It was meant to be a relaxing day: sunny, warm for the time of year, blue sky, nothing on the schedule. Then I read the morning readings: online newspapers, favored blogs, unfavorable musings just to “keep the enemy closer.”[i] What could go wrong?

I read about a former president’s Texas rally, where he called his base of supporters to march in the streets if prosecutors across the country tried to take him to court for felony crimes, including trying to overthrow the government, to which he admits involvement. At that same rally, he stated that he had encouraged the Vice President to alter the results of the Electoral College votes because he had the right to do that.  

Then, there was an article reporting efforts by legislators and ultra-conservatives to ban books by the hundreds from school libraries. And to add interest to the day, I read an in-depth review of a new book by Barbara Walter, How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them. It was not to be a relaxing day no matter the sunshine in mid-winter.

Walter is a professor at the University of California San Diego. She spent thirty years studying civil wars. She has the chops to help us understand the phenomena. Her research spans the globe’s uprisings over the centuries. She concludes that there are three early indicators of potential civil wars.[ii]

The first is when a country begins to trend away from democracy or moves away from autocracy. The Polity Index developed by the Political Instability Task Force measures those movements using a +10 to -10 scale. They place the U.S. smack dab in the middle with other countries defined as anocracies, neither democracies nor autocracies. We can argue about our place on the scale,[iii] but data, developed over several decades, shows us moving further away from a true democracy than more of us think we are.[iv] Anocracies are most vulnerable to civil uprisings.

The second indicator is factionalism, defined as when a political party is based on ethnicity, religion, or race instead of ideology. This is the point where politics goes from being about the good of the country and more toward the interest of their members and their group.[v]

The third indicator is when a dominant group senses a loss of status reversal. On a Washington Post Live broadcast with Jonathan Capehart, Walter said that a large segment of Americans is experiencing status issues. She says, interestingly, that it isn’t Republicans vs. Democrats or whites vs. blacks so much as it is whites vs. brown people and Christians vs. Muslims and Nones.

If Walter is correct, we should prepare for more insurrections, for more street fighting. The “Troubles” in Ireland[vi] might be the model rather than Gray and Blue armies marching toward the capitol.

Last week, speaking before a Federalist Society meeting in Florida, the former Vice President stated the issue saying, “I had no right to overturn the election … The truth is there’s more at stake than our party or our political fortunes. If we lose faith in the Constitution, we won’t just lose elections – we’ll lose our country.”

Mike Detmer, a candidate for the Michigan Senate told his followers that they needed to show up armed to ensure that they can observe vote counting in the next election.[vii] He went on to explain that the Second Amendment is there to let the government know that the people are armed and ready to “lock and load.”

Thirty-four states have bills before them designed to make it more difficult for people to vote. Most will pass into law, including possibly a bill or two that allows the legislature to overturn the results of elections; although that was a bridge too far for the Speaker of the Arizona House who ensured the bill would not see the light of day.

Last week the National Republican Committee censured two sitting members of the House because they are willing to serve on the committee investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection. The RNC described the assault on the Capitol as “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” Generally, ordinary citizens visiting the Capitol don’t bring war-grade guns while dressed as trained militia.

Then, I read a news article about the ban-the-books movement that engrosses the nation, often promoted as moms and dads seeking input into what kind of books are in the school library. A political candidate in Texas asked the state school board to review over 850 books that he and his supporters find objectionable.[viii]

The books on the list include classics used in grade schools and high schools for years. MAUS, a graphic novel about the Holocaust is very popular for banning because it has one drawing of a semi-naked woman in a bathtub, never mind that the book won a Pulitzer Prize.  Within weeks of its banning in a school district in Tennessee, it rose to #1 on the Amazon best-seller list.

If you want a teenager to read a book, ban it!

So, what is the point?

The U.S. is in a period of severe flux to be sure. Iron-clad truths are questioned, long-established institutions tossed about, and millions are seemingly willing to accept political power struggles as the new norm. All of these are moves away from democracy. They are power plays, always in the name of preserving our way of life. Is it serious? Yes! Will we outlive it? I think we can but who knows? We can if the majority of people erect a firewall to prevent armed insurrections, tearing institutions asunder, and call for renewed adherence to traditional approaches to governance. At some point, someone has to say, “Enough is enough.”

