Now We Are Engaged In A Great Civil War

How do you write about the most recent gun violence, without saying the words "again" and "enough"?  You can't, and you shouldn't.

But where do we go from there, with only one political party committed to taking action that would sensibly save lives without infringing on any honest understanding of the Second Amendment, while the other one looks away from the funerals with "thoughts and prayers" while the NRA, a gun-manufacturers' lobbyist group that ironically started life as a gun-safety organization, stuffs campaign cash in its pockets?

The debate we're having now is not about guns generally.  If that was ever a battle, and I don't think it was, it ended a long time ago, and gun-ownership advocates won it handily.  No one objects to the personal defense of one's home or business.  No one (or, at least, almost no one) objects to hunting.  And no one objects to the existence of firing ranges.  I don't object to any of these things.  When it comes to hunting, well, I eat meat, so I would be a hypocrite to object to that.  I shot air rifles in summer camp, and enjoyed it very much.  And, if you live or work in a rough patch, no one's going to object to you taking steps to protect yourself--provided that the steps you take include making sure that any weapons you owned are secured in such a way that someone can't gain access to them in order to misuse them.

Guns are dangerous.  They are weapons.  They are dangerous by design.  This is why they need to be regulated in the first instance.  And the Constitution explicitly fails to blink at this need; it not only recognizes the need to keep arms regulated, but "well-regulated."  Moreover, the Second Amendment provides for regulation even in the context of military use, i.e., the "militia."  Militias are organized.  Militias exist and operate under color of state law.  Militias are not randomly-summoned groups of people who think of firearms as a fashion or party accessory.  Militias are meant to act in response to specific threats against the general public, not members of a particular political party.  

And, when that threat is vanquished, militias are meant to stand down, permit the resumption of civilian life, and be ready for the next threat.  That is why the right to the personal possession of firearms is recognized as a constitutional right in the first place.

Indeed, that is why then-Justice Antonin Scalia struck down, on behalf of the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller, a D.C. statute that forbade all private ownership of guns in the district.  That law went too far; under any understanding of the Second Amendment's terms, it could not pass constitutional muster.  As an attorney, I disagree with the reasoning in Heller, primarily because it strove to diminish the import of the clause regarding regulation, and then left the broader question of whether any gun regulation is constitution to dicta that states, outside of the ambit of the Court's legal holding, that there are many reasons why government should be able to regulate guns.  This was based on a cramped philosophy of statutory construction, which somehow treated the "well-regulated" clause as purely introductory, while failing to construe that the right preserved in the Amendment is a right of "the people" and not of individuals.

Heller is worth a law review article all by itself, but that's not my purpose in bringing it up here.  Rather, I want to emphasize that at least some conservative voices, like that of the late Justice Scalia, understand that the right to own guns and the power of the state to regulate them exist in our constitutional structure, as do many other seemingly contradictory provisions, in order to balance each other and to ensure that neither is being misused for purposes other than the formation of a more perfect Union.

In other words, weapons of war fall outside of the protection of the Second Amendment.  There is no Second Amendment right to own explosives.  There is no Second Amendment right to own artillery.  There is no Second Amendment right to own missiles or missile-launchers.  And there is no Second Amendment right to own an H-bomb.

And that's the problem we have.  That's why the lost souls of Atlanta and Boulder join those of far too many other communities across the nation.

They were killed by weapons of war.  Specifically, by assault rifles.  By guns that have no essential, or even practical use in civilian life.   By weapons designed to be lethal on such a massive scale that their regulation is a matter of public safety, not tyranny.  Any individual with deadly intentions or an inability to control their intentions, deadly or otherwise, only needs one such weapon, and one magazine with which to load it, to become a public menace.

That is, to become a menace to the peaceful operation of society.  To become the exceptional moment, not the everyday one.  To become a source of righteous outrage that demands swift, effective action by public officials, regardless of their party affiliation and, above all, regardless of who is paying their bills.

