The Supreme Court and Religion

And so it begins.  Yet another battle over the future of the Supreme Court, the fate of women in America, and, perhaps, the fate of the nation itself.

And, once again, the Republicans and movement conservatism wants to make it all about religion, while saying that their opponents have absolutely no right to bring up the subject of religion.

That they have done this time and time again for decades should be evidence enough of their self-serving hypocrisy.  Let me take a moment to dwell on my own personal experience in this area, as a recovering evangelical Christian.

Theologically speaking, evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics are natural opponents, even though they claim to worship the same God, and claim to honor the centrality of Jesus of Nazareth in that worship.  Evangelicals are, and have been for longer than my life span, obsessed with the issue of personal vice, while Catholicism embraces a somewhat larger view of social and economic justice.  This is why evangelicals, and not a few Catholics, have major problems with papal decrees (especially from the current Pope) that address these questions, while wholeheartedly exalting those views in the area of human behavior where the two religions intersect most neatly--sex.  

It is this intersection that explains why, with the help of evangelical Christianity's political muscle, there is a Catholic majority on the Supreme Court, while also explaining why that majority occasionally produces decisions that grate on the nerves of evangelicals.  For example, and most notably in the current moment, its refusal to strike down the Affordable Care Act.

Which is why it is both appropriate with regard to the question of stare decisis, and otherwise to protecting the health and welfare of the nation suffering through the worst pandemic in a century, to discuss how her views, on the law, religion, or anything else.  This is a job application for a lifetime position on the most consequential court on the county.  It shouldn't be easy for any nominee.  Putting it bluntly, it should be damned hard.  If they're equipped to parry arguments from the toughest, smartest attorneys in the nation, I'm comfortable saying that they should be able to handle a few tough questions from elected officials.  And let me remind everyone:  Brett Kavanaugh couldn't, and didn't, pass that test.  And a combination of timid Senators and corporate media shoehorned him onto the court anyway.

We can't afford political timidity or media corruption getting in the way of an open, robust, confirmation process.  Not when the current President, and his party, have all but confessed that the major goal here is to manipulate the outcome of a national election.

I've told you any number of times to vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, VOTE.  So here I am, doing it again.  It's the most peaceful possible end to our long national nightmare (thank you, Gerald Ford).

But, for those of you inclined to pray, especially on the eve of Yom Kippur, please do so.  We can use all the help we can get.

And g'mar chatima tovah to us all.

The Death Of A Justice--And, Perhaps, Much More

The rate at which politics moves in the Trump era is enough to give anyone whiplash.  Just a bit more than a week ago, I was exhorting all of you not to neglect the impact you could have on Senate races,  And here we are.

Somewhat random, but nevertheless relevant thoughts:

First and foremost, in our political culture's abandonment of decency, and specifically the Republican lust for power above all else, we have largely neglected to do what any decent country would do in the wake of losing someone with the level of human and professional accomplishment achieved by Ruth Bader Ginsburg:  to focus on mourning the loss of her, and on her greatness.  While I am completely confident that the latter will be enshrined in history--indeed, to a great extent, it already has--we have not even taken a full day, or even a few hours, as a nation to come together and honor not just an outstanding public servant, but a wonderful human being with the greatest accomplishment any human being can achieve:  family and friends.  Their loss is greater than ours.  And it has, for the most part, almost entirely overlooked by far too many of us.

For my part, I'll sum it up this way.  She was someone who understood that a denial of freedom to some of us was a denial of freedom to all of us.  She was someone who understood that democracy enabled us to disagree agreeably, and that doing so was the only path to a more perfect Union.  And she was someone whose wisdom and warmth inspired people to embrace her to a degree that seldom happens to those in the legal profession.

Well, sadly, not all people.  If nothing else, this disgusting story allows me to pivot to an unavoidable topic:  the political aftermath to Justice Ginsburg's death.

As of this morning, and even before a specific nominee to replace her has been made, Mitch McCONnell appears to have enough votes to ram that nominee through the Senate successfully, literally weeks and perhaps as little as days before a general election.  It's been said many times already, but it can't be said enough:  this is of course the same Mitch McCONnell who repeatedly declared, a bit over four years ago, that no judicial nomination to the federal bench could be allowed to proceed in an election year, to allow the will of the people to be heard with respect to said nomination.  

In fact, he claimed that this position was a rule of the Senate, enshrined by Joseph Biden back when Biden was still a member of the Senate.  This position is based on an out-of-context quote from Biden back then, and overlooks the fact that, as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he oversaw the confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice in the last year of Ronald Reagan's second term--specifically, Anthony Kennedy, the Justice eventually replaced by Brett Kavanaugh (who clerked for Kennedy). 

Now, in response to the bipartisan effort to underscore his hypocrisy, McCONnell is now saying "Oops!  Did I forget to mention that the rule has a subsection that waives it for years when the Republicans hold the White House and the Senate?"  Yes, Mitch you did.  And you forgot to include find a Biden quote to support the "subsection," because no such quote exists.  In fact, should you need further proof of how muddled his "thinking" about the confirmation process is, take a look here, where he describes it as an obligation and a choice.  It's either one or the other, Mitch.  At some point, reality demands that you stop talking out of both sides of your mouth.

Unfortunately, the problem here is not just the fact that, however twisted McCONnell's comments are, there's much more at stake than exposing the self-serving hypocrisy of the Republican Party, and its Senate caucus.  A 6-to-3 conservative majority has the power to upend the Roe ruling, and thus make abortion law either a state-by-state patchwork or, worse, a real-life version of "The Handmaid's Tale."  Indeed, a majority of that size has the power to do what movement conservatives have wanted to do ever since the New Deal:  to dismantle the entire administrative state and leave every one of us to fend for ourselves.  They allegedly want to protect our "liberty," as defined by now-overruled Supreme Court cases such as Lochner v. New York.  This would be, of course, the "liberty" to be oppressed by those who have the power and the need to do so.  It would, effectively, replace the so-called "nanny state" with a Bully state.

And, when confronted with the prospect of a Bully state on the horizon, there is no alternative but to bully right back.  I'm sorry, but the days of reaching across the aisle and putting bipartisanship first are over.  That's precisely why this won't do.

Rather, this will have to do.  I'm not crazy about it, but I'm not about to stick my head into the sand when all of us are about to be swamped, by the Republicans and by their destruction of not only our political system, but also our planet.  Too many people sacrificed everything to carry us this far.

Will Democrats in Washington wake up at last?  Will they stop bringing Robert's Rules of Order to what stopped being a knife fight a long time ago, and has been full-scale carnage ever since?

Maybe.

There's the September 30th deadline for the federal budget.  There's the ability to deny the Senate a quorum.  There's the ability of one or more Senators to take the floor and hold it for as long as they can.  There are probably other aspects of the rules that allow Democratic Senators to delay, IF they have the fortitude to use them.

Personally, years of observation and frustration have made me deeply cynical when it comes to the likelihood of this happening.  But there are glimmers of hope, here and there, like this one.

Do it, Chuck.  Do it, Nancy.

If you don't, it may lead to the death of more than a justice.

And baruch dayan ha'emess, RBG.

Whatever You Do, PLEASE Don't Forget The Senate

We tend to talk about the upcoming election as though it was purely a binary choice.  Elect Biden over Trump, and we've done what we need to do to save the nation and ourselves.  But, while it's got to be done, it's not enough.