For the republic to survive, political parties must focus on ideology and programs that move us toward a more perfect union. We must come to grips with the idea that this isn’t our grandparent’s country. It is a younger nation with younger ideas looking for younger leaders. This cohort wants the people to rule, not some party. We need to accept the migration to urban areas where high-skill jobs await. 

We must remember what happened in other countries when the party and the party leader became more important than the free exercise of democracy. Where shall we start – Hong Kong, China, Russia, the USSR, Sudan, Ethiopia, Congo, Eritrea, Rwanda, Argentina, Chile, Uganda, Myanmar, etc? It always started with a small group discontent with changing power cells, loss of influence, or unhappiness with immigrants and the economic system.

 

In our current state of affairs, we have a political party hell-bent on making it difficult for people to vote. The most popular talking heads on cable TV continually foment distrust of opponents and transform public health precautions into political actions that keep the pandemic going. It’s the Proud Boys spewing white nationalism and anti-Semitism, then being described as “good people” by our national leader. It's a political party's strategy to create distrust of the electoral process. Book banning and book burning limits education rather than encourage it.

Each action is one small step in our national journey away from democratic ideals.  

The point is we have always criticized other countries for these same misbehaviors. Are we no longer any better than them?

Are we no longer the shining city on the hill casting a bright beacon for democracy?

Are we no longer us?

 

 

 

 

---

[i]The Prince, Nicole Machiavelli, “keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” “One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.”

[ii] New York Times, 01/18/2022, How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them, Barbara F. Walter, PhD

[iii] A group sponsored by the CIA originally maintained the Polity Index. Many political scientists question its approach but generally use it as a reference to track political movement in a country, trends if not absolute progress.

[iv] We can argue that we are a republic, not a democracy, but that isn’t the point.

[v] NYT ibid

[vi] The Troubles lasted from 1960-to 1998. It began when Catholics demanded equal treatment from the Protestant ruling party, and it was a fight to free the country from England. 3,500 people died because of the conflict which included street fighting and assignations on a regular basis.

[vii] Detroit News, January 31, 2022

[viii] Matt Krause, a member of the Texas Legislature, who is running for Attorney General sent a letter to all school districts in the state asking them if they have any of the 850 books in their school libraries or in classrooms because the books might make students “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish … because of race or sex.”

Counting Votes!

 Conundrums present themselves when you least want them. The unexpected ones are the worst. Even worse are those whose answers are an enigma. It is frustrating to hear arguments against something when there shouldn’t be arguments against it.

Last week we saw Exhibit One of this thinking when the U.S. Senate voted against a bill to halt the destruction of voting rights that is sweeping the country. Free and fair elections are no longer the hallmark of the “greatest democracy on Earth.” Senators actually debated the idea and decided that we don’t need them anymore.

In States across the country, state legislatures are enacting laws to dampen the ability of citizens to cast their votes in an easy and orderly fashion. The argument goes something like this: the 2020 presidential election was stolen from the rightful winner for reasons unsupported by facts. In many states the “powers that be” adjusted voting practices to accommodate the vagaries of the COVID pandemic. Voting by mail was encouraged, early voting was encouraged, and ballot drop boxes were added to make voting easier. Even before voting began there was a drumbeat from the White House that voting by mail was a way to steal the election and that the only way the President could lose was if the voting system was rigged.

Some states counted their ballots as many as three times. State legislatures appointed partisan investigators (Cyber Ninja was one) to recount the ballots, to ensure that the voting machines were operating properly and that no foreign government was interfering with the voting process.

No voter fraud was identified, the ballot counting had been accurate, the machines operated properly, and foreign governments didn’t interfere with the elections. So, state legislatures are passing bills to ensure that what never happened never happens again. In addition, some states are enacting laws that let the legislature change the election results if they have the slightest inkling that there was a “steal.”

