Tag Archives: Snyder

Treason in Plain Sight

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“…. and soon the school feels to Werner like a grenade with its pin pulled.”

As I reread this morning Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, All the Light We Cannot See (2014), I reached the chapter entitled Everything Poisoned where that partial sentence appears. How astonishing that I would arrive at those remarkable words and the idea they capture as I was struggling to finish the post that follows below. Doerr’s observation about the young German Werner, one of the major characters in the story, captured perfectly how I, and millions of others here and around the world, felt watching the President of the United States, working in synchrony with his Vice President and his Secretary of State, ambush the popular, war-battered President of Ukraine at a press event called for that very purpose.

And make no mistake, while there may be no written script for the event we’ll ever see, I and many others are certain beyond any doubt that the attack was planned. The phony umbrage of JD Vance was calculated to unleash Trump’s angry denunciation of President Zelensky while Marco Rubio sat, hands folded, seemingly hoping no one would notice him. Everyone played their part to perfection at a public event that had no apparent purpose except to sabotage the mineral rights deal that Trump purported to want but only, it turns out, if Ukraine essentially surrendered to Putin’s Russia.

Zelensky wasn’t having it. Trump knew or should have known would be true and thus played out the end-game for the day: kill the deal while acting outraged that a visiting head of state engaged in an existential fight for the very survival of his country would have the temerity to disagree with the great and powerful Donald Trump making multiple demonstrably false claims about the war.

Why do this? Because Trump knew that Putin, the aggressor in the Russia-Ukraine war, did not want the United States to support Ukraine. Putin does not want peace. He wants conquest. Nothing could be clearer.

But, as he did during his first term with the COVID pandemic and the attempt to blackmail Zelensky into undermining Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy, Trump miscalculated both Zelensky’s character and the worldwide support for the survival of Ukraine as an independent democracy. The Republican sycophants who support Trump will proclaim their usual wonderment at how Trump “stood up” for the United States, but the reality is that he stood up for Putin’s Russia and sold out the United States once again.

Professor Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny among others, promptly posted a video on Substack entitled Five Failures in the Oval Office in which he outlines how Trump failed the country at the Zelensky lynching. https://open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p/five-failures-in-the-oval-office?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email The video takes less than six minutes and should be watched.

I am going to go a step beyond Professor Snyder. This post was originally intended to address only Trump’s directive that the United States vote twice with Russia against Ukraine on United Nations resolutions condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I will return to that but first ….

I make no claim to expertise in the subject of how the Constitution defines “treason.” But I have the Supreme Court to help, along with other credible sources.

Important background:

As the Library of Congress’s Constitution Annotated notes, the Framers were wary of vesting the power to declare and punish treason in Congress. Having just won their independence from Great Britain, the Framers had seen how the English kings and British Parliament had escalated “ordinary partisan disputes into capital charges of treason.” In other words, the ruling class used the crime of treason to eliminate their political dissidents.https://constitution.findlaw.com/article3/annotation24.html

Perhaps because of the limiting history of the constitutional definitions, there is almost no precedent in case law. There is a statute on the books, however:

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States. [18 US Code § 2381 (1948)]

And there is Haupt v. United States, 330 U.S. 631 (1947) wherein the Supreme Court went to some lengths to spell out what is required to establish “treason” and which remains, as far as I can tell, as the last word on the subject.

The charges against Mr. Haupt related to aid and comfort he provided to his son with knowledge of the son’s mission to aid Germany in its war with the United States. After his arrest, Haupt volunteered information to FBI agents including that he had been present when the son told the complete story of his travel outside the U.S., his return by German submarine with large sums of money and plans to be a saboteur. During his confinement in the Cook County jail, Haupt also talked with two fellow prisoners concerning his case; they testified as to damaging admissions made to them.

Ultimately twelve overt acts in three categories asserted to be treasonous were submitted to the jury: (1) Haupt accompanied his son to assist him in obtaining employment in a plant engaged in manufacturing a bomb sight; (2) he harbored and sheltered his son; and (3) he accompanied his son to an automobile sales agency, arranging, making payment for, and purchasing an automobile for the son. Each of these was alleged to be in aid of the son’s known purpose of sabotage. The Supreme Court was faced with Haupt’s argument that his motives were merely those of a loving father supporting a son.

Key findings:

  • … the minimum function of the overt act in a treason prosecution is that it show action by the accused which really was aid and comfort to the enemy. Cramer v. United States,325 U.S. 1 (1945); This is a separate inquiry from that as to whether the acts were done because of adherence to the enemy, for acts helpful to the enemy may nevertheless be innocent of treasonable character;
  • Cramer’s caseheld that what must be proved by the testimony of two witnesses is a “sufficient” overt act.
  • … there can be no question that sheltering, or helping to buy a car, or helping to get employment is helpful to an enemy agent, that they were of aid and comfort to Herbert Haupt in his mission of sabotage. They have the unmistakable quality which was found lacking in the Cramercase of forwarding the saboteur in his mission.
  • We hold, therefore, that the overt acts laid in the indictment and submitted to the jury do perform the functions assigned to overt acts in treason cases, and are sufficient to support the indictment and to sustain the convictions if they were proved with the exactitude required by the Constitution.
  •  The Constitution requires that “No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act . . . .” Art. III, § 3.
  • And while two witnesses must testify to the same act, it is not required that their testimony be identical. Most overt acts are not single, separable acts, but are combinations of acts or courses of conduct made up of several elements. It is not easy to set by metes and bounds the permissible latitude between the testimony of the two required witnesses. It is perhaps easier to say on which side of the line a given case belongs than to draw a line that will separate all permissible disparities from forbidden ones….and it is not required that testimony be so minute as to exclude every fantastic hypothesis that can be suggested.
  • The law of treason makes, and properly makes, conviction difficult, but not impossible…. [Haupt’s] mission was frustrated, but defendant did his best to make it succeed. His overt acts were proved in compliance with the hard test of the Constitution, are hardly denied, and the proof leaves no reasonable doubt of the guilt.

The judgment is Affirmed.

The Court thus found that, given the incriminating testimony of the required two witnesses, it was for the jury to decide between “treason” and “just a father helping his son get along.”

Mr. Justice Douglas wrote a concurring opinion, noting “…. As the Cramer case makes plain, the overt act and the intent with which it is done are separate and distinct elements of the crime. Intent need not be proved by two witnesses, but may be inferred from all the circumstances surrounding the overt act …. The requirement of an overt act is to make certain a treasonable project has moved from the realm of thought into the realm of action.”

Mr. Justice Murphy dissented in an opinion that suggested it was for the courts rather than the jury to decide whether “reasonable doubt” existed as to the true nature of the acts in dispute. Happily, that was not and is not the law.

The foregoing, I believe, fairly summarizes the law governing sustainable findings of treason.

Before turning to why I believe Donald Trump, among others, is plainly guilty of treason, you should also be aware of some facts set out in Autocracy, Inc., The Dictators Who Want to Run the World (2024) by Anne Applebaum, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Gulag, A History of the Soviet Camps (2004) and author of Twilight of Democracy, among others:

On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale war against Ukraine, the first full-scale kinetic battle in the struggle between Autocracy, Inc. and what might loosely be described as the democratic world. Russia plays a special role in the autocratic network, both as the inventor of the modern marriage of kleptocracy and dictatorship and as the country now most aggressively seeking to upend the status quo. The invasion was planned in that spirit. Putin hoped not only to acquire territory, but also to show the world that the old rules of international behavior no longer hold.

