Two Points Regarding Classified Documents

A planet on fire, an economy riddled with debt run up by the millionaires that control it, the vast majority of people struggling daily to make ends meet, authoritarianism on the rise, and what is the corporate press (left and right) wringing its digital hands about?

Right.  Who is the greater sinner when it comes to unauthorized possession of classified documents--Trump or Biden?

I'm going to start here with the larger point that everyone seems to be missing about this:  how is it apparently so easy to obtain and hold onto classified documents long after the apparent need to possess them is finished?  On the strength of both the Trump and Biden stories, it appears to be far easier than any of us might have previously thought.  Which, in turn, ought to raise another question:  how many more people, in and no longer in government service, are in possession of such documents?  For what purpose?  And is the National Archives aware of any such documents?  Does it not have some sort of tracking system in place to ensure who has what, and what needs to come back to the Archives when the professed need for the documents has ended?

This, I think, is the larger scandal that's evidenced here.  At some point, there has to be a congressional investigation of what happened, not only with regard to the Trump and Biden cases, but also to identify any other cases that might exist.  At a guess, it's probably safe to assume that there are many more cases out there than anyone might have imagined.  And, given the potential damage to American interests that might result from those cases, the sooner a bipartisan commission gets to the bottom of what's going on, the better.  Of course, good luck with that in the House, given its current <ahem> configuration.  Perhaps something can happen on the Senate side; if so, it should with all deliberate speed.

My second point:  conceding that both Biden and Trump are on the wrong side of the law here, has the press coverage of this story descended into false equivalency territory?

I'm almost tempted to ask:  what do you think (and, as always, you're more than welcome to leave comments).

Of course they have, and that is to be expected, because the corporate press lives to protect its profits rather than the public interest that the First Amendment is meant to help them protect.  The differences between the way Trump and Biden have responded to their respective situations could not, in any case, be more different.  Biden has extended the maximum amount of cooperation to the Justice Department.  He has not pretended that the documents are his property, nor have any of his lawyers, staff members, or allies pretended that he has a right to them.  There has been no need for a warrant, or an FBI raid.  And, finally, the difference in the respective numbers of documents in each case differs, as of this point, by a factor of 30.  A factor that weighs against Trump.

It's not surprising that Biden's political enemies have weighed in against him on this.  It's marginally more surprising that some of his allies have gone so far as to suggest that he should step aside in 2024 as a result of it.

For whom?

Here's an example.  Read it carefully.  One thing you should notice:  the absence of an alternative.

That's not accidental.  The fact is that there is no viable political alternative.  None.  Zero.  No one that has the same level of political recognition and support that Biden has.  Even with this anchor tied around his neck.  And his opponents on the left know that.  All they have is a handful of future possibilities and a ton of wishful thinking.

My advice to my friends on the left:  reframe the issue, along the lines of the points I've made here.  Advocate for a bipartisan Senate committee for reforming not just the Archives, but the entire classification process, which is long overdue in any case.  That's how you take charge of the narrative.  And I would bet real money that, if such a committed is convened and launches an investigation, more sinners on both sides of the aisle will be identified.

Which means that the issue will lose its partisan punch, And Trump's far greater sins on this issue will fold back into the larger image of him as the most corrupt President in the history of the Republic.  I can assure you that the process of this happening will be aided by the larger swirl of scandal surrounding him.  That, and the indictments that I believe will finally be announced this year.

Stop letting the media wring your hands, folks, and don't lose sight of the real enemy.  It isn't Biden, who is far from perfect.  But you don't even want to begin to think about the potential reality of what GQP authoritarian might replace him.

McCarthy's Mess, Or How To Get Started On The Wrong Foot

Happy New Year to you and everyone!

And where to begin?  Well, the most logical place to begin is with the convening of the new House of Representatives.  After all, if it's possible for most of us to agree on anything when it comes to politics, it's that none of us have ever witnessed the opening of a new Congress that looked like the spectacle that has unfolded over the past two weeks.  And we should be thankful for that fact.  When I use the word "spectacle," it's because I try to spare my readers the experience of my using more colorful language.

I witnessed most of the first week, or as much as I could stand of it, because I knew going in that the events that unfolded were going to do even more damage to our politics and governance than we've already witnessed in the Trump era (a label I use reluctantly, since I'm acquainted with Trump's love of plastering his name on everything he touches).  I found myself reacting to what I saw with a wider range of emotions than I expected.  

On the one hand, not everything I witnessed upset me.  Some of it even made me proud.  On the other hand, that which I fully expected to be revolting revolted me even more than I expected.  Just when you think contemporary Republicans have reached the sub-cellar for bad behavior, they suddenly seem to find another level underneath it.  Maybe Trump's background in real estate helps them with that.  Maybe, more likely, it simply encourages the cynicism, ambition, and deceit that was always there.

At any rate, the following are my random thoughts and reactions to what unfolded in the People's House.

The professionalism of the congressional staff.

I don't think enough can be said about this.  Technically, the new House does not exist until a Speaker is elected, which, in this case, took the better part of a week.  As a result, for that span of time, the Clerk of the House, Cheryl Johnson, and her staff were in charge of the proceedings.  They are part of that permanent army of government employees that we routinely, and often unthinkingly, refer to with disdain as "bureaucrats."  And yet, without that army, the routine functioning of the government, the functioning that we take for granted, the functioning that is based as much on loyalty to our country and dedication to serving its interests, as well as a deep well of institutional experience and professional training, simply would not take place.

I might as well put my personal cards on the table here:  I have spent fifteen years of my life as a bureaucrat, in federal and state agencies.  During that time, I had the privilege of working with people from both parties, and am happy to assure you that the same level of loyalty, dedication, experience and training that you saw from the Clerk and the members of her staff is typical of most, if not all, of the people working in those agencies--both the career civil servants, and the political appointees.  It is, however, the former that particularly carry the burden of day-to-day business.  I am proud to be one of them, and I am proud of my bureaucratic brothers and sisters for the work they did in holding the House proceedings together for the week without a Speaker.  

Don't take it from me. If there was one thing on which everyone was agreed, it was, based on several of the statements from the House floor, it was on the quality of the work done by the Clerk and her staff.  But I want everyone, and I mean everyone, to think about that very carefully, the next time they hear anyone use "bureaucrats" as a scapegoat for what's wrong in Washington, and elsewhere.

The unity and boldness of Democrats

The Democratic caucus, now in the House minority, made it clear that that the three D's the media love to place on their party--depressed, divided, and in disarray--do not define their willingness to do the people's business, or their appreciation of the challenges that exist for them in doing so.

In talking about that, let's start with this.

The entire caucus assembled on the steps of the Capitol, to commemorate the second anniversary of an attempt by a  right-wing thugocracy to destroy the honest counting of presidential electoral votes and the legislative process more generally.  They were their to commemorate the failure of that effort, and the sacrifices made by law enforcement officials to ensure that failure.

And they were joined by a single Republican.  Single, as in one of of the 222-member majority.  None of them could be bothered to show up and back the blue with their colleagues.

That may have been the most subtle breach of constitutional behavior by the new majority.  But, as other events demonstrated, it was far from the only one.

More about that presently.  Back, for now, to Democratic unity.

Perhaps it's because the size of the Republican majority is so small, as well as unstable.  Perhaps it's because even the older, less diverse members of the Democratic caucus have seen the future in the increasing number of younger, more diverse members, and understand that it's a future that works (apologies, Lincoln Steffens).  Perhaps, more than anything else, it's because every one of those members, young or old, understands the exact nature and power of the threat from across the aisle.

Nevertheless, over the course of all fifteen ballots in the speakership vote, they unanimously stood behind their new leader Hakeem Jeffries, resisting the pleas of corporate media to "reach across the aisle" and vote for a man who couldn't even muster a strong showing from within his own party.  They openly mocked, in ways subtle and not-so subtle, the disarray and associated lunacy that they and the people they represent were being subjected to.  And, when Jeffries took the podium after the voting for the formal transfer of power from one party to another, they cheered him with one voice as he used the alphabet to mock the new regime.

I appreciate the fact that Democrats stood together and publicly treated the nonsense as nonsense.  Which is why I think not having C-SPAN in the House is a bad idea.  After all, the current state of disrepair in the House began back in the 1990s, when Newt Gingrich used C-SPAN to turn voters away from the long-standing Democratic majority.  Turnabout may not be pretty, but it can and should certainly be fair play.

