The Rhino Is Taking A Pause

At the end of last year, I told you that I might be making some changes in the publication schedule of this blog.  Well, with a mixture of resignation, satisfaction, and hope for the future, I have decided to do exactly that.

Effective with the publication of this post, THR is going on hiatus for the next six months.

And, quite possibly, for more than that.

I alluded to this in my last 2022 post, and referred to the fact that I have launched a production company, one that has optioned a new play, which in turn had a reading this past February at Theatre West in Los Angeles.  The reading was a big success, and I am now working with my playwright and director on the first steps toward mounting a full-scale production, currently planned to take place in Los Angeles as well.

As I do so, however, I have developed an increasing amount of respect for the amount of work involved in mounting a production of even a small show like this one.  And, if I'm going to do this right--in other words, if I am going to do it the way I've tried to do everything in my life--I'm going to have to find more time in which to do it.  Something has had to go.

And that something, for now, is THR.

The thought of doing this has in fact been very painful for me.  A part of me has always wanted to be a columnist, and the advent of the Internet and blogging has give me along with countless others a way to do it.  I used to feel, politically, like a voice in the wilderness during the '80s and '90s, as well as the first few years of this century.  But, in the past two decades, I have seen the explosive growth of progressive politics, as well as the ways by which the Web has made that growth possible.  I know that I leave behind a world of electronic commentary filled with views much like my own, and far often more eloquent and more informed than my own.  It feels good to have been a tiny part of that for the past 14-plus years, and, while part of me wishes I could continue to be a part of it, I know that I am, for now, making the right decision.

Might I come back?  Who knows?  Part of what will determine that is the future of my producing ambitions.  Part of it may be the shape of politics.  We live in highly uncertain times, and circumstances may lead me to drop in here from time to time and speak my mind.  My Twitter account, to which my blog is linked, is not going away in any case, no matter what Musk does to Twitter, so I can promise I will not be completely silent.  And too, in connection with my producing work, I will be launching a newsletter at some point, and as many of you who want to be on the mailing list for that will be more than welcome.  There won't, of course, be any political commentary in it, and, in fact, my only regret with THR is that it didn't always have the diversity of subjects I'd originally planned for it.  Perhaps the newsletter will help make up for it.

To anyone and everyone who has read my posts, there are truly no words that adequately express my appreciation for you.  Thanks for being part of this experience.  It has meant more to me than you can know.

Whatever else you take away from reading my words, please remember that democracy is very much of a participatory sport.  The rewards go to those who get involved and stay involved.  We live in times that demand maximum involvement, for the sake of the present and the future.  Look for ways to stay involved.  And above all, STAY INVOLVED, no matter what the present looks like.  The world belongs to those who are strong enough to take and rise above whatever it dishes out.

I hope and pray, with all my heart, that all you have and will keep that strength.

G-d bless you.

Red States Are The Ones That Need their Credit Cards Cut Up

I don't have to remind you that Washington right now is consumed by a "fight" that the barely Republican House of Representatives has decided to pick with President Biden and the Democrats over raising the legal limit for the amount of money the federal government is allowed to borrow.

I don't have to remind you, although some of you may have forgotten, that raising said limit was never a "fight" during the years that Republicans controlled both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, not even after they rammed into law a trillions-of-dollars tax cut for the 1%, a tax cut that left said trillions sitting either offshore or in corporate treasuries, and not "trickling down" to the rest of us.  (Side note:  I've always appreciated the honesty of using the word "trickle" instead of, let's say, "gush."  It's a reminder that Republican policies are engineered to give them the goldmine, and everyone else the shaft.)

I shouldn't have to remind you that the "fight" is, for all practical purposes, an attempt to weaponize for purely partisan purposes the full faith and credit of the United States, which (as of right now) is being propped up by our allies and trading partners, both of whom rely on us for their own political and financial stability, as we rely on them for ours.  Nor should I have to remind you that their purpose in doing so is to create economic chaos at a level that will propel them back into control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, so that they can continue to replace constitutional government with a kleptocracy.  On the other hand, it's worth making the effort to make sure that all of you have been warned.

But I think it's both fair and essential to make absolutely certain that everyone understand fully that the media some-people-say-but-others-say "debate" about the raising the federal "debt ceiling" is something of a sideshow that, by design or otherwise, distracts all of us from the real fiscal problem facing us.

And it is simply this:  far too many of the United States talk a much better game of fiscal probity than the one that they actually play.  And, like it or not, the principal offenders are red states, the ones that pay lip service to balanced budgeting while using money from people they hate to balance their budgets.

I could use the specific circumstances of almost any one of these states to make my point about this.  But, since it's been in the news recently, and because it used to be a launching pad for the national careers of Democrats, I think I'll take the case of Arkansas as my Exhibit A.