The belief in a stolen election ignited the fuse that rocketed people up the stairs of our temple of democracy on January 6, 2021. The percentage of Republicans who believe that the election was stolen is higher today than a year ago, 70%. The “Big Lie” has traction.

“That in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility: because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily, and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie … It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have  the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”[i]

There was some fraud after the election, however. In five states people posing as Electors signed nearly identical certificates of election, naming Trump and Pence as the winners in their states and sent them to the national archives, insisting that they be counted by the Congress. Some senators even objected to counting the real certificates. The Vice President had to change the usual words of acceptance to ensure that the real certificates were counted.

Democracy, unlike other forms of government, relies on people believing in the concept and supporting the institutions that bind us. The concept of fair elections was a given, we took it for granted that it would always be there, that it is in our DNA. Maybe not so much anymore.

A wide divide between political parties is a risk to our way of life. When average citizens express a strong belief that the voting system is corrupt, we are on the verge of serious disunity and even breakup. There are a number of actions in the political arena that we can disagree about, some serious and some, well, just political. The one thing that bound us for more than two centuries was our belief that we could vote and that our vote would be counted and that would determine the winners and losers.

The idea of rigged elections is now a major strategy for creating doubt about the election process. In a mid-January special election in the Palm Beach, FL district, Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick, a Democrat, won 78% of the votes. The Republican candidate refused to concede because the vote may have been tainted.

Voting should be an easy four-step process: registration, voting, counting the votes and declaring a winner. Each of those steps should be easy steps. In our state, when a teenager applies for a driver's license they are automatically registered to vote when they turn 18 years old. When there is an election, each registered voter receives a ballot in the mail. When they have voted, they mail it back or drop it off at secure locations. On Election Day the votes are counted, the winners jubilate and the losers congratulate. Done.

Anything more complicated than that is an infringement on the democratic process.

 

 

---

[i] Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1925

So I Write!

Joan Didion died last week. The literary world mourned. Print media poured gallons of ink into obituaries. New critiques of her work sprouted in all the usual places and some not so usual. This will go on for a few more weeks. There was praise for the quality of her writing, for her sentence structure, and for her ability to capture a moment with words, without even one on-the-other-hand. What she saw formed a prescient vision of what would follow. A Sacramento native is among the pantheon of literary giants who saw the nation’s movement from one period to the next and then to another. She recorded it in brilliant essays and deep-thought novels.

Didion published River Run in 1963. I was well out of college by then and on to other things. I’ve read several of her essays. Her skill with the English language is notable; it isn’t an easy one to master. Hemingway told us in A Movable Feast that if he could write one good sentence, the rest would follow. He did it well. Didion said that she liked Hemingway’s writing, his sentence structure. She was as good.

In Why I Write she said, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” She noted that writing was, “Imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind … there is no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully.”

Sometimes, writing something out is the only way to explain what you are seeing. Oral is easy; just say whatever comes out of your head. But that seldom has the power of a well-constructed sentence, written and rewritten. Churchill could do it but generally didn’t. He said he could talk for an hour with no preparation, but if he was limited to only a few minutes he might need a week to prepare.

Toni Morrison once told her neighbor, according to the neighbor, “If there is a book you want to read and it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” I find that that’s true of not only stories but of daily goings-on. I started writing, commenting, about what I witnessed every day: a country seemingly in turmoil, perhaps unprepared for the throes of an extreme makeover. The only way to understand it was to write about it. I didn’t think that was being a bully, but then I’m not the reader of what I write. Then I put the thoughts into a blog, Comments, opinions about the current state of affairs.

Admittedly, Comments can edge toward strong opinions from time to time, a reflection of devilish things rippling across the land. But why not? I noted early on that it takes a certain amount of audaciousness to think that people might read my comments, and more importantly perhaps, come back a second time, and a third. I’ve been accused of enjoying a good argument. Not really, but there are times when you just have to keep talking until you convince people that you are right. The bit of the Francophile in my upbringing, sifted by way of Quebec, instills a natural penchant toward l’audace, toujours l’audace!”