The violence on the floor

In life, as someone once said, there are leaders and followers.  And in politics, there are people who have the label of a leader and the behavior of a follower.  And, in our current crisis, Kevin McCarthy is Exhibit A for the latter proposition.

Despite being repeated touted in the legacy corporate press as a "moderate," McCarthy is a man without any political compass, or even a moral one.  No greater illustration of this exists than his backtracking from his fiery denunciation of Trump and the Capitol attack Trump instigated to his trip to Mar-A-Lago weeks latter to get down on his knees to the Orange Iguana and beg for forgiveness.  This show of sniveling was, as the night would show, the shape of things to come.  In more ways than one.

The chaos and extremism of the January 6 attack had its analog in the first week of the new Congress, in both the multiple ballots for the speakership and the outrageous demands of a fraction of the GQP caucus for the sake of awarding it to McCarthy.  As is the case after every election, the new majority had nearly two months to get its act together, to hash out their differences and show on Day One that they were ready to serve the interests of the nation.  In our lifetimes, this sort of orderly transition is so orderly it barely rates five minutes on the evening news.  

In this case, it seems that those two months could not have been devoted to anything except the level of disorder and disruption to which the American people were treated to for a week on their screens.  And all for the sake of appeasing people who are, basically, unappeasable.  They have absolutely no goals other than being in charge.  And that much they plainly accomplished.  But, in the process, they accomplished something else:  demonstrating that the insurrection has moved from outside of the Capitol building to inside the House chamber.

And, however much the House Democrats may have enjoyed watching the party-in-disarray narrative flip to characterizing their opponents, they can't be content with laughing at what is on one level laughable.  The chaos inside of the House is likely to lead, perhaps is already beginning to lead, to violence on a par with the attack two years years ago.  The near-fist-fight toward the end of the balloting could be a small taste of what is to come.

And not only on the floors of Congress. but here.  And abroad.  Perhaps nearly everywhere.

You don't want to be in a position of having to oppose force with force?  Fine.  The sooner one draws a line, the less likely it becomes that one has to openly defend it.  We are, frankly, in that position because Democrats in the past haven't heeded that lesson.  For all of our sakes, they'd better start heeding it now.  That show of unity can't run for a day or a week.  It has to be nonstop from here on out.

The transparent weakness of McCarthy 

From the partisan standpoint of the GQP, the spectacle of McCarthy sacrificing every perogative he needs to keep the House in order to the claque of fanatics who want to watch everthing burn, and even begging on camera for the votes he needed to stick his nose across the finish line, could not possibly have been worse.  Gutting the House ethics office, even as the fanatics scheme to impeach the entire Biden administration.  Given them a chance to systemically defund entire federal offices should anyone in them make a peep against the interests of the fanatics' donors.  Enabling them to put McCarthy's job in jeopardy by a single vote if he doesn't say "How high?" every them one of them says "Jump!"

McCarthy has given away so much of the power of the office he just barely obtained that it might be a compliment to even call him a follower.  He is certainly no one's idea of a leader.  He may very well be little more at this point than a hood ornament on the authoritarian jalopy of his caucus.

The transparently bad GQP spin on the process

Spin, spin, spin.  Yes, both parties do it, and I'm guilty of it from time to time myself.  But the Republicans do it with more shamelessness and less fidelity to the facts than do Democrats.  That's primarily because Republicans, like the majority of Americans, evaluate everything, even matters of significant substance, by way of style points.  That, sadly, is evidence of a society that is in decay because of the distance between its founding principles and its present state.

And without question, the House GQP caucus was doing its best (or worst) to spin-doctor the nightmare unfolding before the viewing public.  Oh, its members said, this is just the sort of deliberation every party needs to go through when it re-takes power.  Once this sorts itself out, they assured us, we'll be astonished by how ready they are to lead the nation, by way of investigating every Biden they can get their hands on.

I'll say this much for them:  they are astonishing, although not in the way they might want us to think that they are.  But I repeat:  they had nearly TWO MONTHS to sort everything out and spare us the week-long debacle.  I find myself remembering the public clichés of previous Republican conquests.  "Hit the ground running."  "Ready on Day One."  This was more like hitting the ground stumbling, and needing all the luck in the world to be ready by Labor Day.

Perhaps the best way to sum up both the cravenness of McCarthy's grasping climb to power and the Orwellian confidence the GQP has in its ability to memory-hole anything is this. I tend to doubt that this can or will actually happen. Expungement is a legal procedure by which an individual convicted of a crime can have all records related to that conviction purged. How do you do that with a historic event that has been recorded all over the world? For that matter, how do you convince the other house of Congress to purge its records of the trials it conducted, neither of which resulted in a conviction?

And one more thing, relating to my earlier observation about C-SPAN. Whether or not you think that open monitoring of Congress is or is not a good idea, you're about to lose the opportunity to gain more evidence for making a decision on that point. That's because Kevin and company are, at least for now, making that choice for you.

The bad news is that the only thing this House will ever be ready for is chaos. The even worse news is that it is likely to drag all of us into that chaos.

Leaving one last point to make here:

The education for the rest of us:  is it even possible to reach across the aisle if all you’re going to get is a fist fight?

Very unlikely. There are only going to be two things that will take their focus off of shooting themselves and the rest of us in the foot.

The first is going to be the need to protect themselves. Gutting the House ethics office is only the first step. After that, they're going to need to spend time on putting out the fires that will erupt in the press whenever one or more members stumble and have their corruption exposed for all to see. Freshman GQP Congressman George Santos (or whatever his name is) remains the most immediate example for the moment. But be assured: there will be others.

Speaking of Santos, note that his Republican defenders are describing what he has done as having "embellished" his resume. Wrong. I speak as someone who has, in a former life, been paid to write resumes professionally. Using a word like "manage" to describe making multiple coffee deliveries is embellishment. Saying you graduated from a college you never attended is a bald-face, unabashed lie. And Santos' resume is chock-full of them. If Gym Jordan is right in saying that every Republican does this, that's all you need to know to never vote for a Republican again.

Later, they will branch out from protecting themselves to protecting their donors, by making sure, for example, that those donors never have to worry about committing tax fraud at the expense of the rest of us.

Finally, they will use the need to raise the debt ceiling as an excuse to blow up the economy and attempt to seek even greater, and far more unconstitutional, power in the ensuing catastrophe.  This is Donald Trump 101:  create a disaster, point fingers at everyone but yourself, and manipulate the circumstances for your benefit.  Anyone who thinks we're living in some kind of wonderful post-Trump age is kidding themselves.  Donald Trump hasn't gone away.  If anything, he's more of a Speaker of the House than McCarthy is.

Which is why Biden and Senate Democrats are wise to refuse McCarthy's invitation to "discuss" the threat that he and his caucus are deliberately manufacturing.  One does not negotiate with someone pointing a gun at you.  You make it clear that they will either have to pull the trigger, deal with the possibility that you may be able to protect yourself, and wait until they understand that you've called their bluff.

This is how you deal with bullies.  I speak from experience.  I hope that the Democrats retain and practice this wisdom.  The embarrassing opening of the new House of Representatives shows that our future depends on it.

A Few, Parting 2022 Thoughts

In past years, when I've come to this point on the calendar, I've usually aimed for big-picture statements about where the U.S. is, where I think it's going, and where I hope to see it go.  Sometimes, I've aimed to be a little more personal, whether it's discussing my wife's immigration law practice, or the medical issues faced by one of my grandchildren.  But for the most part, I've wanted to write about us.  Not me.

But this year's a little different, as it may have an impact on this blog.

Not on its existence.  But on its schedule.  And perhaps in other ways as well.

Over the past several years, I've launched a production company dedicated to producing plays (and perhaps, at some point, films) written by members of historically marginalized communities:  women, Blacks, peoples of color, and LGBQT authors.  I've been working with one playwright over the past few years on a play she wrote and submitted to the Baltimore Playwrights Festival.  I'm a reader for the Festival, which is how I found her play.  I was very deeply impressed by it, and think that it deserves an audience.  With that in mind, I have optioned it, worked with her on re-writes, found a director, and scheduled a reading of it at Theatre West in Los Angeles for next month.  Needless to say, I'm very excited about doing this, even though I obviously can't say how far this venture will go.  That will ultimately be up to audiences to decide.  But I'm very hopeful that this one will be received, and received well.

As for the blog?