Thoughts and prayers don't cut it.  Thoughts and prayers with a willingness to enable the circumstances that ensure more opportunities for them amount to the worst sort of virtue-signaling.  It doesn't wash the blood off the hands of those doing the signaling, any more than it washes it off the hands of the people who pull the triggers.

Once upon a time, back in the 1990s, a period that was no stranger to partisan culture wars, we managed to muster enough combined outrage and common sense to ban assault weapons.  It worked.  There is absolutely no reason that it can't work again.  It won't stop every mass killing, but it would stop many of them, and it would be a far more fitting memorial to those we've already lost.  It would be absolutely more appreciated by the survivors of those we've already lost than "thoughts and prayers."  And there are additional steps that need to be taken, that would help to ensure fewer lives lost without violating anyone's right to keep and bear arms.

If it were up to me, we would, as a nation, emulate Japan, which has one of the lowest rates of deaths by gun violence in the world.  Take a look at the video here, which outlines in detail the steps that a private individual needs.  Maybe you think it's too restrictive.  Frankly, I don't.  But, that could just be me.  I measure the burden that it imposes on the lives of prospective gun owners in Japan as far smaller than the burdens that the deaths of victims imposes on the victims themselves.  Good news:  they have no need to worry about government forms and tests.  Bad news:  they're dead, and any dreams they had are with them.  This doesn't even begin to get into the burdens imposed on their survivors, and on society when it comes to the costs of caring for the victims and the survivors.

If you have any doubt about the costs on all of us that the Wild West of the current status quo imposes, take a look here.  At the very least, gun manufacturers and gun owners should be required to be insured against the harm that comes from being a paradise for gun-toting.

And the extent of gun-toting that we now have isn't even enough for the gun-toters.  Once upon a time, I used to joke that they wouldn't be satisfied until everyone is required to own one.  Well, the joke is now on me.  But, sadly, now it's on all of us.  And death may be an inevitability, but that doesn't give anyone the right to make it more likely.

Strictly speaking, this should not even be a partisan divide.  The New York Post, whose owner has done more to support Donald Trump than anyone else has, has consistently taken a position in favor of an assault weapons ban.  It recently re-affirmed that position.  But the Post appears to be an isolated case.  The Washington lobbyists masquerading as office-holders, and the investing class that funds their perpetual re-election, prefers to allow the merchants of death to rake in the big bucks, even while proclaiming themselves to be "pro-life."

To borrow from Lincoln, and as the assault on the Capitol demonstrated, we are now engaged in a great civil war.  Between a party that respects the Constitution, including its provisions on guns, and a party that treats the Constitution as a slogan, and views guns as both a means and an end.  Ultimately, the type of society we will have, the type of society your children will grow up in, will depend on which one of those parties wins, and keeps on winning.

That's up to you.  But, if you really want to choose life without upsetting the Constitution, you should know by now which one you need to vote for.  Next year, and after that as well.

Do We Need To Suspend Habeas Corpus?

So much for the image of Democrats in charge as being too bogged down in process arguments, and division in general, that nothing gets done.

Joe Biden, in partnership with congressional Democrats, have been in charge for just slightly over two months.  In that time, he has had nearly all of his Cabinet appointments confirmed, he has signed a series of executive orders to undue much of the Trump administration's policy and regulatory damage, the Senate has completed Donald Trump's second impeachment trial, the nation has exceeded (with weeks to spare) the new Administration's goal of 100 million COVID-19 vaccinations within its first 100 days, and, to top it off, has enacted the largest and perhaps most radical revision of Federal spending in decades, while at the same time providing states and health care providers with the resources needed to turn the page of the Trump pandemic.

This latter accomplishment, the $1.9 trillion-dollar pandemic relief bill, has been the object of many laudatory articles and reports in the MSM and on the Internet.  I have nothing to add to what others have said, but I'd like to take some space here to highlight some aspects of what has been said that I think are significant, especially going forward.

