Tuesday, February 27, 2018

"Is Donald Trump Proof That There Is No God?"

That's the amusing--or, maybe, not-so-amusing--title of this online piece from the Vanity Fair Web site.  How amusing--or not-so-amusing--it may be for you may ultimately depend not only on how you feel about Trump, but also how you feel about G-d:  whether you believe in Him, Her, They, It, or Not At All.  It's not my place to dictate or otherwise advocate for where you should be on the G-d issue.  That's between you and the Almighty, and I'm perfectly content to leave it there.  As for Trump, all I can say is that I sure as hell hope that you think he should go there.  Hell, that is.  Before Trump sends all of us there.

If you don't believe, then I think that you already have your answer to Vanity Fair's question.  On the other hand, if you do believe--and polls suggest that the vast majority of you do just that--I'm going to try to suggest a way for looking at Trump's awful Presidency not as proof of G-d's absence, but in fact of the opposite--of G-d's presence of what may be a very critical time not only in our nation's history, but humanity's history as well.

Put simply, Donald Trump is a test.  Not just for one party or the other, or even for members of small parties or no parties at all.  He is designed to teach us how far we have fallen away from principles that used to guide and unite us, and that sometimes seem to exist in name only.

The Bible is replete with examples of G-d testing His followers, from Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and throughout the Gospels in the New Testament.  Some are obedient and reap the rewards of G-d's favor, while others are not and reap the price of that failure.  Perhaps the thread that runs through all of these accounts is the idea that G-d is constantly trying to see if we are mindful of His presence and responsive to His voice.

If we think about divine testing in that sense, then what does Donald Trump's odious presence in the Oval Office teach us?  How does it show our mindfulness and willingness to listen to G-d, and follow Him.  Or, as I believe, our failure to do those things?

To answer those questions, it's useful to consider a few facts about Trump.

Donald Trump is a con artist masquerading as a businessperson.  He was, as I believe I've said before, born on home plate with the idea that he invented baseball.  Growing up in the lap of luxury with his father (who, for all of his own failings, was actually a self-made man), he gained a nine-figure trust fund upon reaching adulthood.  Instead of using that money as a tool for learning how to be an actual businessman, he has squandered it on a series of publicly-funded vanity projects, most of which are unlikely to survive him, as the Bonwit Teller building and the Commodore Hotel, two New York landmarks he destroyed, survived their creators.  Oh, and, in the process, he went into bankruptcy four times in the casino business, a business in which money practically prints itself for the half-witted.  And lest I forget:  he helped to destroy Atlantic City in the process.

Donald Trump cheats.  On his wives.  On his children.  On his business partners and his associates.  On the contractors who routinely have to sue him for payment on projects long after the work in question is clearly finished.  And now, on the people who voted for him, by using Washington and the tax code to pay off his fellow 1%ters, at the expense of those who need public assistance and borrowers who need stable interest rates to finance their purchases.  "Trump Digs Coal"?  Maybe.  The people who actually dig it?  Hmmm ... not so much.

Donald Trump says what he says and does what he does first, last, and foremost, for the benefit of Donald Trump.  As President, he is supposed to sublimate his own well-being for the benefit of the entire nation.  As President, he has done exactly the opposite.  He had taken advantage of his position to enrich himself and the businesses he still controls.  He has, almost without question, accepted assistance from foreign interests without any public disclosure of what that assistance might cost the American people, now and in the future.  He has spend large amounts of his schedule amusing himself by tweeting and golfing, at the expense of focusing on complex domestic and foreign issues that require his full attention and comprehension.  And when he does find a few moments in his busy schedule to respond to reality's intrusion into his narcissism, it is always in a way calculated to promote his short-term popularity, even if that means contradicting a statement he made days or even hours earlier.

What does all of this mean?

I think Donald Trump is a judgment on all of us.  He is, in a democracy, the president that we deserve.  As a reflection, and as a punishment, on our own squandering of resources.  On our own willingness to treat the truth as an occasional convenience.  On our own willingness to seek out fulfillment by finding it only within ourselves, as opposed to finding it within each other.  These qualities, in fact, may be the only thing about which we as a divided nation are bipartisan. 

Indeed, these qualities may be the reason we are such a divided nation in the first place.  We have, over the past several decades, forgotten about the qualities that made us a great nation.  Hard work.  Self-sacrifice.  Helping others, even when doing is neither easy nor likely to lead to publicity.  We have fallen--all of us--into the trap of thinking that each of us is all we need.  From G-d's perspective, the truth is much different.  He needs all of us--and, as a consequence, He needs us to realize that we all need each other.