Actually, Arkansas could be used as Exhibit A for another political problem, and one that is bipartisan in nature, the rampant nepotism that pervades American politics.  It's always been there, of course, and, once in a long while, it has a chance of doing something of value, as the Cuban Missile Crisis illustrated.  But, more often than not, it changes things for the worse, and that certainly seems to be the case with Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

You may recall Sanders as the combatively dishonest "press secretary" (one of several, in fact, but perhaps the best-know one) for Donald Trump during the four years that he disgraced the Oval Office.  Sanders did her fair share of disgracing her office as well.  But that should not be completely surprising, considering the fact that she got the job solely because she is the daughter of Mike Huckabee, himself a former governor of Arkansas.  But that is the new career pathway that has been created by the GQP in the age of autocracy it has launched:  when you fail in one job for which you were not qualified, fail upward in another, and make sure your children get the exact same opportunity.  And so the voters lather, rinse, and repeat all of us into perpetual failure; it just makes it easier for Republicans to scream "The system is rotten, but our opponents are even worse!"

And so it was with Sanders; with almost breathtaking speed, she went from failing in the White House press office to the governor's mansion formerly occupied by her father, where she now threatens to continue her track record of incompetence.  If anything illustrates the reality that the old American ideal of learning the ropes by working your way up them has vanished, this surely does.

I mention all of this in part because nepotism and mooching go hand-in-hand; both are forms of corruption, and the presence of one form is enough to breed others.  And mooching is definitely what goes on in red-state government--mooching, that is, off of federal revenue produced by the more productive policies practiced in blue states.

That Democratic policies in blue states produce more tax revenue for the entire nation that the Republican policies is beyond any doubt.  Certainly that is the case when The Wall Street Journal is willing to document it.  For decades, the Journal has, in its own stoic, slightly snotty way, defended the indefensible aspects of conservative economics without any regard to reality.  That has been no less true since it was purchased by Mr. Fox News himself, Rupert Murdoch, who has done more than anyone to destroy honest journalism in our nation.  But here it is.

Well, Murdoch may be willing to admit it, but you'll never hear it from the likes of Sarah Huckabee Sanders.  What you will get instead is fatuous claptrap about so-called "small government" like this gem:  "As long as I am your governor, the meddling hand of big government creeping down from Washington DC will be stopped cold at the Mississippi River."

Maybe not, if that hand is stuff with cold, hard cash that Arkansas needs to balance its budget, hand out a tax break it couldn't otherwise afford, AND provide the state's residence disaster relief that might enable them to make use of the tax break in the first instance.

For starters, she has already promised a combination of tax cutting and spending that, without the federal money that Biden's policies are pumping into state budgets, will be utterly unsustainable.  This, by the way, would be a side effect of the utterly inhumane budget bill that Barely Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has whipped his barely-majority into passing by a solitary vote.  In the enormously unlikely event that the bill becomes the actual federal budget, red state governors like Sanders can kiss their own cut-and-spend plans goodbye.

And it gets worse.

In addition to the infrastructure and green initiatives signed into law by Biden, Arkansas and many other states need federal relief from the series of storms that have hit them.  In fact, Washington has been taking care of 75% of the bills for relief, a fact that Sanders has readily acknowledged.  Unfortunately, she has done so in the context of a demand that it take care of 100% of that cost.

That's right.  Go away, meddling hand.  But make absolutely certain that you leave behind you as much of that crispy cash from blue states as you possibly can.  It's a mindset that brings to mind the complaints that '60s era conservatives had about student protests against "the system," despite the fact that the student protests were financed in part by the willingness of their parents (i.e., part of "the system") to pay for tuition, room and board.

Believe it or not, back in the day, I had some sympathy for that point of view, not the least of which because I was one of those students (although I went to college in the '70s).  But that just makes me that much more comfortable about calling out the hypocrisy of red-state leaders who, in the immortal words of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, "vote no and take the dough."  Sanders is hardly alone.  Just look at the track record of Florida Governor and presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis.  And, while you're at it, pray that he never becomes President DeSantis.

In the context of the current House hypocrisy on the subject of federal spending, one often hears about the need to cut up the government credit card.  But maybe we're talking about the wrong credit card.  Maybe the card that we need to cut up are the cards that belong to red state governments, the latter-day equivalents of those '60 college students.  Maybe what we should be doing is giving them incentives to take the log out of their own eyes before the complain about splinters in the eyes of blue states.  (That New Testament reference seems appropriate, since so many red-staters aspire to the practice of Christianity.)  Maybe, just maybe, at the extreme end of those incentives, we consider the possibility that these states are essentially bankrupt, and that they require a federal takeover to get their finances straightened out.  Maybe even a demotion to territorial status, temporarily.

I'm not advocating these things.  But I think they're a useful way of illustrating a point.  We're supposed to be the United States of America.  We're all expected to pull our weight. And some states are far too comfortable with not doing their fair share, even while they point their hypocritical fingers at the states that are not only pulling their own weight, but the weight of their critics.  You want to root out immorality in American government?  Well, how about starting right there?

Like I said, corruption breeds more corruption.  And if you've bought into the bill of goods the GQP sells that government is always corrupt and Wall Street is always squeaky clean, you're part of the problem.  Corruption doesn't have to exist.  Freeloading doesn't have to exist.  Nepotism doesn't have to exist.  Because the people selling all of these poisons live in fear of democracy's antidote:  the people, rising up and demanding their birthright:  a freer and better world.