During the past four decades, Republicans have typically tried to frame the Federal spending debate as a clash between Democrats and their wasteful government programs, versus the alleged Republican desire to "put more money in your pocket."  What they never said was that, by "your," they always meant the people who underwrite their campaigns.  The 2017 tax-cutting bill that Paul Ryan masterminded on their behalf, with the help of Trump and Mitch McCONnell, is perhaps the most egregious example of this trend; the goodies provided for in that bill went straight into corporate treasuries and off-shore bank accounts.  This is why the short-term value of the stock market increased, even while the job market showed, at best, negligible pre-pandemic growth compared to the final months of the Obama Administration.  

And then came the pandemic, which Trump largely ignored for the sake of protecting his paper tiger of a recovery.  What happened?  The job market fell off of a cliff, while the billionaire class enjoyed an unexpected, undeserved boom.

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 will probably not fix all of the damage that has been done in the past year, but it will go a long way toward leading the nation back to something resembling "normal."  Perhaps even more significantly, it marks a change in Democratic thinking about how to enable economic growth, and how to use the power of the purse to help Americans at the bottom of the pyramid.  Instead of focusing on aid to the investing class, or expanding the size of the national bureaucracy, it focuses on providing direct financial aid to people in need.  It amounts to a progressive rebuttal of the more-money-in-your-pocket argument that Republicans have used to shift wealth from the bottom to the top of the American economic structure.  It is founded on the principle that wealth creation is not a top-down process; if anything, it is a bottom-up process in which work produces goods and services that everyone is able to consume.  As Paul Krugman has stated any number of times:  my spending is your income, and your spending is my income.

Perhaps most significantly, Biden and the Democrats in and outside of Washington seem to be in the process of re-defining what bipartisanship means.  Bipartisanship, the holy grail of inside-the-Beltway punditry, has always had had an inside-the-Beltway focus.  That is, the existence or ability to achieve it is viewed entirely from the perspective of Washington-based actors:  the President, members of Congress, and their various allies inside and outside of government.  When it comes to approving the ARPA, however, the President and Congress did so without a single Republican vote, an achievement that has led to reportage of the bill as a purely partisan achievement.  But that fails, however, to take into account the bill's popularity among Republican voters nationally, as well as Republican governors and mayors whom those voters support. And even in the world of op-eds, one can find conservatives who are, more or less, on board with the Democrats.  This is, in other words, a governing party that has the courage of its convictions, and with good reason.

But that's not to say that all Republican office-holders are on board with the Democrats, and even their own voters.  Far from it.

I have said, prior to last year's election, that the Republican Party was moving in a direction of defining itself solely by various forms of voter suppression--dark money, extreme gerrymandering, and, perhaps worst of all, blatant attempts at voter suppression that aim to target the ability of Democratic constituencies to get to the polls.  Or to be actually able to vote, once they get there.  But, in the wake of last year's Republican losses, the party and its allies in state legislatures have hit the accelerator on their suppression efforts.

In doing so, they have for the most part used the alleged existence of 2020 voting fraud, even though no actual evidence of such fraud has been produced.  However, their anxiety about their political future is such that, every so often, they will--well, like it says here--say that quiet part out loud.

What is the quiet part?

In a word, racism.  As well as its allied "isms":  sexism, ableism, any form of hatred of those who are not white male Christian straight bigots, and the folks who love them.

Moreover, the struggle to suppress the vote has an analog in the current battle within the U.S. Senate over the fate of the filibuster, the rule that currently requires an absolute minimum--with the exception of budget-related bills like the ARPA--of 60 votes to end debate on a bill and proceed to a vote on it.  Historically, up until the beginning of the Obama administration, the filibuster's use was almost entirely in opposition to civil rights legislation.  This is why perhaps, in hindsight, no one should have been surprised to see it used in opposition to everything the first African-American President would want, even on policies and bills that reflect things Republicans allegedly want.  And perhaps it should therefore not be surprising to see some real movement, at last, toward abolishing, or at least modifying, the use of the rule and/or the ways in which it can be used.

And, here again, Republicans are saying the quite part out loud:  if the filibuster rule is at least modified, and the Democrats are enable to enact legislation that would end voter suppression once and for all, it might actually herald the end of the Republican Party as a political force in America.  Let me be as clear as anyone can:  this is not a Democratic prophesy.  It is a Republican one.