At this point 138 blogs are on the site; this is number 139. The readers are mostly friends, acquaintances, and those forced to be either because they are on a mailing list. Other readers from across Europe, Canada, Australia, and Asia join a U.S. majority. Many of them send me their comments when they agree or disagree with my comments. They range from jovial “I wish I had said that” to volumes of curated articles designed to keep me reading until I change my mind. I seldom do.

The feedback mirrors the diversity of the country. Folks who went to grade school together sit at either end of the political spectrum. The young express different ambitions for the country than their elders. People who live in different regions see immigration through different lenses, depending on their experiences. It would be a boring world if we all thought the same about every issue, wouldn’t it?

There is no doubt that the nation and its people are in a serious age of disruption. What it means to be an American is morphing. In the name of democracy, state legislatures are limiting people’s right to vote, a unique oxymoron. Millions of people are ready to take up arms against …What exactly?                                            

I’m trying to figure out what I’m looking at, what I’m seeing, and what it means.

So, I write.

Roe v. Supremes

Abortion was front and center before the Supreme Court a couple of weeks ago: Dobbs v. Jackson Woman’s Health Organization. The case under consideration was a Mississippi law that bans abortions after the fifteenth week of pregnancy. The state legislature wrote it specifically in the hope that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade.

Dobbs v. Jackson may not have been the most important issue on the December 1, 2021 docket. Democracy may have been on trial!

One side of the argument believes that life begins at conception and therefore abortion is murder. The other side believes a woman should have the right to terminate a pregnancy with few if any exceptions. Roe v. Wade 1973 upheld a woman’s right to an abortion. So much for context.  

One never knows what the Court will rule until it does, but based on the oral arguments, many believe Roe will be overturned. U.S. law relies heavily on stare decisis, (to stand by things decided). Lower courts rely on Supreme Court decisions for their rulings. It explains why SCOTUS rarely overturns its previous rulings. It has done so only 300 times in its history.  Few of those changed decisions changed the country, but there were some big ones!

We learned about those rulings in high-school history or civics classes; Plessy v. Ferguson 1896, and Brown v. Board of Education 1954 come to mind. How is Roe different?

Remember Marbury v. Madison 1803, when the Court said, “It is explicitly the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is,” so it was, and so it has been for over 200 years. The Supreme Court has no army to marshal adherence to its decisions or a police force to enforce its rulings. All it has is the respect of the people for the institution, faith in the Constitution, and an insistence on being a nation of laws.  If the populous believes the court is making unfair decisions, or that it is making political-based decisions, it loses its power.

 Change may be in the air.

For several decades some people played a long-game strategy to overthrow Roe. To do that they relentlessly convinced voters to elect them to state legislatures, to governorships, and to Congress. If they got enough control over government ruling bodies, they could elect a president who supported their efforts. It wasn’t hard to do. The pro-choice population didn’t see it coming until it was too late or they didn’t believe that anyone would seriously attack a ruling in effect for over fifty years.                 

Presidential candidate Trump vowed to appoint judges who were loyal to him and who would overturn Roe. In one term, fate allowed him to appoint three justices who were admittedly anti-Roe. Trump referred to them as “his” judges. And that is a problem, irrespective of which political party claims that “his” judges will rule for them.

Justices traditionally try to position themselves as non-political. The truth is that presidents nominate justices who are consistent with their political party’s positions and usually avowed party loyalists. Nominees pledge to congressional committees, however, that they can’t talk about cases that might come before them and they won’t commit to how they might vote in any case, except that they always say that stare decisis will be their north star; they won’t overturn precedent. Once seated on bench most adhere to that oath. The oral arguments in Dobbs, however, suggest that a fifty-year ruling will be thrown out the window.

 “Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?”[i]

Justice Sotomayor identified the issue from the bench; pundits sounded the alarm across the political divides. Another institution that holds the nation together, that promises us a democracy, could be relegated to the trash heap of unbridled partisanship. Without at least the perception of non-partisanship, will the justices simply be mouthpieces for whichever party nominated them?  Will the court simply resemble the political systems of Peron, Pinochet, Amin, Stalin, or Honecker? In each case, “his” courts all ruled in favor of whatever the dictator wanted. We can’t afford the loss of this institution.