Well, depending on how things go, you may find me talking a lot more about my producing efforts, which will cut into my political commentary.  Depending on how things go, I may end up setting up a second blog, so that I can keep the focus here on politics and political issues, while having a separate space for talking about producing.  If that happens, I'll include a link in a post here, so that you can check it out.

But TRH, in any case, is not going away.

I'll still be here.  I'll be with all of you, riding the same crazy ride we're all taking together, especially with a new GQP House that can't even choose who's going to lead it.  (Spoiler alert:  I have a sneaking suspicion Kevin's not going to make it.)

I'll be saying whatever I have to say, to help you make sense of all of it.  And, frankly, to help myself doing the same thing.  To be honest, one of the things that blogging here has done it to help me put the pieces together.  It's made me read more.  It's made me think more.  And it's been an outlet for my passion and anger about what's going on in this country, when I've really needed one.

But, more than anything, I appreciate those of you who read it.  I hope that it's been of at least some value to you.  I wish all of you, and those in your lives, the happiest possible New Year, and I look forward to continuing this journey the same way we've been taking it so far.

Together.

What NFL Stadiums Can Teach Us About The Age Of The Grifter

Professional sports, at their best and their worst, reflect the culture of the people who follow them.  And yet sometimes, when I read stories about professional sports, I still find myself surprised to find details that can teach us something about where we are.  As well as where we need to go.

That happened to me a few weeks ago, when I read this article with a counter-intuitive lead:  after years of new football stadiums being built with ever-increasing capacities, they are now being planned with fewer seats in the stands.  But, in at least one case, the same capacity in the overall structure.

How does this work?  Very simple.

Fewer "nosebleed seats."  More luxury boxes.  And giant sports bar-style lounges, with paid admissions, and giant videos screens that show NFL action from all around the country, with every play-by-play analysis program available, as well as the game in progress elsewhere in the building.  Sort of a Doctor Doom-style man cave.

Hmm, you might say.  Not all that impressive.  You miss the thrill of feeling connected to the action on the field, to being a real part of the live event, to being part of the proverbial "12th man" on the field.  Instead, you get to be part of a glorified version of your club basement.  Plus, you're being charged for the privilege of doing so.  Quite a bit, in fact.

But still not nearly as much as the people in the stands and luxury boxes.  They are being charged a fortune.  More than the original franchise prices of the teams on the field.  And, since the season tickets and boxes are largely being purchased or leased for "business purposes," they're tax deductible by the purchasers and lessees.  You know what the real definition of "tax deductible" is?  It's IRS-speak for the suckers get to pay for it twice.

And by "suckers," just to be clear, I mean folks like you and me.  Oh well, maybe not me.  I won't go to the games, at least not most of them.  I'll only be nicked by the "business purposes" folks.  But that's plenty bad enough, when you consider we're all being nicked badly enough by these people, whose relative life of luxury is being subsidized by the folks choosing between paying the rent and dining on cat food.

Of course, television has long been the primary revenue source keeping the NFL in business.  But that audience numbers in the millions, so that's not so surprising.  Actual seats in the stands, on the other hand, only number in the thousands.  And when there are even fewer of those seats than there were before, as is the case with any scarce commodity, you can jack up the price to exospheric levels, and still get away with charging a fortune to sit in them.  More money, in fact, than you could ever get from the folks who can only afford a seat in front of a TV screen.

I'm talking, of course, about millionaires.  And, even more amazingly, billionaires.  We have literally millions of the former, and hundreds of the latter.  Yet together, they number less than 9% of this country's total population.  Putting it in practical terms--that is to say, in political terms--their dollars exponentially outnumber our votes.  The money they have for entertainment purposes, such as watching professional sports, outnumber our votes.

And therein lies the central problem with our politics.

The central problem, contrary to the excessive media coverage of him, is not Donald Trump, as revolting and destructive as he is.  As others have said, Trump is not the problem.  Trump is a glaring symptom of a much bigger problem than the Trump circus of corruption and criminality.

We live in an age in which four decades of fiscal and monetary con-artistry has conspired to send so much wealth to the already wealthy that they can quite literally buy out the rest of the country.  Even sports, one aspect of our national culture which supposedly exists to bring us all together, now exists to divide us into those who get to savor participating in the actual event, and those who get to "savor" mass-produced, flash-frozen-and-then-thawed buffalo wings.

And when the folks at the top of the financial pyramid use their goldmine to give the rest of us increasingly desperate folks the shaft, guess who really thrives in an age divided between the comfortable and the comfortless?

Con artists.  Because, when work as a path to wealth becomes meaningless, people will become desperate enough to believe anyone.  Even those who make promises they have no intention of keeping.

And so, contrary to what Trump's canyon-sized ego might want to believe, we do not live in the age of The Donald.  We live in the age of the Grifter.  And this year has exposed it more than ever before.

The age of the Grifter is possible only because we live in the age of billionaires, people with so much money that they can buy anything, even the government and a new citizenship to avoid their obligations to anyone but themselves.  Even a pandemic can't stop their explosive growth; if anything, it may have enabled it.  And why not?  The COVID-19 nightmare created levels of desperation in this country that most of us have never seen, or even imagined seeing.  Put yourself in the plutocrat's position.  You've got hundreds of millions of desperate people, and something they need.  What would you do?  (More about that later.)

As a consequence, the sort of lifestyle, the salaries and benefits Americans took for granted in the last century can no longer be taken for granted.  In fact, for some of the nation's hardest working employees, despite being routinely exposed to danger and disease, are forced to beg for the most basic rights in order to cope.  And ultimately be denied those rights.

That's bad enough.  But it gets even worse.  

Most of the billionaires aren't the inventive class of the past.  They are the investing class of the present, with an appetite for wall-to-wall public worship and the means to borrow money (not always honestly) in order to build the illusion of invulnerability.  They buy businesses that are popular, built by those who have real talent, and pretend to be the source of all greatness.  They are not people who were born on first base and think they hit a triple.  They are people who have stolen home plate while pretending they have invented baseball.  And, all too often, the incompetence that comes from a lack of experience merges with the malevolence that comes from being unchallenged, and allows a billionaire with superhuman economic power to buy a popular business and, through incompetence and malevolence, drive it into the ground.

I hope you recognize Elon Musk in all of this.

Especially since Musk has already shown that, in the age of the Grifter, the Grifters have acquired enough economic power and personal will to purposefully silence the voices opposed to them, even the ones who add value to the business owned by the Grifter while he grifts it into nothingness.  Indeed, many of them don't need to be deliberately silenced; if their position in society is marginal enough, even the threat of being silenced is enough to coerce the same effect.

The trend of silencing voices in opposition to the ruling class is really nothing new.  It's been going on since the first presidential term of Ronald Reagan, the marginal B-movie actor who made his real fortune as a spokesperson for General Electric, a company that began with Thomas Edison and ended up splitting itself into pieces to survive.  It survived him into the 1988 presidential campaign, when the focus of the DC press was not on the integrity of Republican campaigning, but on how well they were working.  Thus began the era of horse race coverage of politics, which has now become the era of horse race coverage of everything.  Independent news sources have been replaced by corporate ones, who make more money off of "trends" than anything else.  And who now have the power to manufacture their own "trends."

This is how and why almost everyone feels so disconnected, why so few people seem to know what's going on.  They don't.  And they are not being helped by a media that is increasingly disconnected from reality.

And it therefore should not surprise anyone that, for the billionaires and millionaires, this level of disconnect creates and fosters the illusion of moral superiority.  This, in turn, leads to the absence of any kind of feedback loop.  And that, in turn, leaves the billionaires more and more isolated from the people who ultimately create the wealth through labor, investing, or spending.  In a word, us.  The result is what some of the wealthy's defenders in the chattering classes refer to "bossism," but what should more honestly be described by its original name.  Fascism.  That is, the merger of government and corporate power.  It happened under Mussolini.  It happened under Hitler.  And yes, it can and will happen here.  It nearly happened here in the 1930s.  And there are signs around us that it could easily happen again.  Let's face it:  it almost happened on January 6, 2021.

You know how little the billionaire class cares about you?  They're willing to bet your life that they can use your safety to maximize their bottom line.  Literally.  Take a look at this.  And ask yourself the question:  in an emergency, would you want to be on a plane that had only one pilot?  Would you actually pay to be on a plane that had only one pilot?  And, perhaps key to what I've been discussing here, would you trust a profit-hungry airline to make that decision for you while keeping your safety and that of your fellow passengers uppermost in their thinking?  Particularly after the recent Southwestern fiasco?  I would like to think that no one would answer those questions with a "yes."

