Our By-Standing Days Are Over

"The Guns of Navarone," the 1961 eponymously-named film adaptation of Alistair MacLean's novel, has stuck in my head decades after I first saw it.  Beyond the stars and the special effects, what has stayed with me is the clever way that Carl Foreman, then fresh off the Hollywood blacklist, managed to weave a strong anti-war debate into the dialogue of what was otherwise one of MacLean's by-the-numbers, resolute-men-getting-the-job-done tales.  When the demolition expert in the team, made with rage about having to leave an injured comrade in the care of a Nazi hospital, exposes one of their number as a saboteur, he declares his wish to wash his hands not only of the mission, but the entire war.  He goads the team leader to shoot the saboteur, and almost succeeds in doing so before the saboteur's friend and compatriot shoots her first.  

Afterwards, the leader lambasts the demolition expert for what he considers self-serving grandstanding.  And he does so in no uncertain terms:

You think you've been getting away with it all this time, standing by. Well, son ... your by-standing days are over! You're in it now, up to your neck!

My play-by-play description of this scene really doesn't do it justice.  If you can find a clip of it online, or watch the whole movie, please do so.  It's worth the time and trouble, especially if you're looking for things to do while quarantining in place.  In fact, if you have not seen it, I'd recommend you do so before reading the rest of this post.  It may make it more meaningful for you.

So, with that disclaimer, let me explain why I'm starting with a classic-film reference.

Democrats have just come off of what was, for them and for all of us, a terrific election cycle, their best in 12 years and one of their three best in the past 40 years (including 1992 and 2008).  This gives them one of those increasingly rare and precious opportunities to reshape the character and direction of our politics and the nation.  That opportunity is all the more real and profound in the wake of the four-year dumpster fire from which we have just escaped.  More Americans than ever are hungry, even desperate, for real and substantial change.  The fact that President Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID bill is not being swamped by the predictable, and hypocritical, efforts of Republicans to flip-flop on deficit spending, but instead is being supported by poll majorities should be all the evidence anyone needs of this.

I've been hearing a lot in recent days about how Democrats in Washington need to act like they won an election, and use the power that the voters gave them.  I'm all for that.  Yes, compromise is how things get done in a democracy, but compromise is always the end result of a negotiation, and negotiation is in the first instance a question of positioning.  One of Barack Obama's biggest failings is that he tended to negotiate by starting at the 50-yard line and expecting not to have to do anything to move the proverbial ball.  Unfortunately, that tendency fed the appetite of an opposition that lives to demonstrate how much they can grab in plain site.  

So, instead of getting to the end zone, Obama ended up fighting to get into field-zone range and then bragging about his ability to occasionally get 3 points.  That mindset not only cost him two midterm elections, but also may have set the stage for Donald Trump's by-a-nose victory over Hillary Clinton.  Field goals, and even the occasional touchdown like the ACA, don't turn out your fans.  Fighting for every victory even when victory seems hopeless does that.  In hindsight, Trump's victory seems less improbable when you remember that Republicans voters turn out with the relentlessness of the 2000 Baltimore Ravens defense, to extend the metaphor a little bit.

So, yes, Democrats in Washington need, as the cliche goes, to go big or go home.  Happily, they all seem to have gotten that memo, read it, and are heeding its advice.

But what about the rest of us?

Well, there's a bit of a problem there.  To extend the metaphor yet further, while Democrats have had a tendency in the past to start negotiations on the 50-yard line, their voters often refuse to show up unless their team has reached the end zone four times before the referee starts the game clock.

OK, I exaggerate a bit.  But only a bit.

Look at the history of elections in the modern two-party era.  Democrats win with turnout.  Even in the last election, when the Republican candidate received more votes than any prior winning candidate in American presidential history, Biden still beat him by 7 million votes.  And, even in a deep-red state, even after the other U.S. Senate elections had largely been fiascos for Democrats, Democrats flipped not one but two Senate seats and control of the Senate itself, simply by showing up.

Simply by showing up.  If I thought it would make a difference in turnout and elections, I'd type that phase a thousand times, make that alone into a post here, and repeating that post day in and day out for the rest of my days.

Do you want to know why, in the past 40 years, the vast majority of my adult life, Democrats have only controlled both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue for four years?  Despite the fact that polls show more support for Democratic positions on most issues than Republican ones?

Simply put, we are frontrunning fans.  We show up on those rare occasions when everything looks absolutely perfect for ensuring victory.  Republicans show up whether victory is possible or not.

In saying this, I am mindful of the realities of Republican games with the voting system.  That's a whole post all by itself.  For now, I'll just say this about that.  The Democratic base of the future is being born every day, while the Republican base of the past is dying every day, all the more so because it refuses to believe in a virus that doesn't care about what it believes in.  This is why the Republican Party no longer has any faith in democracy, if it ever did at all.  This is why it has to rig a system in which its ability to compete is shrinking each day.  

And nothing in that last paragraph changes an important and distressing fact:  Democrats are political perfectionists.  If they don't get exactly what they want, when they want it, they think that they'll get it by holding their breath until the rest of the country turns blue.  Or, to put it in practical terms, not showing up until perfection is guaranteed to us.

Leaving aside the question of the achievability, or even the nature, of perfection (yet another blog post), this mindset has an important defect.  Elected officials can't be elected unless people show up at the polls.  And if certain categories of voters don't show up at the polls, and in fact make a habit of failing to do so, guess what?  Those voters, and the things they care the most about, get forgotten.  And, if those things are in fact things that affect significant numbers, most, or even all of us, those people affected are losers.  As is the nation.  As is the world, in its increasingly interdependent state.

This is why so many elections feel like a choice between a Republican and a Republican.  If you feel that way many times, well, you aren't entirely wrong.  Because that's what happens when Republicans are the majority of the voting pool.  As badly as the system is rigged, there has been, and going forward will be, more real choice when the folks running for office have a choice when it comes to potential voters.

These insight are hardly new ones.  In one form or another, I've used this forum to make basically the same points many times before.  So, why do so again?  Especially in the wake of the turnout success in 2020?

To be frank, the reaction of a lot of Democratic voters to the outcome of the second Trump impeachment trial is what has set me off.

No, Trump was not found guilty.  No, there was no vote on barring him from office.  So, almost immediately, there was a kerfuffle in the press and social media about whether or not Democrats (who, by virtue of their hard-won Senate majority, controlled the trial this time) should have called witnesses.  That angst obviously has it roots in the response to the first Trump trial, when Republicans were in charge and went out of their way, with the help of Chief Justice John Roberts, to bury the mountains of evidence that House Democrats had unearthed.  I get it, up to a point.

And then, I think about the fact that a witness statement from a House Republican was entered into the written and spoken record.  The fact that, instead of a lone vote to convict from Mitt Romney, his vote was one of seven Senate Republicans to convict, on top of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach.  There is the reality that the 43 other Republican Senators, as much victims of the insurrection Trump instigated as anyone, weren't going to be moved by anything short of a written confession Trump was never going to give.  

And, almost unbelievably, there was the speech given by Mitch McCONnell, in which he speciously tried to justify his vote to acquit on procedural grounds (of his creation, no less) and otherwise done what he should have done years ago:  throw Trump under the bus.  That speech could have been given by any one of the House managers at the trial; in one form or another, it essentially was.  Better late than never to the party, I guess.  All the more so, given the fact that his speech will make Lindsey Graham's efforts to derail the confirmation of Merrick Garland as Biden's Attorney General a lot harder.  To say nothing of any efforts Graham might make to derail any investigations and prosecutions Garland may launch in connection with the insurrection.

On top of that, there are the polls, which by decisive majorities support both the fact of the trial and the goal of convicting Trump.  And the multiple investigations against Trump and his cronies in New York, the District of Columbia, and Georgia.  And (yes, there's more) the prospect of using the Fourteenth Amendment to bar Trump from ever again serving in public office.