The Harvard University Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics survey of young adults released a couple of weeks ago, found that 52% of 18-30-year-olds already believe our democracy is in trouble or has failed. Seventy percent of Republican young adults believe the democracy has failed. Rather frightening is that nearly 50% of young adults seriously believe that there is a greater than 50% chance of a second civil war in their lifetime. Survey participants who lived in rural areas were more likely to feel that democracy is failing. Depending on which poll you read, between 50-64% of this age group opposes overturning Roe.

Civil rights cases argued before the Court always deal with increasing people’s rights, not taking them away. If Roe is overturned it will send shock waves through the nation. If one doesn’t think that democracy is working, if they disagree with government programs and rulings, taking up arms doesn’t seem that farfetched.

They tried it on January 6, 2021.

If the Supreme Court uses Dobbs v. Jackson to overturn Roe, rescinding an established civil-right of long-standing, it might well determine if we will be a democracy ten years from now.  

 

 

---

[i] Justice Sotomayor’s comment toward the end of oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson, December 1, 2021

Not Only in Denmark

Oh, that we had a modern-day Marcellus who could tell a modern-day Horatio that there is something rotten, but not only in the State of Denmark![i]  Following the ghost of a democracy that once was is not farfetched. It is happening across the globe, but frankly, I’m most concerned about our own experiment with a republic. Too pessimistic some might say; it isn’t as bad as you are making it out to be. Maybe my glass is half empty but it was at least half full not too long ago.

It is often said, and I’ve said it often, that democracy is fragile. It relies on faith in its institutions. They are what bind people together, they create an ethos, which says what we are about. Tear down the institutions that sustain us and you lay siege to the democracy.  

So what creates the dither, the doom, and gloom? It doesn’t start with the last election, but that is a good place to start. Think about a normal election cycle: candidates campaign, voters vote, civil servants count the ballots and announce the results; The loser concedes and pledges to help the winner make a go of it; The winner thanks the opponent for running a hard campaign. Then voters go about their lives until the next election. They have faith in one of our most sacred institutions.

A recent CNN poll, reported in Forbes,[ii] noted that 46% of Democrats and 75% of Republicans believe that our democracy is under attack. The drawback to a counterattack is that they can only agree that it is the other party’s fault. One party will tell you that they are doing their level best to ensure that future elections are fraud-free. The other party will tell you that all of the fixes will reduce voter turnout and make it difficult for anyone to vote: a power grab. More importantly, it is an ongoing effort to reduce people’s faith in the voting process, the institution.

I can’t get all worked up about voters needing a photo ID when they vote. When politicians tell you that people should not have to show that they can legally vote, they too are creating distrust in the electoral process. What I do get worked up about, however, are bills working their way through state legislatures that give them the power to overturn, invalidate, voting results that they don’t like. Over 50% of voters believe they will live to see a free election reversed by a state legislature. [iii] The rot grows.

Today, regardless of the facts, the majority of Republicans believe Trump won the election and that Biden is not the legitimate president. The divide is so wide and deep that thousands of followers gathered in Dallas a couple of weeks ago, flags waving and placards raised, waiting for the arrival of JFK Jr. (in hiding for the last twenty-plus years, not dead from an airplane crash in the ocean?) to help Trump take back the White House. He didn’t arrive. Last week they gathered once again to experience disappointment. The rot grows.

We and the rest of the world are experiencing a serious virus with new mutations coming quickly. Over 775,000 Americans have died from the Covid virus and the number grows each day. The previous administration’s program, Warp Speed, allowed for big Pharma to complete research, test, and bring to market very effective vaccines to mitigate the virus. The nation called on its citizens to follow well-tested and proven health care practices to reduce the spread. Simple things were suggested, wash our hands often, don’t get too close to others, wear a mask. Then when the vaccines became available, they urged us to get vaccinated. This is not rocket science, and it isn’t politics. It’s called doing our duty as citizens.  But too many resisted the call for national unity, for any number of reasons, and the virus rolls on, killing more and more each week. Many leaders encouraged people to get the vaccine but other influencers mounted campaigns to convince people that the vaccines contained microchips that would allow the government to track your every move or change your personality. People believed them. The rot grows.

