job of being a democratic republic for nearly twenty-five decades. There were some not-so-good times, but we try to make the Union more perfect, even if it often takes too long to right the wrongs.

Democracies, by their nature, are not efficient forms of government; they are meant to be messy. They require constant discussion, forever disagreements, and the best-for-now compromises. The current administration doesn’t believe that axiom, and I’m not sure the out-party does either.

The current poohbah thinks he has the right to govern by fiat, executive decree. His minions do whatever they can to strengthen the role of the executive to the detriment of the legislative and judicial branches.

The Founders were afraid of such a strong leader. After all, they had just won a revolution that ousted a king. They didn’t want another one. We go back once again to Madison, who tells us in The Federalist, No. 47, that “ The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands … may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” 

Let us consider the purpose of our government. We all learned and maybe memorized the words, “…to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity …” To accomplish these great aims, Article I of the Constitution gives  the power to make laws and the power of the purse strings to the legislature. Article II instructed the President to execute those laws and spend the money as instructed. With few exceptions, a president doesn’t have the authority to spend money as s/he wishes or make laws by decree. S/He doesn’t have the power to dissolve government departments established by Congress.

It is a simple concept - the government is designed to provide services to the people. Providing for the general welfare includes having a strong public health component. It is responsible for the military to protect the nation. It should bolster the educational strength of the nation, preserve our natural resources and national parks for the pleasure of its citizens. It ensures a wide separation between religions and the state. It encourages basic scientific research, supports the arts. It encourages these institutions. It doesn’t tear them down or tear them apart. The current administration doesn’t believe that axiom.

Many of the Founders warned against strong political parties. But those that governed from the middle have been a strength for our democracy. They generally limit the ambitions of those who want to lead from the edge of the ideological wings. Calvin Coolidge told us that “It is a great advantage to a President, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know that he is not a great man.” We miss that humility today and suffer the consequences.

While I tend to lean just a tad to the left of center, I’m registered as “No Party Preference,” but I’m wondering if that designation really fits my mood today. I might be a Libertarian for all I know, or even an Independent. The lack of a party affiliation allows me to put “a plague on both their houses,” without guilt.

The Republican Party began its takeover of the nation decades ago, mostly under the radar. They built strong alliances at the county and state levels, where election districts are formed and local laws enacted.

Donald Trump used the party to gain his first term, took over the party with threats of primary challenges for those who didn’t agree with him, accumulated successful oligarchs willing to bend a knee to change power structures in their favor, and smartly identified the angst of the middle class in the heartland who disliked the changing culture and that of the skilled tradesperson who had lost their jobs to other countries. He expertly attracted those who feared their white advantage was ebbing, to the point of carrying guns to a Capitol incursion.

All the while, the Democrat Party smothered its best and brightest in ideological quagmires that required fidelity to positions that never became vote-getting messages. They became the party of the university faculty lounge, the city elites, and the tech workforce. They forgot the farmer, the small business owner, the ones losing jobs to higher-skilled young people. They ran on issues the populist didn’t think affected them, and didn’t raise up the issues that did. The degree of loss at the Electoral College level devastated them to the point that five months later, they still couldn’t identify a leader or a message to take to the voters. They have cowered at meeting constituents in public; too scary for them.

So we are living in a dystopian era governed by a near cultlike group that tears at the strings of our institutions to unravel the very fabric of the nation only to be countered by a floundering opposition party that doesn’t know what to make of itself, whose ancient leaders won’t invite the younger crowd to the table or knows how to reclaim a vestige of recognition among the electorate.

So what are we going to do?

The saving grace seems to be the millions of people who are taking to the streets to protest the tearing apart of the government that they witness daily. It seems there is a big difference between voting for change and seeing destruction. The rise is an effort to remind those who support autocratic and oligarchic style government that, in the end, this is a country of and for We The People.

The Democrats don’t control any branch of the government, so they must rely on the people to rise up and for the judiciary to do its job. The opposition is filing one case after another each day that questions the legal authority of the president’s actions. They are winning most of them. Many cases are already at the appellate level. From there, they will move to the Supreme Court for final determination. Many of the administration’s actions are designed specifically to evaluate the limits of presidential power and seem to assume that SCOTUS will validate their efforts.

But we have this annoying thing called the Constitution, designed to rein in the bad actors in the executive branch and bad laws drawn in the legislative branch. Marbury v. Madison told us that the Constitution says what the Supreme Court says it says. Its power is derived from the willingness of the people to follow its rulings. It doesn’t have an army. But …

If SCOTUS hands down a decision and the executive branch doesn’t obey it, we will have lost our democracy for sure and may never reclaim it. That is a bridge too far, but the first months of the current administration have caused an upheaval unlike any since the days of Andrew Jackson or the Civil War. They want to test the limits of presidential power.

For the generations who lived with the notion that you get up in the morning to face the world and make it better, their ideals are being destroyed before their eyes. 

Where to start?

 Lawmakers listen to their constituents. Let’s make sure that we are heard. They will listen –

·         Especially if they are in the streets. That’s how the civil rights movement succeeded. That is how we can save our democracy.

·         We can pressure the legislature and the administration to change their methods. That involves demanding change and attending town hall meetings with Members of Congress.

·         We can pressure our aged leaders to give the reins to those who can relate to the younger generation’s needs.

·         We can demand that leaders are active on the social media that younger folks use.

·         We can insist that members of Congress hold live Town Halls.

·         We can fill the Letters section of newspapers, digital or pulp, with information about our aims.

·         We can attend opposition rallies.

·         We can  gather in small groups to keep like-minded folks informed and to gin up enthusiasm for action.

 

We the people haven’t been in the streets since the sixties and seventies. Most have forgotten how to do it, and at least two generations have never experienced rising up to demand better from our government for our nation. It will be a steep learning curve, but we can’t let the destruction continue much longer. Nor can we allow the destruction of our economy and the world order to continue.

 

 

 

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.

 

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