And there's the whole matter of focusing on an Administration to staff.  A government that Trump turned into his own personal swamp, one that needs to be drained as quickly as possible.  A pandemic to end.  A policing crisis to end.  An economic depression to end.  And a planet on fire.  And, to address all of that, a filibuster rule to repeal, a goal toward which we may have been pushed at least a little bit further by the ranting and raving of Joni Ernst over the Democrat wish to have witnesses at the trial.  If that doesn't due it, perhaps the fact the the Republican Party is now a playground run by delinquents will.

To borrow a phrase, do you get it now?

If you've been spending a lot of time sitting on the sidelines, not wanting to get your hands dirty with compromise, well, you no longer have the luxury of keeping your fingernails clean and polished.  Your by-standing days are over.  All of our by-standing days are over.

And, if it's any consolation, I've got the same message for Democrats in Congress, and Democrats in Washington generally.  Their by-standing days are over, too.

I've got some questions for them.

Do the Democrats in Congress understand that the violence of January 6 happens to people in the United States every day?

In one form or another?  Did it have to become that personal for them to show the kind of toughness and steely-eyed resolve that they should hitherto been showing the Republicans, the American people, and the entire world every day?

Do they even understand what it means to engage in "public service"?  Perhaps the police officer who was killed could have explained it to them.  Perhaps his sacrifice could explain it to them now.

They say that a conservative is a liberal mugged by reality.  Well, we've all been mugged by reality now.  Serving the public isn't about being in the headlines while lining your pockets.  Serving the public is about serving all of us, no matter what it takes.  And, if the worst thing is losing your job, so be it.  I've lost any number of jobs, but I've never been tempted to keep one by selling my soul.  And if you hold a public office, and keeping your job is more important than keeping faith with the American people, you don't deserve to keep your job.  Period.

The trial will be over.  The fight will go on.  What happened on January 6 was not a one-off; for most of the people who attached the Capital, it was a kind of dry run.  Those people are still out there.  If anything, they're multiplying in great numbers.  If you're an elected Democrat official, in Washington and elsewhere, and you don't do everything you can to make sure you and the people you are responsible for are ready, get the hell out of the way and make way for someone who is.   We need more AOC's, and fewer chickenshits like Marjorie Taylor Greene who is at best a publicity hound and a terrorist at worst—but who will never be anyone's idea of a public servant.

Regarding buried soldiers, Trump wanted to know what was in it for them.  What was in it for them was their country.  Trump will never understand that because he stands for nothing but himself.  If our political class is nothing more than a cabal of Trumps, no one  needs to take us prisoners; we're already dead.

Congress needs to do better.  All of us need to do better.  Putting others first usually hurts.  It's always worth it.  For those who care about being a Christian, that shouldn't be hard.  Don't tell me what you believe.  Show me.

Okay.  Both sides have gotten an earful from me.  Or, rather, a screenfull from me.

No more bystanding.  Get out there and stay out there.  I'll be there, no matter what.

Why The Filibuster Rule Must Go, And Why The Trump Impeachment Must Go On

Well, that didn't take terribly long.

No sooner was Joe Biden sworn in as our 46th President, and gave an Inaugural Address in which he committee himself and his Administration to national unity while asking for a reciprocal committee from the rest of us, than obstruction struck.  In the form of now-Senator Minority Leader Mitch McCONnell, who needlessly delayed the reorganization of the Senate under Democratic leadership with a transparently insincere request for a commitment to preserve the filibuster rule, which effectively blocks a majority Senate vote on most legislation.  And also in the form of McCONnell and the majority of his caucus, for shying away from their earlier willingness via the impeachment process to call Donald Trump to account for his seditious organization and promotion of the insurrection against the Capitol on January 6.

As House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's obsequious kneeling to Trump at Mar-a-Lago this past week illustrates, the only thing that is clear is that, almost without exception, the Republicans and their conservative allies are unified--by the personality cult of Trump.  And the Democrats, with the admirable assistance of a slice of Republicans, are unified around progress and democracy.

There's really no other way to look at America right now than with this overarching truth:  the second Civil War in our history is very much on.  In hindsight, January 6 looks very much like its Fort Sumter.

And it will be anything but a Cold War.  The temporary fence that went up around the Capitol now looks like it's going to be a permanent one.  Even at that, it's not going to keep everyone who works safe.  Not with the likes of Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene blithely carrying firearms around metal detectors that have been set up around the House chamber.  Not with young congressional staffers so fearful for their lives that hundreds of them have signed a letter begging Senate Republicans to do the right thing at Trump's impeachment trial.  As if the school shootings with which they have grown up isn't enough trauma to inflict those who represent whatever future this country has.

And not with Nancy Pelosi herself, a proud institutionalist and a pioneer in expanding opportunity within our institutions, agreeing with them 100%.  Indeed, the enemy is not just within the House of Representatives.  It's also in the Senate, where the likes of Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley have effectively whipped their caucus to back Trump at the trial, come hell, high water, or even enough evidence to choke a horse, in the form of video that recorded the menace that threatened all of their lives--even Cruz and Hawley, who actually whipped the mob itself.  Just ask Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

In this context, there is a curious quaintness in talking about the filibuster rule, and perhaps even the impeachment process.  Although only one of the two is actually part of the Constitution, both of them are built on the fundamental assumption that has, for most of our history, made our constitutional order work:  government by consent of the governed.  Yet, if Trump's following is any indication, 46% percent of the American people, and as many as 74 million voters, are now more than prepared to withhold that consent.

And, as McCarthy's willingness to toady to Trump, which has already helped to cost him some of his popularity in his own caucus, and earned him some well-justified mocking from Brian Williams (no stranger to justified mockery himself), that 46%, those 74 million, are by and large hanging together, in the hope (with apologies to Benjamin Franklin) that they can ultimately hang each of us separately.  There's a very simple reason for this.  The modern Republican Party isn't about limited government, personal responsibility, original intent, the value of religious freedom, or whatever bumper-sticker-of-the week they want to scream about.  The modern Republican Party is about power, and about coalescing to a point at which they cannot be opposed. 

I realize I've made that same statement, or some version of it, many times.  But I can't stress it enough.  No one can stress it enough.  And, in the wake of Republican obstinacy about the filibuster rule and the impeachment trial, coming after an event that endangered them every bit as much as it endangered Democrats--remember the "Hang Mike Pence!" chant?--anyone who ignores it for any reason does so at mortal peril to themselves, to their fellow Americans, and to constitutional government itself.  They are not simply willing to die.  They are willing to take the rest of us with them, whether we want to go or not.

Obviously, only Republicans can control how they vote at Trump's trial.  Only they can decide whether America or Trump is worth their lives, their fortunes, and their honor (sacred or otherwise).  But the trial will go forward, and, if it does nothing else, it puts on the historical record forever the stain of January 6, and the responsibility of Trump for making it happen.  Hopefully, there will be 67 votes to convict, and a subsequent majority vote to bar him forever from public office.  If not, the criminal justice system will need to do its work to jail Trump, and as many of his cronies as possible.  Thankfully, in part because of Trump's love of being on TV, he's given the criminal justice system a lot of ammunition to use against him.

But there remains the filibuster rule, which McCONnell intents to use to stop a lot of popular, essential legislation dead in its tracks.  And McCONnell is never so insincere as when he talks, as he had the nerve to do recently, about the need of the filibuster to promote comity and debate in what used to be known as the World's Greatest Deliberative Body.

My question, in response to McCONnell on this point, is straightforward and simple:  what debate, and what comity?  Under his leadership, the filibuster rule has never been used to promote a discussion of legislative alternatives, and certainly not a vote on any such alternatives.  It has been used solely and exclusively to block anything the Democrats, and especially Barack Obama, might have otherwise wanted to do.  Not to discuss alternatives.  Indeed, not to do anything that might address the various crises that we're confronted in the 14 years that McCONnell has lead Senate Republicans.  Just to obstruct.  Or, as McCONnell himself enjoys describing his role, to be the "Grim Reaper."  And, I'll have to concede, he's done that pretty well.  Maybe that's why no one should be surprise by the fact that chaos and death are the result.

And when McCONnell had a chance to defend his view of the filibuster rule by reversing the change that then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made in the rule for federal district and circuit court nominations, to thwart McCONnell's filibuster of them, he didn't reverse it.  He expanded it to include not only Supreme Court nominations, but all appointments to the executive branch requiring Senate confirmation, including Cabinet departments.