A friend, in a recent sermon, referenced Pope Francis who wrote that we are experiencing a loss of “Common.”[iv] We have become a nation of “Me.” The virus crisis brought that to bear as people repulsed normal health practices by claiming that it was their right to decide if they wanted a vaccine and not the government’s role to mandate it. That makes good sound bites for the evening news, but it is not good public health practice. I hurried to get vaccinated as soon as it was available. But I confess that I got it to prevent me from getting the virus, without once thinking that I should get the “jab” so that I could protect other people. I too had forgotten the “Common.” The loss of “Common” is so widespread that the rot grows exponentially.

Congress recently passed an infrastructure bill, but along party lines for the most part. Those few Republican senators who voted for the bill were vilified by the party base because they allowed the other party a win; a win that was virtually the same as they had proposed when they controlled the Senate. Party loyalty is more important than the common good.

It is trite, I suppose, to quote Franklin continually, but he did say that we have a republic if we can keep it. It is also trite, I suppose, to cite the fall of Rome, a democracy that couldn’t keep itself on track after only 200 years or so.[v] Volumes of tomes tell about the city’s huge expenditures on the military, political intrigue, and ineffective government structure, and a rise in populism.  They too had rot.

Alexander Tytler, a Scottish historian, is an oft-referenced commentator about democracy. He proffered that democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. He suggested that democracies go through five stages: bondage to spiritual faith; from faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence to bondage.[vi] His writings, though written while the U.S. was being formed, were more accurate than we might want them to be. Projections, while usually wild guesses, sometimes prove accurate. Tytler said that democracy can only “exist until voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury … the result is that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, followed by a dictatorship.”

 

Too much similarity to today’s America? Are we working our way from apathy to dependence or dependence to bondage?  It’s a conundrum, isn’t it? We experience armed civilians storming the streets and the capitol at the same time that members of Congress try to pass a bill that shovels money, largess, to everyone who might be in need. Somewhere in the mix, one can conclude that there will be too much rot.

 

Dear Marcellus, it’s not just in the State of Denmark!

   

---

[i] W. Shakespeare – Hamlet, Act I, Scene iv -  “Something is rotten in the State of Denmark”

[ii] Andrew Solender – Forbes – September 15, 2021

[iii] Ibid                                            

[iv] Francis – Laudato Si, May 24, 2015

[v] Edward Gibbon – The History of the Decline and Fall of Rome, 6 volumes, 1776-1789, Strahand & Cadell, London. While I would not claim to have read Gibbon’s six volumes, it is hard to get through much history without at least a glance at the library shelf and references in other history books.

[vi] Alexander Fraser Tytler, 1747-1813 – Universal History, Vol II – Tytler was a

 

Q

 QAnon sits on the lunatic fringe of the far right of the political spectrum. Middle of the road, they ain’t. Hardly a day goes by that they don’t make you scratch your head and wonder, “What the hell? 

If you haven’t caught up with them yet, you haven’t paid attention. Q is an unknown person who pronounces weird political theories on weirder YouTube and other internet sites. The basis of his popularity is the large number of Americans who believe his spews that Democrats and other coastal elites are pedophiles who govern a dark state that is trying to put an end to the country and turn it over to even more sinister rulers on the far left. The number of followers is not insignificant. We saw their flags carried into the Capitol on Insurrection Day, January sixth. 

Q basically preyed on disaffected people during the 2020 election, convinced that the other end of the spectrum had made their lives miserable,  made them feel left out of the conversation, stuck with the “woke” of cancelling culture. He/they was/were very good at it. They rallied thousands upon thousands of people to believe that Biden stole the election and that patriotic Americans should end the counting of the certificates of elections from the States and Territories. That was shameful enough, but Q’s followers were also convinced that Trump would suddenly take back the presidency on a day-certain, or on another day-certain if the first one didn’t work out. 

And then there was Dallas! 

