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

With Age Comes ... !

 

A disadvantage of getting on years (One can’t say they are old, can they?) is that people start treating you as if you were old, while you try to convince them that you have the mindset of a twenty-year-old, but with more wisdom to share. (Those who lack experience begin rolling their eyes about now) Forget that the muscles do not work as well and ten-minute chores now take forty minutes. While age is not the be-all, it does mean you have seen almost everything at least once, there are few surprises, and maybe just maybe understand more than those who are age-challenged. Those long-held truths blew up on January 6, 2021.

 

The Age of Enlightenment brought us clever ideas like “We the people ...” or “governments by consent of the people,” and “All men are created equal.” Jefferson and Madison wrote it down so we would not forget it, and with the hope that we, two and a half centuries later, would still live by these truths. Hamilton and Jay, then Madison, argued their better points in the Federalist Papers. Two-hundred-forty-five years after the Declaration of Independence, however, we are on the brink of another civil disturbance. Advocates of white supremacy and conspiracy theory believers lead this new revolution. While these groups certainly stood out at the march on the Capital, most of the insurgents were regular folks, janitors, police officers, IT specialists, professional managers, and CEOs.

 

All seemed upset about something, afraid of something, joined at the hip with swelling numbers of hate groups lurking in the dark web or on conspiracy platforms that spew hate. Some lay the blame at the feet of the unvetted information age of social media and its ability to push junk data across the world in nanoseconds. [i] A recent poll asked respondents to answer true-or-false to the following statement: “A group of Satan-worshiping elites who run a child sex ring is trying to control our politics and media.” Fifty-three percent of the respondents said that that was true.[ii] Disinformation is so rampant across the country that a candidate who denies the 9/11 plane attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, who says that the killing of children in Sandy Hook was a staged event, who calls for the murder of Constitutional Officers, can get herself elected to Congress. The people who elected her must have believed the lies ignored the lies or supported her beliefs. There is a disconnect between self-preservation, hate, and a clear understanding of the notions from which this nation grew its uniqueness.

 

A once and former president, lacking any appreciation for the ideals of a self-governing, democracy, and its institutions, easily convinced seventy plus million people to follow him. He convinced them to vote to re-elect him and to fight for him in a battle to negate the election. He high-jacked large religious groups, conservative groups, and other normally moderate groups in his quest for power. He convinced them that evil people stole the election from him, which he claimed to have won by a large margin. He called them to DC, then urged them and convinced them to march to the Capitol, to overthrow the government by force. The last time our Temple of Democracy was breached was during the War of 1812. Those of us who have seen it all sat in shock watching a President call citizens to arms. We sat in shock watching a band of terrorists desecrate our symbol of freedom, and the world watched in shocked disbelief. Any moral authority we might have had as the standard for democracy melted before our eyes and their eyes. The terrorist demeaned the nation and it will take generations to repair. Only five members of his party voted to impeach him for his seditious behavior. How does this happen?

There have been others before him who did not get it right, who did not understand or decided to create a new normal. What we see around us today is not the makings of one person’s four-year term. We know because we understand that it takes about twenty years for a new idea to become a new norm. It is not quite the same as saying that whatever we are against today will be the usual a generation hence, but you get the point. The current state of affairs can be traced back a number of years if one looks.

 

Hate is not unusual anymore; it is a commodity that shows up at every opportunity to destroy our way of life, our values, and our institutions. Our American value that all people are created equal isn’t the value of the Proud Boys; these men roam the countryside and the cities preaching the sermon of white supremacy and male dominance; are they afraid that black and brown women will challenge their manhood? Canada declared them a terrorist organization. Anti-immigrant groups protest against our democracy, regular folks with extremist ideas mingle with the organized haters and soon you have homegrown terrorists that want to bring down our system of government.[iii] Homeland Security issued a National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin last month; it warned police departments about these terrorist groups. How does this happen?

 

We don’t see these things happening when they happen before our eyes. We don’t realize that a TV channel dedicated to one philosophy of government peddles division and hate as we watch it. We don’t see the danger we support when we choose one channel or station over another because it produces programs with which we agree; liberal, conservative, reactionary, or radical. We don’t realize what is happening to us when we can’t distinguish between real news and news produced by foreign bot centers.

 

The pundits may rail against the “new” thoughts, but by next week, there is something else about which to rail. We have seen things happen and done nothing until it was too late. We have seen things happen that disgusted us but waited until we could not take it anymore before acting. We saw McCarthyism and said nothing for too long. We saw minorities fight in WWII and come home to segregation and we said nothing. We saw US citizens of Japanese descent sent to internment camps and said nothing. We saw women denied the vote and tried to keep it that way until it happened. We have seen too much and let it pass. Every now and then, however, events reach deep and require us to search for the soul.[iv] We live through one now, and can’t let it pass because it will change our experiment for the worse, it will turn us into the proverbial banana republic, it will nullify a quarter of a millennial of trying to make a more perfect union. We can’t let this happen.