In other words, and to perhaps repeat myself, he has consistently used the rule not as a vehicle for building consensus, but to maintain and expand power.  And this he has done, at the expense of the needs of the American people.  To expand on the eloquent summation recently made by a former Republican National Committee chairman (full disclosure:  we're both from Maryland and former state employees), we've all been "punked."  And that's putting it mildly.

And, as it turns out, it's not even helping him to do that.  The new Congress is less than a month old, and already Republican senators, even ones in states where their re-election seems almost a foregone conclusion, are heading for the exit or eyeing it with real longing.  Even the subtle pleasure of spending all of their time saying "no" to Democrats and the American people just isn't enough to keep them in the clutches of their cushy jobs.

And, on the other side of the aisle, what about the Democrats themselves?

At the very least, if McCONnell is genuinely interested in effectively putting the filibuster rule on the table by asking for a guarantee of it in writing, well, why not take him up on it, as Norman Orenstein has suggested here?  Why not ask him for something in return for his unprecedented request, even now that he has allowed the Democrats to organize as a Senate majority?  Why not use this as an opportunity to smoke his hypocrisy out into the open, by putting him and his party on the record as opposing goals that the American people overwhelmingly support?

And, if the Senator from "no" is still the Senator from "no" after that, you have a perfect predicate (as if one didn't exist already) for modifying or even eliminating the rule.  And, if the only people really preventing you from doing that are Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, your two most conservative caucus members, don't just jawbone them.  Poll the voters in West Virginia and Arizona, and see how they feel about having goals they might like thwarted by a rule that requires a supermajority instead of a a simple one.  After all, their new-found roles in the Senate majority just might depend on the outcome.

In fact, that might be true of all 50 members of the Democratic Caucus, to say nothing of President Biden and Vice President Harris.  It may very well be the case that, if the government doesn't really care much about governing, maybe Democratic voters will stay home for the midterms, allowing Republican voters to elect the "entertainment"--and the nightmare--that the Trumped Republican Party now represents, even to itself.

Democrats have good ideas.  Hell, Democrats have better ideas that Republicans have.  Even in a post-filibuster world, where a simple Republican majority in the Senate would have the power to make bad things happen easily, would they do so?  Maybe it's time for the Democrats to bet big on the power of their ideas, rather then spend all of their time watching them disappear into a political graveyard.  A graveyard that might even one day claim the Democrats themselves, if they don't get their act together.

And get it together they must.

Democrats won the election, across the board nationally.  As a wiser man than me recently said, they should start acting like it.  Eliminate the filibuster rule, so that Joe Biden and all of us can build back better.

Fight The Cowards

Happy New Year!

Are you wondering whether we should say that?  Or even can say that?  I don't blame you.  Not after January 6.  Not after decades of speculation about a potential civil war in the United States gave way to a reality I had hoped and prayed we would not have to experience.

But given way it has.  And now we know what we're facing.  Not the "economically dispossessed."  Not victims of a new world order.  Not regular folks who have been "disrespected" by a cultural elite.

We're facing bullies.  Even worse, we're facing bullies whose intolerance is empowered not just by racism, but by religion.

I don't speak in a vacuum about either phenomenon.  Let me take a few lines to explain.  Fair warning:  it will probably be more than a few.  You may want to take a few minutes to go and get a drink, some popcorn or other snacks.  It's fine with me.

Settled in?  OK.  Here goes.

I grew up in Baltimore County, Maryland in the 1960s.  I went to public schools that were dominated by white, middle-class students and faculty whose views on race and religion were decidedly white and Christian.  In the America of that time, this was considered to be completely normal.  Even patriotic.  If you weren't white, if you weren't middle-class or more, if you weren't Christian, well, you weren't part of the majority of the nation.  You weren't American.  Period.

I was brought up to object, to speak out against this, as much as I possibly could.  And I did.  And I paid a price, one that was painful but do not regret for an instant.  I was bullied.  I was beaten up once by a gang that outnumbered me seven-to-one.  I was kicked down from behind by a member of this gang who was upset by the fact that I called him a coward (irony, obviously, was lost on him).  I was extorted for lunch money and chased down when I didn't surrender it (and that happened when I spent a year in California, then as now a more "liberal" state).  I was bullied, physically and verbally, all the way through high school, even by a teacher who objected to my support for George McGovern's presidential campaign.

From that experience, I moved on to college, with self-esteem so low that it could not reach up to touch bottom even if it stood on top of the Empire State Building.  That led me into the world of evangelical Christianity, a world that taught me to dis-enthrone my brain in dealing with day-to-day reality, to embrace belief--but belief as defined by an interpretation of Scripture that could alternate between being narrow and being slippery.  Over a period of more than a decade, and despite denials from my fellow believers, that interpretation marched this country further and further to the right.  I tried to hold on to my faith as long as I could, until reality demanded my brain back.

So, with regard to the present moment, what should you take from this slice of autobiography?

That bullying can break people down, and open them up to blinkered ideology.  And that ideology can become bullying in and of itself.  Until you decide to take charge of your life, internally and externally.  Which I did.  And it turned by life around, completely and positively, in every single way.  Without fear of what might happen if I was willing to make major changes.  Without worrying about how anyone might react.

In sum, I know how bullies work.  I know how ideologies work.  And I know how to fight them both, even when they work hand-in-hand, like the insurrectionists who assaulted our democracy 12 days ago.  And those insurrectionists, first and foremost, are bullies.

Bullies are sneaks.  Bullies rely on overwhelming force.  And bullies, when they've achieved the object of their bullying, pretend that the rancid consequences of their bullying, pretend that their victims are to blame for the actions of the perpetrators.

In a word, bullies, like my attacker-from-the-rear of so very long ago, are cowards.

And bullies armed with ideology are even worse.  By definition, using reason against them is useless.  By definition, they respect no boundaries except the ones they choose to create.  For their purposes.  Not yours.  Not ours.  Theirs.

January 6 exposed white, male, Christian ideologists, and their ideology, as the bullying that poses the clearest and most present danger to our Republic.  They relied on overwhelming numbers and unprovoked violence.  They used intimidation to achieve what they could otherwise only have dreamed of doing.  And their success is defended in public by allies in high places, allies who demand--no softer word suffices--that the bullying be forgiven, or overlooked, or perhaps even justified, all in the name of--I can barely stomach even typing the word--healing.

This much is certain:  nothing that happened on January 6 can be justified in the name of conservatism.  Certainly not as conservatism as it has been redefined over the past four decades.  The assault on the Capitol was certainly not about limited government.  Limited government does not permit a mob organized by one branch of government to launch a full-scale attack on another.  And it was certainly not about personal responsibility.  After all, to borrow a phrase, "If conservatives believe so strongly in 'personal responsibility', why do they constantly blame liberals for all of their problems?"

Classical conservative was defined very differently, as I've noted here more than once.  Classical conservatism was all about reverence for, and learning from, history.  Indeed, when it comes to the need to preserve historic structures and sites, I consider myself to be a conservative.  I mean, good grief, the word conserve is embedded in a minute.  And that illustrates a central and tragic irony about modern American conservatism.  It systemically rewrites, revises, and even destroys history, and the physical fabric of historic sites, because the lessons of history distract from and ultimately defeat from the narcissistic, short-term goals that matter to it, such as personal profit.  Read about the history of Rhodes Tavern if you want to see an example of how this has, and does, work.  And, slowly but surely, over forty years, modern conservatism has burned through a number of narcissistic, short-term goals--profit, military adventure, advancing theocracy--until it only has one left, the one that threads through the entire American experience:  white nationalism.  And this is why physically desecrating one of the most sacred of American buildings, and threatening and even killing those who occupy it, should not at all be shocking, as shocking as it nevertheless is to so many of us.  