Barack Obama had it right.  We really are the change we seek.  If we want to get rid of Donald Trump, and make sure that nothing likes him ever comes back, there's one simple answer:  all of us need to become much less like him.  Then, we'll have passed the test that all of us need to pass, for our sake and His.

Sunday, February 18, 2018

All That Needs To Be Said About Trump's Vanity Parade

I leave you, for the time being, with these words of wisdom regarding our not-so-beloved leaders attempts to imitate the vast parades of military power he has seen in countries he otherwise hates, like North Korea and France.  Never mind the sheer cost (estimated at somewhere between $20 million and $30 million) that could be better spend on increasing military pay, or the potential for sinking Washington streets into the swampland upon which they were built.  No, these words come from a senator of Trump's own party, the ironically-named John Kennedy, who has been quoted thusly on the subject:

"I think confidence is silent and insecurity is loud."

Couldn't have said it better myself, sir.  Until next week.

A Few Words Of Skepticism Regarding the GOP "Crack-Up"

Donald Trump, as we all know, has never been able to command a majority of support within his own political party, let alone the entire nation.  Save for Neil Gorsuch's appointment to the Supreme Court, and the midnight ride of the tax-cutters, he has no serious legislative accomplishments toward which he can point with pride.  And even among the conservative chattering classes, there are many members who not only openly despise him in terms that are inseparable from those used by their Democratic counterparts, but who surprisingly argue that his presidency may very well prove to be the beginning of the end of the Republican Party.  In a nutshell, they make alternatively the case that Trump will either permanently associate Republicans with corruption of the worst sort, and/or that he will permanently associate the party with white nationalism at the expense of identifying it with more saleable ideas (e.g., limited government, personal responsibility, etc.).

You can find any number of examples of this line of reasoning in social media, especially on Twitter, coming from such conservative luminaries as Bill Kristol, Bruce Bartlett, Jennifer Rubin, and David Frum.  Kristol, in particular, has been especially vehement in his disdain for Trump, going so far as to say that people who want to leave the GOP as a consequence of his occupying the Oval Office should not look to him to stop them.  Kristol would prefer, and has advocated for, the emergency of a third party that would embrace so-called true "Reagan principles," again, small-government-except-for-defense, hawkish foreign policy, conservative religious views, and so forth.  Two writers have even gone so far as to suggest that conservative voters consciously vote against Republicans in this fall's midterms, as the only hope of preserving the hope for a party that (ta-da, once again!) will uphold conservative values.

I suppose that I should look at these signs of a potential dissolution of the GOP as a source of joy and enthusiasm, a sign that the political universe in this country is moving toward some sort of harmonic convergence in which Democrats and Republicans can once again find ways to work together for the greater good of the nation.  And a naive, idealistic part of me would actually like to do so.

That part of me might have won out as recently as twenty years ago.  The more pragmatic, experienced-hardened part of me finds the whole concept very easy to reject.

Small government?  Look at the ballooning of the national debt over nearly 40 years of uninterrupted Republican political thinking.  Triumphant military?  Three words:  Iraq and Afghanistan.  Christian values?  Five words:  Jimmy Swaggert and the Bakkers.  And those last five words, of course, have had five more added to them by the current "President":  Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal.

Let's sum all of this up by asking this: when we follow the advice of the late Governor of New York, Al Smith, and look at the record, do we actually see a series of anything that look like "principles" in action?

No.  What we see instead are two things that have defined the modern rise of the
Republican /conservative movement:  abuses of power, and white nationalism.  The former can be found in almost an unbroken line, from Teapot Dome to Sherman Adams to Watergate to Iran-Contra to the Florida recount, all the way up to not only the Russian interference with the last presidential election, but the naked theft of a Supreme Court seat that preceded it.  (Incidentally, I don't recall many of the current crop of "dissenters" objecting vehemently to that one.)  The latter can be found in the so-called "Southern strategy" of Richard Nixon, which was recycled by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, before it reached Olympian heights of perfection under Trump.

So, to those who argue from the right about how Trump has spoiled the Republican Party, I ask, in the words of the late John Anderson, a moderate Republican back in the days when it was possible to be such an animal, "What's there to spoil?"

Maybe a better question to ask is this.