 

I have lived through one-third of the 245 years of this experiment in self-governing, living out Descartes’ thesis; cogito ergo sum. The lifespan is at once hard to contemplate but provides perspective. Something is missing. How often can we say that our system of government is fragile, but it is fragile? It relies on its institutions to survive, the real ones, the implied ones, and the hoped-for ones. It relies on a sense that we strive to be one, knowing we aren’t, but we strive. We are called to be fair, knowing we aren’t always, but we strive. Our creed tells us that all men are created equal, but we don’t treat everyone equally, but we strive. Our motto, E Pluribus Unum, tells us to welcome everyone, but too many eschew immigrants, but striving makes us better. Something is missing! We’re not striving enough. Someone didn’t get the message.

 

Brookings’ Jon Valant thinks that we haven’t taught our kids or ourselves how to deal with technical literacy; how to use our technology gadgets. When QAnon can convince hundreds and thousands of people to believe its conspiracy theories, something is wrong. When the White House staff begins to believe these wild fantasies and act upon them, something is wrong. The bombing of Pearl Harbor, a day that will live in infamy, brought young people rushing from their homes to join the armed forces, rich, and poor, white-collar and blue-collar, black and white, they all joined to help defend the country. Would that happen today?

 

With a massive viral pandemic taking down hundreds of thousands of lives in one year, some parts of the country openly defy simple public health measures to help stem the spread. Mask wearing is a political statement, science is scoffed at, Congress is at loggerheads trying to provide minimum assistance to the jobless, the hungry, and the businessperson going under, all through no fault of their own. How does this happen?

 

Is it time for the leaders of the country to step up their efforts to bring some sense of unity to the nation? The question reads like an echo. Haven’t we said that after every major event that divides us? There is a difference, it seems to me, between free speech and anarchy, between protesting and insurrection, between disagreement and hate, between strong beliefs, and overthrowing what gives us the right to protest, to disagree, and to hold strong beliefs.

 

Seventy plus million people voted for Trump in the last election. Seventy plus and more millions of people voted for Biden. Those who voted for Trump did it because he was a Republican, or because they dislike Democrats or they liked Trump and disliked Biden. They did it because they thought Trump was more capable of running the country or liked his policies, or for whatever reason. Those who voted for Biden did it for opposite reasons. At the end of the ballot counting, however, the election should be over. Most of the seventy million Trump supporters have decided that the campaign is over. The votes were counted, and the results confirmed. Most decided to move on or to regroup for 2024.

 

Both sides, however, need to find a way to negate the influence and the operations of the homegrown terrorists in our midst. Both parties need to end the hate for each other in the halls of Congress. Both parties need to come to grips with the long-held notion that the nation is more important than the party, or of one member of the party. Can we return to voting for or against the substance of an idea rather than for or against whoever introduced the idea? We cannot have another storming of the Capitol. We cannot have a country ruled virtually or in reality by gangs of thugs. A bit of civility would be appreciated as well.

 

 

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[i] Jon Valant, Brown Center Chalkboard, Brookings Institute, February 1, 2021

[ii] Ibid, NPR/Ipsos poll, December 2020

[iii] The Year in Hate and Extremism 2020, Southern Poverty Law Center, February 1, 2021

[iv] Jon Meacham covers the search for the soul of the nation in his 2018 book The Soul of America, The

Battle for Our Better Angels. It is a must-read for those who care about the homeland’s democracy.

The Unfinished Nation!

 

Senators orate bio-partisan words of welcome. A cleric gives an invocation calling on an Almighty to bring care, hope, and peace to the nation. Lady Gaga, a classically trained Pop singer renders the National Anthem in a fashion that sets the bar high for any who follow. A black-robed Latina Justice of the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, administers an oath to a Black-East Asian who becomes our first woman Vice President; the band plays Hail Columbia, the Vice President’s song. The Chief Justice asks Joe Biden to swear that he will preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. He does. He is proclaimed the 46^th President. The usual ruffles and flourishes precede Hail to the Chief, the President’s song. The usual speech calling for change and unity follows. The President vows to be the president of all the people. It is short, effective, inspiring, and appropriate. All that is left is for the usual poem to be read, and the Benediction. The crowd that includes three former presidents can then disperse and go about their day. But wait, something isn’t going as planned.