Rise up, already.  Demand more from red and blue states.  Demand more from yourselves.  Demand the better worlds that those who came before us suffered and died for.  We owe it to them.  We owe it to ourselves.

And, like the Preamble to the Constitution says, we owe it to our posterity.  Our children, and their future.  We can still give them a better world than the one we inherited.  Let's not throw that chance away.

Let's pick it up and make the most of it.  Now, tomorrow, and always.

Karma For Trump, Karma For MAGAhats?

Over three decades ago, when Donald Trump still had as much chance of becoming President of the United States as most of us have, he launched his career as a spokesperson for "law and order" with a full-page ad in The New York Times.  The ad piggybacked on a tragedy in Manhattan involving an assault on a jogger in Central Park, for which five young Black men were accused of, and ultimately convicted for, a crime they did not commit.  They were ultimately exonerated by DNA evidence, but not before serving time; when they were released, they sued for and received damages from New York City.

At the time of the attack, however, the City was going through a horrendous crime wave, one that was severe enough to raise questions not just about its safety, but also its ability to function as a unit of government.  Trump being Trump, and perhaps even at that point having some nascent idea about a career in politics, he saw an opportunity for publicity and public acclaim.

And he pounced.

With the above-referenced Times ad, headlined in doomsday type as follows:  "BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY.  BRING BACK OUR POLICE!"  It went on in even worse fashion, building up to in the verbal violence that is his stock-in-trade:  "CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS!"

In fact, that is precisely the moment when civil liberties become as precious as possible.  Civil liberties exist to ensure justice for all, because justice for some is no justice at all.  Justice for some is what makes crime "easier" to control when the victim belongs to a politically favored group, and the accused belong to an unfavored one.  Justice for some is what allows the system to run like clockwork to produce a popular outcome, but one with no connection to fairness or the truth.  

Perhaps worst of all for the "law and order" advocates, justice for some stands solely on its ability to remain in power, an accomplishment no government, no empire, no leader or leaders have ever been able to maintain indefinitely.  And when power changes hands, the new leaders, often risen from the ranks of the former oppressed, have no clear reason to stand for something other than justice for some.

Sometimes, though, we all get lucky.  Sometimes, a member of the oppressed has the character to rise above the oppression.  Sometimes, justice delayed really isn't justice denied, and the victims of systemic injustice get a second chance, one to which they respond not with revenge, but with the heart and soul of reformers.  Sometimes, when they get a second chance, we all get a chance to see justice for all.

That seems to be the case with Yusef Salaam, a member of the group of Black men who made up the accused cohort that became immortalized in tabloid print and and airwave coverage as the "Central Park Five."  Salaam, now well into middle age and running for a seat on the City Council, saw an opportunity to turn the tables on his one-time accuser when Trump was indicted by the Manhattan district attorney's office for falsifying business records in connection with his hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels.

And he did so brilliantly.

He used social media to publish an ad of his own, one that mimicked the format and some of the tone that Trump used in his ad, to publish a very different response to the the ex-President's legal jeopardy.  Instead of asking for Trump's execution, as well as a suspension of his civil liberties to speed his way toward that destination, Salaam merely asked for the system to work as the Constitution designed it to work--and that Trump, regardless of the outcome, accept the justice it produces with the same grace and resilience that Salaam and his friends accepted their unjust punishment and their exoneration.

Trump, of course, will never do that.  Even in the event that he is exonerated, he will spend the rest of his life whining about the unfairness of his having to face justice at all, that all of his conduct (even the illegal conduct) was "perfect," and that he will spend the rest of his life seeking revenge against the system he has already done so much to poison.  He will also continue to fundraise off of the experience, in a desperate attempt to salvage whatever might be left of his political career, to say nothing of whatever might be left of his debt-ridden business empire.  Worst of all, he will never lack for an army of suckers to help him fundraise, because it's easier for them to simply believe in Trump than it is to face their own shortcomings and fix their lives.

Frankly, though they would rather die than admit it, the members of that army could take a lesson  from Salaam's ad, as well as Salaam's life.

He and the other members of the "Exonerated Five" had to face far worse than many of Trump's very white, largely male supporters have had to face in their lives.  They had their reputations and then-future prospects destroyed in the most public way possible.  They had to spend time in prison.  They were force to fight for their freedom and the restoration of their reputations.  And they were forced to do all of this fighting against a system that, in so many ways, has historically been and still is wired against them because of the color of their skin.

And, as Salaam's ad illustrates, they prevailed.

Racism is a sinkhole that is easy to jump into, and difficult to get out of.  The Exonerated Five did not jump into that sinkhole.  The MAGAhats have spend most if not all of their lives wallowing in it, again, because it's easier to believe in white identity politics than it is to face the truth about one's individual circumstances and fight back

Trump and his family have lived their entire lives in that sinkhole, profiting mightily off of it.  But karma has finally caught up with them, just as it threatens to do the same for other people who would rather die that face the fact that we are, however slowly and haltingly, moving toward a world in which how we look will no longer automatically punch a ticket to how we live.

You don't like what karma is doing for Trump?  You'd better take a harder look at what you believe and why you believe it.  And then consider how much more someone like Yusef Salaam can teach you.