No, I am not advocating for some would-be progressive third-party savior to protect us from the corporatocacy.  I have noticed over the past week or two in social media that the Bernie-and-Elizabeth dead-enders are trying to make some last-minute noise about how we all need to withhold our votes from Biden and the Democrats to teach them a lesson that only the purest, most uncompromising progressives can and will save all of us, even attracting votes in red states.  These people are overlooking the fact that Senators Sanders and Warren are both supporting AND working with Biden on progressive concerns  And they also have somehow managed to either forget the last four years entirely, or don't mind overlooking the fact that Reagan-era conservatism has burrowed into our society as deeply as it has due to the fact that Reagan conservatives were willing to play a game of inches, in a system designed to reward those who are willing to play that way.

Which brings me to what I want to write about today.  The United States Senate.

For the past six years, under Mitch McCONnell and his fellow-travellers in perfidy, the Senate has been a graveyard not just for great ideas, or good ones, but for any ideas at all except ideas that benefit the interests of Donald Trump and donors to Republican Senators.  They enacted a tax cut that amounts to welfare for Wall Street, stuffed the federal court systems with unqualified stiffs, and, worst of all, used the impeachment process to give the most openly crooked President in the history of the Republic a free pass to set new records of corruption.

Whatever happens, this craven, criminal version of what was once called the World's Greatest Deliberative Body cannot be allowed to stand, not in its present form.  If it does, and if (G-d forbid) Trump manages to win a second term, even if the Democrats hold on to the House of Representatives, Trump's perverse behavior will be allowed to destroy whatever is left now of constitutional government in our country.  And if it does, and even if Biden does manage to throw Trump out of the White House, his term is liable to be a nightmare of frustration as McCONnell as his partners in crime hold the line on behalf of the autocracy they wish to create.

Political success, like all other kinds, requires money and, thus far, Biden has done surprisingly better than Trump in raising it.  I say "surprisingly" not because I don't doubt that most of us are sick of Trump but because, historically, money in elections (especially national ones) has historically been a Republican advantage.  But I'm not as sure that the same level of financial success applies to Democratic efforts to retake the Senate.  For a time, Democrats attempting to flip Republican Senate seats seemed to be done well enough in the polls that I considered the possibility that not only would the next Senate have a Democratic majority, but that it might even be large enough to make liberal agonizing over the filibuster a thing of the past.

But, as we get closer to Election Day, and as Republican campaign efforts start to ramp up, the polls in a number of Senate races have tightened significantly--so much so that, as I type this, I cannot say for sure that even a bare-minimum Democratic Senate majority is guaranteed.  And it is for this reason, combined with Biden's apparent financial superiority over Trump, that I am for the moment, not only concentrating my political donations to Democratic (or, in races with a Democrat, independent) Senate candidates attempting to flip Republican seats, but making sure that I give something to every candidate attempting to do so, regardless of how "hopeless" their standing in the polls seems to be.

And I urge all of you, as strongly as I possibly can, to do the same thing, to the very best of your ability.  Don't bankrupt yourself, obviously, and, in your donating, don't forget the presidential or House races.  But the Senate needs to be flipped--to borrow a phrase, for the sake of ourselves, and our posterity.

I've divided these candidates into three groups, and am providing links to the campaign websites.

In the first group, I'm including those candidates that, based on polling, seem to have the best chance of actually flipping the seat for which they're running:  Sara Gideon, Cal Cunningham, Mark Kelly, and John Hickenlooper.  Make sure that you give something to them.

In the second group, I'm including those candidates who are deadlocked with their Republican opponent, or close to being so:  Al Gross, Jon Ossoff, Raphael Warnock, Theresa Greenfield, Barbara Bollier, Amy McGrath, Steve Bullock, Jaime Harrison, and MJ Hegar.  I would urge all of you to find a way to give these candidates a significant amount of money, or other forms of support, especially in the case of McGrath, who is waging a courageous battle against McCONnell, a take-no-prisoners politician.  And I would also suggest doing the same for Doug Jones, who is doing everything he can to hold onto a traditionally Republican seat in Alabama.

In the third group, I'm including those candidates who are, statistically speaking based on polling, unlikely to win their races, but who are still worth supporting (especially compared to the alternatives) as good people, and as an exercise in political party-building in severely red states whose citizens need all of the help they can get.  And, as some of these people are progressive, the progressive dead-enders can and should treat those races as opportunities to put their money where their mouths and typing fingers are, and prove that they can make a difference.  In any case, here they are:  Dan Whitfield, Paulette Jordan, Adrian Perkins, Mike Espy, Preston Love, Jr., Abby Broyles, Dan Ahlers, Marquita Bradshaw, Paula Jean Swearengin, and Merav Ben-David.  Whitfield and Love are write-in candidates, but don't let that stop you.

In fact, don't let anything stop you, if you can afford it.  I don't think any of us can afford to do nothing to support these candidates.  Many of them are flying well below the media radar and, while that can be a liability, it can also be an asset; if Republicans and the media ignores these races, it could open up opportunities for Democrats and progressives to create a few election-day surprises.  Perhaps a lot of them.

It's up to you, as it always has been and (G-d willing) always should be.

Do it.

"Will The Future Ever Arrive?"

Will the future ever arrive?...Should we continue to look upwards?  Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished?  The ideal is terrifying to behold, lost as it is in the depths, small isolated, a pin-point, brilliant but threaten on all sides by the dark forces that surround it; nevertheless, no more in danger than the star in the jaws of the clouds.                                                                                                                                                                --Victor Hugo

I have been a--well, call it what you will, but I have been a "progressive," a "liberal," a "reformer," and yes, a Democrat, and in some ways even a socialist, for as long as I've been actively interested in politics, which is to say since the 1968 presidential election.  I turned 64 this past Tuesday, at a time in our history when we as a people, and as individuals, face multiple challenges.  Individually, each of these challenges are powerful enough to serve as the definition of an entire era.  Collectively, they may be powerful enough to rip the fabric of this country to pieces, and turn what we have called the United States of America into just another historic relic, another failed attempt at a just and prosperous society no more meaningful or influential than any failed society that preceded it.

In no particular order:

Our streets are filled with the anguished voices of people whose civil rights have been withheld for centuries;

Our economy is in the worst condition it has been in since the Great Depression;

Our health is menaced by a pandemic whose boundaries, as of this point, are beyond our ken, with no long-term solution in sight;

And our planet itself is threatened by the poisons we have produced in our desire to consume without consequences.

Any of these disasters, and certainly all of them taken together, are overwhelming enough to give rise across the political spectrum for demands to take political action.  Unsurprisingly, especially in an age when the power to reach the rest of the world is literally in everyone's hands, those demands are not in short supply.  Nor should they be, however inarticulate some of them may be.

What result?  Stalemate.

We have two political parties.  One of them conducts political discussion and action like a graduate seminar, for which the point is to endlessly research, opine, and discuss what might be the intellectually perfect solution to all human problems, without ever expending much practical effort, and sacrifice, to find out if any of the discussions have produced ideas that work.  The other one conducts political discussion and action like a crime syndicate, for which the only point is the maintenance of its own prefered position in the scheme of things, a state of affairs it always describes as the only possible state.  And any debate about that state of affairs is effectively thwarted by the fact that, in true crime-syndicate fashion, it has effectively bought out every branch of government at every level.

And horrible as all of this is, it would be less horrible were it not for the one segment of our society that is affected by, yet not really at home with, either of our two woefully deficient parties.

Poor white men.  Men who long for a world in which they can feel prosperous and powerful simply by way of the fact that they are white men.  Men who, having been born into a constitutional structure that renounces aristocracy, yearn to be part of an aristocracy, yearn to feel powerful simply by dint of identity, and feel that, if government is to have any value at all, it is to make them feel that way, whether as well-paid factory workers, or well-heeled plantation owners.  Nothing matters for these men except the raw feeling of "being on top."