From the very first days of the war, Putin and the Russian security elite ostentatiously demonstrated their disdain for the language of human rights, their disregard for the laws of war, their scorn for international law and for treaties they themselves had signed. They arrested public officials and civic leaders: mayors, police officers, civil servant, school directors, journalists, artists, museum curators. They built torture chambers for civilians …. They kidnapped thousands of children, ripping some away from their families, removing others from orphanages, gave them new “Russian” identities and prevented them from return home to Ukraine. [Autocracy, Inc. at 13]

And more. And more. Those facts are not disputable by anyone with a functioning mind and the ability to disassociate from the penumbra of subordination cast by Donald Trump on his followers.

The conclusion from that and much other evidence, all well-known, is that Russia under Putin is the enemy of the United States. To anyone observing Putin and his statements and behavior, he has made it clear beyond any doubt that he regards American democracy and our constitutional freedoms as anathema. Multiple investigations here have shown beyond doubt extensive Russian interference in our elections and more.

It is also clear beyond doubt that there are more than two witnesses to Trump’s issuing of instructions to the interim U.S. representative to the U.N to vote with Russia and against Ukraine. There is no possibility she would have just done this on her own without instructions from the highest level. Speaking in Trumpish, “America’s acting envoy to the UN, Dorothy Camille Shea, described the US resolution as a “simple historic statement… that looks forward, not backwards. A resolution focused on one simple idea: ending the war”. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7435pnle0go

Now add the sickening spectacle of Trump and Vance aligning with Putin’s Russia against Zelensky’s Ukraine and you have the perfect description of multiple acts of giving “aid and comfort” to an avowed enemy of the United States.

Trump has abandoned the western alliance formed after WWII and aligned himself and now the U.S. government with Russian aggression against a free and independent democracy on its border. Given the bizarre collection of appointments Trump has made to positions high in our defense, security and intelligence apparatus, it is not farfetched to believe that he is preparing to gift Ukraine to Russia and likely a lot more.

Recall that Trump is the same person who removed highly confidential documents from the White House when he left in 2021 and that he refused to return them, lied about what he had and engaged in overt acts to hide what he had from authorities seeking their protection and return. The FBI under Trump’s new appointed leadership has just returned those documents to Trump!

So now, etched in our memories forever, is the pathetic spectacle of Trump and his henchman JD Vance, with the silent acquiescence of Marco Rubio, attacking and berating Volodymyr Zelensky in an almost certainly staged event for that very purpose. Trump, self-satisfied that he had accomplished his mission, freely noted at the end that it would “make great television.” In this pathetic demonstration of anti-American animus, Trump gave further aid and comfort to a declared enemy of the United States he took an oath to defend. You can read a reasonably accurate account of the episode here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/us/politics/trump-zelensky-us-ukraine-russia.html

This was a first in American diplomatic history and, I believe, an obvious effort to sabotage Zelensky and Ukraine in front of the American people. Trump set up the press event and, with VP Vance chiming in with a personal attack near the end, erupted when Zelensky tried to explain the true situation Ukraine faces with Russian aggression. Vance and Trump acted like Zelensky had forced his way into the White House, called the press event himself and then outrageously used it to stand up for the freedom of his country that is under existential attack designed to eliminate the very existence of the country.

Trump, as usual had spent the first two-thirds of the press event talking about himself, what a great negotiator he is, how he only wants the best for the United States, how he was persecuted, how terrible Presidents Obama and Biden were, on and on and on, the same old mindless lies and blather.

In my opinion, the entire nightmarish scene was planned to undermine Ukraine and Zelensky. Trump knows Putin does not want peace; he wants conquest. And it won’t stop with Ukraine if he’s successful. Trump had no intention of making a deal with Zelensky unless it involved the total surrender of Ukraine to Russia.

I have no idea what leverage Putin has on Trump – you have no doubt read many of the same stories and speculations as I have – but whatever it is, it must be very strong to produce such overt appeasement that rivals or exceeds anything ever seen in world relations. Russian media ate it up, of course, just as one would expect. Peter Baker, White House reporter, wrote that

Never has an American president lectured the leader of an ally in public like this, much less the leader of a country that is fighting off invaders.

I have covered the White House since 1996. There has never been an Oval Office meeting in front of cameras like this in all that time.

The damage Trump/Vance did to United States standing in the world is immeasurable and unforgivable. It was, I believe, pure and simple treason.

Viewpoint Discrimination at Substack

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A while back I decided to create a Substack account as another outlet for writing and sharing my thoughts about the political situation, among other things. I had already decided to stop active participation in Twitter/X given the undermining of the original concept by its new owner, Elon Musk. I thought I would over time transition away from this blog to using Substack as my primary outlet. Substack hosts a number of people I follow closely, like Prof. Timothy Snyder, and I wanted to write in that same environment.

So, I signed up. I used my Gmail account with the shiningseausa as a pen name because that is the pseudonym I have used on most social media accounts. My thought was that using a single pen name would make it easier for readers to understand who was writing and, if they desired, to choose which social media in which to follow me.

My first Substack post, on September 23, 2024, was a message, a plea into the ether, that Jill Stein should do everyone a favor, including herself, by withdrawing from the 2024 presidential race in which she stood a zero chance of success. It was titled simply, “A Proposal for Jill Stein.”

The second post was Only the Best People, on November 17, 2024, about some of the people Donald Trump was proposing for his cabinet and other high government positions. It contained only one link, to an opening poem, and no one clicked on it. This post was also published in this blog but no one reading it in Substack would have known that unless they subscribed to both.

Substack posted this no-reply message on November 17:

Share Only the Best People

We’ve generated custom assets to help you promote your post on other social networks. Download your videos and images and share with a link to your post!

https://shiningseausa.substack.com/p/only-the-best-people

That message was accompanied by other links created by Substack, that clearly encouraged me to repost on Twitter/X, Instagram, TikTok and possibly others. I did not act on that invitation.

My third Substack post was called, “The Nauseating Descent of Mainstream Media,” posted on December 5, 2024. It was also posted in this blog, but the only link in the post was to a Substack post by Harry Litman that I urged everyone to read.

Then, it happened. Jennifer Rubin, whose opinion pieces I followed in the Washington Post, announced her resignation in the face of Jeff Bezos’ interference in the editorial side of the paper. Shortly thereafter, Rubin announced in the BlueSky app, the formation of The Contrarian, described as “a new media outlet not owned by anybody.” I tried to subscribe and at that point, for the first time, learned this:

Your account is currently suspended. Something you posted may have violated Substack’s Spam & Phishing policy. If you believe this is a mistake, you can submit a appeal to our Trust & Safety team here: https://substack.link/account-ban-appeal.

Consider that message closely. “Something” I posted, but unidentified. “May have violated” … presumably that means “actually violated,” since the result of my posting the unidentified material resulted in suspension of my account, not an inquiry about it.