Which brings us back, or should bring us back, to thinking about the seditious January 6th assault on the Capitol.  For a very obvious reason.  If a political movement is effectively reduced to a cause that has been repulsed not only by the majority of voters, but by the force of history that produced the Constitution and nearly 250 years of largely peaceful, democratic government--if, in other words, it stands for nothing except bigotry and suppression in the name of bigotry--it has no future in relying on due process of law.

It can only rely on a literal call to arms.  To violence.  And to death for all who stand in its way.

This is why I view the news about the removing of the protective fencing around the Capitol with a strong case of mixed emotions.  As a symbol of returning to the America most of us want to see, it is more than welcome.  Yet I find myself hoping and praying that it is not a premature step.  Trump and the forces he has managed to channel for his personal use are far from disappearing in our collective rear-view mirror.  And this should surprise no one.  These forces have been organizing for decades, at least since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and likely even before then.  They have been gathering strength.  They even have allies withing the halls of Congress.  And at least some of those allies may have had a direct hand in enabling the January 6th attack.  The investigation of that attack by a now truly independent Justice Department has just begun; I would be genuinely surprised if it did not turn up evidence of infiltration from within.

This is not a new subject for me.  Off and on, over the past seven years, I have written more than once in this space about what we now refer to as the Trump voters as tantamount to a fifth column in our midst, a movement that uses the language of patriotism to insidiously subvert and ultimately destroy the nation as we have known it.  Facing up to that reality has not been easy for me, even while seeing the massive amount of evidence that has accumulated in that time in support of this view.  If you love your country, if your family has sacrificed for it (as mine has), well, seeing it torn apart from within is heartbreaking.  Denial can be an attractive remedy, under the circumstances.  But it is no longer an acceptable one.

Consider, for example, the recent shootings of in Atlanta of Asian women working in massage parlors by an allegedly Christian white male shooter, whose alleged justification for his heinous actions was that the women were tempting him to act in a sexually immoral way.  Never mind the fact that his attacks violated the Sixth Commandment, while he was in the process of trying to "uphold" the Seventh one.  But, on top of that, an officer of the law openly accepted the shooter's assessment that his actions stemmed from having "a really bad day."  One cannot help but thinking that his victims had an even worse one.  All the more so, given that the officer's broadcasting of this assessment may very well have damaged the victims' chances of getting justice from an untainted jury.  How is it possible to see this as anything except an official attempt to suppress the racism that screams out from the very focus of the attack?

Consider, focusing on a national level for a moment, the fact that we are just two months or so removed from having a President who was a paid agent of a foreign power--an agent whose agency was acknowledged by a senior member of his own party, and an agent whose agency was well repaid.

If you've made it this far, for which I thank you, and you are wondering what all of this has to do with the title of my post, fear not. I have a very controversial argument to make here, and I did not want to advance it without laying the groundwork to support it.

It involves habeas corpus.  Or rather, the potential need to suspend it.

Simply put, habeas corpus refers to the common-law power, first recognized in British law and codified in Magna Carta, to obtain a writ justifying the lawful imprisonment of one or more individuals.  The U.S. Constitution explicitly permits the suspension of the habeas corpus process (in article I, section 9) "when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."  In fact, during the Civil War, Congress did permit Abraham Lincoln to suspend it, under what constitutional scholars refer to as the Suspension Clause, for the duration of the war.

Obviously, this is not something to be done lightly.  Ideally, we would not be discussing this at all, except perhaps as a purely academic exchange involving constitutional jurisprudence.  And yet, in a very real sense, it's already been put on the table.  And not just by the actions of Trump supporters, but by the words of Trump himself, as well as his allies in Congress.

You have probably by now heard a lot of foolish and dishonest rhetoric from the former President and congressional Republicans about the "Biden border crisis," in which the United States is once again being "invaded" along the Rio Grande by various unsavory elements in Central America determined to rape, pillage, and burn the countryside.  The "invaders" in this case are unaccompanied minors, who are being admitted solely for the purpose of processing asylum claims.