 Amanda Gorman, the National Youth Poet Laureate, a 22 year-old self-described skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother, stands at the dais and sets the nation ablaze with the powerful reading of her powerful verse. She forces us, those in the stands and the 40 million watching on TV, to examine our conscience. to dig deep into our souls, to right our wrongs, to work for justice, to turn our Creed into reality. “We are striving to forge our union with purpose, to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, character, and conditions of man… We close the divide between us … We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.” The nation is astir. Soul searching is visible in the crowds. President Johnson, in March1965, after Selma, told a Joint Session of Congress, “At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord, So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.” Congress went on to pass the Voting Rights Act.

 

So it was a few days before in Washington DC, when unruly mobs grew to a seditious insurrection and stormed our Temple of Democracy. These were people who disavow democratic principles, people who do not want a country committed to people of all colors and cultures; by those who celebrate the Holocaust, by those who buy into Q’s conspiracy theories, by those who do not want to believe that all men are created equal.

 This young poet, already a woman of accomplishment, reminded us that our national dream was almost lost. It was a young woman with high ideals who turned an inauguration from simply the usual pomp into a call for deep and lasting national soul searching; once again.

Fifty-six years earlier, at the other end of the National Mall, the Reverend Martin Luther King told us he had had a dream, “that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’” We are still toiling to make this Union more perfect. We were reminded!

Jon Meacham,[i] a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the presidency, suggests that the creed will only become reality when individuals in the arena choose to side with the angels. Lincoln called them our “better angels.” We saw in the last couple of weeks what could happen when we ignore our better angels; when those trusted to guard us ignore their angels. We were reminded of how fragile our democracy is, how it could be brought down after only four years of an onslaught, how easily the crowd can be encouraged to overthrow all that we hold dear, our democracy, how easy it is to be taught to hate, to be suspicious, to wish upon a falling star. Joe Biden is the President, but Gorman made the day. 

President Biden has his hands full for the next few years. He has to demonstrate that his administration can end the pandemic that haunts us and kills thousands each day. He must get the country back to work and the kids back in school. He must provide economic aid to the millions unemployed through no fault of their own, standing in long lines for free food to feed their families. He must revive the manufacturing sector of the economy; he must convince the world that we are a nation that keeps its word, its alliances, its treaties, and that we are a people that can be judged by the content of its character[ii]. He has a hard row to hoe.

 

Biden calls for unity. The ultra-conservative cable news accuses him, on the first day in office, of installing far-left programs that cause disunity. His party’s progressive wing in Congress sees him as too moderate, a middle-of-the-roader. Yet unity is what our people need, some effort to meet in the middle, to do right for today, to work toward the never achievable perfect union, but try to make it better today than yesterday. Perhaps good, effective, and efficient government, conducted by experienced and competent people can bring changes to still the conspiratorial hoards. We will always have a diversity of views; that makes us a great nation. Diversity of ideas, however, is to be argued on the floors of Congress, not in the streets and not through armed insurrection.

 

We wish Biden well, for the sake of the country. We hope the calling of Amanda Gorman sustains itself to help us take stock of ourselves and strive to excite the soul of the nation to meet the expectations of its creed.

 

 

 

 

 

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[i] Jon Meacham – The Soul of America – Random House, New York, 2018

[ii] Martin Luther King – I Have A Dream speech – Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC, 1965

[1] The Hill We Climb – Amanda Gorman – January 20, 2021

We knew it was coming, but didn’t believe …!

One of America’s most sacred institutions is the peaceful transition of power. Defeated for a second term, John Adams left the White House for Massachusetts and Jefferson moved in. The rest of the world was astonished; leaders didn’t leave office peacefully in those days. And, so it has been since 1801. The peaceful transition of power is one of our great institutions, a light unto the world, the most powerful message about democracy and freedom we can utter. A sitting president tried to upend the hallowed practice, starting with a call back in December for supporters to amass in Washington DC on January 6^th for a large rally on the day that a Joint Session of Congress would meet to count the Electoral College votes for President and Vice President. At a rally in front of the White House Trump chanted that he would never concede and urged the crowd to march on the Capital.

And march they did, an organized group of white supremacist, Qanon conspiracy theory hollow-heads, Proud Boys dressed in black, and rag tagged Trumpists who believe the election was stolen, regardless of factual data that shows no fraud, miscounts, stealing of ballots, counting machines hacked by the Chinese or any other set of wild conspiracy accusations.