White nationalism has always tried to hide behind fundamentalist Christianity; as the Reagan era has collapsed in slow-motion, the evangelicals are the only die-hard Republicans left, their faith and their bigotry representing what Pat Buchanan once celebrated as the triumph of belief over reason.  That triumph, sadly, as I have already described, is something essential that white nationalism shares with fundamentalist Christianity, something that allows those who subscribe to either movement, or both of them, to jump in for the emotional sugar-rush, and stay for the manipulation by the leaders.  And make no mistake:  those leaders are not among the "economically dispossessed"; far from it, as the leadership at the Capitol insurrection illustrates.

And the Commander-in-Chief was the Insurrectionist-in-Chief.  Donald Trump has never been a fundamentalist Christian, but he has always been a white nationalist, and one of his few real talents, as a con artist who knows what a mark looks like, has, throughout his campaign and presidency, understood the overlap between the constituencies and how both of them can be manipulated to assist him in his pursuit of power.  And, as any woman with any experience with Trump can tell you, he is no stranger to the use of violence.

No one should doubt that this was an insurrection, either.  Violent overthrow of the government for the sake of protecting Trump was, without any doubt, the goal of the attackers.  As for Trump's own appraisal of his supporters?  "I love you.  You're very special." 

Nor should anyone doubt the lack of spontaneity for this event.  There is plenty of evidence of planning and coordination.  By dark money interests.  By the wife of a Supreme Court Justice.  By Trump apparatchiks at the Pentagon. By Members of Congress themselves, directed in some cases at other Members.  Even at the Speaker herself.  And this is why the outcry to respond through the impeachment of Trump, and the permanent barring of him from public office, is as bipartisan as it can be, including Tom Nichols and John Podhoretz as well as the New York Times.

Perhaps above all, no one should doubt the naked bigotry that fueled the attack, as well as the equally naked reliance on the police to express said bigotry.  Sadly, this even applies to the Capitol Police, who in the past have been guilty of needlessly heavy-handed treatment of peaceful protestors (for the record, here are Exhibits A and B).  Not so on this occasion:  they not only welcomed the attackers with open arms, but even posed with them for selfies.  After all, like police officers in other events (Exhibits C and D), this is what they were supposed to do.  And, when they didn't, the attackers let the police know their displeasure, both verbally and physically.

Oh, and one more thing:  no one should doubt that the insurrectionists may have placed the national security of this nation, and perhaps the world, at risk in the process.  Their safety, as well as yours, not that they give a damn about the latter.

And even this does not bring an end to the list of those who bear responsibility for the insurrection.  

After all, the attackers were attempting to block a normally routine, but essential process in our democracy:  the certification of the Electoral College votes and the formal declaration of the presidential election winner.  This year, the process was anything but routine:  despite the absence of any voter fraud, and the failure of dozens of court challenges alleging the existence of such fraud, many Republicans in both houses of Congress went into the certification joint session having publicly announced their intention to challenge the certification.  Even more stupefying:  147 of them, even after they and their colleagues were assaulted and threatened, still voted to reject the certification.  None of them should be allowed to remain in Congress, and all of them, at the very least, should be investigated for criminal violations relative to potential participation in the attack and the violence that resulted from it.

And now we come to the truly cowardly part:  the efforts by conservative press commentators to minimize the attack and its consequences by either engaging in "whataboutism"  or blaming the violence of their allies by alleged infiltration by the left (Exhibits E, F, and G).  Regarding the latter, I'm not worried about the likelihood of its success; the video evidence to the contrary, provided by both the perpetrators and brave observers, is more than enough to refute that canard.  As for the former:  well, to an extent, I do blame the Democrats.  Not for fighting too hard, but for not fighting hard enough in the past.  Had they done so, I have to wonder, and I think we all have to wonder:  did that lead their opponents to view them as a soft target?  That is something that they will have to guard against, going forward.  And the rest of us have to help them, while simultaneously holding them to account.

Perhaps the biggest way in which we can help them is by holding the right-wing media, and Rupert Murdoch to account, for marshalling lies, gossip, and other forms of informational malice in the service of their craven ambitions (Exhibits H, I, and J).  And, in the process, the best way we can expose the bullying by the right, and the ideology it tries to advance, is by exposing the cowardice that characterizes the bullying, as well as the cravenness that characterizes the ideology.

What does all of this portend for the future?

Well, we've got an inauguration of a new Administration, and an impeachment trial for the soon-to-be-former President coming up.  And, with Democrats in charge by the thinnest of majorities, forward progress on behalf of the American people (i.e., the work the government is actually supposed to do) will be hard.  Perhaps above all, and for the first time since the Civil War, there's legitimate reason to be concerned about the survival of the American experiment, a subject about which multiple commentators have already opined (Exhibits K and L).

Frankly, I respect their concern.  Indeed, I share it to a certain extent.  But I believe that Americans, and the word, need America to survive.  And, as a survivor of both bullying and ideology, I firmly believe that survival, and better than survival, are possible.  Especially in a case like this one, in which the bullies may be starting to turn in on themselves.

But we have to do so on our feet, not our knees.  And we have to do so with our ideas, and not just our feelings.

Those are the only ways to deal with bullies and ideologues.  And they are the only ways to not only preserve our heritage, but to build upon it as well.

And with those thoughts, and my own commitment to act upon them as though our lives depend upon it, I say once again to all of you:

Happy New Year.

Celebrate a new presidency and, with it, a new hope.

O Pioneers! (With Apologies To Willa Cather)

2020 can now be measured in hours, and those hours can't be counted down fast enough for me.  I vividly recall New Year's Day a year ago, the lion's share of which was spent in an emergency veterinary hospital in a sadly futile effort to save the life of our diabetic cat.  Moral of that story:  when G-d gives you a big hint on New Year's Day of what kind of year lies ahead, believe Him.

I've spent a good deal of time today thinking about what I should say to sum up the year, to point us toward the future in a positive way.  I know there's no way to sugar-coat what we've all been through, nor would I even attempt such an effort.  I do, however, think that I can talk about the way forward in a positive manner.  But caveat lector:  I didn't, and will not, say anything about it being easy.

Among the many losses of beloved public figures in 2020, the loss of David Dinkins, the first African American mayor of New York City, looms large in my mind for a number of reasons.  In part, that's because, in a year that highlighted the country's structural racism to an extent that cannot be reversed, he is a reminder of what can be accomplished when people are willing to fight that racism, as is Barack Obama.  Much as the unprecedented level of voter turnout, in a year of pandemic and poverty, is a reminder of what can be accomplished when the majority of Americans refuse to take democracy for granted.

Dinkins, and Obama, were pioneers in a nation built on the work of generations of pioneers.  We tend to romanticize what it means to be a pioneer.  Our culture depicts our forbearers in highly sanitized ways, making it seem not much different than a road trip or a camp-out.  But make no mistake:  being a pioneer has always meant being willing to sacrifice one's comfort and even one's safety in the service of a larger goal.  Those who can before us endured disease and death, over years and decades, and often did not live to see the fruits of their sacrifices.  But they were willing to look beyond themselves, believe in a world that did not exist, and give everything they could to make it real.  And they succeeded.

Dinkins was reviled by conservative (translation:  white) forces, especially by the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post, and was denounced as a failure by those forces when he was replaced after a single term by the current President's mouthpiece, Rudy Giuliani.  Yet, in hindsight, it's clear that he laid the groundwork for much of the changes in the city that Giuliani subsequently took enormous and substantially undeserved credit for accomplishing.  You can read about Dinkins' work here.  In the end, even the Post lionized Dinkins in reporting his death.

My point?

Being a pioneer is hard work.  But being a pioneer is necessary work.  And the need for pioneer work never ends.  And, in a country with our history, we owe it to those who have gone before us, and those who will follow us, to be willing to make sacrifices as well, especially since we have received so much from those who have gone before.  In the relay race of life, our primary job is to hand off the baton in good shape, hopefully in even better shape, to the runners in the next generation.

And, while I hate to say this, I have no choice:  Donald Trump, and the suicidal hatred of government off of which he feeds, aren't going to go away in 2021.  There truly is no rest for the weary.  There is going to be a runoff election in Georgia next week that will determine not just whether we can make progress in addressing our long term problems, but whether we will even get past the short-term (hopefully, pu! pu! pu!) problem of the pandemic.  If you want to make a difference in that election, and especially if you have not done so already, please click here and here.  (Yes, both of them.)