On December 3, 2024, two days before my third post, Substack sent me a reader statistics report. No mention of any issue related to spam or phishing. On December 5, immediately after my third Substack post, I received another no-reply Substack email:

Share The Nauseating Descent of Mainstream Media

We’ve generated custom assets to help you promote your post on other social networks. Download your videos and images and share with a link to your post!

https://shiningseausa.substack.com/p/the-nauseating-descent-of-mainstream

Again, no mention of spam or phishing issues, but including the same sharing suggestions as before. The next day, another reader statistics report with no issues raised.

On December 17, 2024, Substack announced a new project:

The new media, powered by Substack

Partnering with The Free Press to better support media organizations

The Free Press, a media organization founded by the journalists Bari Weiss, Nellie Bowles, and Suzy Weiss, and hosted by Substack, has relaunched its website with a fresh design….

This relaunch showcases a model that, in the years ahead, will give big-vision publishers a new option for starting a fully-fledged media business, encompassing rich design, advanced websites, deep analytics, automated marketing features, and first-class support for video, audio, and more.

Substack will always be dedicated to helping individuals and small teams publish across formats, build an audience, and make money from subscriptions, but we also want to support publishers’ ambitions as they grow on the platform. With that in mind, we are building a toolset that will allow high-volume publishers with sophisticated needs—including custom branding, website design, and support for large editorial teams—to take advantage of Substack’s best-in-class publishing system while also being plugged into a network that drives subscriptions.

On January 3, 2025, Substack sent me another reader statistics report with no indication of anything amiss.

At this point I was, and remain, thoroughly confused as to what the issue really was at Substack. The site was encouraging me to share my Substack posts using my shiningseausa pen name and simultaneously telling me I had violated some policy I was unable to divine from Substack’s policy statements while simultaneously proclaiming its dedication to free expression.

I appealed the suspension. Substack acknowledged the appeal on January 13 and responded with this:

As noted in our Content Guidelines, Substack is not intended for advertising-based accounts or conventional email marketing.

The moderation team has reviewed your account and determined that its content is in breach of these guidelines. Specifically, we have concluded that the primary purpose of the account is to advertise external products or services, drive traffic to third-party sites, distribute offers and promotions, enhance search engine optimization or similar activities. [Bolding added]

I responded on January 16:

I have examined all three of the posts I placed in Substack & do not understand how you reached the conclusion you assert unless it’s the single reference to my blog in the first post on Sept. 24, 2024, which reference was related solely to matters of policy content of the argument I was making. In the other two posts, no reference is made to the blog. The blog has no commercial component, no advertising, no product promotions except a single reference to a book I published in December. I do not therefore understand the basis for your conclusion that the primary purpose of my entire Substack account is to “advertise external products or services, drive traffic to third-party sites (all are cited only as sources or references to arguments being made), distribute offers and promotions (there are none), enhance search engine optimization or similar activities.” My second Substack post was devoted entirely to criticism of Trump’s cabinet & other nominees, and the third post related solely to disputing attacks on President Biden for pardoning his son. With all due respect, since you cite nothing specific to support the sweeping conclusion you state about the purpose of my Substack account, which is barely off the starting block, I ask that you identify precisely where the offense lies. I have read many Substack posts by many different authors, all of whom cite authorities & sources for their arguments. All seem identical substantively to what I posted. If you’re going to permanently ban me from Substack, you should at least be specific as to the offense committed. [Bolding added here]

On January 17 Substack responded with this:

As noted, Substack is vehemently anti-spam and may ban accounts that post spam when interacting with others on Substack, such as in comments, discussion threads, or email replies.

To reactivate your account, please confirm we may remove previous notes and comments engaging in these activities, and we will be happy to remove your account restrictions.

 Within minutes, I replied:

I too am vehemently anti-spam. The issue here is that I don’t understand what the spam is that Substack is concerned about in my three posts. If Substack has in mind deleting “notes and comments” from the 3 posts, it would be most helpful if you told me what those were so I can give informed consent. Right now I truly have no idea what the concern is.

Less than an hour later, Substack responded:

We’ve reviewed your account activity and noted your interactions on other newsletters. Specifically, we’ve identified two comments on separate newsletters which included links directing to your personal website. Additionally, the bio section of your Substack profile includes a link to the same site.

Our moderation team regards these actions as promotional activity geared to direct users off-site to an external webpage. As stated in our Content Guidelines, while advertising and marketing are allowed on Substack, these activities should not be the main focus of a Substack account. The primary purpose should be creating valuable, unique content for subscribers.

In this case, the frequent linking to an external site gives an impression of an account primarily intended to drive traffic elsewhere, rather than engaging with the Substack community.

To resolve this issue and reactivate your account, we propose to remove these external links from your comments and profile. Once removed, your account restrictions will be lifted.

We’re awaiting your consent to proceed with this step. If there are any further concerns or queries, please let us know.

The very next afternoon Substack sent me a survey asking me to “rate the support you received.”

I replied that same day that “I am still waiting for you to identify the claimed offending statements.”

On January 24, Substack finally responded:

To resolve this issue and reactivate your account, we propose to remove these external links from your comments and profile.

https://shiningseausa.com/
https://shiningseausa.com/2024/12/05/the-nauseating-descent-of-mainstream-media/
https://shiningseausa.com/2024/12/05/the-nauseating-descent-of-mainstream-media/

Once removed, your account restrictions will be lifted.

We’re awaiting your consent to proceed with this step. If there are any further concerns or queries, please let us know.

The same day I replied:

Remove those links from what accounts specifically? How do I access my bio with account suspended?

Four days later Substack had not responded. I wrote:

I am astonished and disappointed that Substack has chosen to resist explaining its bizarre position that my posting(s) are somehow spam. I have asked for straightforward factual information on which to base a decision to the path Substack has demanded and you simply repeat the same demand with no discernable effort to address the questions I have posed. I am finished repeating myself to be faced with apparent stonewalling by Substack’s team. You leave me no choice but to address this another way. Very unfortunate.

And so, here we are. Someone familiar with the workings of social media has suggested to me that Substack’s action is driven by a complaint someone filed. If so, that has not been disclosed. I am at a loss.

As a result of Substack’s persistent refusal to explain its concerns and demands, I am left with no choice but to terminate the account. Very disappointing.

Time to Face Reality

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As Trump’s proposed cabinet of losers, criminals, and traitors continues to take shape, it is perhaps time to face certain realities. I am reminded of the statements of several wise people over the years.

Alan Bennett, 90-year-old English playwright and creator of The History Boys, wrote, “History? It’s just one f***ing thing after another…”

You no doubt recall the famous line attributed to the philosopher George Santayana, but here is the full quote:

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Many others, Winston Churchill among them, have reiterated the last line, usually as a warning, usually ignored.

A variation attributed to Eugene O’Neill was that “There is no present or future – only the past, happening over and over again – now.”

And, of course, President Lincoln stated in his address on June 16, 1858, at what was then the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, after he had accepted the Illinois Republican Party’s nomination as that state’s US senator, an election he lost:

A house divided against itself, cannot stand.”

I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

It will become all one thing or all the other.

Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new – North as well as South.

The wisdom of these statements is often overlooked. Not now.

The Republican Party needs a new name. The Republican Party is no longer conservative or patriotic. In the hands of Donald Trump, the GOP is threatening to reduce the federal government to a shadow of its current self and turn such political power as remains outside Trump’s personal dictator hands to the states.