 Then, for the first time since who knows when, crowds of insurrectionists invaded the Capital grounds, charged the building itself, and breached the doors. Some reached the floor of the House and protested from the dais, some reached the Speaker’s office and caused mischief, some were on the Senate floor. About a thousand terrorists managed to get inside before it was all over. It was an insurrection in the least, an attempted coup by a bunch of seditionists perhaps, but definitely, a challenge to our democracy, to our republic, as Franklin warned, and the result of four years of unmitigated disregard for our institutions. In a feeble attempt to soften the battle, the President asked the rioters to go home, saying that he loved them, these good people. To call what happened yesterday a peaceful protest is to deny facts. To call it anything but an attempted coup is to deny facts. To deny that President Trump fermented these actions is to deny reality.

A Joint Session of Congress, meeting to count the nation’s votes was suspended so that the members could go to a safe place during an instigator’s incursion. The Vice President was evacuated by the Secret Service. The police were overwhelmed and called for reinforcements. Vice President. The National Guard was called to the Capital. The location of congressional leadership was unknown.

I have to admit that I cannot understand who the people are who descended on DC yesterday to protest at the White House and then overtake the Capital. I admit that I don’t understand them or their thinking, or their motives. Somebody will write a book in a month or so to explain what happened, but until then I remain mystified. In every state of the union, the ballots in the last election were counted and recounted. Democrat and Republican proctors were in every counting room to ensure that the process was fair. Government employees in every voting precinct certified the vote count. Election officials in every state certified the election outcome. Where there were questions about the process, officials audited the results. In each state, members of the Electoral College voted for President and Vice President, and their votes were certified and sent to Congress. There was no fraud and there was no steal! So who are these people who are so dedicated to overturning the vote of hundreds of millions of people? Who still believes the President and his sons’ claims of fraud and a stolen election? Surely they are not rational thinkers. I don’t get it.

Those who invaded the Capital, flag wavers all, were doing all they could to disrupt the Constitutional mandate for that day: the day the votes are counted. The irony is overwhelming!

I must say, that I am surprised at the disgust expressed uniformly by cable news platforms. They were unanimous; MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, Newsmax. Their reporting showed how unusual this attempt at sedition, at this potential coup is, for our nation.  Later in the evening, some of the far right-wing channels talking heads began to blame everyone except the mob that tried to destroy our democracy.

Later in the evening, after the Capital was cleared of ruffians, the majesty of our democracy went on full display. The two houses of Congress reconvened, and polite, heartfelt discourse continued. Storming the ramparts did not end the vote count; it did not end our democracy, but let it shine in its glory as our representatives went about their duty. It showed that We The People govern this vast land, not street thugs. At 3:44 AM this morning, the Joint Session of Congress ended, having elected Joe Biden, President and Kamala Harris, Vice President, to be inaugurated January 20, 2021.

Nobody carried more water for Trump in the last four years than Vice President Pence and Senator McConnell. These two men, in the end, could not abide the intended disruption of our form of government, and both did what their oath demanded; they stood to protect and preserve the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic. Trump had gone too far.

Let us pray for our republican form of government. Let us come down in support of our democratic values. Let us not just pass off these actions as the new norm. This was a coup attempt and our nation’s future was changing before our eyes.

These incursions on our institutions, our Constitution, our way of life must end. Let us hope that when tomorrow’s morning has broken it will be a new day for America.

 

The Year Ahead!

“Happy New Year! It’s got to be better than 2020.” How often have you heard that lament in the last couple of weeks? 2020 is over! I don’t want to talk about it! I don’t want to write about it! It’s over! I’m giving myself only three months this year to become accustomed to writing 2020 2021 on checks and other documents. I usually take longer to develop the muscle memory.

For anything to get better, or worse, something has to change. So the only way 2021 will be a better year is if we change the behavior that made the last years such a mess. No change, no change!

We have been a two-party country for many years now, but I cannot remember a time when they tried so hard to pull the country apart. Seventy million people still believe the last election was a fraud. Even Members of Congress, who fear being primaried, are supporting efforts to overturn the election, in spite of the proven legitimacy of the vote in every state. They are willing to tempt the destruction of our democracy to keep their jobs. While they can claim the rules allow for questioning a State’s certified election results, there is a faint scent of sedition in their efforts. We are not born this way; it isn’t natural. We have to be carefully taught to hate at this level.[i] So let’s move forward into a new era, not a Biden era necessarily, but a New American era. We can do this!

We are not perfect, but we strive to be better today than yesterday, and more so tomorrow. It’s in our DNA! That is why we were sent, to be that beacon on the hill that showed the oppressed, those yearning to be free, how it could be so for them too. Let us transform the image into reality. In his book, The Soul of America – The Battle for Our Better Angels,[ii] Jon Meacham urges us to remember what makes us Americans: the constant striving for equality for everyone, the ongoing efforts to help our neighbors, and the willingness to work with those with whom we disagree, to come to the best agreements for our time. Let us find our soul this year!