It's stories like this one, and, for that matter, the recent cryptocurrency collapse, that expose the fallacy of the libertarian fantasy of a world with no government, which has effectively deluded people into thinking we can give everyone unlimited personal freedom, including the freedom to not only help billionaires build fascism, but even invest in a form of "money" absolutely unconnected to any real value.  Money in any form, whether backed by the full faith and credit of a government, means nothing without a connection to real value.  The value can be in intangibles, such as intellectual property rights and future interests in real estate.  But it must be connected to something that exists.  Cryptocurrencies, to me, have always been a form of digital riverboat gambling.  That's why I've never touched them, and never will.

Libertarianism is every bit as toxic as racism.  Both distort the use and acquisition of power for the benefit of a privileged few, but always in the name of "the people."  This is why we live in an era in which Republicans, having built their political power over four decades with a toxic brew of libertarianism and racism, have as much political clout as they have, a clout that is utterly disproportionate to the results that power has achieved.  A nation crippled with debt and disease, and a people increasingly disenfranchised from the means by which to reverse and recover their fortunes.

It also explains the so-called inflation of the present period, which is in fact price-gouging.  Prices don't need to be tamed by the Fed, whose raising of interest rates may in fact help to trigger not a recession, but a depression, something that may finish everyone off, even the wealthy for whose primary benefit the rates are being raised.  Yes, this is what's being done by the party that denounces "big government."  Small government is exactly what they don't want.  Their dirty little secret is that they use rhetoric opposing "big government" to create exactly that--a big government that serves the interests of the few at the expense of the many.

They have done all of this while operating under the label of "conservatism," a philosophy that, in its classic form counsels heeding the lessons of history and, in the process, being mindful of the limitations that those lessons illustrate.  But so powerful and brazen have they become that they are no longer pretending to be "conservative."  They are openly declaring their true identities as reactionaries, painters of a mythical past that never existed, but which still serves for them as the only justification for their outrageous demands for power.

When the only justification for power is a lie, the justification cannot stand forever because the lie cannot stand forever.  Truth is truth, no matter how much the Trumps of the world pretend that it's Silly Putty.  At some point, it always finds away out of the web of lies woven around it.

When, if ever, will people finally wake up to this?

Perhaps they already are.

Along with the Supreme Court's execrable Dobbs decision, and the rise of a new, more diverse generation of young voters Dobbs decision, it may very well have influenced the better-than-expected (for Democrats) outcome in the recent midterm elections.  The lack of success by GQP election deniers on Trump's behalf would certainly seem to suggest as much. 

Perhaps an even stronger indication of people waking up involves an issue that, in the post-Reagan era of politics, has been something of a third rail for progressives generally:  taxes.

As the clock winds down on two successful years of Democratic control of Washington, the House of Representatives is wrapping up its work not only on its investigation of the January 6th attack on the Capitol, but also on its investigation of Trump's tax returns.  You remember Trump's tax returns.  They were the things people have been demanding since 2016, and that he has lied time and again about his willingness to release them, and the circumstances under which he would do so.  Now he doesn't need to do so, thanks to the persistence of the House Ways and Means Committee in pursuing the release by the IRS of Trump's tax returns.

This is not good news for Republicans who tried to scare people on behalf of Trump by pushing the tax button and complaining about how the release of Trump's tax returns might lead to such "terrible" scenarios as the release of the tax returns for Supreme Court justices.  Given the current makeup and output of the Court, all I could do when I heard that was to mentally respond "Yeah ... how about that?"

I'm deadly serious about that.  I think everyone running for public office, federal, state, and local, should be required to put out six years of tax returns, enough to bring their tax matters within the scrutiny of the Internal Revenue Service under its statute of limitations.  Maybe it would be a check on all of the principle-less con artists who think they can imitate Trump and con their way up the ladder of power.  In the case of the Supreme Court, perhaps that's how we can get back to checking it with what has been historically a check on it:  the court of public opinion.

And, if social media feedback counts for anything, it would appear that a significant number of people agree with me.  I can't be certain, but I would like to think that the real issue with taxes in the U.S. is not tax rates, but whether or not everyone is pulling their weight.  I hope and pray that's the case.  And Trump is all but the poster child for the willingness and resourcefulness of the rich in making sure that everyone else pulls their weight.

We know this now, because we actually have the returns.  And they show that Trump is not only a financial failure, but that he has lied in a desperate attempt to avoid being an even bigger financial failure.  In the process, my hope is that we all learn what a terrible price has been paid to satisfy the political need of the Republicans to make people worship the power of the rich, as well as the popular need to fantasize about how wonderful it would be to be rich.

And to satisfy both needs, we have gone out of our way to let Republicans cripple the IRS, which (like it or not) collects the tax revenue needed to pay the price tax for the civilization we take for granted.  The effect is that the rest of us pay more so that those with the most get to pay less.  You want evidence that the IRS hasn't been allowed to do their job?  Presidental tax returns are supposed to be routinely audited by it.  Guess which president's returns weren't audited?  I'm going to assume you got it right, but here you go anyway.

What must we do?

I've been talking about the need for a more progressive tax system from the time I started this blog nearly 14 years ago.  Not just because we need to honestly pay our bills for the things we both want and need, instead of taking the plutocrat path of financing it through debt and sticking it to everyone else.  But to avoid giving the plutocrats the power to stick it to everyone else.  To force them to put some skin into the game they play with our country and its future.  To remind them that we are all part of the same nation, and that we each have an obligation to its continued existence proportionate to what it has given us and what we are able to contribute.  

And one more thing:  to remind all of us that capitalism is a system that works best when you are forced to use your own money to build the dreams you want to build.  It forces you to think practically, and to work with others in a manner that treats them with respect and enables them to contribute their own ideas as well, and build their own dreams.  That is the difference between democratic capitalism and crony capitalism.  Democratic capitalism is real capitalism:  putting one's money to work.  Not someone else's.  Your own.  We are, in fact, where we are because of crony capitalism.  And, to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, the problem with crony capitalism is that, sooner or later, you run out of other people's money.

We have gone a very long way down a very bad road.  Is it too late to turn back?

I don't think so.

If I take anything away from the midterms, it's the possibility that the tide may be turning in a way that not even all of the election-related gimmickry of the GQP may be able to stop it.  But that only remains true if all of us, myself included, remain involved.  To whatever degree you can be.  In whatever way you can be.  I know that a lot of you have issues with the corporatism of the Democratic Party in the post-Clinton age.  I do too.  But pay the MAGA hats the compliment of doing what they've done:  change the messaging of the party by burrowing into it.  Get involved in your local branch of it.  Organize your friends.  Blog.  Contribute whatever time, money, and energy you have to contribute.

And, above all, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, VOTE!

It's the only way things are ever going to get any better, without resorting to a full-scale civil war.

And maybe, one day, among other things, we'll all be able to sit together in stadiums again, and cheer for the same team.

It Could Have Been Worse, But Here's How It Could Be Better

I've never had a harder time assessing an election in my entire life.  Perhaps the best way to put it is this:  never in my life have I felt so good saying "Well, it wasn't that bad."

Because it could have been worse.  Much worse.  And it wasn't.  Because of you.  Because of all of you.  Because of us.

Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives, which means that it will, over the next two years at least, be a complete waste of taxpayers' money at best or, at worst, a nightmare that pushes back against the progress that has been made since 2020.  No one should take this lightly.  The incoming House majority is composed almost entirely of reactionary GQP fanatics who would rather burn the aisle than reach across it.  They used the first day after the election to essentially declare war against their political opponents, including Joe Biden.  

And the Washington establishment's reoccurring fantasy of the past seven years still has not come true:  Donald Trump has not gone away.  Even though he is, slowly, slowly (dear G-d, it couldn't be any slower if it tried) being backed into a legal corner from which not even he can escape, he's hanging on.  No one should even begin to underestimate his ability to hang on to the edge of the cliff, long after anyone else would have slipped away.

That's the executive summary of the bad news.  And yet, bad is it is, it's far from the whole story.