So, let us take a spin through some history that Trump and his billionaire shills have either forgotten, never knew, or simply don’t think is relevant.

I refer to the Articles of Confederation. The Articles were the first “constitution” adopted during the Revolutionary War. The ConstitutionCenter.org explains it this way:

The Second Continental Congress approved the document on November 15, 1777, after a year of debates. The British capture of Philadelphia helped to force the issue.  The Articles formed a war-time confederation of states, with an extremely limited central government.  The document made official some of the procedures used by Congress to conduct business, but many of the delegates realized the Articles had limitations.

Two days later, Congress submitted the Articles to the states for immediate consideration. However, it took until March 1, 1781, for this “immediate” consideration to become final.

Here is a quick [edited] list of the problems that occurred, and how these issues led to our current Constitution.

    1. The central government was designed to be very, very weak.The Articles established “the United States of America” as a perpetual union formed to defend the states as a group, but it provided few central powers beyond that. But it didn’t have an executive official or judicial branch.
    2. The Articles Congress only had one chamber and each state had one vote.This reinforced the power of the states to operate independently from the central government, even when that wasn’t in the nation’s best interests.
    3. Congress needed 9 of 13 states to pass any laws.Requiring this high supermajority made it very difficult to pass any legislation that would affect all 13 states.
    4. The document was practically impossible to amend.The Articles required unanimous consent to any amendment, so all 13 states would need to agree on a change. Given the rivalries between the states, that rule made the Articles impossible to adapt after the war ended with Britain in 1783.
    5. The central government couldn’t collect taxes to fund its operations.The Confederation relied on the voluntary efforts of the states to send tax money to the central government. Lacking funds, the central government couldn’t maintain an effective military or back its own paper currency.
    6. States were able to conduct their own foreign policies.Technically, that role fell to the central government, but the Confederation government didn’t have the physical ability to enforce that power, since it lacked domestic and international powers and standing.
    7. States had their own money systems.There wasn’t a common currency in the Confederation era. The central government and the states each had separate money, which made trade between the states, and other countries, extremely difficult.
    8. The Confederation government couldn’t help settle Revolutionary War-era debts.The central government and the states owed huge debts to European countries and investors. Without the power to tax, and with no power to make trade between the states and other countries viable, the United States was in an economic mess by 1787.

George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Dickinson and others met and proposed that all 13 states meet in Philadelphia to resolve the debacle. The current Constitution emerged from that meeting, was ratified, and then promptly amended by the Bill of Rights to cure certain glaring omissions in the original version. Constitution-making is hard work.

While the issues with the Articles of Confederation were clear, by the time of the Constitutional Convention white people in the southern states were deeply entrenched in the system of slavery on which their economy depended. Compromises were required and made in order to reach a constitutional document that could be promoted among the states for ratification. Without those compromises there would have been no Constitution and no country, at least not one comprised of all the former colonies and territories. Even then, ratification consumed two years and eight months. Ratification of the Bill of Rights took another year.

A very detailed history of the events leading to the Constitution may be found in https://www.britannica.com/topic/American-colonies/The-decision-for-independence if you have interest in it.

What lessons can be learned from this early experience with nation-making?

One is that in the modern world of, say, the post-WWII era, a “nation” in which the major powers are dispersed among many widely spread and independent entities (read “states”) is extremely vulnerable to nations with more power concentrated in a central authority. It’s true, of course, that the separation of what became the United States of America was driven in major part by rejection of the totally centralized power of the King of England. But that king’s authority resided in one person and was absolute.

Under the Constitution (not the Articles of Confederation), the power of the central authority, the federal government, was strong but restrained by several features built into the system, not least of which was the division of federal power into the three co-equal branches we call the Executive (President), Legislative (Congress) and Judiciary (Courts). The idea was that each would serve as a check against the power of the other two. And, among the many brilliant elements of the new Constitution was the principle that the church and state must remain separate so that individuals would always be free to practice, without interference from the government, whatever religion, or none, that they chose.

Over time amendments were judged necessary as the country grew and society recognized that further centralization of certain principles was essential to secure the freedom that the Framers, and the Americans who fought the Revolutionary and Civil Wars to create and preserve the union, sought to protect in perpetuity. For example, the requirements of ‘equal protection’ and ‘due process of law’ apply to both the federal government and the states.

It is now clear that the constitutional regime thus formed has several serious flaws, not least of which is the unplanned for development of political parties. The operation of the Electoral College has also proved to be quixotic at best.

It is also apparent that the widespread rhetorical framework under which Americans claim to a special place in the world is a myth. American “exceptionalism” viewed against the reality of lingering racism, fear of “foreigners,” and fear of the future leads to the inevitable awareness that Americans are no more exceptional than the people of other countries. The US history of intervention in other countries has not endeared the nations of the world to unqualified respect for the intentions of this country.

The threat of climate change and our newly realized vulnerability to disease should be sufficient to bind all peoples together in a common effort to protect the species by protecting the only planet we’re ever going to know. But that’s not what’s happening.

The United States has one of the strongest economies in the world. Our people overall enjoy a standard of living far above most of the rest of the planet. Yet fear of change, fear of the “other” and fear of displacement have led the people to elect a convicted felon as national leader. That same “leader” is plainly guilty of other crimes that will never be adjudicated, including his leading an insurrection against the government to overturn the 2020 election and his theft, and refusal to return, highly confidential government documents.

The Supreme Court, laced with conflicts of interest and outright corruption, has held that the President of the United States may not be held accountable for crimes committed in office if, for example, they are committed while conducting “official acts.” Thus, the Court held that the President may with complete immunity enlist the Department of Justice to join him in a criminal enterprise by simply “discussing” the matter with leaders within the Department.

Trump has made clear that he and his cronies intend not to lead the federal government but to dismantle it. His initial selection of incompetent and blatantly unqualified departmental and other senior leaders is conclusive proof that he has no intention of complying with the oath of office he will nominally take on January 20, 2025.

Trump is literally free, per Supreme Court decision, to ignore the law and proceed with his agenda. Little stands in his way, given the composition of the Congress and the abdication of responsible jurisprudence by the high court. What then?

Many large companies, like Meta and Apple, have surrendered by providing massive funds for Trump’s inauguration, ignoring the advice of Prof. Timothy Snyder not to comply in advance. Trump knows these economically influential entities and their leaders will not resist him. Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, stopped the paper from endorsing Kamala Harris.

Perhaps even more remarkably, the Post’s Editorial Board has published a list of some Trump key appointments and indicated they should be confirmed. The list includes the likes of election-deniers Elise Stefanik and Pam Bondi (Trump’s second choice behind the disgraced and grossly unqualified Matt Gaetz. Also Kelly Loeffler, rejected by the voters of Georgia. The only ones who fail to pass the Post’s low bar are Robert Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, and Russell Vought.

Granted the Post spend little effort in explaining itself, but the criteria it chose to mention are, well, mind-blowing.

First, the Post says:

We would not have picked any of his choices for our hypothetical Cabinet. But, as we have argued for decades, that is not the standard we — or U.S. senators — should apply when evaluating potential executive nominees for Senate confirmation. The president-elect won the election. He deserves deference in building his team, and the Americans who elected him deserve an operational government, absent disqualifying deficiencies in competence, temperament or philosophy.