And, above all, no matter what happens in the runoff, stay involved.  Take nothing for granted.  Being a citizen in a democracy is always a full-time job.  I'm hoping that we've learned that this year to a degree that has never been reached before.

Don't be afraid of the price of being a pioneer.  Be afraid of the cost of not being one.

That's how to make the New Year, and those that follow, worth celebrating.

I wish all of you who have stopped by over the past 13 years to read TRH, and those who have not, the happiest and healthiest 2021 possible.  I am grateful to all of you.  I look forward to what all of us will achieve together.

Dum spiro spero.

The Real "Border Crisis"

We are rapidly, but not rapidly enough, approaching the end of a year whose departure will dismay no one, as well as the beginning of a year which we hope will be a deliverance from the nightmare called 2020.  So it's time to feel a bit retrospective, to once again try to look at the last twelve months and ask ourselves where we are, and where we are going.  

It's unfortunately hard to do that, because events at this time of year normally slow down enough to permit a period of reflection.  But when the President of the United States is still Donald Trump, and the dumpster fire of his time in office is coming to an end, his rage at the unraveling of his life of deception is so great that he is finding new and increasingly troubling ways to add fuel to the dumpster.  Four weeks before he's exposed to the absence of immunity from (at least) State prosecutions, and the deceptive tweets, the destructive pardons, and the distracting attempts to meddle in the work of legislative grown-ups are multiplying at a pace that makes the thought of keeping up almost impossible, even as it increasingly becomes more and more necessary.

But, with G-d's grace, and a certain amount of luck, Trump will be gone soon.  And it will be time to take stock of the damage that has been done to us, and to our democracy.  And that damage will take years to repair.  Maybe decades.  And there's the question of whether all of it can be repaired.  So we might as well avert our eyes and our attention from the long con of the Donald for a little bit, and take some stock.

I'm taking the Rachel Maddow approach with this, in which I start light-years away from Earth, ultimately land on a specific spot, and thereby hope to connect the big picture with the moment at hand.  So here we go.  

I've spent much of the fifty or so years in which I've discussed politics preaching that economics is never a simple capitalism-versus-socialism frame of analysis.  Economics requires the perspective and initiative of individuals, but no less requires cooperative efforts as well that channel those characteristics into productive channels, and help to avert them from producing destructive results.  So, some mix of private and public enterprise needed in order to make things work.  And there's no perfect "middle ground" in calibrating their respective roles, either.  Sometimes, we need more of one; sometimes, we need more of the other.  And one of the trickiest calculations a political leader can make is deciding where the emphasis needs to be placed, as well as when and how it needs to be changed.

In that sense, economics is no different from any other aspect of our experience.  Human history is a story defined and propelled by different forms of conflict.  Between faith and reason.  Between conquest and settlement.  Between construction and destruction.  Between two fundamental choices:  the betterment of humanity, or the advancement of venality.  It's why, for a number of years, I used to make a point at about this time of year of watching "Things to Come," a 1936 science-fiction epic based on a screenplay by H.G. Wells, which endeavored to depict the next hundred years of human progress.  Wells based it on his understanding of history as a struggle between those who advocated those fundamental choices.  Despite the film's flaws, including one scene reflective of Wells' anti-Semitism, it's worth watching at least once.  I think Wells' fundamental analysis of how human history works is sound, and applicable to an analysis of our present circumstances.

We are where we are, in the middle of a deadly pandemic with no clear end in sight, despite the recent emergence (thankfully) of vaccines that may help to build a path to a new normal.  That pandemic has led to the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression, and exposed beyond any doubt the existence of structural racism that perverts our supposed founding values and virtues.  All of this--all of it--demands action on a national level, a coordinated plan and program carried out by the federal government that reflects the size and scale of the crisis as well as the solution to it.  This fact has been screamingly obvious to the majority of Americans, to Democrats and Republicans, which s why we are now counting down the days until Joe Biden's inauguration.

So why didn't we get it?  And, even worse, why is there still a sizable possibility that we still may not get it, going forward?

Because of the border crisis.

No, I'm not talking about the border crisis as reflexively covered by our woefully inadequate, co-opted media.  I'm not talking about what Trump calls "hordes" of people of color ready to stampede across the Rio Grande to take jobs away from white people.  The world isn't being threated by immigration; if anything, the right to travel is one of the oldest, most recognized, most fundamental human rights on Earth, one that has continually reshaped the world and always for the better.  Yet now, more than ever, that right has been restricted to the point, even prior to the pandemic, that people could only move around the world at the speed of sludge.

But money is a very different story.  Money has an unquestioned right to move around the world that makes light look like a slowpoke.  That's been true for at least half a century, and probably longer, ever since the rise of the modern multinational corporation.  However, since the end of the Cold War, and with the subsequent creation of international trade agreements that facilitated the existence and growth of the global economy, money has assumed an unprecedented role in its control of our lives.  And that's because global companies, and the global investors that control them, feel no need to be constrained by the decisions of government.  An international consensus had emerged that government was less essential to the affairs of humanity than the needs and concerns of the marketplace--a marketplace that covered the entire globe.

That consensus, and the extent to which our national government has attempted to adhere to it over the past several decades, has dragged our standard of living and even our level of civility down to the lowest international common denominators.  On both of these fronts, this nation used to lead by example.  Now, its "example" is one that many of its long-standing friends openly shun.  Instead of organizing the world into a noble crusade for the benefit of humankind, as we did during the period from the end of the Second World War to the close of the first Gulf War, we are now allowing ourselves to be stripped for parts and auctioned off to the highest bidder.

And that is far from all.

Our leading corporations, including ones like Boeing, whose bombers helped to save the world from Hitler, now openly and systematically compromise safety to wring a few extra dollars onto their balance sheets.  And they co-opt the state referendum process to not only defeat proposals that would restrict their ability to oppress workers, but do so in ways that can only be overturned by impossible-to-achieve supermajorities.

Our national legislature has seriously considered and advocated budget provisions that would not only allow corporations the right to systemically endanger the public, but give those corporations the right to sue you if you try to fight back against the danger.  And it has likewise advocating changing the powers of the Federal Reserve so that it will always be there, if needed, to provide socialism for the rich, but not for anyone else.

One of our two leading national parties has, as its primary organizing principle, the systemic restriction of the popular vote by any means necessary, undoubtedly operating under the theory that, if the people vote, the party's donors will go looking for even more supple politicians to do its bidding.  And it goes out of its way to cripple government's ability to fund itself and conduct what even Richard Nixon once called "the people's business."

And the Fourth Estate?  Please.  If only.  That formerly worthy institution is now dominated by, of all ironies, a naturalized immigrant whose systemic willingness to abuse women in print and through the airwaves serves as a demonstration of his confidence that Biden and the incoming Administration does not pose a threat to his ongoing destruction of American journalism.

Pretty bad, huh?  So, you ask, what's to be done?  How can we push capitalism back to the "middle ground"?  Especially now that it operates on a scale larger than any one government can operate?

Wells would have advocated, or at least supported, the creation of a worldwide government to constrain the more destructive aspects of capitalism.  "Things to Come," in fact, implicitly presupposes the existence of such an entity, although its details are not explicitly spelled out.  Rather, they are reduced to glittering generalities, like the slogan "Wings Over The World" (and now you know where Paul McCartney got that from).  That's just as well, perhaps.  An entity that attempted to operate on that scale would almost, by definition, be too cumbersome to effectively respond to the rapid pace of change in the 21st-century world.

I think that what would be better, and what should certainly should be attempted, is something that provided some of the basic ground rules and at least some of the enforcement procedures that a world government might possess, but that relied in a fundamental way on the actions of participating nations to make short-term responses to changing circumstances.  What I would envision, and suggest, is that this should be based on international treaties not unlike the trade agreements that came together in the 1990s, but that addressed concerns typically addressed by national and local governments, such as voting rights, living wages, health care, and environmental issues.  