As I'm writing this, the Democrats not only held on to their Senate majority, including all of their at-risk incumbents, but have the prospect of expanding their majority by 1 seat, which will make judicial and executive nominations far easier to approve, and to do so quickly without endless GQP obstruction.  Democrats also picked up Governors, state legislatures, and wins on ballot initiatives.

And while the next House majority will be Republican, it will not wield its majority power by a large margin.  Right now, with votes still being counted in two congressional races, the GQP will have between 220 and 222 seats, and the Democrats will have 213.  A nine-seat majority, made up in part of a handful of representatives from swing districts.  Whoever the next Speaker will be, he or she may not be able to prevent some members of the majority from working with Democrats on popular issues.

The red wave that was predicted came very close to washing out to sea.  As it was, it was a tiny splash that left a small puddle, one that may prove to be less unsightly and dangerous than the potential consequences that all of us feared

The GQP and its media allies spent, or rather, wasted an inordinate amount of time, money, and media space demagoguing Democrats and their allies on inflation, crime, and immigration, issues that are time-tested winners for them.  But not this time.

 

All of the messaging about inflation fell flat, which should lead all of us to question what voters really think about which party is more effective in managing the economy.  Initially, it appears that independent voters broke for Democrats on this.  Why?  Well, frankly, economic data has shown time and time again that the economic results during Democratic eras are far stronger than they are during Republican ones.  You may not have heard that said very often by media outlets owned by Republicans (which is to say, most of them).  But it is the truth.  It's quite possible that how independents think about inflation, in relationship to other issues, may differ from the "perspective" those outlets offer.

Then again, maybe, just maybe, it's time to come down to brass tacks here.  Republicans have been lying about all three issues all along.  Inflation is really price-gouging.  Crime is in fact worse in red states than in blue ones.  Biden has already deported potential asylees at a record pace.  Even worse, they know they've been lying all along.  They've never wanted anything but power.  This is precisely why they're planning to use their wafer-thin House majority on nothing but investigations.  If you want more proof of this, look at what is actually happening to prices now, in spite of the lack of a GQP plan to address them.  Does it surprise you that the same thing is happening to the crime rate?  It shouldn't.

What was really on the ballot, more than anything else.  Democracy was on the ballot, and democracy won, hands down.  Especially where it had to: at the state level, in state legislatures.  And this happened in spite of unprecedented gerrymandering designed to make Democratic victories impossible at both the state and congressional levels.  Keep this in mind, by the way, in evaluating the Republican House victory.  It literally would not have happened without gerrymandering.  The delicious irony in the results is that Republicans may have gerrymandered themselves out of better election results.

Gerrymandering.  Voting restrictions.  Dark money.  This is all the GQP knows how to do now.  And while it may help them place bodies in seats, it does nothing for them in the marketplace of political ideas.  The left has had tremendous success in the last several election cycles when it comes to ballot initiatives, and this year was no exception.  In Colorado, a formerly purple state that has become increasingly blue, voters for a tax increase to pay for universal free school lunches.  And there was also real if not perfect progress on banning slavery at the state level.

And then, there's the one thing that should give conservatives and their "religious" allies nightmares for decades to come.  This may not have been a red wave, but this was most definitely a Roe wave.  In spite of all the white men on your television screens and elsewhere trying to convince all of us that women were completely on-board with the idea of the government snatching their bodily autonomy away from them, actual women who voted begged to differ.  It isn't just Republicans who need to heed this warning.  It's Democrats as well, every time their "moderate" itch feels like it needs to be scratched.  It's Democrats as well.  The Roe wave, as I have said, kept Democrats within a few seats of House control, and, given the divisions within the House GQP caucus, may allow Democrats to have effective control.  It also helped them hold the Senate, control of which (depending on what happens in Georgia next month) may yet expand.

And if it does expand, thereby allowing executive and judicial nominations to move forward faster than they have in the past two years, Democrats should have no compunctions about doing so.  There's an opportunity here to use Dobbs to build a progressive majority the way the GQP used Roe to build a regressive one.  The so-called Reagan Revolution was largely based and sustained by right-wing outrage over Roe, and that outrage transformed the Republican Party, congressional races and, ultimately, the Supreme Court, which is no longer a court and does not deserve the label "supreme."  Dobbs has already upended the voting habits of America and, so long as it remains the law of the land, there's no reason to doubt that it will go on doing so.  The only appropriate response for Democrats is to use the power voters are prepared to give them.  Democrats must prove, and show, that they are willing to do so.

Why should Democrats believe this?  Because abortion won everywhere it was on the ballot.  Even in deep-red states such as Kentucky and Montana.  Want even bigger news on the subject of abortion?  It now has the potential to flip even evangelical voters.  They may be ready to flip anyway, now that Trump is exposed for the fraud he has always been.  There are already signs that even evangelical voters have finally had enough of Trump.  And not just Trump either, for that matter.  Time well tell.

For now, Democrats should take their success with ballot initiatives seriously, and use that combined with their wins in state races to see how federalism can work for them, by achieving results at the state level and spend less time chasing the Washington merry-go-round.  Especially now that Republicans have gone to war over the ability to put initiatives on the ballot.  And they have good reason to be fearful.  Here's a prominent example of what a ballot initiative can do when it comes to that big GQP super-weapon:  TAXES.

Perhaps above all, Democrats should finally, and once and for all, end the infighting.  It makes Republicans happy and makes media ratings go up, but accomplishes nothing else.  Attacks on the left from so-called "moderate" Democrats may have cost Democrats the House.  They're engaging in the same futile fighting-the-future that their GQP counterparts are pursuing.  What makes this infighting especially foolish is the fact that progressive Democrats made gains in this election, just as they have in the past two elections.  The generational shift that has been predicted in favor of progressive politics is finally happening.  Fighting it is like trying to fill a funnel with water.

No less a Washington and Democratic insider than Nancy Pelosi, along with Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn, recognized this fact and stepped down from their leadership positions, thereby giving House Democrats to put into place a new, younger, leadership team.  At the same time, Pelosi, Hoyer, and Clyburn will all remain members of the House, allowing their wisdom and influence to be available to that team.  They will, in fact, be able to wield behind-the-scenes influence as never before, now that they are out of the spotlight.  In this arena, they have no equals among the members of the pathetic Republican caucus.  

And no one, absolutely no one, should think that this was about Pelosi's spine, and the cowardly attack on her husband.  The conservative columnist Cal Thomas once dismissed Pelosi as a "San Francisco Democrat" who would be eaten alive by Republicans.  Wonder what he thinks today?

So-called moderate Democrats need to wake up and understand that they're making a major mistake in fighting the progressive wing of their own party, when what they need to do is less reaching across the aisle and more uniting within their own tent.  More and more, voters are able to see the lack of moderation behind so-called "moderate" policies and the "moderate" politicians that peddle them.  They are, moreover, only too happy to punish Democrats who try to sound like Republicans.  

You know what makes more sense?  Trying to support Democrats like Jessica Piper in Missouri, who's trying to organize despairing rural voters in her state--who she refers to as "Dirt Road Democrats," or at least potential ones--to stop giving Republicans a pass on their dismal economic track record in the state.  As she will tell you, it's hard work, but it's absolutely essential work, because Democrats are never going to be able to win a true governing majority without finding ways to flip red states like Piper's.  Likewise we need to appreciate people like Stacey Abrams, who may have single-handedly started the process of turning Georgia into a blue state, and hope that she runs again.  Because the truth of the matter is that there are lots of Republicans ready to become Democrats.  We need to have faith in our ability to cut through the MAGA distortions in our political discourse, meet people wherever they're at, and talk about what Democrats can do to help them.

Because we can go on pretending that we have a true two-party system, and let the system slide down history's memory hole, or we can face the blindingly obvious fact that being a Republican has been reduced to meaning being a supporter of Donald Trump.  And we can then go about the business of saving Trump's supporters from themselves.  The secret GQP sauce is to lie consistently and brazenly about Democrats and what they have to offer, leading voters to vote against them and, at the same time, vote against their own interests.  

We need to counter the lying 24/7, on not just a state-to-state level but a county-to-county level.  It's especially important, in the post-Dobbs era, to reach out to women, far too many of whom still see their interests as being aligned with those of men.  There may be, in this moment, a major opportunity to break through the communications wall with many potential Democratic voters, given what appears to be the willingness of Trump's major media ally, the loathsome Rupert Murdoch, to dump him.