By that standard, all but two of Trump’s planned Cabinet nominees seem confirmable — as well as all but two of his picks for Cabinet-rank jobs that require confirmation.

But then the Post describes some of the nominees this way:

Marco Rubio for Secretary of State – “The son of immigrants, Rubio is respected by Senate colleagues and understands the vital importance of American leadership.”

My comment: this was news to me given Rubio’s post-2020 obeisance to Trump and the MAGA crowd. No sources are cited.

Scott Bessent for Secretary of Treasury — a “hedge fund billionaire, who seeks to stimulate growth and reduce the deficit, is among Trump’s most reasonable intended nominees.”

My comment: Again, no sources or authority cited. Maybe “billionaire” is sufficient for the Post’s purposes. It certainly is for Trump.

Pam Bondi for Attorney General – “Florida’s former attorney general is qualified; lawyers who have worked with her report that she is serious.”

My comment: Bondi is a 2020-election-denier and apparently has lobbied for foreign governments in the past. She’s serious alright. Bondi will be the perfect accomplice to Trump’s continuing efforts to use the Justice Department, with his Supreme Court’s approval, to commit further crimes without accountability.

Doug Burgum for Secretary of Interior – “The outgoing North Dakota governor and Stanford MBA built a successful software company that he sold to Microsoft.”

My comment: Being a software entrepreneur is not an obvious qualification for managing our natural resources. Prepare to lay your body down in front of a national park.

Howard Lutnick – Secretary of Commerce – “The co-chair of Trump’s transition team is a natural fit for a job traditionally held by a presidential friend.”

My Comment: A founding member of DOGE. Billionaire. His pinned Twitter/X account says: “Welcome to DOGE. We will rip the waste out of our $6.5 Trillion budget. Our goal: Balance the Budget of the USA. We must elect Donald Trump President. @elonmusk @realDonald Trump” The accompanying photo is of Lutnick & Elon Musk!

Balance the budget – riiight. Standard Republican rhetoric. Balance the budget and destroy the economy. A “natural fit.”

Lori Chavez-DeRemer – Secretary of Labor – “The former congresswoman from Oregon maintains surprisingly unorthodox views on organized labor.”

My comment: what “unorthodox views” means we are left to guess, and I’m guessing they are not good for unions.

Scott Turner – Secretary of Housing & Urban Development – “The former motivational speaker has never run a big organization, but that is not disqualifying.”

My comment: Lack of experience is self-evidently irrelevant in a Trump administration.

Sean P. Duffy – Secretary of Transportation – “The former reality TV star is also a former congressman from Wisconsin. He’ll still need to study.”

My comment: …..

Chris Wright – Secretary of Energy – “The Colorado oil and gas executive acknowledges that climate change is real.”

My comment: I suspect he also agrees the Earth is not flat. Prepare to lay your body down in front of a national park.

Linda McMahon – Secretary of Education – “The other co-chair of the president-elect’s transition team led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term.”

My comment: Betsy Devos redux? Her SBA experience definitely, certainly, obviously, assuredly qualifies her to lead American education policy, though her opportunities to do more damage to our education system may be brief if Trump fulfills his plan to eliminate the Department.

Douglas Collins – Secretary of Veterans Affairs – “He was a firebrand as a congressman from Georgia, but his heart seems to be in the right place in caring for veterans.”

My comment: You can’t make this stuff up. The most the Post has to say is that the nominee cares about veterans.

Kristi L. Noem – Secretary of Homeland Security – “Dog jokes aside, she has served in Congress and two terms as governor of South Dakota.”

My comment: The Post apparently thinks Noem’s shooting her dog was a joke! And, South Dakota being at the center of our national security concerns, Noem is imminently qualified for … something, though not the complex task of securing the homeland against attacks, especially with Trump in charge.

Interestingly, the Post did not mention Trump’s anointing of Kash Patel as inside man at the Department of Justice with instructions, redundant in his case, to get even or better with many of Trump’s main enemies list.

You get the picture, I’m sure. This is the “government” that Trump promised and that the American people chose, albeit by the slimmest of margins.

The United States is in the deepest trouble.

Corporate America is lining up to bend the knee to Trump. Under Donald Trump the United States seems destined to become a weak state and an international pariah as Trump in turn bends the knee to dictators like Vladimir Putin.

Thus far, the Democratic Party, reeling from the loss of the presidency and both houses of Congress, and with a Supreme Court having conferred immunity for the president’s crimes in office, has nothing much to say. Everyone, it seems, is waiting to see the actual shape of the catastrophe about to begin. It won’t be long now.

The Strongman Fantasy (And Dictatorship in Real Life)

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Professor Timothy Snyder, an expert in, among other things, the theory and reality of politics and law, has written an extraordinary summary of the result of electing a “strongman” to power. Professor Snyder, the author of, among other works, On Tyranny – Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, wrote this for Substack and encouraged sharing of his thoughts.

Here they are, verbatim but with hyperlinks removed. Pay attention. It may be your last chance.

“Quite a few Americans like the idea of strongman rule.  Why not a dictator who will get things done?

I lived in eastern Europe when memories of communism were fresh.  I have visited regions in Ukraine where Russia imposed its occupation regime.  I have spent decades reading testimonies of people who lived under Nazi or Stalinist rule.  I have seen death pits, some old, some freshly dug. And I have friends who have lived under authoritarian regimes, including political prisoners and survivors of torture. Some of the people I trusted most have been assassinated.

So I think that there is an answer to this question.

Strongman rule is a fantasy.  Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman. He won’t.  In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents.  We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance.  The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing.  We get abused and we get used to it.

Another pleasant illusion is that the strongman will unite the nation.  But an aspiring dictator will always claim that some belong and others don’t.  He will define one group after another as the enemy.  This might feel good, so long as you feel that you are on the right side of the line.  But now fear is the essence of life.  The politics of us-and-them, once begun, never ends.

We dream that a strongman will let us focus on America.  But dictatorship opens our country to the worst the world has to offer.  An American strongman will measure himself by the wealth and power of other dictators.  He will befriend them and compete with them.  From them he will learn new ways to oppress and to exploit his own people.

At least, the fantasy goes, the strongman will get things done.  But dictatorial power today is not about achieving anything positive.  It is about preventing anyone else from achieving anything.  The strongman is really the weak man: his secret is that he makes everyone else weaker.

Unaccountable to the law and to voters, the dictator has no reason to consider anything beyond his own personal interests.  In the twenty-first century, those are simple: dying in bed as a billionaire.  To enrich himself and to stay out of prison, the strongman dismantles the justice system and replaces civil servants with loyalists.

The new bureaucrats will have no sense of accountability.  Basic government functions will break down. Citizens who want access will learn to pay bribes.  Bureaucrats in office thanks to patronage will be corrupt, and citizens will be desperate.  Quickly the corruption becomes normal, even unquestioned.

As the fantasy of strongman rule fades into everyday dictatorship, people realize that they need things like water or schools or Social Security checks.  Insofar as such goods are available under a dictatorship, they come with a moral as well as a financial price.  When you go to a government office, you will be expected to declare your personal loyalty to the strongman.

If you have a complaint about these practices, too bad.  Americans are litigious people, and many of us assume that we can go to the police or sue.  But when you vote a strong man in, you vote out the rule of law.  In court, only loyalism and wealth will matter.  Americans who do not fear the police will learn to do so.  Those who wear the uniform must either resign or become the enforcers of the whims of one man.