Do you conservative critics of all things Trump have what it takes to return to the American people the fruits of the poisonous tree?  To allow Merrick Garland a chance to take the place on the Supreme Court that Gorsuch, with a lot of help from Mitch McCONnell, usurped?  To repeal and replace (to borrow your Obamacare words) the rancid excuse for tax reform you enacted at the end of last year with a bill crafted the way tax reform was crafted during Reagan's second term?  On a bipartisan basis, with give-and-take on both sides?

Or, if a Democratic wave in 2018 truly does leave Trump as the last Republican standing in a position of power, will you forswear allegiance to him as you do now, and work with the victors to re-establish a truly ethical government that is fully and promptly responsive to the peoples' needs.  Or will you go back to putting party first, put a "just kidding" sign next to all of your posts and articles of the past several months, and become the sharks filling the shrinking moat around the Trump White House?

Maybe we don't even have to wait until November to get an idea of how sincere your denounciations have been, up until now.

Among the dissatisfied Republicans in Congress at the moment are two Senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Jeff Flake of Arizona.  Collins is upset that McCONnell has not kept a promise to vote on a fix for Obamacare subsidies, in exchange for her voting yes (as in fact she did) in favor of the midnight tax scam.  Flake, on the other hand, is upset over the unwillingness of his party to support legislation providing a straight-up pairing of immigration relief to young foreign nationals brought here without documentation at an early age, in exchange for enhanced border security, and without any additional measures to restrict legal immigration.  As I said, they're both upset about these things.  Or so they say.

Well, Susan and Jeff, why not put a little meat on the bones of your displeasure?  Why stand around whining but still staying true to Team Red?  Why not do what another dissatisfied Republican Senator, Jim Jeffords, did a few years earlier when he found himself in a similar situation?

No, he didn' switch parties.  He became an independent.  Not just as a label.  He actually registered as an independent, and caucused with the Democrats, so that he could talk to people who were not only willing to actually listen to him, but even to respond in a positive way to what he had to say.

If both of you were willing to do this, together, simultaneously, and shift the balance of power away from the awful, unbearable Trump, without sacrificing anything you actually believe in, well, then, maybe, just maybe, I'll think there's some fire behind the smoke of conservative objections to The Donald.

But, until then, and certainly until the midterms, I reserve the right to be skeptical as hell

Maybe, Just Maybe, This Time It's Different

I remember very clearly what I felt when I first heard the terrible news of the 17 innocent lives that were lost in yet another military-style assault on a public school, this time in Parkland, Florida.  All of the things I felt every time one of these disasters has taken place in the past.  Sorrow, both for the victims, and those who knew and loved them.  Anger, that something so utterly preventable and unnecessary could have ever happened even once, let alone the obscene number of times it has happened already in the past several decades.

And one more thing.

Despair.

The despair that comes from having to associate phrases such as "yet another" and "this time" and "every one of these" to these awful events.  Because they have happened again and again and again.  They follow the same basic pattern, each time.  And there is an aftermath in which we reveal the damaged character of our divided nation, with one side of the divide expressing its outrage to those who are supposed to protect us, public officials, and those who think that the pattern can be best explained by poor school security.  By untreated mental illness.  In short, by anything but guns, the ultimate idols of worship in a society that has historically defined itself by violence.

And then, the aftermath fades.  The public officials, who have been bought by the gun manufacturers, offer "thoughts and prayers" tweets, and then uncharacteristically run away from the microphones as fast as they can.  The manufacturers use the tragedy to sell more guns to those who worship them.  Everyone else falls into a state of hopelessness, as they catch on to the fact that our nation is in the grip of those who define public order solely by violence.  And we go on living in fear, waiting for the vicious circle of gun violence to start all over again.

But, maybe, not this time.

For one thing, this time, the victims' families and friends are not going away quietly, the way that the gun fanatics think they should.  They are speaking up.  Loudly and clearly.  Especially the children, the ones who suffer the most, whether as victims, or as survivors who will have their entire lives defined by a single, senseless, horrible moment.  And they are not content with thoughts, prayers, or any other sanctimonious method for making them go away.  Take a look.  Take yet another one.

For yet another thing, there are some signs that the media might not be in a hurry to walk away from this horror show.  It's possible that their coverage of it might linger a little while longer and, in turn, might help the survivors find a way to light a fire under the cowardly tails of government "leaders."  After all, it's one thing when the New Yorker refers to gun violence in schools and other public spaces as "a national disgrace."  It's quite another when Rupert Murdoch's New York Post declares that it's time to rethink the national position that the Second Amendment confers an absolute right to bear arms--and to suggest government action in restricting their use.  After all, the Post loses money on a regular basis, subsidized as it is by Murdoch's liberal business interests in Hollywood.  If he's willing to risk more red ink over this position, that has to be treated as a sign of a potential sea change among the moneyed classes on this issue.