Q’s tour de force was this week, and it was scary. After listening to a not-so-bright-whoever discuss the genealogy of the Trump family, of General George Patton, of Benito Mussolini, and the Kennedy clan, and how they are all related to each other in some roundabout way, he proclaimed that JFK Jr. would appear in Dallas to serve as Trump’s Vice President. The two would then reclaim Trump’s rightful place as the head of the government. To make sure it happened, JFK himself would appear to help his son claim his place on the ticket. People believed this stuff, they really did! 

Here is how The Atlanta Journal Constitution[i] described the event: “Micki Larson-Olson, who wore a QAnon-themed Captain America costume Tuesday, said she not only believes JFK Jr. is alive – she also believes that his father was never assassinated and that the 104-year-old former president will appear to help usher in a Trump-JFK Jr. Administration. How will she react when the former president and his dead son do not show up? ‘We’ll figure that something happened in the plan that made it not safe to do it,” she said. “If it doesn’t go down how I believe it will, that’s OK. We’ll figure it just wasn’t the right time’” Hundreds, if not thousands, lined the streets, carrying Trump-JFK Jr. flags and placards in anticipation of the reincarnation. 

Politics is a grownup’s sport. It pits people with differing points of view about real issues and philosophies of government into debates, with the hope that the endgame will result in something better than what they have. Politics isn’t supposed to be a place for crazies, a lot of evidence to the contrary. 

People lined the street where a president was shot and denied that he had been assassinated, and then they said that his son, who died in a plane crash, really had been in hiding for 22 years and would return to don the mantle of leadership. This should give us pause as we contemplate the future of the homeland. If you extrapolate the number of fringe believers assembled in Dallas to the rest of the country, one wonders if democracy can survive. Like most people in their condition, they think they are normal and we are a bit off. 

The people who showed up in Dallas to witness the resurrection of JFK Jr. look like regular folks, like those who live in the neighborhood, shop at the local grocery store, go to the local movies, and may even attend a local church on weekends. But they aren’t just regular folks;   nerve endings zigged when they should have zagged, crossed over, and never connected. 

But, here is the rub. They vote!

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

---

[i] The Atlanta Constitution, November 3, 2021, Catherine Marfin and Michael Williams

Cognition?

I don’t know Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, but I’ve seen him on television news programs and Sunday-morning talk shows. He seems like a nice enough guy, but I seldom agree with his positions, on any subject. In a recent interview, however, he suggested that all older people in government leadership positions should submit to annual cognitive tests. The Senator is a medical doctor so that gives him some street cred. He is a gastroenterologist, which makes his gut feelings more valid than his musings about brain drain. But I think he is on to something. 

The Senator pointed out that we are a country led by old people. The President is 78 years old and the former President is 75 years old. The Speaker is 81 years old; the Senate Minority Leader is 79 years old, the Majority Leader is70 years old. Only 30 senators are under 60 years of age, only one is under 40 years of age. This is the oldest Senate in the history of the country. In the House 109 members are under 50 years of age; 30 are under 40 years of age. Depending on one’s party of choice, I suppose, the former president and/or the current president both exhibit cognitive problems.   

Just for comparison purposes, consider the following: in 1776 Jefferson was 33 years old, James Madison 25, Hamilton 21, Aaron Burr 20, and John Jay 29 years old. They go things done. They were on to something! 

The census bureau tells us that the average American is 38.5 years old. Why is a country of relatively young people led by septuagenarians and octogenarians? Where are the young leaders who can revive the national spirit? Where are the dreamers who see another Camelot as a real possibility? It’s been done before, so why not now? 

Teddy Roosevelt was 42 years old when he became President. John Kennedy was 43 years old on his Inauguration Day. A president is typically 55 years old upon taking office. I often suggested, in jest, that no one over the age of 45 should run for office. Now, I think I’m on to something. 

What if we amend the Constitution so that no one may run for president who will be over 45 years old on day one! I know, I know, constitutional amendments are hard to come by, so let’s just institutionalize it, make it part of our “American Way of Life.” 