Everybody (except the dictator and his family and friends) gets poorer.  The market system depends upon competition.  Under a strongman, there will be no such thing.  The strongman’s clan will be favored by government.  Our wealth inequality, bad enough already, will get worse.  Anyone hoping for prosperity will have to seek the patronage of the official oligarchs. Running a small business will become impossible.  As soon as you achieve any sort of success, someone who wants your business denounces you.

In the fantasy of the strongman, politics vanishes and all is clear and bright.  In fact, a dreary politics penetrates everything.  You can’t run a business without the threat of denunciation.  You can’t get basic services without humiliation.  You feel bad about yourself.  You think about what you say, since it can be used against you later.  What you do on the internet is recorded forever, and can land you in prison.

Public space closes down around you.  You cannot escape to the bar or the bowling alley, since everything you say is monitored.  The person on the next stool or in the next lane might not turn you in, but you have to assume they will.  If you have a t-shirt or a bumper sticker with a message, someone will report you.  Even if you just repeat the dictator’s words, someone can lie about you and denounce you. And then, if you voted for the strongman, you will be confused.  But you should not be.  This is what you voted for.

Denunciation becomes normal behavior.  Without law and voting, denouncing others helps people to feel safe.  Under strongman rule, you cannot trust your colleagues or your friends or even your family.  Political fear not only takes away all public space; it also corrupts all private relationships.  And soon it consumes your thoughts.  If you cannot say what you think, you lose track of what you believe.  You cease to be yourself.

If you have a heart attack and go to the hospital, you have to worry that your name is on a list.  Care of elderly parents is suddenly in jeopardy.  That hospital bed or place in a retirement home is no longer assured.  If you draw attention to yourself, aged relatives will be dumped in the street.  This is not how America works now, but it is how authoritarian regimes always work.

In the strongman fantasy, no one thinks about children.  But fear around children is the essence of dictatorial power.  Even courageous people restrain themselves to protect their children.  Parents know that children can be singled out and beaten up.  If parents step out of line, children lose any chance of going to university, or lose their jobs.

Schools collapse anyway, since a dictator only wants myths that justify his power.  Children learn in school to denounce one another.  Each coming generation must be more tame and ignorant than the prior one.  Time with young children stresses parents.  Either your children repeat propaganda and tell you things you know are wrong, or you worry that they will find out what is right and get in trouble.

In a dictatorship, parents no longer say what they think to their children, because they fear that their children will repeat it in public.  And once parents no longer speak their minds at home, they can no longer create a trusting family.  Even parents who give up on honesty have to fear that their children will one day learn the truth, take action, and get imprisoned.

Once this process begins, it is hard to stop.  At the present stage of the strongman fantasy, people imagine an exciting experiment.  If they don’t like strongman rule, they think, they can just elect someone else the next time.  This misses the point.  If you help a strongman come to power, you are eliminating democracy.  You burn that bridge behind you.  The strongman fantasy dissolves, and real dictatorship remains.

Most likely you won’t be killed or be required to kill. But amid the dreariness of life under dictatorship is dark responsibility for others’ death. By the time the killing starts, you will know that it is not about unity, or the nation, or getting things done. The best Americans, betrayed by you when you cast your vote, will be murdered at the whim and for the wealth of a dictator. Your tragedy will be living long enough to understand this.”

Quo Vadis, Republican Party?

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You may recognize the Latin phrase, or not. It derives from “Domine, quo vadis? meaning Lord, where are you going?” and was assertedly spoken by Saint Peter who, fleeing persecution in Jerusalem, came upon the resurrected Jesus and made the inquiry, leading Jesus to tell Peter that he was returning to be crucified again. [source: e­­ncyclopedia.com https://bit.ly/38OcLIG] [Also a 1951 movie title]

I was reminded of this by a, typically, erudite and lengthy essay by Yale historian Timothy Snyder in today’s New York Times Magazine, entitled The American Abyss: Trump, the mob and what comes next. Snyder also wrote On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, a book that should be required reading for every American interested in the survival of our democracy.

A major premise of Snyder’s Times essay is that the Republican Party’s political establishment has two main branches. One, the gamers,

is concerned above all with gaming the system to maintain power, taking full advantage of constitutional obscurities, gerrymandering and dark money to win elections with a minority of motivated voters. They have no interest in the collapse of the peculiar form of representation that allows their minority party disproportionate control of government.

The main exponent of this group’s point of view is the former Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, of the failed state of Kentucky.

The other, even more craven group (my view, not necessarily Snyder’s) are the “breakers,” who “might actually break the system and have power without democracy.” That group is now led by Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz.

Snyder then begins the analysis, noting that to some Republicans the hopeless quest to overturn the election was just political theater, but

for Congress to traduce its basic functions had a price. An elected institution that opposes elections is inviting its own overthrow. Members of Congress who sustained the president’s lie, despite the available and unambiguous evidence, betrayed their constitutional mission. Making his fictions the basis of congressional action gave them flesh. Now Trump could demand that senators and congressmen bow to his will. He could place personal responsibility upon Mike Pence ….

If that doesn’t lead you to immediately buy a Times subscription and also Snyder’s book, I don’t know about you….{I get no royalties; just trying to be helpful]

As noted, Snyder’s treatment is erudite and complex. My own view is more simplistic.

The principal distinguishing feature of our mish-mash American democratic republic with its squirrelly Constitution and three “co-equal” branches of government intended to mutually restrain each other, is that the people elect their leaders. If the leaders fail to perform as the voters think they expected, the voters can elect new leaders on the immutable schedule of elections. AND — this is critical — assuming a fair process, the loser accepts the loss and waits for the next election in the immutable schedule for another try. ALWAYS. The loser accepts the loss, moves on, reorganizes and so on.

If the acceptance of loss, a/k/a the peaceful transfer of power, were to be lost, the entire system, Constitution notwithstanding, would collapse and American democracy would be finished.

As noted, the essential premise of this scheme is “fair process,” and everyone knows that politics can be “rough and tumble,” “dirty,” and other unpleasantries, often in direct proportion to how much power is at stake. But “rough and tumble” or not, the process by which voting occurs must be accepted as fair, meaning each voter has a fair and equal opportunity to vote and to have her vote honestly counted.

Obviously, that goal is aspirational. We have, for example, gerrymandering which alters the “equal opportunity” element by rearranging the electorate to favor one party over another. Since both parties, in a floating tit-for-tat combat try to tilt the system in their favor when they can, the electoral system begins to resemble an exercise in mutually-assured-destruction, a/k/a MAD. And that doesn’t even account for the way in which the Electoral College system enhances the votes of smaller states or the way in which the allocation of legislative seats dilutes the votes of high-population states.

But those are features of the imperfect system that have been present for a very long time. At bottom, there remains, at least until now, the fundamental core principle that the loser will accept the loss and move on.

But, what if the process is not fair, in that the voting or the vote-counting is rigged in some way that favors one side? Why would the loser be expected to just accept defeat, an ill-gotten gain by an adversary with no recompense? Isn’t that exactly what Trump and his supporters have claimed?