Parchment in the vault of the National Archives reads, “All men are created equal.”[iii] We can do better this year. Inequality is not new. Historical tension between those who succeed greatly, whether financially, professionally, or politically, and those who choose other routes has proven a challenge for our republic. That tug is greatest for those forced to struggle on an uneven playing field. The pandemic is teaching us about the wide and deep disparity among our citizens. We should right our wrongs.

Millions of children attend inferior schools. Others have insufficient broadband to use home-based learning effectively; others don’t have adequate computer hardware. While the kids will go back to in-classroom learning sometime this year, pedagogy has changed forever. We can level the playing field of education. We can help more families to have access to fresh food so that children don’t have to rely on the schools and libraries for their daily nutrition. We can do more to train parents how to read to their kids, to help them with learning challenges, to make sure they are healthy, have glasses, and have other medical needs met. We can do that. Let’s!

We can change the homeownership paradigm for lower-income people and people of color so that they can join the middle class more easily. We should put an end to redlining and the flagrant abuse of the lending systems. We can make it happen!

We must get our people back to work. The stock markets’ record highs simply illuminate how little it represents the economy of the country. While the top 10% see portfolios grow, millions are out of work through no fault of their own. Hundreds of thousands line up every day for free food so they can feed their families. We must create jobs to replace those that will not come back after the pandemic; mostly low skilled jobs. We can retrain millions of people with new skills. We have done it before. We can do it again. Let’s!

Too many people do not have access to high-quality healthcare. Millions lost access when they lost their jobs due to the covid-19 shutdowns. Why must employment status regulate our access to wellness? The solutions aren’t simple and many people don’t want everyone to have good healthcare, but these roadblocks can be overcome in a compassionate and rich country that should be a model for the world, but isn’t. We can fix this national disgrace. We can help our neighbors get good healthcare when they need it. Let’s do it!

This year, we can focus on reducing the wealth disparity gap. Redistribution of wealth is a touchy subject, but one that needs to be faced every few generations. For the most part, the richest people in America started with a dream, an idea, and built companies that hired thousands of people, and in many cases changed the way the world works. They deserve their rewards. At the same time, however, they built their status with the help of those who worked for them. They had the help of willing legislators at local, state, and national levels. They need to contribute more to the society that lets them be so successful. Most of them agree with this idea.

The wealth gap is wide and deep in the US. Many retired people live quite well on our pensions, social security, and some investments. We may not see the difficulties faced by people who have no defined benefit programs, who work for companies that can’t afford health insurance for their employees, and who work for minimum wages. Work itself has changed and the chronic unemployed numbers hover above extreme. This year we need to ask ourselves if we want to perpetuate a system that has less than one percent of the population, 200,000 people, owning more wealth than the 110,000,000 people at the bottom of the wealth chart. Consider an employee who makes $137,700 per year who will pay $8,537 in Social Security taxes, and the person earning $1,00,000 who will only pay $8,537 in Social Security taxes. Shouldn’t a person making a million dollars a year pay the same percentage of income into the SS pot? This would be a good year to start to create a more equitable economic system. We don’t expect that everyone will have an equal outcome, but we should expect equitable pay back into the system that allowed them to succeed. We can do this!

When 2021 is over, I don’t want to be tired. I stayed up until midnight on New Year’s Eve, mostly to see the year out rather than the New Year in. Virtual is not the same as hundreds of thousands of people in Times Square, on the bridges of Sydney, the Strip in Vegas. When I stay up late at the end of this year, I want to be with lots of people, hale and hearty; a night filled with noise, with good friends, maybe even in a tuxedo. I don’t want much, really, just an end to the pandemic, a unified country, and a government that focuses on the good. Mostly, though, I want us to be America again, a light unto the world. It could be a great year because we know what changes we need to make, and we can make those changes if we set our minds to it. We can, really!

Let’s!

 

 

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[i] Rogers & Hammerstein, South Pacific, 1949, New York

[ii] Jon Meacham, The Soul of America, Random House, 2018, New York

[iii] Declaration of Independence, In Congress July 4, 1776

Wei Chi

 

Wei-Chi

Our great experiment in self-government may have saved itself on December 11, 2020, but there are days to go before certainty comes to bear. Too many today, it seems, don’t pay much attention to the daily news because it’s all about politics and politicians who fight among themselves and don’t do anything for the benefit of the country and its people. They have a point, but this week they missed the sausage-making at its worst and at its best. Most people agree that we are a nation in crisis, even if our reasons differ dramatically. The Chinese use two characters for a crisis: Danger and Opportunity, Wei-Chi.