This is deflection, a classic Republican tactic--for that matter, a classic Trump tactic--for dealing with harsh realities that might be embarrassing, politically or otherwise.  It is an inherently dishonest tactic, and, in this case, is designed to conceal the fact that the Biden Administration has inherited an immigration disaster, one in which potential asylees, adults and children, were confined in cages without even the most basic human necessities, and with little or no hope of having their claims processed.  Cleaning up this mess will take time and, in the absence of reliable information to the contrary, Biden's people should be given at least some benefit of the doubt.

But it's also worth remembering that, back in the day, Trump dragged the possible suspension of habeas corpus into the border control debate.  Take a look.

So, no one on the right side of the political spectrum should have any objection to what I'm about to put on the table.

Maybe we need to consider a nation-wide suspension of habeas corpus.

Maybe that's what we need to get a handle of how extensive the fifth column is.  Maybe that's the only way we'll find out how much of it is inside and outside of government.  And Washington, for that matter.  Maybe the web is so tightly and invisibly woven by design that we can only rip it apart in the most invasive way possible.

I'm not a huge fan of this idea.  I'm an attorney.  I'm an artist.  That's two reasons why I am, at heart, a civil libertarian.  I hate the idea of anything that infringes on individual liberty.

But I can think of something I hate as much:  the use of violence to deprive anyone of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, or the democracy that millions have sacrificed to preserve.

Do you have an alternative?  Let me know.  It's worth a discussion.  Discussion, after all, is really at the heart of democracy in the first place.  Let's sort this out together.

Let's stop taking shots at each other.  Figuratively, and literally.

While we've still got a country worthy of sacrifices.

When Mother Nature Messes With Texas, As Well As Cancun Ted

Before I say anything else about the Texas disaster, I want to emphasis one point, one that I think gets a little lost in the scores-and-highlights madness into which mainstream media coverage of news descended long ago:  it is first and foremost a human disaster.  No matter who you are for or against politically, no matter where you live in the nation, and even no matter your economic circumstances, people have died and many more people are suffering greatly.  They our more than our fellow Americans; they are our fellow souls.  Many of them are children whose parents are as helpless as they are right now.  So, before you read any further, make a donation to one of the charities listed here.  Or, for that matter, any other you can find by way of personal knowledge or an Internet search.

I'll give you a moment or two.  If the spirit moves you to do so, please use the comments section to let me and readers know, and share information about what all of us can do.

And, with that said, I'll dive into the political fray surrounding the disaster.  There's quite a bit to dive into, unfortunately.

Texas, to make an obvious fine point, has become a very red state in the nearly half-century since Jimmy Carter was the last Democrat to carry it in a Presidential election.  It has, for decades, become a magnet for people and companies looking to escape the taxes and cold weather of Northeastern states, it is now a similar magnet for Californians to escape the taxes and overcrowding of that state.  It has openly bragged about how its low taxes, minimal regulation, weak social welfare structure and freewheeling attitudes about firearms has made it an American paradise that all of us should envy.  And anyone who has the temerity to poke into this assessment--say, to note the amount of money the Lone Star State receives annual from Washington--is cut off by the arrogant, vaguely threatening retort, "DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS!"

Enter Mother Nature from the wings, carrying with her the effects of the climate change.  And the effects of that we've sadly all seen by now.

And how did the state's elected officials step up?  Well, it depends on which ones you're talking about but, in the main, the answer is "hardly at all, really."  Those who couldn't get away from it all blamed a second-term Democratic congresswoman from New York, based on legislation she has sponsored but not yet been able to pass.

And the others?  Well, they tried to get away from it all … or, at least, from the people who depend on them for help.  Based on what we will politely call his track record, it should come as no surprise that Ted Cruz attempted to lead this particular charge.  Only the embarrassment of being outed for his cowardice stopped him from a perfect getaway, and forced him to make the appearance of responding to the bugle call of duty.  And that embarrassment, sadly, did not prevent him from attempting to first blame his daughters and then his wife for the whole fiasco.  But don't think, even for a single minute, that he was the only Texas politician to chose flight over responsibility.  He was not.