No, it is not. The entire system by which the “truth” is determined in our society is based on arrangements provided in the Constitution. Thus, the taking of an oath to support the Constitution is an oath to accept those arrangements. The determination of “truth,” as close as we frail humans can come to its ascertainment, is made by a system of challenge-response-decision by independent courts which in turn have elaborate appeal arrangements so that erroneous decisions may be corrected before doing lasting harm. Like all human systems, the legal system is not perfect, but it is the closest we have come and is far better than a system in which appointed autocrats make all the decisions. And our systems have published “rules of engagement” that all parties must follow, so that the fight in a legal environment is as fair as it can be, assuming both sides have access to adequate representation.

Thus, our system includes the legal system as a fail-safe against faulty electoral process, as regards problems like obstruction of access to the polls, corrupt vote counting and the like.

Turning then to the 2020 presidential election, we first should recognize that the president began complaining of election rigging even before issue was joined with a chosen Democratic opponent. Moreover, through direct manipulation of the U.S. Postal Service, he tried to rig the election in his own favor, all the while complaining about what the opposition was up to. Aided by Republican governors, access to the ballot box was restricted by closing polling stations and other techniques of voter suppression.

Whatever one may say about social media and their manipulation by Trump and other politicians, those media also enabled the Democrats to call out the voter suppression as it was happening. So, it came to pass that the president, in sharply declining popularity as he downplayed the deadly coronavirus and was caught trying to pressure foreign governments to help undermine his opponent, lost the popular vote by more than 7 million votes, lost the key battleground states and lost the Electoral College vote. Joe Biden was declared the winner.

Trump fought back, screeching that the election had been stolen due to massive voter fraud, but only in the key battleground states he lost and, inexplicably, only regarding the presidential election but not the down-ballot races for supremely important seats such as that held by Majority Leader McConnell of Kentucky, who survived a challenge despite having done little or nothing for his constituents. Trump sent a team of lawyers into the field, filing lawsuit after lawsuit, more than 60 cases, many to be decided by judges he had appointed. Not knowing and not caring how the legal system worked, Trump apparently expected his appointees to simply award him victories. He, and his crack legal team, could not, however, overcome the lack of evidence, defined as credible information of specific facts supporting a legal claim. Such evidence simply did not exist. Trump’s case was actually damaged by trotting out “witnesses” who did not understand how vote counting worked in their precincts. Trump lost ALL but one insignificant decision, more than 60 defeats. Even his “house lawyer,” William Barr, putative Attorney General of the United States, concluded that Trump had lost the election fairly.

And still Trump cried “foul,” arguing that he had won the election by a landslide, that the fix was in.  His mendacity was exposed yet again by a tape of his attempt to induce the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” a collection of votes just one more than Trump needed to reverse Biden’s win in Georgia. Never mind that for his claims to be true, tens of thousands of people would have had to conspire to tilt the vote count, a vast conspiracy that both theory and practice informs us could not happen without someone spilling the beans. There were no beans to spill.

And still Trump cried “foul.” And still his Republican enablers in Congress remained silent or engaged in full-throated support not only of Trump’s right to test the legal waters, but in support of the proposition that the election had been “stolen.” Stolen by means and persons unknown, but stolen nonetheless.

That “situation,” created by Trump’s own irrational insistence and domination of his political party, led to the January 6 assault on the Capitol Building in which a violent mob of Trump supporters tried to prevent the final certification of the Electoral College vote count. Trump watched on TV, apparently quite happy with his handiwork. He was a hero to his fans and within arms’ reach of getting the second term he claimed to deserve.

The attack failed, a perfect metaphor for Trump’s presidency.

Trump’s term ends at noon on January 20, just three days away. The nation’s capital city is an armed military camp awaiting a predicted resumption of the January 6 attack in an attempt to overthrow the government and install Trump as dictator.

Time will tell. But what is clear to me at least is that Donald Trump has violated the fundamental and central premise of democratic government. He has rejected his electoral loss and is trying to force himself on the country for a second term.

This then is the root of the tree of ultimate political evil. Unwillingness to accept the loss and move on after being heard more than 60 times in court, and despite multiple audits and recounts, is a  bridge too far, an undoing of norms, conventions and legal/Constitutional principles from which there is no recovery for forgiveness. In this effort, Trump is supported by multiple elected representatives of the people in the national legislature.

For those reasons alone, though there are many others, Trump should not only be convicted in his second impeachment, but he must also be prevented from holding public office again. If you don’t play by the rules, you must not be allowed on the field. The same is true for the other politicians who continue to falsify, fabricate and bloviate regarding the election result. They — Hawley, Cruz, Johnson and the others who voted to reject the final count even after the January 6 coup attempt —  must be removed from office and banned from holding another.

Defeating Trump’s Coup d’état

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Donald Trump is planning to take control of the U.S. government regardless of the outcome of the 2020 election. I believe that deeply. Even if I’m wrong about that, we must prepare on the assumption that I’m right. If wrong, and he goes quietly, fine. If I’m right, saving the country and its republican form of democracy will likely depend on how we prepare in the next three months.

The classical definition of a coup d’état is the “sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government.” But there are other, more subtle ways of accomplishing a coup. Trump himself, a master of the “I am a victim” trope, has argued repeatedly that the Mueller investigation was an attempted coup. Many Republicans have reiterated that “argument.” Now the argument has morphed into an attack on mail-in voting, a process similar to absentee voting and identical to the voting procedures used in five states: Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Utah.

Timothy Snyder, author of  On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from The Twentieth Century, has described Trump’s position as a “prime historical fascist tactic”: create a crisis, then use that as an excuse to reject the peaceful transfer of power. Snyder knows a thing or two about tyranny and how it can work to destroy a democracy. He has written that “Trump’s ‘Delay the Election’ tweet checks all 8 rules for fascist propaganda” https://wapo.st/3i0remw We ignore his warnings at our extreme peril.

Since Trump can’t legally delay the election on his own, his main task is to find someone to foul up the election so he can claim a right to stay in power. The tactic is not unlike the infamous “will no one rid me of this turbulent priest,” an utterance by a king that led to the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury. He has launched a multi-front attack to get his way: undermining the U.S. Postal Service and claiming mail-in voting is the cause of massive voter fraud.

Let’s move from the sublime to the practical. According to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, there are about 200,000 polling places in the United States even after the Republicans’ massive voter suppression efforts in multiple southern states to reduce polling places so as to increase voter travel and waiting-in-line times. Election Administration & Voting Survey, 2018 Comprehensive Report to Congress. https://bit.ly/39UakD7

That Report notes that,

more than120 million Americans voted in the 2018 general elections, a turnout rate of 52 percent of the Citizen Voting Age Population (CVAP) .… turnout in the 2018 general elections increased in nearly all states when compared to 2014. Some states saw turnout levels that approached those of a typical presidential election.

That was the glorious Blue Wave that swept Democrats into control of the House of Representatives. Moreover,

More than half of voters cast their ballots in person on Election Day, and one-quarter of participants cast their ballots by mail. Nearly one-fifth voted early at in-person early voting sites, a rate that more than doubled since the 2014 elections. In six states, more than half of ballots were cast at in-person early voting sites. Although the overall rate of by-mail voting has not changed significantly since 2014, the states of California, Montana, and Utah saw large increases in their statewide by-mail voting rates.