Our democracy was in danger this month, our Constitution ignored by too many who should have known better, and our most prized institution frayed. Some in Pennsylvania tried to have the presidential election results overturned and allow the Legislature to appoint the Electors. The Supreme Court said no.[i] The Attorney General of Texas, joined by several other States Attorney’s General, with an amicus signed by over 100 members of Congress, tried to overthrow the election results of several states. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case because Texas had no standing to bring it in the first place. That decision was interesting because two Justices believed that the case should be heard, but at the same time they said they would not give relief, so it was also a unanimous ruling.[ii] The Electoral College votes today. In early January a joint session of Congress will count the votes and announce who will be our next President and Vice-President. Several members of the House indicated that they plan to challenge the votes of several states. The whip count likely doesn’t support such action, but it could cause a delay in the process.

 

Our democracy is still in danger and our electoral process still on life support because too many people believe that the November election was fraught with fraud. Nearly 70% of Republicans continue to believe that the vote count was irregular, the vote-counting machines were set to turn Trump votes into Biden votes, or that some dead dictator from Venezuela had led a decade’s long conspiracy to bring down the election process. Some meet in coffee shops to discuss how their candidate’s election was stolen while others take to the streets around the country to protest, flags waving and fists raised. The state of Michigan closed all legislative offices today because of the credible threats of violence toward Presidential Electors. All the while, every State certified that there was no fraud; in many states, votes were counted three times, and local, state, and federal courts ruled in nearly sixty cases that the Trump campaign staff presented no evidence to substantiate claims of wrongdoing.

 

Twenty years ago Al Gore, who won a plurality of votes nationwide, lost the presidency when the Supreme Court ordered Florida to stop counting votes, resulting in Bush receiving enough electoral votes to claim victory. Vice-President Gore went on national television: “Let there be no doubt: While I strongly disagree with the court’s decision, I accept it. I accept the finality of this outcome…And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession. I also accept my responsibility …to honor the new president-elect and … help him bring Americans together in fulfillment of the great vision that our Declaration of Independence defines and that our Constitution affirms and defends.” That is what a nation expects from its leaders. That is what keeps the nation’s ideals out of danger.

 

The ultra-ultra right-wing reactionary news station Newsmax was beside itself when the Court ruled against Texas, et al. On December 11, 2020, newsreader Emerald Robinson complained, “The president put three Supreme Court justices on the bench… yet none of those … were with the team.” It is dangerous for the country when the Executive branch expects court nominees to be on its team, when in fact the justices take an oath to support and defend the Constitution. But then again, so did the President, the 100 plus members of Congress who signed an amicus brief for the case, and the dozen or more State Attorneys General that joined the Texas case. They put our Democracy at risk. They may have flirted with sedition. The Chair of the GOP in Texas even suggested seceding from the US because SCOTUS would not hear a case that had no standing in law. Power, Party, and Trump, for many people, are more important than the republic and its institutions. The Wei is clear!

 

Danger breeds opportunity to right wrongs. If one were to venture far out on a limb, or even into a sidebar, they might suggest that schools review how they teach Civics, how they teach about the Constitution, how they deal with our history, even the not-so-good parts of it. This isn’t wanting to go back to the good old days, but a search for how we instill a love of the democratic process at an early age, how we bring people to support a political system that requires give and take in discussion and compromise in legislating. It is a quest for an appreciation for our institutions and their fragility.

 

There is an opportunity for all of us to defuse the current crisis by lowering the volume of our side of discussions. There simply is no significant evidence of a stolen election. So let’s stop talking as if there was. Let’s all find a news channel that is more middle-of-the-road than we normally watch. There is an opportunity for all of us to ignore the bad actors on the far left and the far right. There is an opportunity to shut down (at least mentally) White extremists, people like Proud Boys and QAnon. We can all do something, but the one who could make the most of the opportunity is the President.

 

President Trump can defuse the crisis by taking the opportunity to make a peaceful transition, halting the childish machinations to which we are exposed. Many people, 70 million or more, don’t like the fact that Trump lost the election today when the Electoral College gave Biden more than the required 270 votes to become the next president. The nation, its institutions, its democracy, and its image to the world are much more important than one person. President Trump has an opportunity to make things right. If he continues his sociopathic behavior he will damage the nation, his legacy and we will no longer be the shining city on the hill.  

 

It would be nice if we took this opportunity, the interregnum, to smooth a transition to a new four years, a time for unification, for less division, for peaceful activities that will make the world a better place. We have the opportunity to seek our better angels.

 

Wei or Chi, which will it be?