Because maybe, just maybe, we have finally reached the point at which the Fourth Turning has already begun.  If you've never heard of this term, take a look here.  There are, in fact, some signs of it already.  Some members of the religious right are openly advocating violence, as are some members of the secular right.  Murdoch may be willing to dump Trump, but he's still willing to spend money to lie on behalf of conservatism.  Just as Republican state officials are still willing to manipulate voting.  Just as dark money is still a problem.  Ditto illegal gerrymandering.  And do not underestimate the importance to Republicans of gerrymandering:  outcomes in purple states show that fair maps work for Democrats.

Perhaps the biggest lesson for Democrats is the simplest one:  DON'T GIVE UP.  Here's a powerful reason why:  YOUR VOTE REALLY, REALLY, REALLY MATTERS.

And, in the meantime, the Democrats should make maximum use of the remaining weeks of their current governing trifecta.  Here's a good place to start.  Here's an even better one.

We've weathered one storm.  We have it within our power to go beyond weathering the next one, and sailing toward clearer waters.  Let's start getting everyone on board RIGHT NOW.

... AND One Final Point

MAGA Republicans are Trump Republicans.  Whatever they get control of will be used solely for his benefit.  And the only thing he and his followers want to accomplish is to inflict pain on their opponents.

To paraphrase one of his own tag lines:

In reality, he's not for you.  He's against everyone but himself.

The Democrats and their Republican/independent allies are the only thing in the way.

The Case For Midterm Voting (And Whatever Else You Can Do), Part II

And so, now down to hours before the midterms, I come to Part II of this message.  I'm going to operate on the assumption that you have already read Part I.  If not, I encourage you to stop reading here, and not come back until you've read it.  It'll give you useful context for what I have to say here.  In any case, I'll sum up here what I've written in Part I by saying that it gives an overview of the media environment in which politics in the U.S. is practiced now, and how that environment contributes to the existential dilemma democracy in our country now faces.  Fighting that environment, and the damage it has done and continues to do, is one key part of the case I want to make here for making sure that you get out and vote and encourage as many other people as possible to do the same.

This part, however, is equally important, and perhaps is even more disturbing and dangerous.  It's not about the messengers. It's about the message.  In a philosophical sense, it's about the absence of a message, as well as the dangerous political goal that occupies the place where a message should be.

Up until the 1980s, elections in this country, whatever the agendas of the candidates competing in them, were predicated on a fundamental acceptance of the rules of democracy.  Rules for voting in each state applied to everyone eligible to vote.  All votes cast by people following those roles were counted honestly and fairly.  As a consequence, there were winners and losers defined by the rules for elections as well as those of math.  Everyone, even the disappointed losers, accepted and abided by the results.  The winners knew that they would have to face the voters again to stay in power, while the losers knew that they would get another chance to be the winners.

We should all be proud of the fact that it worked that way, and mostly worked well, for a historically long period of time.

We cannot, however, assume that it will work that way this year.  We will be damned lucky if we can get back to the point again.

Let me put it this way.

One of the things that allows the MSM, and other players in our political system, to push for the out-of-power-in-the-White-House party to succeed in midterm elections is that it carries the fairness theme of American elections to a logical point.  In a democracy, even those who do not control the highest office in the land deserve to have some ability to influence the direction of governance in the nation.  If fairness is your political lodestar, the power of that principle can't be denied.  In ordinary times, it shouldn't be.

Again, these are not ordinary times.  But the good news is that, if fairness is your lodestar, there is still a way to pursue it, and make it a reality.

On one side this year, you have what amounts to a coalition of Democrats, Republicans, and independents, all of whom accept the basics of government in a democratic republic.  They believe in listening to and respecting each other, working together, and governing their conduct toward one another with fairness and honesty.  In short, you have people who cut across all social, political, and economic boundaries, willing to do what it has traditionally taken to form a more perfect union.  You don't have to take my word for this.  Look at Twitter (before Elon Musk destroys it, that is), and you'll see people from all sides of our political discussion chiming in on the same basic message.  For that matter, look at MSNBC, that notoriously "liberal" cable news network, and you'll see the same thing.

As for the other side?  Well, in fairness to my Republican coalition partners, I won't call it the Republican side, or even a MAGA Republican side.  Since it's essentially a personality cult in any case, let's call it the Trump-DeSantis side.  That should make it clear enough.

And, once again, if fairness is your lodestar, you should do everything in your lawful power to prevent it from gaining even a toehold in Washington.  For all of our sakes.  For your sake.

Why?

I know that your time is precious, and I don't want to do a single thing to stop you from getting yourself and everyone you know to the polls on Tuesday.  So I'm going to give you what in corporate circles the executive summary.  It's still going to be lengthy, because it's as comprehensive as I can make it.  But my hope is to get you and everyone else out the door with everything you need to know.

The Trump-DeSantis party promotes a policy agenda that is recognized elsewhere as being bankrupt.

Even worse, it knows this, and does not care at all, because it doesn't want Congress to make policy decisions on behalf of you and me.  It wants control of Congress for its own sake, to enrich its backers and shaft everyone else.

It is willing to lie about its opponents to get it.  Especially if one or more of the opponents are black.

And the steps they will take?

Sowing division, discord, and chaos to the point of exhausting any possibility of reasoned debate, just as they have been doing for the past two years. 

Making America dependent on a declining resource supplied by bloodthirsty tyrants.

Making it a theocracy where the only right to worship God is to do so as evangelicals do.  Even though evangelicals don't even believe in their own values.  And they certainly are no longer pretending they aren't religious fanatics.

Promoting policies that make their own states more dangerous than blue ones.

And policies that, far from fighting inflation, will actually make the cost of living worse.  Here is one example.  And another.  And yet another.

And, far from giving you more freedom, will give you even less.

In fact, it will enable them to control every aspect of our lives--and yours.

And to deny you any chance of using the right to vote to change any of this once it becomes real.

They are, in fact, actively manipulating the polls to exaggerate not only their popularity, but also the enthusiasm level of their voters.

Even worse, they have taken an assassination attempt on a political leader, one instigated by their own rhetoric, and attempted to turn it into a joke, and perhaps even into a springboard for more violence.

Are you paying attention?  Or are you just skimming through all of this and saying "So what?  Aren't the MAGA politicians going to win the midterms anyway?  Isn't that how this always works?"

Maybe not.  In fact, there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic, not only about the midterms, but also about what might lie ahead once they are behind us.

Early Dem turnout is massive.  And even the potential "spoiler" vote doesn't seem to be a problem:

And, if you need talking points to encourage others to vote, here are a few.  Recent economic news is better than many had expected, with even the Fed open to slowing down interest rate increases.

And with President Biden using every tool at his disposal to fight inflation, whether that means releasing oil from our strategic reserves or adjusting tax rates.

And with economic growth picking up again.

One final point.

Conservatism in its classical form teaches the virtue of learning from the lessons of history.  A short history lesson here is worth making.  Historians have shown that American politics tends to swing back and forth in arcs of 30-to-40 decades.  If recent trends point in a direction with regard to this, they point to an era to a 40-year era in which we took pluralism and people power off of the American agenda, and put in its place the power of Wall Street, weapons, and a warped view of Christianity that replaces God with Mammon.  And all of us are reaping the disastrous results.

Maybe, just maybe, the course we've been on isn't inevitable.  And, without any doubt, it's not our only choice.  I'm not the only person who feels that way, that our past tells us that this election may have the potential to be a healthy prologue.

How about you?

You have a chance to make a difference on Election Day.  You can help, and encourage others to help, change the deadly course we're on now.  You can do it by joining a truly bipartisan coalition of voters who, even as I type this, are banding together to literally, in the words of the late Senator John McCain, put country first.  Or, by either your actively voting for the Trump-DeSantis cabal, or staying at home and tuning out the civic rubble collecting everyone, you can prove that America was never exceptional in the first place, that it will become one more failed empire clogging up the dust bin of history.

The choice, as always, as I have said before and don't hesitate to say again, is yours.

For the next three days, I will be praying as hard as I can that all of us make the right one.

The Case For Midterm Voting (And Whatever Else You Can Do), Part I

Today, it is eight days before a midterm election perhaps like no other in our nation's history.  I'm sitting here on Halloween, hoping that the spirits being summoned by the electorate are our very best ones, the ones that put freedom and justice ahead of the darker passions that afflict the human soul.

And, honestly speaking, though I'm as sure as I am of anything when it comes to what I think American voters should do, I'm not at all confident that they're going to do it.