Once upon a time, they were New Deal Democrats, in an age when the Democratic Party was content to make merely token efforts to empower women and people of color.  When the politics of the New Deal morphed into those of the Great Society, they began the long transition into being Reagan Democrats, hoping to find shelter in a party that promised, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, to protect them against "the other"  And, when they finally figured out that their new "home" had no real room for anyone except the folks that already owned it, they threw out the owners and became Trump Republicans, men so filled with rage from their self-deceptions that, like their new leader, they could think of doing nothing but tearing the house down, if only to ensure that "the other" could never feel comfortable in it.

Will the future ever arrive?

The past can serve as a guide to the future.  In some ways, that's the most fundamental truth contained in conservative politics.  What does America's past tell us about ourselves, that might be useful in working our way through the crises of our current moment.

We have always been a society hungry for reform.  We have also always been a society hungry for the power that can be wielded and maintained through the ownership of property.  We have often been resorted to violence in cases where that ownership was either threatened or thwarted.  And we have ultimately been a society which has needed the so-called "heavy hand" of government to both restore order and to implement changes needed to ensure either the protection or expansion of the social, economic, and political power that comes with the ability to hold and acquire property interests.

Don't believe me?  Take a look here.

I'm not writing this to give you a cherry, chipper, we've-been-through-this-before lecture.  I have no wish to belittle the magnitude of our present crises, individually and in combination.  I do it to remind all of us, perhaps even myself, that their are two essential ingredients to overcome any crisis or series of them.

Not giving up.  And voting.

Not giving up can be hard.  Voting shouldn't be hard, save for the fact that the aforementioned crime syndicate is making is so.  But both of these things have never been more essential than they are now.

And, in any event, the two of them in combination are the only possible way to ensure that the future will arrive.

The Impact Of Watching Two Conventions

In a country as divided as ours, watching the Democratic and Republican national conventions back-to-back is bound to give anyone a severe case of psychological whiplash.  And that has been very much the case with me.

The week before the past one, I watched the Democratic convention and, as a Democrat and a progressive, I found myself genuinely inspired by not only the positive and, above all, unified nature of the message presented by Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and their allies all over the nation.  Likewise, I was inspired by the use of technology to overcome the sense of isolation generated by the pandemic, and give all of us a feeling that, however physically separated we are in this awful moment of history, we are all on the same page when it comes to how we move forward from it.  In particular, I liked the way the traditional roll call of the states became not a collection of party bosses in an arena, but a wide range of ordinary Americans from different locals in all states and territories.  It's safe to say, judging from the public reaction to that part of the convention, that this approach may become the norm even when we get into a post-pandemic world.

By this time last weekend, I found myself almost being able to remember what this country was like when it wasn't in thrall to a rancid cult of personality.  I found myself almost being able to visualize a world in which, once again, every day felt that way.

It didn't take long for the Republican Party to put a giant dent in all of that.  I'm not going to re-hash the details, since that makes me feel like I'm doing the bad guy's work for them.  But I have to admit that the rancid content of the robotic speeches, combined with the narcissistic abuse of public property for personal glory, pounded into television audiences over four days, was almost more than I can bear, even as I write this.  Even worse was the typical MSM lapping-up of it, even to the point of allowing conservatives to turn the tragic shooting of Jacob Blake and the violent aftermath into an endorsement of conservatives, who are responsible for the culture of violence in the first place.

All of this too all of the air out of my sails, the air that the Democratic convention had put there in the first place.  In my worst moments, it was almost enough to make me root for this to happen.

And then, last night, I learned of the tragically premature death of Chadwick Boseman, the gifted Black actor who brought heroes as real as Jackie Robinson, and as fictional as the Black Panther, to life.

My initial reaction was the feeling of yet another brick being dropped into the load of suffering all of us are carrying right now.  But then, I learned about how, over the past five years, while he was battling colon cancer, he was still able to bring all of those heroes to life.  That's the kind of accomplishment that tells death not to be proud.  That's the kind of accomplishment that will keep his work and his memory alive.

And it's something for all of us to keep in our mind and hearts right now, in what feels like a pit of despair that no one can climb out of.

We owe it to ourselves, to those who came before us, to those who will come after us, to fight as hard as Boseman--and T'Challa, for that matter--fought to keep love, and hope, and peace, and plenty alive and well.  Whatever happens, if we do so, we'll find a victory worth whatever it takes to get to it.

VOTE!

GET OTHERS TO VOTE!

WAKANDA FOREVER!

The Future Of The Never-Trumpers

What happens to all of the Never-Trump Republicans and conservatives if Donald Trump's time as President comes to an end on November 3?  

It's a question I've been thinking about for a while, even before the pandemic radically changed the dynamics of this fall's election.  Frankly, it's hard for me not to regard them with a very mixed array of feelings.  These are the same people who courted what we now summarize as the Trump vote for decades, knowing all about the bigoted and otherwise crazy views that motivates this voter cohort, but regarding it as a kind of political plutonium that they could manipulate in each election cycle in order to maintain their own grip on power, and never imagining for a minute that they could somehow let it get so far away from them that it would, in effect, swallow their own party and turn it into a nightmare that threatens everyone. They have been systematically feeding this monster for almost the length of my entire soon-to-be-64-year life, and now it's out of the cage, never to return.

Never to return?  I'm not entirely convinced that the Never-Trumpers look at it that way.  Rather, I think they view their momentary anti-Trump alliance with Democrats and Republicans as basically one of convenience.  Perhaps it was most eloquently and concisely expressed by George Will a few weeks back on Lawrence O'Donnell's MSNBC program, "The Last Word."  Will stated that he was going to be voting for Joe Biden on November 3, not in support of Biden's agenda, or that of the Democratic Party, but as a endorsement of democracy and of someone who could restore the pre-Trump political order, in which Democrats and Republicans could do partisan battle in a world in which neither had to worry about an American fifth column.

Will's candor, as well as his commitment to real democracy, are admirable, especially since they have the effect, among other things, of formally accepting Democrats and their views as being tolerable within a truly free society.  Frankly, that's not something he has always seemed to say in the past, nor is that a point on which many of his conservative colleagues would agree with him, especially when it comes to his position that all Republicans have to be voted out.  Some of them, at the very least, still seem to view the Republican Party as something that can somehow be salvaged, and object to the idea of voting it completely out of office.  Peggy Noonan, for example, seems to take this view, as though there was nothing wrong with the party that finding another Ronald Reagan and revisiting the politics of the '80s was enough to cure everything.

It won't.  The 80's are gone, as there is almost no New Deal left to rebel against except Social Security, and Trump's unilateral payroll-tax cut threatens the existence of even that.  And there is no ex-New-Deal-Democrat-turned-Republican, like Reagan, to inspire confidence in so-called "Reagan Democrats."  What's left of the GOP is a political apparatus whose leaders care only about maintaining the grip of the investing class on the rest of us, since their support of that grip helps to maintain their cushy jobs on Capitol Hill and elsewhere.  You have only to look at the reflexive support for Trump from Mitch McCONnell's Senate, through impeachment, a pandemic, and a depression to see the truth of that.

I will be the first to admit that I have enjoyed the fruits of the Never-Trump movement, especially its influence on voting trends by way of advertising, such as the work being done by the Lincoln Project.  It feels good to see all of that razor-edge Republican marketing expertise being used against Trump.  But, one way or another, it's not going to last beyond November 3.

And then what?

Does the Never-Trump movement transform itself into a third, moderate-to-conservative party, one that focuses on conservative tax and defense policies while accepting some form of a social welfare state? Or does it enter into some kind of an alliance with the Democratic Party, trying to pull it slightly to the right on those policies in return for a commitment to at least a part of the progressive agenda, such as single-payer health insurance, something that is supported in Europe even by conservative parties?