Too, it may not just be Republican business interests that are turning against unrestricted access to guns; it may also be the Republican donor class.  This guy, at the moment, looks like a bit of a lone wolf.  But there's always the possibility that, where there's one, there's another, and another ...

And there's one more thing.  This time, there's incontrovertible evidence that the shooter was connected with the white nationalist movement.  In other words, the very people who did so much to put Donald Trump in the Oval Office, and whose violence he has at least indirectly encouraged by referring to them with such compliments as "very fine people."

Whatever else can be said about Trump, he spares no effort to pander to his base, and is quick to see a potential threat to its support of him.  Here are his "thoughts" on what could have been done to prevent the disaster in Parkland.  That's right:  he does exactly what conservative advocates of law-and-order police tactics accuse liberals of doing--blaming the victims.  Of course, he has shown many times that he is as cowardly as he is dishonest, so its hard to expect him to do anything else.  The same goes for Florida Governor Rick Scott, who blamed the FBI for not investigating information it had on the shooter and called for the FBI director's resignation.  Hey, Rick, what have you done about the unbelievably permissive laws your state has concerning guns?  Maybe you ought to resign.

Despite some foolish statistical inflation to be found in a handful of recent polls, Trump remains what he was on the day of his election:  a president supported by a minority of the American people.  It's doubtful that either he or the current Congress is going to produce any sensible gun regulation, so long as they are willing to kneel before the National Rifle Association and have its money shoveled into their pockets.

Then again, that's what elections are for, among other things.  To change the nation's course when the nation is signalling that it is ready to do so.  And, this time, I believe that it is ready to do so, barring more interference from Trump's patrons in the Kremlin.  We as a people have an opportunity to make that change at the end of this year.

But, once we do so, what should we ask of a new Congress and new state legislators?  Is it as simple as reinstating the 1994 assault weapons ban, for which there is at least some evidence that it had an impact on reducing gun-related deaths while it was in effect?  Are there lessons to be learned from the experiences of other countries?  Australia, in particular, could be a useful model for the U.S., especially since, like our nation, it began its existence as a frontier nation settled largely by violent means.  Do we try to find a meeting point between what experts and the public both support?

We can do all or some of those things, and certainly we need to try at least some of them.  But many of them have been tried before and, however effective they have proven to be, they have in many cases proven to be all too susceptible in the long run to demagoguery from gun fanatics in and out of government.  Which leads me to think that it's probably past time to try a couple of new approaches.

For one thing, we don't need to regulate guns.  Just the one indispensable thing that makes any gun dangerous:  bullets.  After all, the Second Amendment says nothing about ammunition.  This is not, strictly speaking, a brand-new idea:  it has been proposed in the past by such diverse advocates as Chris Rock and Daniel Patrick Moynihan.  But it has thus far only been enacted in a few states.  Enacted on a national level, such laws could do a lot more to stop the senseless carnage in lost lives.  They might even help to pay for the damages that result from gun violence, by raising taxes on the sales of ammunition and using them to create a fund to compensate the families of victims.

Or, there may be an even more effective approach.

Since gun-rights advocates "sincerely" believe that all regulation of guns is terrible, why don't we let them have their way?  Why not a federal law that outlaws all restrictions on guns?  One that would allow literally anyone to carry a gun anywhere at any time?

Including the halls of Congress.  By the members themselves.  By their staffs.  By reporters.  And, above all, by the visiting public.

After all, if all gun regulation is bad, why permit any at all?  Why not given the public a chance to back up a beef they have with a representative or a senator with a piece?  Could give them a whole new source of leverage.

Ah, but I think we're forgetting the operative guiding rule of Republican politics and policies.  The best of everything for me, but not for thee.

Well, if gun restrictions work so well for Republicans on the Hill, it's high time that we had a Congress that made them available to the rest of us.  Especially to children.  The first duty of any government--literally, any government--is to protect its people.  The modern Republican Party doesn't protect the people.  In so many ways, and by no means just with regard to gun laws, it protects itself.

That has to end.  And it has to end right now.  This time feels different; it absolutely MUST be different.  Before there is even one more Parkland.  So that America can not only be the land of the free, but the home of the brave AND the safe.