An old axiom says that the military always trains for the last war. Politicians, it seems to me, want to take us back to the last three or four decades, to bygone eras. “Make America Great Again” and “Build Back Better” are just two examples. Why don’t we elect people who reach for the brass ring, and who want to take the speed governor off the merry-go-round of life? The 88-year-old senator from Iowa just announced that he will seek another six-year term. Why do we continue to elect people who can’t be effective anymore? The old-people cohort continues to grow each year and doesn’t seem to want any change, with a few notable exceptions. What if we elected young visionaries?  What if we, WE, wanted new? 

David Gergen served four presidents: Nixon, Ford, Bush, and Clinton. He knows what it takes to run a government, to motivate a populace, to inspire. In his new book Hearts Touched with Fire: How Great Leaders Are Made, he suggests that “One of America’s best hopes for the future is to pass the torch to a new generation of leaders – young people with fresh vision, a passion for change and a fierce dedication to progress.” I think he is on to something! 

Change doesn’t come easily to a nation as insular as ours is. Our institutions give credence and power to our elders. We characterize young movers and shakers as progressive, in a pejorative way. We put too much credence in the notion that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. I think it was Tom Peters who advises that if it works it’s obsolete.  NASA isn’t reaching for the stars anymore. They leave it to younger entrepreneurs who take people on joy rides into space. The old folks aren’t pushing for improved transportation systems. China has 23,000 miles of track for trains that travel at almost 300 miles an hour. France has 1,675 miles of track for the TGV, Italy 1,467 miles of track for the Alta Volocita. The US has 33 miles of track on which the engines might get up to 150 miles an hour. Why aren’t we building a train system that can cross the country at 300 miles per hour? Is it possible that our elders have turned us into a country that doesn’t dream anymore, that doesn’t risk greatness, that can’t even agree to fix the roads and bridges; that won’t support basic health care for everyone or that won’t even save itself from a killer pandemic? We aren’t third-world, but we may be slipping out of first-world. We can’t let that happen. 

I’ve heard said that the country is safest when Congress isn’t in session. I suppose that applies to city councils, county supervisors, school boards, and library trustees as well. All of these ruling bodies are, stereotypically, warm seats for the older folks who run for office year after eons of years. It makes a strong argument for term limits. 

Looking in the rearview mirror sometimes points to the failures of an electoral system populated by people on their way to octogenarian status. They fight so hard to stay in office that they don’t govern. Half the population devotes itself to keeping the other half from winning, frustration builds and people elect other old people who are afraid to govern. Are we really afraid of change? We could use some new blood in the Halls. 

Being in your 70s and 80s is hard work, in and of itself. Ask me! Adding the burden of governing in a world whose technology is moving so quickly that it is hard to understand is asking too much of older people. It does, however, make good fodder for SNL each weekend. The younger generation gets it. 

Try to pawn off a file cabinet to 20-year-olds and watch their reactions – why would anyone need a file cabinet, there is a cloud you know. Even the FED can’t figure out how to regulate cryptocurrency in a period when other countries are planning to stop using currency altogether. altogether. 

The younger generations are asking for good healthcare, family care, better and less expensive education, and good working conditions. They learned in the pandemic, the lucky ones at least, that work doesn’t have to be what it was; why commute to an office to work on a computer when you can work on a computer at home. Essential workers are demanding better pay and an end to overbearing production quotas. Young people want to invest in the planet, to be less militaristic in our approach to world affairs, to be congenial with our allies, and at least polite to our adversaries. They want the country they know it can be. They aren’t naïve, and I think they are on to something! 

America needs a revolution, not a violent one, but one that returns us to be the dreamers we once were, to a willingness to strive for common values, and to be repulsed by hate and division. Is that hoping for a return to what was? Maybe, but for the young people who should be yearning to lead us, that would be new. They have lived through the result of old people leading them and it is time for a change. 

It is hard to imagine, but I find myself agreeing with an ultra-conservative senator from an ultra-conservative state; just this once mind you. So yes, if you are over 55 years old please don’t run for office, but if you do, be willing to submit to an annual cognition test. We are really on to something! 

Written at age 82 years, a bunch of months, a few days, and … heck, I can’t remember.