I honestly don't know which one of these alternatives is more likely to win out.  I'm not even entirely sure which one would be best for the nation--or, for that matter, the narrowly partisan interests of the Democratic Party.  I can say this much:

Forget about nostalgia for the Age of Reagan.  It is over, and it will not come back.

That is a truth that Never Trumpers have to face, in making decisions about how to go forward.

And if they are interested in talking about an alliance?

Well, I can think of at least one progressive Democrat willing to have that conversation.

Pull Out All The Stops Against The Godfather In The Oval Office

In the age of Trump, there's never a shortage of topics for posts.  Ordinarily, that would make it difficult to select a topic for the coming week.  Or, I might just choose not to right about the Orange Iguana and, for a change of pace, write about something positive, such as Vice President Joe Biden's selection of Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate.  After all, for about twenty-four hours after I heard about the Biden-Harris ticket, I felt as though I had been magically been transported out of Trumpland, as least emotionally, and had gone back to the world in which politics could be a vehicle for progress.

But that feeling didn't last very long  And, for the same reason, although there are still a smorgasbord of topics to chose from, there's only one topic I can write about right now.

And that is the existential threat to our democratic elections currently being posed by Trump, who has become the Godfather in the Oval Office.

I'll explain exactly why I call him that in a few moments.  Right now, I want to comment on the systemic destruction of a constitutionally-mandated function for the sole purpose of rigging the fall elections:  the destruction, more specifically, of the U.S. Postal Service.

At a time when the nation in under siege from a pandemic with no national plan to combat it, a siege so severe that the United States has become an international pariah for travel purposes, a siege so severe that the American economic engine is almost literally running on empty, a siege so severe that millions of us are living in our homes in fear for their lives, and those of their families, it faces an election that matters like none before it.  The ability of every adult citizen to vote has never been more essential.  And there is only one means by which to ensure that ability:  voting by mail.

Voting by mail has taken place in U.S. elections for decades without any serious problems or objections to the practice.  It's the means by which Americans overseas--including, and especially, military personnel--are able to vote.  It possesses one major advantage over electronic voting:  it creates a paper trail beyond the reach of hackers, domestic and foreign.  There are already five states in which voting by mail is the only way to vote, and voting takes place in those states without partisan objections, or any at all.

And the Post Office is one of the most well-regarded agencies of the federal government.  It touches the lives of every American, every day, and plays a vital role not only in the nation's commerce, but also the personal lives of our must vulnerable citizens, in providing the delivery of necessities from Social Security checks to medicine for veterans.  It delivers millions of gifts each holiday season on time; in fact, in one movie (not counting remakes), it has even been able to prove the existence of Santa Claus.

That scene from the original "Miracle on 34th Street" includes one moment not included in the clip:  a statement by Santa's attorney that attests not only to the Post Office's efficiency, but also to the fact that federal law criminalizes the misdirection or misdelivery of U.S. mail.

Which is exactly what Donald Trump is doing, right now, in broad daylight, and brazenly admitting it on television.  Moreover, he's not just doing it passively, by refusing to authorize additional funding for the Post Office; he's also authorizing his hand-picked, conflicted Postmaster General to systematically vandalize postal facilities around the country.  And today, to top it all off, he held a news conference at which he said he'd consider agreeing to additional Post Office funding if Democrats made other coronavirus relief concessions.  Presumably, this would include the unlimited corporate coronavirus liability that Mitch McCONnell earlier stated was the hill he would die on.

Donald Trump is literally holding the existence of the American system of government for ransom.  This is what Mafia Dons do, which is probably why his first name feels so appropriate.  And that is why I stated, earlier, that we have a Godfather in the Oval Office.  Of course, Mafia dons also demand percentages of business deals that take place in their "territories."  If only Trump was guilty of something like that ... oh, wait!

Democrats need to get off their political duffs.  Hearings, subpoenas, and the generous use of the Sergeant-at-Arms have to be the order of the day.  And the rest of us?  We have to be in the streets, in the faces of Republican office holders, and yes, at the door of the Postmaster General.

We are under the thumb of the most sophisticated crime syndicate in world history.  The only way to get out from under that thumb is to fight.

And, Speaking Of The Filibuster ...

... as I promised in my previous post, I have more to say here about how Democrats who want to move the country forward can do so without worrying about the potential for filibuster abuse standing in the way.

Budget bills--anything dealing with raising revenue and/or spending it--cannot be filibustered, and, as a consequence, have been used (some would say abused) by both parties to accomplish goals that might be thwarted by way of a filibuster in a non-budget bill.  The Republicans launched this approach in passing taxes cuts under George W. Bush, and used it again to get tax cuts under Donald Trump.  In between, Barack Obama and congressional Democrats used it to get the Affordable Care Act into law.  So, whether the use of the budgeting process to achieve partisan goals without fear of a filibuster is wise, or fair, or desirable is something of a moot point.  Both parties have ratified it as a means to multiple ends, and so it has now become.

So, if the filibuster is, in some form, left in place, what hope does the budget process offer for getting past the Mitch McCONnells of the world, and enacting a progressive agenda for the nation?

Plenty.

As was the case in particular with the passage of the Affordable Care Act, making use of the budget process for this purpose involves a certain amount of what I would charitably describe as creativity.  The bill in question has to be one that principally has an impact on the federal budget, either to raise revenue or to spend it.  If it strays too far from that purpose, its opponents can request a ruling from the Senate parliamentarian as to whether the bill's impact is primarily budgetary in nature.  If the parliamentarian says that it does not, the bill then becomes subject to the filibuster rule.  In fact, during the sausage-like process that led to the so-called Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, modifications were made in consultation with the Senate parliamentarian to ensure that it would not be subject to a filibuster.

It's at this point that I'm inviting you to read this, if you have not done so already.

As a consequence of climate change, refugees and asylees are going to be a fact of life, whether we want them to be or not.  It is not a choice for them.  It's not going to be a choice for any of us.  And, whatever policy direction we choose to take, that choice is going to cost a great deal of money.  And, if we choose to go in the direction that is consistent with our heritage, as well as our humanity, we can use the budget power of Congress, filibuster-free, to fund an immigration system with more staff to process visa applications and adjudicate asylee cases, and a combination of lower fees along with streamlined rules to make entering and leaving the country on a legal basis simpler and more likely.  

And, in saying this as a principal in an immigration firm, I'm actually speaking against my self-interest.  A system like the one I'm describing would be less dependant on lawyers.

There's no reason, in fact, why this basic approach couldn't be utilized across other issues that matter to progressives.  Climate change means that people are on the move, but science has been on the move with it, and has given us the means to fight it sustainable energy and renewable resources.  The budget process can, as it already has, be utilized to promote the development of both industries--and, at the same time, provide jobs, including jobs in areas with historic underdevelopment and unemployment (including, of course, neighborhoods with a high percentage of people of color).

I am, in one sense, getting ahead of myself with all of this.  Progressive policies, in any case, require a government led by progressive leaders.  That means winning elections, and doing it in a time of corruption in our politics that has no historical parallel.  But that state of affairs just makes it all the more important to spare no effort--no fair effort--to ensure that a government led by progressive leaders is exactly what we have as of this coming January 20.

And, when that happens, not let the filibuster rule stop us from giving the American people the rule of law they've been denied for the past three-and-a-half years.

The Filibuster: Mend It, Don't End It?

I'm a Democrat.  The Republicans control the Senate.  So why would I want to write a post about filibuster reform?  The Democrats aren't in a position to do anything about it.

Or are they?

