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.

 

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

From Here We Go Where?

 

Try to find a better place but soon it's all the same
What once you thought was a paradise is not just what it seemed
The more I look around, I find, the more I have to fear[i]

 I’m unwilling to live in fear. That is a hard resolution to keep. The last four years mystified me, but the last couple of months were incongruous. I never was afraid of losing our democracy. Sedition was one of those things in The Constitution that you didn’t spend a lot of time studying. Who could have imagined an armed and planned assault on our Capitol by other citizens? Then, we watched it happen. That was nearly two months ago and I’m still writhing.

Months before the election, Trump convinced his followers that the only way he could lose the election was if the process was rigged. He repeated over and over that early voting and vote by mail would be fraudulent. He claimed irregular vote counting and called election officials biased. The fix was in!

Too many people believed him and convinced themselves that he could not lose. He called his base of supporters to Washington to protest the election, and they came. He urged them to march on the Capitol, and they did. He told them that the Vice President could nullify the election, and they believed him.

When Pence announced that the constitution didn’t allow him to change the election, they called him a traitor. They raised a gallows in front of the Capitol. Their insurrection rose to the level of sedition, in the name of democracy. Hundreds of people were injured, many died, still, others committed suicide. Culprits are still being identified and rounded up for prosecution.

The House of Representatives impeached the President a second time. The Senate acquitted him a second time. Then some senators who had just voted to acquit talked about how guilty the President was, how he had encouraged the armed insurrection, how he continued to relish the actions of his followers. They knew he was guilty; they voted “not guilty.”

State Party leaders censured Republican Representatives who voted to impeach and Senators who voted “guilty.” Pennsylvania Senator Toomey voted to convict Trump, which he described as “doing the right thing.” It resulted in quick censure from county party leaders. One, Dave Ball, went so far as to state on television, “We did not send him there to vote his conscience. We did not send him there to do the right thing … We sent him there to represent us.” The implication was that the party sent the Senator to Washington to represent the party, not the people.

James Madison noted, “Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as the abuses of power.[ii] There can be no illusions that there was goodness in the storming of the Capitol in an effort to overturn an election. It was a planned abuse of liberty in a free country. What is unfathomable is that so many consider it “no big deal.” The divide is wide, the divide deep. The rot drains oxygen from the soul of the nation. Our freedom to vote and for our vote to matter is under attack.

We never know when something will be the last.[iii] We never know when our last vote will be our last one; ask the people of Germany, Italy, and Spain if they thought their last vote was their last one. Is last November the last time we voted in a free and open election? Will it be the next one, or the one after that?

This year legislators in 43 states introduced 253 bills to reduce voting access.[iv] One state has a bill that allows the legislature to pick the Presidential Electors irrespective of the vote of the people.[v] Others plan increased Gerrymandering to control voter results. Still others have bills to reduce voting hours, early voting, voting locations, and drop boxes for ballot return. Many are considering eliminating votes by mail except for serious health conditions. All of the voter suppression bills were introduced, supposedly, to help ensure that citizens believe that a valid election took place. Too many people ignore these efforts to abuse liberty.

Will state legislatures gerrymander the voting districts so that elections aren’t the free expressions of voter will? We don’t know. Will state legislatures squelch easy voter registration, eliminate vote by mail, the convenience of voting in a neighborhood precinct? Voting, the most sacred act of a free people is on the brink of destruction by people who fear the loss of power. “The evil men do lives after them; the good is interred with their bones.”[vi] 

We now know that the insurrection and storming of the Capital was not a simple case of protesters with an unexpected surge of adrenalin. There was collusion among Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Neo-Nazi cells, and other groups dedicated to the overthrow of the democratic process. It was a planned insurrection, it was an armed insurrection, and it swept others in its path. It was sedition.

How do we protect the vote? In nearly half the states voter suppression is an active movement, especially if the legislature holds veto-proof power. The only way to ensure that voters can vote freely is to insist that the process be open to all. Let’s start with the notion that all men are created equal. In our country, that means that anyone over the age of 18 should be able to vote, with very few exceptions. What does free and open voting look like?

Registering to vote should be easy. When a 16-year-old person applies for a driver’s license they should automatically be registered to vote after their 18^th birthday. If a person hasn’t registered to vote but wants to vote, they should be allowed to register on Election Day.

Securing a ballot should be easy. Every state should send every registered voter a ballot one month before Election Day.

Voting should be easy. Voters should be able to return their ballots to a nearby dropbox, to the election office, or to the polls when they are open. Those who wish to vote in person should have that opportunity. Many states have had vote-by-mail for many years, so we know the process works.

Voting districts should be rational. Each district should be fairly divided between party affiliation, races, age groups, etc. Some states already have bipartisan panels of unelected officials who draw the district boundaries. This reduces the likelihood of obscene Gerrymandering.

Write your state representative or state senator and tell them to ensure that freedom to vote must be preserved for all people. Talk to your friends about the un-American activity that some legislatures are using to reduce voter turnout, to control vote results. Support campaigns against legislators who vote to increase voter suppression; vote for their opponents.

Voting in America is controlled at the local level, for the most part. County election officials and state election officials administer the laws enacted by the state legislatures. It is at the local levels that voter suppression is taking place, under the national radar, and that is where it must be preserved.

 

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[i] Where Do We Go From Here – Chicago – 1969 Recording

[ii] James Madison – The Federalist, No. 63, 1787

[iii] Timothy Snyder – On Tyranny – Tim Duggan Books, 2017

[iv] Brennan Center for Justice, New York University – January 26, 2021

[v] The Constitution allows state legislatures to determine how Electors are chosen. It does not assume that that would happen after an election.

[vi] William Shakespeare – Julius Caesar – Act 3 Sc 2