Obviously, some of these structures already exist.  But what's needed to find a "middle ground" for our times is something that has to function more like a cohesive system of regulation and enforcement, but that still allowed nation-states certain rights of regulation over domestic affairs and unilateral (as well as multilateral) action in international ones.  The closest thing we have right now to something like this is the EU, which is not a particularly encouraging example.  And yet, it is precisely because the EU has thus far limited itself to addressing economic issues that its effectiveness has been thwarted.

And what role can the U.S. play in this?  Our own experience at the domestic level with the type of federalism I am advocating on the international level has, to put it politely, been something of a mixed bag, to say nothing of its willingness--or lack thereof--to date to participate in international agreements.  It would help if there were changes in the elected political class; there are already signs that this may be in the offing.  In turn, it might help if the workers of this country could finally come to understand that unity, and even short-term sacrifice, are the only way to create a climate for fundamental change.  That has always been the case, and it is no less true now.

Beginning in 2021, we all need to come together to move the "middle ground."  We can only do that, however, if we start by recognizing the nature of the border crisis that we actually face, and the increasingly desperate need to address it.

Oh, and Happy Holidays.  I'll be back before the New Year.

Why Georgia Should Be On Everyone's Mind

In last month's post-election post, I discussed the disappointing results in U.S. Senate races for Democrats, relative to the predictions being made in pre-election polls.  I considered the possibility that voters, fed a steady diet of bothsiderism by the MSM, decided at the last minute to declare a plague on the houses of both parties, despite the fact that only one party was clearly responsible for the existence of an actual plague.  I've had a few more weeks to think about it and, somehow, it still seems like the likeliest explanation.  

How else to explain the fact that pandemic politics clearly were decisive in the voters' rejection of Donald Trump (and just to be clear:  they really, truly have rejected him), while still allowing them to vote in Senate races for incumbent (and replacement) Republicans who have done everything possible to enable Trump's worst tendencies?  And not just with regard to the virus, but everything else.  The re-election of Susan Collins in Maine is particularly disturbing.  Collins did everything she could to stand by Trump, and thereby forfeit her well-polished image for independent thinking, and still won re-election by a decisive margin.  

In fairness, it may be the case that the large amounts of out-of-state money flowing into her opponent, Sara Gideon, and other Democratic challengers made it easier for Collins and other Senate Republicans may have made it easier to emphasize their local roots.  Still, if the question is independence from Trump, where is that revealed in her voting record over the last four years?  Where is it revealed in the voting record of any Republican Senator over that period?  Mitt Romney's vote for one article of impeachment?  Commendable, but hardly enough to suggest any real independence in the caucus as a whole.

Even now, flush with enthusiasm from an unexpected victory, Collins is bent on pretending that it has given her some sort of new-found political significance, and is now pushing a compromise pandemic bill with a handful of her Republican colleagues and some Democrats that is supposed to prove that a spirit of kum by yah has descended over Capitol Hill.  Not likely.  Not while Mitch McCONnell is still insisting on approving no more than one-sixth of the amount approved last spring by House Democrats for pandemic relief.  Not while, in addition to that paltry figure, he is insisting on iron-clad immunity for his donors from COVID-related litigation AND the nationalization of legal standards for personal-injury law.  Interesting, don't you think, to insist on nationalizing access to justice, while refusing to do the same for public health and safety?

It's precisely that latter refusal that has made this nation, which formerly set the global standard for public health and safety, an international pariah and an internal menace to everyone living in it.  As I write this, we are now north of 280,000 COVID-related deaths, with no end in sight.  Even if the promised vaccines live up to their potential, we will still have lost over half a million souls before we can say that this is over.

And while the President-elect, and his Democratic colleagues in both houses of Congress are pushing for badly-needed financial aid to Americans in every state, red or blue, what are Republicans actually doing?

Continuing to rubber-stamp Trump's judicial and executive appointments, while making negative noises about their plans for people Joe Biden will nominate.  Those appointments will no doubt live up to the unbelievably low standard being set by his current Supreme Court Justices, who are demonstrating their own unconscionable misunderstanding of how to balance religious interests with those of public safety.

Looking the other way while Trump attempts to use the pardon power of his office to give the criminal apparatus he has installed around himself a series of get-out-of-jail-free cards, including a big fat one for himself.

And otherwise pretending that there is still some level of doubt about the outcome of the presidential election, thereby wasting precious time in addressing the needs of a nation in crisis, while simultaneously enabling Trump's efforts to undermine democracy and push a slow-motion coup that may leave us stuck with him indefinitely, until everything finally comes crashing down on our heads.

If there's one thing we absolutely need to do--and, frankly, there are many--we all need to get one thought all the way through our heads and hearts, and act as though our lives depend on it, which they do:

Both parties are NOT the same.  And there is absolutely NO reason to doubt this.

Not while Trump is throwing crowbars into every aspect of federal machinery for the sole purpose of making life miserable for his successor.

Not when Trump's Bond-villain excuse for a Treasury Secretary is taking nearly half a trillion of federal dollars already approved by Congress for COVID relief, and putting it beyond the reach of the incoming Administration.

Not while the nation as a whole teeters on the brink of a level of economic disaster not seen in just under a century.

And absolutely, positively, not while the former party of Lincoln, and now the party of Trump, is pushing the one philosophy for which it stands:  the systematic suppression of democracy, by any means necessary.

Which, in an admittedly roundabout way, brings me to the matter of Georgia's two runoff races for its Senate seats, the outcomes of which will decide which party controls the Senate, and perhaps the federal government as a whole, for at least the next two years.

If the results of the Senate races on Election Day were in fact a conscious effort at ticket-splitting, the Republicans are trying to make the Georgia races all the more so.  There's already a great deal of right-wing rhetoric, including from Trump himself at a rally last night in the state, about how the GOP needs to take both seats in other to have a firewall against what they call socialism (and what the rest of the world calls SOP).  Right this minute, I could probably turn on my TV, select a news channel, and find some random talking head uttering the words "checks and balances."

You know who really needs checks and balances?

McCONnell and his Senate partners in crime.

For over a decade, he has done everything he can do stonewall the functioning of the Senate, turning the World's Greatest Deliberative Body into a deathtrap for any proposals that might even hint at being a threat to his monopoly on power.  Or, in other words, anything that might actually make the lives of the American people better.  And, as I've already mentioned, nothing about the results of this election thus far have done anything to change his mind.

Indeed, even if the Democrats take both Georgia seats, effectively making a 50-50 Senate one under Democratic control by virtue of Kamala Harris' tie-breaking vote, there's no guarantee that McCONnell will allow them to be seated.  The Constitution, and related Supreme Court decisions, allow the Senate to have the final say over whether newly-elected Senators will be seated.  And McCONnell, who will be the majority leader prior to the outcome of the elections, will be able to take advantage of any election "irregularities" ginned up by conservatives, and other Trump devotees, to argue that either of the Democratic candidates, if victorious, should still not be seated.  Think that sounds far-fetched?  Think about what McCONnell has done over the past five years with Supreme Court nominations, and then ask yourself if it sounds far-fetched.

And so, once again, as it was on Election Day, it's up to us.  As it always is and should be, in a democracy.  Especially in a democracy as evenly divided as this one.

Here is a quick and easy reference outlining how you can help Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock check-and-balance Mitch McCONnell and the Republican criminal cabal and give America, for at least two years, a puncher's chance to become America again.

Whatever you can do, for the next month, until January 5th, keep Georgia on your mind, and in your heart.  Your nation, your life, may very well depend on it.

Post-Election Blue And Post-Election Blues

First, an apology.  I had meant to post an election wrap-up piece days ago, but the wrap-up process, like everything else in Trumpland, is continuing to make a bad-faith effort to descend into chaos.  Nevertheless, at this point, there are obviously some big and important things that we know.  So, without further ado ... 

Roughly four years ago, I wrote and published this.  I have often wondered during the awful interval between then and now if I would have to write something similar in the wake of events on Election Day of this year.