 

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[i] Supreme Court of the United States – Tuesday, December 8, 2020 – Order in Pending Case – Kelly, Mike, ET AL. V. Pennsylvania, ET AL – The application for injunctive relief presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied.

[ii] Supreme Court of the United States – Friday, December 11, 2020 – Order in Pending case – Texas V. Pennsylvania, ET AL – The State of Texas’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot. Statement of Justice Alito, with whom Justice Thomas joins: In my view, we do not have discretion to deny the filing of a bill of complaint in a case that falls within our original jurisdiction. See Arizona v. California, 589 U.S. _ (Feb.23, 2020) (Thomas, ]., dissenting). I would therefore grant the motion to file the bill of complaint but would not grant other relief, and I express no view on any other issue.

I Am! … Am I?

 

I’m a liberal-conservative. Or, I might be a conservative-liberal. For context, I grew up in the northeast corner of Vermont when everyone up there professed to be Republican, back when Republicans were Republicans. Generally, Democrats didn’t bother to run for office. I don’t think they wanted people to know they were Democrats. Senator George Aiken, a Republican, got more write-in votes in the Democratic primaries than anyone in that party who actually sought the office, so he ran unopposed in the general election. He served from 1941 and retired as Dean in 1975. (He was replaced by Patrick Leahy, now the Dean of the Senate) He was one of the leaders of the liberal wing of his party and the guiding light for my generation. Even conservative-Republicans were liberal back then compared to the ultra-conservative-Democrats down South. Everyone agrees that our Union needs fixing, they just don’t agree on the fix. Should we take a conservative approach or should we take a liberal approach? The answer is Yes!  

The nation’s economy is near depression levels for most people. The stock market is at all-time highs but nearly 25 million people are still without work. Small businesses are collapsing. The pandemic, responsible for the business downturn, is raging across the country with hardly any national policy or program to mitigate its surge, while large numbers of people still think it is a hoax. The healthcare system is at the breaking point and millions are without insurance due to costs and unemployment. The nation is losing a trade war it started, and our place in the firmament of responsible nations is de minimus. All the while there is a concerted effort to undermine the democratic system by questioning the very process of voting, to the point where nearly a quarter of the people think that the system is rigged, regardless of all evidence to the contrary. We are a nation divided and in trouble.

President-Elect Biden (I hope he’s listening) will feel a tug from all directions, the progressives are already nipping at his heels for being too conservative in his cabinet picks, the moderates think he is too much to the left of center and ethnic and racial groups think that his administration, to date, doesn’t look enough like America. There is a lot to be fixed. He likely knows what needs to be done, but it doesn’t hurt to jog his thinking. As President, he needs to concentrate on the 20% that will fix the 80%. If he allows himself, his cabinet and sub-cabinet to be drawn into daily battle with the tweets of an ex-president that will surely come his way for the next three or four years, he will have wasted his time in office.

Mr. Biden, communicating to the public of a highly divided nation will be difficult. President Trump indicated in the last week that he intends to mount a 2024 campaign, and that he might make it formal during your inauguration. He is very good at controlling the message and creating disruptions. The Democrats may have won the White House but they lost members in the House and, to date, haven’t taken control of the Senate. Communications from the administration must set a new standard for truthfulness, consistency, and relevance.  

Mr. Biden, we can feel it, we can see the results of the economic devastation. We must get the nation working again. Seven-hundred-thousand people apply for unemployment each week. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of families line up each week to receive free food. Children go without food because the schools are closed. Rents and mortgages are due and there is no money in the checking accounts. Millions are without health insurance due to layoffs. Small businesses can’t make payroll. Large corporations seem to be doing well, and highly skilled employees are doing well, but small businesses are stuck in park. Restaurants need to open up again, to employ cooks and waiters, to purchase from local farmers. Barbers need to be able to work, people in manual labor and farm jobs need to work too. Our infrastructure is riddled with potholes, bridges are rusting, our power grid is ancient and subject to hacking, whole segments of the country are without broadband and schools lack the technology needed to teach in the new learning environment. The nation doesn’t need an economic stimulus package as it does an economic lifeboat. Let’s blot out the root cause of the economic decline.

The pandemic is killing people and killing the economy and must be stopped. President Trump made major mistakes in dealing with the pandemic. As a result, a country with 4% of the world’s population has 21.44% of the covid-19 cases and 18.2% of the world’s deaths and climbing.  

Operation WARP SPEED may be an exception to the debacle. Charged with getting an effective vaccine quickly and distributing it quickly, proved what can happen when highly competent people are assigned and allowed to perform without political interference.  Biden needs to convince the nation to follow well-proven public health techniques until the vaccine is widely effective. The quicker he can do that, the quicker we will get folks back to work.