I'm not one to tempt fate, however tempting it may be to do so.  However, pu! pu! pu! (and with a pause to knock on wood, which I just did), current polling suggests that my party has at least a theoretical chance of taking control of the Senate away from Mitch McCONnell next January.  This might not be the best week to lean too hard on that thought, as recent polling has undermined it to a small degree.  Nevertheless, it's there.

Which has raised some media discussion (including, of course, Web discussion) about the idea of doing away with the Senate's filibuster rule in the event that happens, thus giving a Democratic President and a Congress with complete Democratic control a chance to successfully address every legislative goal with a simple majority vote.  In fact, recently, the idea got a very powerful boost from Barack Obama.  In delivering his eulogy for the late, legendary John Lewis, the former president not only endorsed the idea in surprisingly strong rhetoric, but went so far as to link the filibuster itself with systemic discrimination against African-Americans.  (On a side note, I'm glad to see Obama use his post-presidency to say things he felt that he dared not say while he was in office, though I will always deeply regret his decision to wait that long in saying them.)

It's not entirely true that the filibuster was created specifically for the purpose of promoting racism, although it is certainly true that it was used well into the previous century for precisely that purpose.  You can find a good discussion of the rule's history here, in an article which also argues for its abolition.  But it is certainly true that filibusters are still being launched today with that goal in mind, and, even worse, they have been used over the past decade (thanks to Mitch) as little more than a single-minded tool of partisan opposition, in an attempt to realize short-term political gains at the expense of the long-term (and even short-term) needs of the entire nation.

It's tempting to look at the fact that McCONnell is the author of this misery, and hope that, if he loses his race this year for re-election, all might be well again, or at least better.  But it's a pretty resistible temptation, as far as I'm concerned.  For one thing, although he has a strong challenger in Amy McGrath, he has maintained enough of an advantage over her in opinion surveys that give him anywhere from a statistically insignificant lead to a gargantuan one.  But there's another reason for resisting temptation:  McCONnell, who has been an at-the-hip partner with Donald Trump from the very beginning of Trump's term in office, has helped him corrupt nearly the entire Republican Party, including every Republican member of the Senate.  Any successor to him as leader of the Republican caucus would not hesitate to go on engaging in filibuster abuse.  Only a 60-member Democratic caucus would stop that successor, and the chances of getting a 60-member Democratic caucus are, to amend a cliche, not even slim.

And too, as McCONnell himself is fond of reminding all of us (but mostly Democrats), the filibuster rule has always been a two-edged sword, which means that any attempts to modify it are also a two-edged sword.  You'll know exactly what I'm talking about if you remember what ol' Mitch did with Harry Reid's modification of the rule as it applied to non-Supreme Court judicial nominees.  What Reid did was understandable and justified, under the circumstances.  But it also gave us Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh for life on the highest court in the land.

So, if the Democrats get a Senate majority out of this election along with a President Joe Biden, what should they do?  Especially if the majority consists of little more than 50 Democrats plus Vice President Whoever-She's-Going-To-Be?

Don't end it.  Mend it.

Here are several ways.

1.  Wait until after the election, to see exact how many seats (if any) the Democrats will gain.  If it's as high enough to give them a 55-seat majority, make that the cut-off for ending or prolonging debate.  The number, like the rule itself, isn't etched in constitutional stone.  As noted in the Atlantic article, it used to take a two-thirds majority to end debate, before that was changed to the current three-fifths cut-off.  Thus, it would still require more than a majority to end debate, but it would be a more reasonable, more achievable number.  It would still serve a counter-majoritarian purpose, but not a crushing one.

2.  Require Senators who want to mount a filibuster to take the floor and attempt to hold it, a la Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington." Frankly, this is my favorite option.  It's not dependent on a specific numerical standard, one that may or may not be advantageous at varying times.  It requires Senators to put themselves, their debating skills, and their reputations on the line for the sake of a given cause.  And it also subjects them to the pressure of intervening events, e.g., deadlines on certain must-pass bills.  Moreover, it need not require the stamina of one Senator to sustain a filibuster; a Senator could be allowed to yield to a sympathetic colleague, who, in turn, could be permitted to continue it while still attempting to hold the floor for as long as possible.

3.  If all else fails, become more creative in making parliamentary arguments that given bills should be considered budget-related, and thus, under existing Senate rules, not be subjected at all to the potential for a filibuster.  What are some examples of this?

I'll have more to say about that in my next post.  To borrow a phrase from Rachel Maddow, watch this space.

IT. MUST. END. ON. NOVEMBER. 3RD.

In Trumpworld, it seems, there is no bottom.

On a day when a national hero and treasure named John Lewis is laid to rest, an occasion for which every OTHER living former U.S. President is present, either in person or, in the case of Jimmy Carter, in writing, Donald Trump floats the idea of doing something we have never done, not even during the Civil War:  postponing a national election.

Postponing it until when?  Until Putin can find a time to airlift you from the White House and slip you off to enjoy lifetime immunity "for services rendered" in your own personal dacha?

Hell, no.  Hell, never.

Especially not when your Ambassador to the Netherlands is waxing poetic on Twitter about the fates of Nazi soldiers.  By the way, Donald, you'd better get used to hearing about The Hauge:  if most of us have our way, you'll be spending an awful lot of time there.  And what is it about Republican Presidents and Nazi cemeteries, anyway?

And the reaction to this idea from your fellow Republicans in Congress?  To run away from it, or in some of the most heinous cases, offer "no comment."  On the day our economy truly falls off the cliff, they're too busy focusing on the number one obsession not of the American people, but of their campaign donors:  liability immunity from pandemic litigation.

I join with the Never-Trump Republicans in offering four simple words.

Throw.  Them.  All.  Out.  On November 3rd, and not a day later.

And, to leave you for the month of July with some sweeter thoughts, I'll let Congressman Lewis have the last word, by way of the New York Times.

G-d bless us all.  G-d save our nation.

Politics Is Generational, Or, A Tale Of Two Representatives

And, to continue with the Dickensian allusion in the title, I believe that, at least when it comes to the composition of the House of Representatives, it actually is the best of times and the worst of times.  Here's why I feel that way.

I have, for a long time, felt that all politics are not merely local, but generational as well.  Each generation comes of age looking at the world and deciding, correctly, that there is plenty of room for improvement, and they set about doing so in whatever ways are open to them.  Typically, those ways are indeed local; who doesn't know by now, after all, that Barack Obama started out as a community organizer?  It is, to borrow a phrase, by thinking globally and acting locally that we start to think about what problems in the world bother us the most, and start talking to those around us about how to go about solving them.  We organize.  We raise money.  We march.  We speak out publicly, in person and in print.  We network, using our contacts to reach those in both financial and political power to press our demands, and (if we're at least a little bit clever) make it clear that our demands are not necessarily inconsistent with theirs.

In short, we understand, and hope that the proverbial powers-that-be can be made to understand, that life is a kind of baton race, and the two most essential skills in that race are (a) taking the baton from the previous generation, and (b) ensuring that, when the time comes, it's handed off to the next generation, to build upon what has been given to them.

The transition from one generation to the next is not something that happens in a single moment.  One can see various signs of it happening over a long period of time, and yet it is not always obvious as to what the moment of transition actually is.  For a little over a decade now, pollsters and other statisticians have been telling us that millennials have begun to supplant Boomers (my cohort) in the center of American cultural life, and their entry into the political realm has reached the point of occupying political offices.

I think, however, that the past week could be said to be perhaps the moment.  First, with sorrow and deep respect, an acknowledgement of the worst of times.