And the messaging failures don't end there, by any means.  While former Governor Rick Perry (also the former secretary of the Department of ... "Oops") told freezing-to-death Texans to feel good about this opportunity to show their fiercely independent nature, others were justifiably rethinking the whole concept of secession from the Union.

There's a lot to unpack here, but we need to start with damage control made necessary by the sheer volume of Republican dissembling here.  Two points.

First, this is not a so-called "black swan" or once-in-a-millennium event.  This is a manifestation of climate change, a human-created phenomenon that is accelerating the pace and severity of climate catastrophes.  What used to be rare is now commonplace.  We can no longer afford to play make-believe with it.

Second, we need to invest in making the physical components of our electric grid better able to function in extreme weather.  This not only can be done, it HAS been done elsewhere.  Alternative forms of energy generation work perfectly well in such cold-weather European countries such as Denmark.  Texas, in any case, relies on fossil fuel sources of power for the lion's share of its energy generation.  To make matters worse, Texas has not invested in upgrades needed to protect its electric grid from the effects of extreme weather.  That is a function of Texas' deregulation of energy generation and disconnection from the national grid.  The additional revenue produced by these measures is not passed along to the consumer in the form of badly-needed equipment upgrades, even when a catastrophe allows them to jack up electric rates.  It ends up in the pockets of the owners of the power companies.  And, even as the power goes out and rates go up, the deficient power equipment pumps even more pollution into the air.

Texas, in short, has a lot to learn and a lot to consider, going forward.  Whether it will do so is at best a very debatable proposition.  The truth is that the state's current crisis has lessons for all of us.

First, we need political leaders who are public servants, not extensions of lobbyists.  Neither of our major parties are completely without fault, but the 40-year misdirection of national income predominantly toward the investor class has given its members more than enough money for their own purposes, which allowed them first to purchase existing politicians, and then to groom their own candidates who work exclusively for them.  

Time was that the investor class was content to use lobbyists to influence office holders; now, they are able to directly install the lobbyists in the offices themselves.  Eliminates the proverbial middleperson, thereby achieving cost efficiency at the expense of human lives.  This is precisely how we have ended up with miserable excuses for leaders like Cruz, who is constitutionally unable to be either honest or anything other than self-serving.  There has never, in my lifetime, been a greater need for campaign finance and voting rights reform.  These are issues that, along with the $15-per-hour minimum wages, should be pursued hammer and tong by Democrats in Congress.

Second, we need to stop worshiping the golden calf of privatization.  It is not the answer to all of our problems.  Just as a nation needs two healthy political parties, it needs a strong public sector as well as a strong private one to compete against each other, and to generate answers to which one has the best answer or answers to a given need.  

The truth is that climate change, and the search for cleaner generation of energy, is a big enough problem that we need the resources and unique capacities of both to successfully tackle it.  But we need both of them to treat it as seriously as death.  Right now.  Or it truly will be the death of all of us.

Finally, we need to take Milton Friedman's advice to take advantage of a crisis, and, in the process, take advantage of innovative ideas to solve that which seems insolvable.  He, of course, was talking about innovative "ideas" that in fact were very old or very antidemocratic ideas, repackaged in new rhetoric to appeal to audiences who had notice received a decent education in history.  Conservatives have been heeding Friedman's advice for decades.  

But it is the Democratic Party that is once again the party of good ideas.  Perhaps its best such idea, reviled by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, is in fact the Green New Deal, the basic principle of which is the use of the climate crisis to create new, well-paying jobs to create an economic based on renewable or sustainable resources.  It's high time to give it a chance.  And it's high time Texas more seriously consider not only staying in the Union, but investing more of its energy profits into energy sustainability, so that the people who pay the bills can count on not freezing to death.

And Cruz?  To hell with him.  Literally.  One of these days, he's going to end up in a place a lot hotter than Cancun.

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.