Thankfully, the answer is no.  We will have a new President and Vice President as of January 20, 2021.  As a consequence, we've got at least a puncher's chance of returning to an acceptable level of sanity and legality in the executive branch of the federal government.  Equally important--and, in some ways, more so--the glass ceiling we all thought would be broken four years ago was, in fact, broken this time, and in spectacular fashion, with the election of a black, Asian, Indian woman (with a Jewish husband and a step-family) to the office that is the proverbial heartbeat away from the most powerful position on Earth.  Rejoice, progressives:  Kamala Harris will be a truly intersectional Vice President.  And she will be working closely with the most experience President ever to take the office, someone who understands that the job requires serving the people, and not himself.  On top of that, they will both be working with the first woman elected and re-elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, with a shot at legislation that would end the Trump pandemic and begin to advance progressive values.

Perhaps most importantly for the sake of democracy generally, turnout was epic, and the process itself was, despite legitimate and justifiable fears to the contrary, free of fraud and manipulation.  And, I might add, despite volumes of effort by Trump and his cronies, including firing the official who made the assessment of the election's integrity, to convince everyone otherwise.

That's a fair amount of good news, and I wanted to make sure that I began by recapping it as fully as possible.  And it's just as well.  Because there's still a more-than-fair amount of bad news as well.

Despite a strong class of candidates and an epic level of grass-roots fundraising, Democrats did not flip the Senate.  They did pick up two seats in Colorado and Arizona, but lost one in Alabama, and the balance of power in the chamber now rests with the run-off races for the two seats in Georgia, a state where run-off races have not been kind to Democrats.  They lost, as of this writing, a net of seven seats in the House, just barely clinging on to control.  Perhaps worst of all, and relative to the House races, they were unable to flip any state legislatures, which ensures that the 2020 redistricting process, like the 2010 process before it, will be abusively controlled by the Republicans.

Perhaps, for me personally, and for many others, the most revolting, mind-numbing fact is simply this one.  Joe Biden received the most votes of any presidential candidate in history, but Donald Trump received the second-most votes of any presidential candidate in history.  Yes, Biden had a decisive victory, but not the blowout that the polls showed he might have.  And the polls, which also seemed to guarantee the existence of a Democratic-controlled Senate next January, missed public opinion on that front by a large margin as well.

For me, for all of us, we have to face the future of American politics by confronting an ugly reality.  Despite epic levels of public corruption and threats to people of color, combined with a pandemic that has claimed nearly a quarter of a million lives, with no end in sight and the likelihood of an acceleration between now and Inauguration Day, more than 72 million Americans looked at the status quo, went to the polls, and said "steady as she goes."

It's a level of disconnect between reality and reaction that almost defies description as well as belief.

And so, as we the people pick up the cards that this election has dealt us, we need to wrap our hearts and minds around a few realities as well, if we are ever to get back to the point at which our politics actually reflects and responds to our desires and needs.

First, and to borrow a phrase I have heard and read many times, Donald Trump is not a disease, but a symptom.

It has been axiomatic for decades that turnout favored Democratic candidates, that Republican candidates did well when turnout was low.  Given the fact that the Democrats were successful in taking two of the three political levers of national power, and that there gains in the Senate, as of this point, are literally by a two-to-one margin, a case could be made that the epic turnout this year proved that point.  But the more significant point is this:  the gap between the Democrats and Republicans in gains is not nearly as close as previous high-turnout elections.  The presidential outcome this year illustrates this.  Biden was leading in the polls by 8 to 10 points but, as of this writing, it looks like he will win by somewhere between 3 to 4 points.

There is only one way of explaining this.  Trump has brought into the national electorate a large number of people who are extremely conservative, even delusionally so given that Trump is not really anything but a narcissist, who are now wedded to him personally and will do and vote for anyone and anything he endorses or otherwise supports.  These people had stayed home on election day in the past, because they were too far out on the fringe to be moved by conventional conservative appeals.  Trump came along and changed all of that.

This is a movement that, sadly, will almost certainly survive Trump's Presidency.  And so long as he is alive, and even if he is in prison (a topic for another day), they will act out any right-wing fantasy he promotes.  Indeed, the Trump movement seems likely to survive Trump himself; his children could and probably will easily find a way to transfer his popularity to themselves, and there is clearly a large raft of hangers-on in his Administration and in Congress who will try to do so themselves, even if that means trashing any reputation that they had before that.  I'm not alone in this view:  you can find it discussed in detail elsewhere on the Web (with three examples here, here and here).

And no one can afford to think that hiding from these people is any kind of a solution.  When they are confronted in any way, even an unintentional way, they are prone to using or threatening violence to acting out their political fantasies.  And this is true whether the people in question are private actors or public officials. 

This is the end result of a slow-burning fuse in our body politic that was lit many decades ago by Ronald Reagan, who declared his political opposition to be "so far left" it had "left America," and before him by Richard Nixon, who declared every Democrat a Communist if that Democrat stood in his path to power.  And, while Ronald Reagan lit the fuse of our self-destruction, the fuse was already there. Post-World War II prosperity help to turn us into a nation of lotus eaters, thinking that nothing, including mutual sacrifice for the common good, should stand in the way of our individual prosperity. I knew even then, as I know now, that we lost our appetite for doing big things, as well as our faith that we could accomplish them.  We lost them, or rather we forfeited them, because they got in the way of our personal comfort.

Too many Americans use what they see as the government's mistakes as an excuse for accepting anarchy, and otherwise see live as a zero-sum game in which only individual survival matters.  However, that government occasionally makes mistakes, and I concede that it does, is neither an excuse nor a justification for arbitrarily shackling its reach.  That’s why we have elections:  to tell government when it’s gone off track, not to permanently derail the train.  That latter desire comes from citizens who have essentially abandoned the responsibilities of citizenship, who think those responsibilities are a joke for suckers, and that the only purpose of life is to scratch your personal itch.  The millions of Americans who have suffered, sacrificed, and even died for the sake of this country would respectfully beg to differ.

It’s hard for me, after watching this nightmare play out over four decades, over almost my entire adult life, to escape the conclusion that, as a nation, we’re doomed.  At times, in fact, escaping it feels pretty much impossible.  But, as I noted in my last post, each of us owes a debt to the past and the future, And, regardless of how things look on the ground, I still intend to pay my share.

I'm hoping that my fellow Democrats and other progressives share that commitment.  At times, however, I have my doubts.  The failure of the Democratic Party to take a majority in the Senate, or flip state legislatures, combined with losses in its House majority, has already placed prominent party members in a familiar position in sifting through these failures:  that of a circular firing squad.

Was ticket-splitting an issue with regard to the Senate and statehouse races?  At least a possibility.  Biden was in a commanding position in the polls for several weeks before the election.  That might have lead some voters to think about choosing the outcome that they have chosen so often in national elections:  divided government.  Some of the movement in the Senate polls during the final pre-election weeks suggest that this might have been happening.  On the other hand, turnout on both sides of the party divide was off the charts, perhaps falling outside of the modeling of the pollsters.  And again, thanks to the Georgia outcome, a Democratic Congress is still not out of the question.

Was messaging a problem?  This is a perennial Democratic headache, reflecting the ying and the yang of the parties progressive and moderate wings.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the most prominent member of the former wing, thinks that the party's digital efforts to organize and motivate voters fell short because of the party's unwillingness to use the best digital companies due to their progressive connections.  Moderates, on the other hand, thought that rhetoric about "defunding the police" and a "Green New Deal" may have been a much bigger problem.  Which, in turn, leads to another perennial question: should Democrats try to be more moderate?

One is forced to wonder:  what does it even mean to be a moderate in this political climate?  Where is the middle ground between fighting climate change and denying that it exists?  Where is the middle ground between law enforcement reform and giving the police unquestioned support?  Where is the middle ground between the need in a pandemic to wear face masks in public, and pretending that the pandemic is a hoax?  AOC won a district and won it again that had been held by a powerful, high-ranking moderate, a man once viewed as a potential replacement for Pelosi.  She's made that point herself, in the wake of the election.

And progressive have a point when they say that, when people understand the details of progressive ideas and programs, the objections tend to fall away, leading both to enactment of progressive policies and election of progressive officials.  On the other hand, running away from ideas that are popular, far from being seen as a moderate course of action, is likely to be seen as a cowardly one that costs the support of voters who are essential to moving progressive ideals forward.  