G-d saw fit to take John Lewis home this week.  G-d knows that Congressman Lewis has earned the rest.  Much has been said about his central role in the American civil rights movement, especially his participation as a speaker at the March on Washington, and a leader in the crossing of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.  I will not take up space here to recount what has been more than adequately recounted elsewhere about the details of his remarkable life.  I will, however, make one point about him relevant to what I've discussed so far, and that illustrates at the same time how special he was. 

John Lewis was all about handing off the baton to the next generation.  He understood that the cause for which he fought his entire life would not be won in a single lifetime.  He understood that the lessons he learned and the example would be set must be shared and continued by those who would come after him.  He grew old, but he did not age; he had much to look back on, but he continued to look forward.  And those are precisely the reasons why he was willing to do something that not many senior citizens would do:  namely, this.  His courage, about which much has been said, walked hand-in-hand, on the mall in Washington, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and everywhere else in his life, with humility and hope.

At a time in our history when, perhaps to an unprecedented degree, we as a people are ready to confront the structural racism of our society and not merely make amends, but long-overdue changes as well, it seems almost unconscionable to lose him, on top of the earlier loss of Elijah Cummings.  At a time in our history when the American people are at war (no softer term will suffice) with an Administration that wears its naked bigotry with the shamelessness of a pole dancer, we have been robbed of precisely the leadership we need to capitalize on this moment and make the most of it.

It's enough to make anyone search the heavens and scream "Why now, Lord?"

And I think the answer is as simple as this:  because we're ready to move forward without them.

And that, in turn, allows me to move on to a discussion of the best of times.  Which, perhaps unsurprisingly, involves Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

I've followed national politics for more than 50 years, and I have never seen a first-year member of the House live rent-free in so many Republicans heads as AOC has.  Some would probably ascribe that to her allegedly "radical" politics--which, in fact, as demonstrated by poll results, aren't really as "radical" as one might think, unless one only thinks about one's capital gains.  Some, inclined to a more sinister (or, arguably, more realistic) perspective on what motivates people, would say that it continues the march of people of color into dominance of American life.  AOC has even been told by our "President" to go back to where she came from, even though both of them come from New York.  And I'll concede that both of those things are part of the perpetual hatred of her.

But, when you overtake even Nancy Pelosi as a boogeywoman for Republican fundraising purposes, I submit that there's more going on here than mere partisanship or bigotry.  There's something else about AOC that drives the GOP mad.  And it's this.

For a first-year member, AOC is simply extraordinarily good at doing her job.  In the parlance of contemporary youth, AOC is simply boss.  Take, for example, her ability to take apart witnesses in committee hearings.  Don't believe me; take a look here.

Far better:  take a look here.  Having suffered a feeble, sophomoric, ultimately obscene attempt by a pitiful Republican representative to gain media space at the expense of her character, AOC says everything that needed to be said to send the representative in question and his comments packing.  She does much more here than speak like an adult; she speaks like someone who is already a leader.  She takes the juvenile attempt to intimidate her and turns it into a defense of an entire generation's right to self-respect.

I said this on Twitter this past week, and I'll say it again.  You can mark my words:  unless she decides to take off for a gig in another area, AOC will one day be Speaker of the House.  And we'll all be the luckier for it.

Perhaps that's why I think G-d was ready to take Lewis, as well as Cummings.  They've handed off the baton to the next generation.  And AOC is showing that the next generation is ready to make the most of it.

I wish her well, and all of her generational colleagues.  I worry about the extent to which Boomers, now the beneficiaries of the greatest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history (full disclosure:  that includes me) have largely formed a generation of lotus-eaters, reaping without sowing, consuming without building, swallowing everything whole and leaving nothing for those who come after us.

I hope and pray that we can, at this late stage of the game, find our inner relay-runner as a generation, and do the best we can to pass the baton.

Republicans: The Viciously Stupid And The Venemous Sell-Outs

I'm a big believer in not tempting fate, so I'm going to preface my next statement by knocking on would and giving a hearty pu!  pu!  pu!  to the Evil Eye.  But, with the advent of the second half of an election year, we are now safely at the point where we can start to look at meaningful polls of the national political mood.  And, cautiously, mindful of the lessons from 2016, I'm willing to say that the lion's share of what's available is good news for Joe Biden, the Democratic Party, and their supporters around the country.  Without losing sight of either the need for caution or the lessons of four years ago, it's therefore worth taking a little time and effort to wrestle with an essential question:

What next?

I'm not referring to the eternal question faced by all Democratic Administrations and Congress:  how far to the left should they go?  Curiously, that might be less of a problem in 2021 and beyond than at any previous time within my lifetime.  That's largely attributable to the universal loathing among party elected officials and their supporters for all things Trump, so it may not be all that curious.

But it overlooks an important point:  even if this fall's election produces a Democratic blowout that make 1936 and 1964 seem pitiful by comparison, it isn't going to change a fact that would be dangerous to forget.

The other side isn't going away.

If G-d is good to the Democrats, and therefore to the nation, it is not enough to be unified on what we as members of a progressive party want to accomplish once we control the levers of power again.  It is absolutely essential to remember that nothing may be accomplished unless we are prepared to battle and defeat the two components of the modern conservative movement:

The viciously stupid, and the venomous sell-outs.  By which I mean, the Republican base, and the politicians they choose to trust.  No matter what happens this fall, they're not going anywhere.  And, if/once they've been disempowered, the last thing on their minds will be working with a new government to turn the country around and move it forward.

Let's take a few moments to look at their most recent activities, so that we don't lose sight of what we're up against.  We'll start with the sell-outs.

They've sold out all of us in numerous ways, but mainly by selling themselves to Trump, whose need to be worshiped at the expense of everything else has poisoned every branch of our government with corruption that will take years, at the very least, to clean out.

This week, we had a spectacular example from the Supreme Court, which neatly reaffirmed the President's duties to turn over evidence, but managed to do so in a way that protects him and other Republicans from any electoral consequences this year.  And his hand-picked Associate Justices, who are not under Court rules required to recuse themselves, naturally did not do so, although they did join the majority in ruling against Trump's claims to immunity from congressional subpoena power.

As a reminder, in case it's needed, this is on the heels of Mitch McCONnell and Senate Republicans running a protection racket for Trump at his impeachment trial, as well as a similar racket for Capitol statutes of traitors.  And House Republicans lined up behind an Attorney General who sees himself as the President's lawyer, and not the nation's lawyer.

So, there aren't sufficient congressional or judicial checks of an Administration whose sins begin with its role as a foreign agent, one that can't even stand up for our men and women in uniform when bounties are placed on their heads.  In fact, the Senate supports Trump in this role, by working to remove the ban on foreign aid in our elections, and openly defending his unwillingness to confront his principal with regard to the bounties.

While Trump has led the way in poisoning our system of government, the way for him was in fact paved for him by establishment Republicans, then and now.  Those establishment figures can whine all they want about they've someone been forced into this every step of the way, but the truth of the matter is that their own lust for maintaining power guided every one of those steps.

And, as a result, we have a crime syndicate instead of a government, one that has no mercy even for children, nor any regard for those who have served our country loyally and with distinction.  When loyalty and competence get in the syndicate's way, they do what they always do:  resort to threats.  And, instead, reward those who break the law on their behalf.

So much for the sell-outs.  Now for the stupid.

Police officers nakedly proud of their bigotry, and unembarrassed in the face of massive public condemnation to continue their brutal behavior.

Evangelical churches that exalt conservativism over Christianity, and turn their children into living sacrifices on the altar of their idolatry.