There's every reason to think that disaster might be lying in wait for our democracy next week.  As MSM outlets are fond of reminding us all the time, the President's party gets punished in the midterms, meaning the Democrats in this case.  Despite a growing economy, with growing employment, people are anxious about the cost of living, which, for a sizable number of voters, is their leading concern going into Election Day.  And turnout for midterm elections tends to be on the low side, which is never good news for Democrats, always the party needing to rely on millions of votes to cancel out millions of Republican dollars.

And, to tell you the truth, if the mood of the country was calmer and more mutually respectful, it might be the case where I might view what will happen on November 8 as not the end of the world when it comes to what I and other progressives hope for from our politics.  I might, depending on the state of my own life, view things through the prism that so many Americans view our politics:  that of sports and entertainment.  Your team loses the World Series or Super Bowl this year?  It's OK.  Wait until next year.  There'll be another chance.

But what I fear from these midterms is not mere disappointment.  It is existential dread. At times, it comes close to sheer terror when I consider the worst of the possibilities.  Because this time we truly have absolutely no certainty that there will be "another chance."

I try to take comfort in the possibility that the polls, which suggest we're at jump-ball when it comes to who will win and who will lose, are undercounting the number of Democratic voters who would not normally make a point in coming out for midterm elections, who see the current anti-democratic trend in our nation and understand that this is no time to (pardon the cliche) make the perfect the enemy of the good.  And there is some news on the early-voter front that suggests that this possibility may be a reality.

But it's a possibility.  Until the votes are counted, it's an unknown.  It's not the sort of trend that pollsters pay much attention to in part because it's an outlier in voting history.  Pollsters owe their continued existence to being right, and, good corporate entities that most of them are, they take the more conservative approach of guidance via historical norms.

And pollsters do their work hand-in-hand with other good corporate entities which all of us collectively know as the Press.  And, since freedom of the presses belongs to their owners, they likewise tend to take a conservative approach to protecting their property interests.  Indeed, they will go so far as to exaggerate, or even lie about, the results of poll resorts on which they report in a manner that promotes the prospects of Republicans.  Here, for example, is a report from a Florida newspaper suggesting that Democrats should be scared to death about a Republican lead in early voting that amounts to about 1% of the votes cast so far. 

Or even more perniciously, they will pretend that MAGA Republicans are really just "moderate" folk, no more dangerous than the next-door suburban neighbor you meet at your children's soccer matches.  As was the case in Virginia last year, they can sometimes fool enough voters in a purple state with this nonsense so as to get them to vote against their interests.  This may very well happen again this year.

So.  November 8 may be a total disaster.  Or it may not.  And my own estimate of my persuasive powers is far from exaggerated.  But too much is at stake to do nothing.  So I will take my chances.

And I will do so as simply as I can.  By reminding all of you of the reasons why November 8 could be at total disaster.  Especially if the Republicans not only win, but win big.

Let's start with the never-ending, Diogenes-style search for the perfect, reasonable, "moderate" Republican.  All you media folks out there, put down your lanterns.  The search is over.  And the bad news is this:  there aren't any.  If any of these folks were reasonable, well, they stopped being Republicans a while ago.  If anything, the contemporary Republican Party is a 100% poster child for what happens to a party when it heads down the rabbit hole of extremism.  Take, for example, the Federalist Society, those wonderful folks who believe in the nonsense of constitutional "originalism" and have now, with the help of "moderate" Republicans, enshrined that nonsense in our legal system.  They're not going around pretending to be "moderate."  Hell, they're not even going around pretending to be "conservative" anymore.

To that, let's add the reality that pollsters, while operating as slaves to historic trends, in fact are infected with enough corporatism that an increasingly large number of them operate with a bias toward Republican-flavored outcomes.  These polling organizations are used in an attempt not to measure public opinion, but to openly shape it.  Don't have any doubts about the reality of this; it is literally happening right now.

And this should not be surprising, given the plethora of openly right-wing leaning media outlets that have always operated without any pretense of presenting an objective perspective on current events.  Rather, they exist to feed an audience that pretends to want secret truths, but actually wants what even it knows on some level to be bald-faced lies, the better to grease its prejudices and narcissism.  That feeding, it should now be apparent, is a never-ending process, in which each day's red meat has to be redder and meatier than it was the previous day.

The best, choicest, most succulent meat of all?  Racism.  Racism that went beyond the dog-whistle stage a long time ago, and is now served up on television and computer screens everywhere, without pretense of being anything decent.  I could give you multiple examples but, when it comes to this garbage, you can always count on Tucker Carlson to sum it up for you.

Why do Republicans and their MAGA supporters need all of this corrupt help?  Why does all of this meant that, if it actually helps them, November 8 will be a disaster?

Well, I called this post Part I for a reason.  There will be a Part II later on this week.  As they used to say in the days when broadcast programs dominated the news media environment, stay tuned.

The Tragedy Of Gibson's And Oberlin

More than once in the course of posting here, I have written about my undergraduate alma mater, Oberlin College.  As I wrote here, to be a graduate of Oberlin is to be filled with a sense of pride in being part of its combined tradition of strong academics and social justice, while simultaneously being frustrated by its willingness to pursue the logic of the latter tradition almost to the point of self-destruction.  From time to time, the college has torn itself apart over issues that, while real and worthy of debate, do not justify the potential destruction of the institution and its legacy in American society.  Not only is doing so a waste of time, energy, and sometimes money, but it feeds the counter-narrative on the political right that progressivism is a nihilistic search for a "perfect" society that, in the process, threatens to destroy the society we have.

In my day, in the mid-1970s, the biggest debate was over closing a budget gap of significant proportions, and the painful choices need to be made in cutting costs (translation:  laying off faculty and even whole departments) and/or seeking new revenue (translation:  tuition hikes).  What did the students favor?  Taking money out of the endowment.  Never mind the fact that the endowment was the main reason that tuition was not even higher than it already was (or much lower than it is today).  I am sorry to say that the students were driven by the same Boomer optimism that would late drive Reaganomics from the right:  live for today, and tomorrow will take care of itself.  Ultimately, with help from a new president and a major unexpected legacy, Oberlin got through that period, and continued to flourish.

But the debate over the budget crisis underscored the inability to compromise that characterizes many Oberlin students.  Nothing matters except the purity of one's views, and no quarter should be given in the pursuit of those views to their logical conclusion.  Not even if that means harming the legitimate interests of those who disagree.  And now, as it turns out, not even if it means a head-on collision with the truth.  Or if that truth feeds the conservative narrative aimed at destroying the advancement of your views.

I am, of course, talking about the battle between the college and Gibson's Bakery, a local merchant in the town of Oberlin for more than a century, and a popular place to shop for students and residents, especially for fans of whole wheat doughnuts.  It's a battle that has provided both the college and the town with more national coverage than perhaps any other story in recent decades.  The coverage, and the resultant publicity, is of the sort that neither would have wanted or sought.  In the process, in its own way, it has helped to fuel the political polarization that threatens to tear our society completely, and permanently, apart.

Some background:  in 2016, an African-American student attempted to shoplift and use a fake ID card at Gibson's.  He was pursued outside of the store by an employee, who attempted to detain him and was, in the process, assaulted by two other students who were friends of the student being pursued.  The students were later arrested, and accepted a deal in which they plead guilty, made restitution, and admitted that racial profiling was not a factor in the incident.

You might think that this episode, fairly straightforward in its facts, would have ended there.  But you would know nothing about Oberlin if you did so.  Instead, it lead to a student protest and boycott campaign, a campaign which was aided and abetted by employees of the college, and which ultimately led to cancellation by the college of a contract between it and Gibson's for baked goods in student, as well as allegations of personal harassments of the Gibson family by various individuals.  The campaign was spurred on in large part by the allegation that Gibson's had a history of discriminatory practices against Black students, and deserved to be called to account for it.

Ultimately, the Gibson family sued the College for civil damages, and in particular for libel with regard to the allegations that its members had conducted their business in a racially discriminatory manner.  After attempts to settle the matter, the case proceeded to a jury trial, which was followed by a series of appeals, a process that concluded this past August with a decision by the Supreme Court of Ohio to reject the college's appeal of a lower court's decision in favor of the Gibsons.  At that point, Oberlin announced that it would pay the judgment awarded to the family, which by that point (after adjustment for a statutory damage cap and accrued interest), amounted to $36.59 million.  You can read the lower court's opinion here, as well as a broader summary of the facts in the case here.