The truth is that moderate Democrats are still Democrats, still concerned about the same issues that concern progressives, but needing the energy and creativity that progressives bring to the political process.  And, in the course of working together, progressives have a way of pushing moderates in a more progressive direction, and making them slightly more progressive while still allowing them room to reach out to more conservative voters.  The bottom line is that both sides need each other, and need to stop carping at each other while spending more time listening to and learning from each other.  That's what happened in this election, and it brought out a record number of voters that elected a Democratic Administration.  

And note that, in the process, moderate Democrats like Chuck Schumer have become less moderate in the process.  That's also true not only of Biden, but the American people as well.  Ten years ago, the ACA and the concept of a "public option" were viewed by Americans and the press as being somewhere to the left of Trotsky; now, both are considered mainstream political ideas, ones that Biden wholeheartedly supports.

And, even without the combination of a Democratic House and Senate, Biden will still be in a position to advance a lot of progressive values and translate those values into results.  It's too much to expect that his personality will lead to Lyndon Johnson levels of persuasion with respect to congressional Republicans, as some have suggested; Mitch McCONnell has proven time and again how resistant he and his Senate Republican colleagues are to such persuasion.  But, through various forms of executive action, Biden can and no doubt will be able to take a great number of highly consequential steps, especially with regard to the economy.

And, again, I cannot stress this enough:  thanks to the outcomes in the Georgia Senate races, we still have a shot at a unified Democratic government.  I encourage all of you, no matter how tapped out you feel financially at this point, to get involved in the two runoff races and make a contribution--hell, make as many contributions as you can--toward making that goal a reality.  If you need a guide to ways by which you can do that, take a look here.

I should add, however, that the situation in Georgia requires a cautionary note:  the Democratic victory there in the presidential election has already led to this.  Yet another reason to take state government, and state government elections more seriously.  To say absolutely nothing about this.

So, stay vigilant, everyone.  Stay strong.  Stay united.

At least for now, there's less reason to curse the darkness.  At least for now, we're still able to light candles, and light the way to a better future.

*************************************

This is the last post for TRH for November.  I'm going to be taking off the rest of the month to celebrate Thanksgiving, and to start getting ready for the holidays.  It's obviously going to be very different this year.  Thanksgiving will just be with my wife and sister-in-law, and Hanukkah will have to be observed not with my entire extended family physically present, but through phone calls and perhaps a Zoom meeting or two.  It's hard, eight months into the pandemic, not to feel a strong sense of isolation and limited mobility.  I know that's something we all wrestle with.  But everyone in my family (pu! pu! pu!) is healthy and safe.  Nothing is more important that that.  Nothing should be more important than that to any of us.  So, in addition to staying vigilant, strong, and united, please stay safe.  Better days are coming, and staying safe now will make those better days all the more rewarding.

"No Great Nation Is Ever Conquered Until It Has Destroyed Itself": Part 2

The quote with which this post is titled refers back to one of my last posts before the 2016 election.  It was, in brief, a warning against our even-then-obvious capacity for self-destruction at the hands of an unchecked Republican Party and its worst supporters.  Sadly, it has aged well.  Better, in fact, than even my worst fears at the time I wrote it.  I didn't have the pandemic on my radar back then.  But, given everything else, why should I be surprised about even that?

Obviously, this will be my last post before the election.  I've spent the last four years doing everything I can to make sure that this time, things will be different.  I voted via a paper ballot I delivered in person to my local board of elections.  I wrote to voters in Texas.  I've donated more money to candidates and get-out-the-vote organizations than I have done previously in my entire life.  And, of course, I've posted here, week after month after year.  And I've spent untold hours--more than I care to admit--on Twitter, and in front of MSNBC, sharing my thoughts and watching like-minded individuals doing all that they can do.

Will it make a difference?

If it's possible for sheer gumption and effort to make a difference, then, in any other election, my answer to that question would be an unqualified "Yes."

But I'm not so sure.

Part of that is the level of chicanery that is possible in a digital age from foreign actors, most notably Vladimir Putin (aka Donald Trump's best friend).  But part of it is the history of the nation itself, and, specifically, the unholy link between bigotry and money.  It was baked into our founding documents, it nearly tore the nation apart in the nineteenth century, it led to a profound turning point in our politics in the twentieth century, and now, it's tearing us apart again.  We have a constitution designed to protect property rights, often at the expense of human rights and, in this moment in America, that fact is being reasserted in our politics with a vengeance.

In fact, it's reasserting itself with a level of violence that can only be described as an inch or two below the level of open civil war.  Four years ago or more, a story like this one would have been a front-page, above-the-fold, banner-headline story.  Now, after four years of epic corruption that rises to the level of national tragedy, it's just another day that ends with the letter y.

At this point, the best thing I can do is pause, suggest you do the same, and ask you to take a time-out from reading this post, and spend several minutes carefully perusing this.  Trump's corruption has been so repeated in frequency, and so widespread in nature, that it's hard to wrap your mind around all of it, so as to be mindful of how urgent it is to remove him from power.  Thankfully, the Times is able to help with this.  For emphasis, I take this opportunity to stress two things:  as a capitalist, Trump is almost a parody of Soviet-style central planners, and, as a sword protector of our most basic rights, Trump sees people as things to be either manipulated or destroyed.

And his followers, inside and outside of the Republican Party, are no better.  If they lose Trump, they will immediately begin the search for a like-minded replacement.  And we have no guarantee that they won't find one.

A party that cares more about your right to own a gun and less about your right to vote is a party to be feared by every decent human being alive, anywhere.  It is a party that cares only about the next fifteen minutes.  It is not a party that cares about the future.

I care very much about the future.  I always have.  Given the fact that none of us live forever, and all of us depend upon the lives of those that came before us, we should all aim to contribute to the future. It's the best way to cherish the contributions of the past.

The past and the future are precious to me in a personal way.  Let me explain why:

This is the obituary of my uncle, who was killed in action in World War II.  Like thousands of other brave young men and women, he did not get to live the life that his sacrifices, and theirs, enabled the rest of us to live.  But that didn't diminish the value of the life he lived, and the death he suffered.  Both of those things, in different ways, are gifts to the rest of us.  They are not to be thrown away.  They are to be honored by doing everything we can in the process of selecting the next leaders of this nation.  And they would have hated to have a president who thought of them as "losers."

And then, there's this:

These are my granddaughters, one of whom was born with  a life-threatening pre-existing condition.  Thankfully, with the help of very brave, devoted parents, and the coverage made possible through the Affordable Care Act, she has made it (pu! pu! pu!) to the age of 8 and third grade.  Hopefully, she will be able to live a life and make her own contributions to the world that is fortunate to have her and her sister.  And the medical professionals who saved her, and who have saved thousands of lives throughout the horrors of this pandemic, are furious at Trump's suggestion that they have done what they've done for money.

We're not here on this earth for personal glory, folks.  We're here for each other.  As I've said before, we're runners in a relay race.  We get the baton of life and opportunity at birth, we run with it for as long as G-d gives us the grace to do so, and, hopefully, we hand it off to the future in as good, if not better, shape than it was when we received it.  L'dor v'dor.  From one generation to the next.  That's the only way a county like this one could come into being.  And it's the only way it can ever be bettered.

There is nothing to be gained by sitting this one out, folks.  Many of us might wish for a better choice of political parties than the one we currently have.  But we don't.  To my fellow progressives, and to everyone, I close here by say that civilization is built one brick at a time, one generation at a time.  And a civilization can destroy itself in many ways, but perhaps the worst one is by doing nothing, especially when it is actively being threatened from with in.  And it is.  The nation of E pluribus unum is now the nation of "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

So, progressives, please heed the advice given here.

And all of you, whether you're progressives or not:  this election may be your last chance to save the best of what we've been, and the best of what we can be.

Don't throw it away.

Donate.  Organize.  Write.  Get others to do all of these things.

And, above all, the day after tomorrow:

VOTE!