A ludicrous unwillingness to respect basic science in everyday settings in the simplest possible ways, or even show tolerance to people who are just going about their lives.  Social media is rife with examples of this.  I will spare you a comprehensive catalogue of links, in no small part because I'm sure that each of you has your own, but I will share a few that really jumped out at me:  here, here, and especially here, with the latter link vividly illustrating the extent to which the Trump era has freed America's bigots to fly their freak flag under any and all circumstances.  It seems to have reached a point at which to be a Trump follower is to literally have a death wish without regard to the impact of that wish on others (an embarrassing example from my home state of Maryland).  Perhaps it has gone past the point of recklessness with regard to the safety of others.

One is forced to wonder how they would feel if they knew that the same President who's telling them that they don't need to worry about the pandemic is going to every possible length to personally protect himself--and only himself--from the virus at its heart.  Or that the money that is supposed to take care of working Americans is going to Republican supporters who advocate against taking money from Washington.  Or that the same Republicans pushing children back into schools that may or may not be safe aren't planning to take a chance on the medical safety of their party's national convention?

Between the corruption of Republican officer holders, and the ignorance of the people who support them, it has become painfully clear what Republicans have always stood for, beyond the empty rhetoric about limited government, personal responsibility, and traditional values.  Power.  For themselves.  And no one else.  If the current crisis has done nothing else, it has exposed that reality for all time.

This is not only why those in a Biden Administration should not try to wish the Trump era away if/when it takes power.  Indeed, it will not even have doing so as a true choice.  They will still be surrounded by the stupid and the sell-outs.  And they will need the clarity of vision, the rhetoric and other tools and, above all, the sheer gumption required to fight them, every step of the way.

Reframing The Past: How Far Should We Go?

It doesn't bring back the dead, and it's otherwise grossly insufficient comfort for their survivors.  But it is one of many, many steps that we, as a people and a nation, need to take in order to right centuries of wrongs to people of color, including not only indigenous peoples, but those from other continents that we systematically enslaved.

I'm talking about the removal of public monuments to Confederate leaders, and to others who participated in the slave trade, as well as the removal of other cultural artifacts that are inherently offensive to peoples of color.  The latter encompasses a range of items, from the use of "blackface" in films and television programs, to the offensive depictions of slaves in entertainment and advertising, to the use of derogatory names for certain ethnicities as nicknames for sports teams.  In many cases, making the changes we need to make means disrupting memories, and personal attachments, that white people have spent decades and even centuries forming.  That has often been used as an excuse for not doing the right thing.  That should never have been the case, and it can no longer be allowed to stand.

Inevitably, this brings up a question:  How far should we go?  Well, the obvious answer, and fundamentally the correct one, is as far as necessary.  But that inevitably leads to a related question:  exactly how far is that?

I think that the answer to that question is as varied as the specific area of our culture that we're talking about.

Monuments, frankly, are easy calls.  And, in saying that, I want to emphasize two things.  First, I think that this should be done by peaceful, lawful means.  Those who are advocating an end to symbols of hatred do themselves, and the rest of us, no favors when they resort to tactics outside of the boundaries of the law to advance their goals.  There's reason enough for rage when it comes to the monuments, especially given their role in the promotion of Jim Crow laws.  Using violence to remove them undermines the respect for American values that motivate the movement to remove them in the first instance.  It animates the protests with rage rather than reason, and ultimately leads to such completely counter-productive actions like tearing down the statue of Ulysses S. Grant.  Yes, Grant owned one slave, which he inherited and promptly freed.  He also was the general without whom there would have been no victory over the South, and no emancipation of the slaves.

But otherwise?  Yes, every one of them should come down.  Not only those that honor members of the Confederacy, but any that honor slave owners in any way.  Including Presidents.  Yes, I'm very much on the same page with Charles M. Blow on this subject.  If that means renaming the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial in D.C., so be it.  In the case of the latter, perhaps it would be enough to replace the statue of Jefferson with one of Sally Hemmings, so that posterity would have a very graphic contrast between Jefferson's words as inscribed on the walls of the memorial, and his deeds in connection with his slaves.

Team nicknames?  An even easier call.  In heaven's name, what could possibly be the justification for naming a sports team, something that's meant to bring people together for the sake of entertainment, with a word or phrase that commonly functions as an insult to a large portion of the people you're trying to bring together?  This is a battle that's been fought for decades, with very limited results at best.  Two of the most notable fronts in those battles involve the Washington NFL franchise, and the Cleveland MLB franchise.  They have also been the most entractable fronts, especially in the case of the football team.  And yet, perhaps one significant measure of the mood in the post-George Floyd world is that progress is being made on both of them.  It's early yet, and its hard to have a sense of how far this may go  But I have a strong feeling that it will go the proverbial distance, if for no other reason than the fact that the process is now being driven from below, and not above.

Advertising and marketing?  Easier still.  Who really wants to buy pancakes and maple syrup that are being sold with the name and the face of a fictional plantation worker who, by design, is meant to make white people feel superior?  For that matter, who wants to buy rice marketed in an essentially similar way?  If the loss of those images offends your sense of nostalgia, think of how many decades those images have been giving offense to African-Americans for the sake of profit.

"Blackface," and other offensive characterizations in fiction?  This is where the sledding gets a little bit rougher in deciding how to proceed. A bit of full disclosure is required at this point:  I own copies of a series of children's books from the early twentieth century that employ racial caricatures of blacks and Jews, and am wrestling with what to do with them.  I no longer want to keep them, in any case, but am conflicted about how to dispose of them.  To give them away--which I could easily do--would effectively pass along the racism embedded in the books to another generation.  To throw them out--which I could also easily do--feels like the ratification of a practice that could be used, as the Nazis used it, as part of a larger war upon culture itself.

I confess that, at this point, I am not sure how to resolve my personal dilemma, but thinking about it has given me some ideas on how to proceed.  Where the content in question can be removed from the work while preserving the rest of it (as in the case of "30 Rock"), that clearly is the way to go.  Where, as in the case of a film like "Gone With The Wind," the racism is so completely embedded in the work as to essentially be part of its point, exhibition has to be combined with some method of education that effectively counter-programs against the dominant message.

How do you do that?  I'm not honestly sure.  Of this much I am certain:  to ban or destroy all copies of "Gone With The Wind," given the realities of human nature, would have the effect of creating a large and potentially ravenous market not only for the work itself, but perhaps for its message as well.  It's a challenge.  But the twin demands of free speech and racial equality demand that all of us step up and find a way to meet it.

In any case, I repeat:  how far should we go?  And, again, I answer:  as far as necessary.  It's a difficult job, and it's not going to be completed overnight, in any case.  But that, especially weighing the magnitude of the harm that has already been done, is all the more reason why we should get started on it.

And, in the wake of Trump's rancid Mount Rushmore speech this past Friday night, that's the sort of Independence Day sentiment we really need.  Happy 4th, everyone, and make sure that you want the film version of "1776" this weekend!

Donald Trump Must Resign: The Sequel

If the majority of that title sounds familiar to you, it might be because of this, which I published in this space in this space two and a half months ago.  Otherwise known, in the age of digital politics and media, as an eternity.  I'd love to tell you that there was no longer a reason to have to write about this subject again.  I'd like to tell you that, with or without my voice, the demands for Donald Trump's resignation have reached the level at which, even for an individual as narcissistically stubborn as Trump.  I'd like to be able to tell you that, given the rate at which his perfidy geometrically expands on a daily basis, we've moved on to not-much-of-an-improvement Mike Pence in the Oval Office, and have even more hope for the potential that this fall's election can bring.

But I can't.

Because Trump is still where he never should have been in the first place:  holding the fate of the United States, and its people, in his untrustworthy hands.

I know I'm not alone in asking Trump to resign; I see people making the same demand in my Twitter feed on a regular basis.  I know that at least some prominent media figures have made the same demand.  Well, at least one of them, anyway.