The pandemic blew up our comfortable credence about so many things: our ability to fight pestilence itself, equality across races, economic strength, and the best healthcare system in the world. We weren’t ready or willing! When asked to sacrifice for the good of the whole, nearly half the people led by nearly half the governors said “No.” They were not willing to shelter in place, wear masks, or change life’s patterns. People didn’t trust their government, they were told that the virus was a plot to weaken the President, they were told to ignore science, and too many ignored good advice. Time at the beach and at close quarters in bars was more important than self-sacrifice. The surge continues. Government officials ignored good health practices and citizens wondered why they should bother to alter life’s cadence.  

Mr. Biden, we need to deal with the political division in the country. My liberal side says we ought to get a little conservative about this effort. The Democrats made a mess with their messaging during the campaign and the Republicans took advantage of the flaw. Change is difficult in and of itself, but, when congressional leadership is the poster child for the geriatric set, not much is in the offing.  People sixty years old or older represent only16% of the population, yet septuagenarians- plus rule the Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court.  Fifty-one percent of us are under 40 years old, yet that cohort commands little real power in DC.

 A squad of four thirty-something first term women members of Congress scared the hell out of the leadership of both parties. They became the Republican’s favorite bugaboo for convincing folks that these women would lead the country toward socialism. The young voters of the country, a growing number of new voters, by the way, don’t consider most of the progressive ideas very controversial or even that progressive. Healing a divided nation is all the more difficult when a soon to be ex-president has spent a lifetime demonizing people and creating division among people, even to the point of mocking democracy itself, by denying the validity of the voting process, ignoring traditional institutions, and refusing to concede a lost election. Howard Dean opined, “What’s going on is just shocking. We’re in serious trouble when you abandon the rule of law as a democracy, your democracy is gone. And it’s going to be gone before people realize it if we don’t turn this thing around.”[i] This is the opinion of a liberal politician, but a conservative politician could say the same thing and be correct. Though difficult to do, but not impossible, we need to bring both conversations together into a dialogue aimed a bettering the country and fixing its political ills. Both groups need to fix our democracy which has been torn asunder.

Mr. Biden, we need to fix the healthcare system. The pandemic illustrates vividly the different levels of care available to Americans. Unlike most of the industrialized world, the quality of our healthcare depends on our economic status. It is inhumane for anyone to be denied good medical care because of the size of his or her W2. The administration has to find a way to communicate that healthcare and health insurance are two different things. If they all agree that everyone, everyone, should have good basic healthcare, we can find a way to pay for it. Other countries can do it, why can’t we?

The national stockpile of protective equipment and medical supply requirements was underfunded by several past administrations. Let’s not blame Trump for that. When we needed it, it wasn’t there. As a result, at the start of the pandemic, states had to compete with each other, the federal government, and the rest of the world for basic face masks and other PPEs and ventilators to keep people alive. There is no excuse for the richest nation on earth not to have enough supplies spread across the continent for easy access. Most PPE is manufactured in other countries who want to keep the products for their own people when emergencies arise. The new administration must ensure that we manufacture emergency goods in the US using US companies.

Mr. Biden, we need to repair our standing in the international arena. The “America First” dogma wreaked havoc with our standing in the firmament of nations. Technology made the world smaller and more interdependent. Most nations want trusted allies. When there is an absence of trust[ii] among nations, they like any organization or group will begin to ignore former allies and not include them in group decision-making. We have seen this happen in the last few years, where Europe and China have new trade deals, where European countries are working closely together to squelch the Russian appetite for dominance and renewed hegemony over its previous empire. Our Constitution tells us that the supreme law of the land is our constitution, our laws, and our treaties. When we enter into a treaty with other countries, it is not an individual president who is making the agreement, but our country. When approved by two-thirds of the members of congress, the treaty has the same weight as any other law. We must renew our support for major treaties to which we have agreed. We need to support NATO, we need to support the Paris agreement on climate and we need to stop the tariff war which is raising prices in our stores and losing markets for our own manufacturers and farmers.

Mr. Biden, you can renew the nation if you concentrate on the important issues. Bring back our economy by ending the pandemic. Bring back our standing in the world by renewing our Democracy and rejoining the allied nations of the world. Bring back a united nation; make us one from many, Let ideas percolate and ideologies wither. Bring back decisions based on facts and science and not personal aggrandizement. If you do these things it won’t matter if you are a conservative-liberal or a liberal-conservative. We will be America again.

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[i] Howard Dean, VTDigger podcast: The Vermont Conversation with David Goodman, November 2020

[ii] Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of Teams, Jossey-Bass, NYC 2002