So, after all has been said and done in this case, stretched out over nearly six years, what's left?

Even after its expected collection of the damages, the bakery is reportedly a shell of its former self, as the boycott against it by the students is still ongoing.  The college has suffered a substantial hit to its reputation and its pocketbook, although I suspect that insurance and the school's overall financial position will ease the latter deficit.  The town and its residents, which includes a significant Black population, has even more reason to resent the intrusion of the college in its day-to-day affairs.  The students' concerns about racial profiling, so far as I can tell, have not been addressed in any constructive way.  

And, outside of the college and town, the chattering classes in the more reactionary corners of the media have another target for use in distracting attention from their own hypocrisies.  In other words, the worst people are the only winners.

How could it have been different?  The first conviction that I have about all of this is that it should have been absolutely, positively as different, as better than this, as possible.

To begin with, the college should never, ever, have permitted any of its employees or other agents to participate in the protests organized by the students.  Even the lawyers representing the Gibsons stated publicly that the students' First Amendment right to protest was not an issue for their clients.  But the willingness of the campus administration to not only advocate against the Gibsons, but provide direct aid to the student protests, and to do so with being in possession of the facts, put the college on a collision course not only with the bakery, but with the town and the many other businesses in it with which the college has both direct and indirect dealings, whether buying goods directly or by supplying a market of customers (students and faculty).  

Town-and-gown relationships are inherently sensitive in nature and, while they can be mutually beneficial, they require a mutual need to recognize that the maintenance of those benefits requires an ongoing dialogue about potential sources of friction, and an established process for having that dialogue.  If the college and the town had such a process in place, that might have provided a means for discussing and debating the incident at Gibson's, and the issues spinning off of it.  What seems clear in any case, from the way this dispute unfolded, is that no such process exists here.  Had that been otherwise, it might have given everyone an off-ramp for dealing with the debate in a way that addressed merchants' concerns about crime and students' concerns about prejudice.

Second, and perhaps above all, the college should never, ever, have allowed this case to go to a jury trial, under any circumstances.  It's an irony of Oberlin's geographic location that one of the most politically and culturally progressive colleges in the nation lies not only in one of the nation's reddest states, but also in one of the reddest districts in that state, a district that could practically be the political poster child for corporate disinvestment in American manufacturing.  

I can sum up the reality of that in two words:  the name of the district's current representative in Congress, Jim Jordan.  Voters for Jim Jordan.  That was the jury pool for the trial.  Even if the college had a plausible defense for inserting itself into the debate over the incident at Gibson's, there was no chance of getting a jury that would be willing to hear it.  To the contrary, it was guaranteed to get a jury that would salivate at the chance to strike a perceived blow against "political correctness."  Gibson's lawyers, if (as I would suspect) they were experienced trial lawyers, knew that fact, and I suspect, would only have settled for a deal that treated their client very generously.  I would like to think well enough of the college's counsel that they recommended such a settlement, because they were experienced enough to know that their client was going to get clocked in court.  

In that case, and ruling out the possibility of malpractice, we're left to accept the likelihood that the college was willing to go to trial simply in an attempt to pacify an angry student population, hoping that the appeals process would go on long enough to position it financially for a settlement they knew in advance would be punishing.

If that is the case, and I am being fair and reasonable (as an attorney myself) in giving counsel on both sides the benefit of the professional doubt, what we are left with is the reality that Oberlin failed in what is perhaps its most fundamental obligation as an institution of higher learning:  to act in the best interests of its students.  Acting in that interest means not only ensuring the right and ability of students to engage in the most vigorous forms of debate, but to do so in a manner that does not, arbitrarily or otherwise, put an institutional thumb on the scale of civil discourse or, ultimately, the ability to render justice.

The fight for racial justice, as I have myself noted in this space, is built into Oberlin's DNA.  It was, is, and should always be a source of pride for the college and for those who have graduated from it.  In a time in which the level of racism in American society is exposed to a degree that we can no longer deny its pernicious effects, from our early history to the present day, Oberlin should absolutely be at the forefront of efforts to redress those effects and accelerate the process of our nation becoming a more perfect union.  Unfortunately, I believe that it can not do so unless it starts, in a meaningful and uncompromising way, to do so in its own back yard.

Since the announcement by the college that it will pay the court's judgment against it in full, I have found myself, from time to time, visiting its Web site and reading alumni publications in the hope of finding some sign, even the smallest indication that there exists an institutional recognition of the damage that has been done by the tragedy of its relationship with Gibson's, and the need to repair that damage and find a positive path forward for all of the stakeholders.  What I have seen so far is the digital and print equivalent of crickets.

Well, with one small exception.

The most recent edition of the Oberlin alumni magazine arrived at my house several days ago.  In vain, I searched through its nearly 60 pages for some reference, any reference, to the Gibson case.  Nada.  Until I came to the very last page, entitled "Endquotes," a collection of quotes from various individuals in the media (social and otherwise) regarding various aspects of Oberlin life.  In the middle of the first column was the following gem, a reprint of a posting on Twitter:

When fascism comes to America, never forget that the elite press spent years hollering about the threat posed by utterly powerless Oberlin College sophomores rather than the threat posed by these people.

By "these people," the person making the post was referencing a video of a crowed reciting the Watchmen Decree, a white-nationalist creed.  For the record, I take a back seat to no one when it comes to condemning, or fighting, white nationalism in any form.  And I consider it to be the greatest menace our democracy has faced.

But, in the immediate moment of reading this, I could only think of one thing.

Well played, Oberlin.  Bloody well played.

I meant that sardonically.  Here is a fuller description of what I felt.  Oberlin has spent years (save for the occasional e-mail) pretending that the whole Gibson controversy never happened, that life at the school has largely been unfolding with first-rate scholarship, exciting student projects, and adventuresome partnerships with various organizations.  And finally, now that the lawsuit is over, it sneaks in a subtlety dissenting voice about it on the very last page.  It gets the benefits of innocence and retaliation all at once.  How about that?  I really did go to a school run by clever people.

Clever up to a point, anyway.

Because what the tweet overlooks is a simple fact.  Whatever is true about Oberlin students in this whole sorry affair, they were anything but powerless.  They brought one of the most celebrated and influential colleges in the United States to its institutional knees.  They perpetrated a fraud on one of the best-known and best-loved businesses in the college's home town, blurring the line between institutional racism (a legitimate concern) over the reality of an actual crime which took place.  They exacerbated the town-gown relationship to the point at which it may never be repaired, creating problems for the college's business needs going forward.  

Perhaps worst of all, they handed a handy talking point to right-wing trolls who don't deserve to have it.  Oberlin at its very best is and should be untouchable by people who live in search of distractions from their own sins.  There are and will be times when moments they can turn into distractions are unavoidable.  So be it.  All the more reason to not, in the immortal formulation of Richard Nixon, hand them a sword.  But that's what Oberlin students have done.

I understand that I'm wading into a situation where feelings on both sides are very raw.  But that's why I'm wading into it.  We live in a society where people who care only about wealth and power use the raw feelings of others as raw material to create distractions from the larger forces that are threatening our democracy.  They may be a lot closer to success than many of us think.  Those of us who care about creating a just and prosperous society for everyone don't have the time, or otherwise the luxury, for internal conflict.  To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, the fierce urgency of now has never been fiercer.  Or more urgent.

So, if you've made it this far, just hear me out for a little while longer.

What I am pleading for is an effort by Oberlin's administration, Oberlin's students, and Oberlin's business community to come together in a highly visible way, with candor, with humility, and above all with a total commitment to hearing each other, understanding each other, to meeting each other's needs without compromising anyone's legitimate concerns, and to finding ways forward that will prevent a repeat of this tragedy from ever happening again.  And this effort, as well as all aspects of it, should be as publicly visible and accessible as possible.

This will require creativity.  It will require transparency.  And it will require more good will than probably exists among the various stakeholders at this point.  But it is utterly essential that it happen.  Not just for the future of Oberlin--the college, and the town that has been its home for nearly two centuries--but for the larger example of how all of us should live that Oberlin represents at its best.  For whatever it is worth, I would be proud to be a part of any such effort, in any way that I can.

Because I know it can work.  As I have documented elsewhere in this space, I've seen it work at Oberlin previously.

And I believe it can work again.  For all of our sakes, it has to.