This should, at the very least, puzzle many of us.  All the more so, if you take a moment, or longer, to flash back to our political life in the late 1990s.

Back then, we had a President, Bill Clinton, whose extramarital affair with an intern (and subsequent attempts to conceal said affair) led to his becoming only the second president in our 200-plus history to be impeached, and tried in the Senate.  Whether you liked the use of the impeachment process on Clinton (and I didn't), you have to admit that it didn't come to pass as a result of a media vacuum.  Over 100 newspapers used the power of their editorial pages to demand that Clinton spare the nation the trauma of impeachment by resigning.

How many of those newspapers, how many of all newspapers, have been "bipartisan" enough to make the same demand of Trump?  Even more specifically, how many of those newspapers have done so in response to the recent revelation that Trump knew about, and did nothing to stop, his political patron, Vladimir Putin, from paying the Taliban bounties to kill American troops.  Let me repeat that, with emphasis:  paying the Taliban bounties to kill American troops.  Perhaps the ultimate dereliction of presidential duty, and certainly of a far greater moral magnitude than a concealed extramarital affair.  And one that is compounded by the fact that, during the period in which Trump and his team knew about the bounties, he continued to attempt showering Putin with favors.

Well, how many?

{crickets}

That's right, folks.  Zero.

As noted above in the link, this failure has not gone unnoticed by any means.  In fact, CNN has covered this failure of the Fourth Estate, and come up with a whole bunch of mealy-mouthed explanations, ranging from the highly polarized nature of our current decline of bipartisanship to fear of reprisals from Trump fanatics.  In the wake of the Capital Gazette tragedy two summers ago, I can't say that the latter concern is a perfectly unreasonable one.

But it's not good enough, and neither is the polarization excuse.  The Civil War itself did not stop newspapers from publishing editorials.  And the point of having freedom of the press enshrined in our Constitution is to give the press the power to say unpopular things that, despite being unpopular, need to be said and heard  If it's truly the case that, in 21st century America, the decision to let Second Amendment rights trump First Amendment ones has been effectively made then, for all practical purposes, there's no Constitution to defend in the first place.  If the publishers of our nation's newspapers have made the calculation that surrendering some degree of their Constitutional authority will guarantee the economic future of their product, they are desperately wrong.  The truth is that a world filled by the Internet with questionable voices needs to be supplemented--even protected--by as many authoritative ones as possible.

Freedom isn't free.  If media companies need better security at their offices against right-wing fanatics, higher better security, pass along the costs, and be worth paying for in the first place.  The most effective antidote to bad speech, ultimately, is good speech, to paraphrase Justice Louis Brandeis.  Not surrendering speech, and democracy, to the barbarians.

So I hope and pray--and you should at least join me in hoping--that editors and publishers across this country will find a way to screw up what's left of their courage, and do the right thing:  demand what I demanded in April.

Donald Trump must resign.

NOW.

Barr: To Impeach, Or Not To Impeach?

Less than three months ago, I wrote about Bill Barr, the current U.S. Attorney General, officially the people's litigator, and unofficially Roy Cohn's (and Rudy Giuliani's) replacement as fixer-in-chief on behalf of the Commander-in-Cheat (sorry, Rick Reilly).  I denounced his proposal to use the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to suspend the Bill of Rights, and argued that his record overall makes a compelling case for making his office subject to direct elections by the voters, as is the case with its state counterparts.  I concurred with a former deputy Attorney General that Barr's conduct justified and required his resignation.  I did so with the expectation that he would not do so.  You can find all of this, and more, here.

I left unsaid the question of whether or not I thought there was any hope that Barr's abhorrent behavior would improve, or would be checked in any way.  The answer to that question seemed painfully obvious.  But, just in case it wasn't obvious to anyone, recent events have made it painfully clear that the answer is no.

Last weekend began with Barr's botched, comic-opera-level attempt to replace the current U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, a career prosecutor currently investigating several areas of Donald Trump's unsavory life, with a crony who had never prosecuted a case.  Gee whiskers, why would he do something like that?  Couldn't be for the purpose of undermining the aforementioned investigations, could it?

Well, if you still have some doubts about the answers to those questions, consider the fact that, tomorrow (I write this on Monday evening) two other Justice Department employees, one current, the other former, will testify before the House Judiciary Committee about even more Barr-related corruption:  the attempt to interfere with the sentencing in the department's case against Roger Stone, and the hijacking of the department's Antitrust Division for political purposes.

The naked corruption of Barr, played out especially as it has in broad daylight, has reached the level of egregiousness at which faculty members of his law school have publicly denounced him.  Will that stop him?  Of course not.

Only two things can do that.

Option Number One:  we wait until next January, and pray that, in the intervening election, his boss loses to Joe Biden, giving Biden and the Democrats (especially if the party controls both houses of Congress) the chance to finally clean up all aspects of the Trump carnage, including what's been done to the Justice Department.

Option Number Two:  impeachment.

I can literally hear your eyes rolling, even now.  We've been down this road earlier this year, with regard to Barr's boss.  And we all know how that turned out:  Mitch McCONnell and his Senate "colleagues" did their best I'm-not-listening performance and, with near unanimity, let Trump off the hook.  If the House did in fact impeach Barr, there's no reason to expect that the result would be any different.

And, unsurprisingly, the signals on this subject being sent out by some of the key players in the House suggest that, as of now, the consensus among Democrats is that they're not prepared to go through what would admittedly be a study in forgone conclusions.  Jerry Nadler, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee that would be in charge of drafting and sending articles of impeachment to the full house, has already signaled that consensus, citing the corruption of Senate Republicans as the basic reason.  Just recently, Speaker Nancy Pelosi essentially said much the same thing, expressing the view that the question of Barr's corruption, as well as his corruption of the Justice Department, would at this point be best addressed in an election.

Would it?

It's a seductive conclusion, which, in an of itself, is one reason why it should be resisted so vigorously.  By not pursuing impeachment proceedings against Barr, the Democrats avoid the dreaded risk of polarizing the electorate, even though the electorate is already as polarized as it can be.  It would save them time for passing more legislation that would die a lingering death on McCONnell's desk.  It would give them more time to investigate corruption in other agencies of the most corrupt government in the history of the Republic, and allow them to issue subpoenas that, based on their track record to date, they have absolutely no intention of enforcing.

In other words, how much of a real waste of time would it be?

In fact, it would be the exact opposite:  it would provide a showcase that would allow House Democrats, witness by witness and question by question, to dismantle the Potemkin illusion of a functioning executive branch and expose it in broad daylight for what it is, a crime syndicate of the first magnitude.  It would give them the opportunity to issue massive numbers of subpoenas and then take them to court, asking for decisions on the whole lot of them and using the election as a justification for expedited action by the court.  It would create a media narrative that would be impossible to ignore, which in turn would be a campaign asset for Democrats running at every level of government, shaping public and, ultimately, electoral opinion in their favor.

And if, as seems completely likely, the Republican caucus in the Senate wants to walk the plank of perfidy for the sake of "protecting" Barr and Trump, let them.  Let them hold the hammer that puts the last nail in their political coffin.  Bullies have no other recourse when you show them that you are not afraid of them.  In fact, the impeachment process would force not only Senate Republicans to walk that plank but also, by doing so, to follow House Republicans in the process.  Judging by recent events, they seem to be more than willing to do so.

Frankly, all of this seems like pretty obvious stuff to me.  It should be obvious to people like Pelosi and Nadler, who know far more about national politics and the lay of the D.C. land than I do.

Let's hope that this is one sign that it truly is that obvious, and that they end up doing the right thing.  For themselves, and for all of us.