These remarkable results involved more than 600,000 volunteer poll workers. However, nearly 70 percent of responding jurisdictions reported that it was “very difficult” or “somewhat difficult” to obtain a sufficient number of poll workers. That was, obviously, long before the coronavirus pandemic. This year the challenge will be massively greater.

There are numerous other obstacles to more robust voting. For example,

Thirteen states do not offer online voter registration

Fewer than half of states allow for same day voter registration

Only three states run their elections entirely by mail (4 others have all-by-mail voting in select local jurisdictions

About a quarter of states require in-person early voters to provide an excuse for doing so

Less than one-third of states have vote centers or allow voters to cast ballots at any polling place in their jurisdiction.

That is what Republican control of many state legislatures, combined with active Republican voter suppression tactics, have left us.

Given the pandemic and ongoing threats to voting by Republicans in 2020, what could go wrong? Answer: everything; the signs are unmistakable.

Republicans, including Trump himself, have publicly admitted that, for example, changes like universal automatic voter registration and mail-in voting will favor Democrats. Therefore, Republicans conjure various bogus and non-evidence-based claims of massive voter fraud, mistakes and delays, even as Trump’s appointee to head the U.S. Postal Service works to cripple the Service’s ability to adapt to major volume increases for the upcoming election. And Trump urges the voter suppression work onward because, as Prof. Snyder has observed, he pretty well knows he’s going to be defeated in a fair election process.

What can Democrats do to avoid the roadblocks Republicans are going to place in the path of increased voter turnout?

The answer is to plan out every potential obstructionist scenario and prepare countermeasures accordingly.

At the most basic level, it is crucial to identify polling places where long lines are likely on November 3. For every such location, Democrats should provide portable toilets, snacks, water, rain ponchos and anything else that will make it easier for voters to stay in line as long as it takes. Virtually everyone who gives up and leaves the line will not return later to vote, so it crucial to help every Democrat stick it out as long as needed.

The actual voting process must be closely observed to assure that bogus obstacles are not thrown in the path of voters. In cases of asserted issues, poll watchers must insist that provisional ballots be provided, and a close count must be maintained of how many such ballots are collected. Watching the final tally at the end of the voting day is equally important. This process can be tedious and a bit complicated; trained observers are important, as their mere presence will discourage shenanigans during the counting and reporting process.

To the extent consistent with local laws, videos and photographs should be taken of the physical setup of each polling place. Record any incidents of potential voter interference outside the polling station. The recent incidents in Minnesota, for example, in which armed “protesters” demanded removal of mask requirements and opening of lockdowns at state legislatures and elsewhere are evidence suggesting that armed groups may appear at polling places in “open carry” states to try to intimidate voters by their presence.

Democratic watchers must be present to record any such incidents and to reassure waiting voters that they should not be deterred from exercising their right to vote. Armed “militias” should not be allowed to, for example, interrogate voters approaching the polling station about why they are there. Poll-watchers should be equipped with contact information for the State and Local Police as well as key media outlets in the area. The more eyes on the situation, the less likely actual acts of intimidation will be successful. In polling places located where potential disruptions are considered most likely, Democrats should always have more than one person on-site from opening to reporting of the final tally.

These recommendations are a tall order, requiring a large commitment from many people. Nevertheless, the stakes are also extremely high — nothing less than the survival of American democracy. Trump intends to steal the election by whatever method works and he has started multiple paths to that end. Having sent federal “troops” to Portland and other cities on the pretext of protecting federal property, with the predictable result of further destabilizing the situation and increasing the violence, he will stop at nothing to get what he wants. The people must stop at nothing to thwart his plan to undermine democracy.

It’s important to remember that Trump’s hard-core supporters are a minority of the voting population. Hillary Clinton’s popular vote was larger by just under 2.9 million votes. Her defeat was a product of many things, not least of which was Russian interference and the Electoral College, the vestige of a past time that enhances the voting power of the smaller states and thus, for example, enlarges the impact of southern state resistance to social policies favored by Democrats. It is likely Trump is getting help from Russia again this year. The election rules are fixed for now so the answer to Trump is maximum Democratic voter turnout.

Also keep in mind that Trump has lied repeatedly about his agenda. Just one example — his lawyers are in court right now trying to end insurance protection of pre-existing conditions. If re-elected, Trump will have free-reign to bring down what remains of America’s best institutions. If defeated, we can immediately begin rebuilding a civil society that treats all citizens fairly and promotes the common good of everyone, including recovery from the pandemic.

It’s up to you. If you can do it, please volunteer to help on Election Day. We must prepare for the worst case if we’re going to win.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most important Book You’re Not Going to Read This Year

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I have just finished reading Can It Happen Here? Authoritarianism in America, edited by Cass Sunstein. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard University where he founded its Program on Behavioral Economics. He is the author of, among many others, Impeachment, A Citizen’s Guide, which you are also not going to read, but should.

The contributors of the essays in this stunning book are mostly distinguished law professors from Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Columbia, NYU and Duke. These people know whereof they speak.

And speak they do, sometimes a bit turgidly as law professors are wont to do, but also brilliantly and incisively addressing the sources of risk that the United States could lose its hold on democracy. It’s important to understand that this is not an anti-Trump screed, although, as you might expect, Trump’s conduct as president figures prominently in many of the essays. The reason is that his behavior is in the classical line of actions taken by political strong men who have undermined democracy in their countries. It’s also important to remember the United States has some blood on its own hands from past episodes of authoritarian behavior induced by crises such as the attack on Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

The threats to American democratic institutions, free press, elections and other features of a free and open society in which we have grown up are real and immediate. While some of the essays are guardedly optimistic about the resiliency of our Constitution and institutions to resist the imposition of an authoritarian regime, you will find cold comfort in most of the essays. They are, along with other recent works like Elaine May’s Fortress America – How We Embraced Fear & Abandoned Democracy, compelling, history- and fact-based accounts of how democracy can fail, and may actually be failing, under the relentless pressures of an autocratic president supported by a single-party Congress. These are conditions not contemplated by the Founding Fathers whose Constitution, as brilliant as it is, may lack sufficient safeguards against one-party rule that does not respect the values on which that document was based.

If you are serious about understanding what is happening in American politics today, this book is a must-read.

To give you a taste, the chapter entitled “Constitutional Rot” observes that “These four horsemen — polarization, loss of trust, economic inequality, and policy disaster — mutually reinforce each other.” Further, “In an oligarchical system, regardless of its formal legal characteristics, a relative small number of backers effective decide who stays in power.”

In the chapter entitled “Beyond Elections: Foreign Interference with American Democracy,” Samantha Power discusses how non-mediated social media opened the door to Russian influence in U.S. elections. The chapter “Paradoxes of the Deep State” addresses little-known history of the so-called “Deep State” with surprising observations about the “leaks” in the Trump administration. Then, the chapter “How We Lost Constitutional Democracy” sets out grave and chilling warnings about the erosion of democratic norms and the limits of the Constitution as an obstacle to the destruction of democracy as we know it.

As I said earlier, this book is serious stuff and not an easy read. Yet the issues analyzed in it are critical to a deep understanding of what is happening and the extent to which we can “count on the Constitution” as a defense against loss of freedom and democratic process.

When you are finished being frightened to death, I continue to urge everyone to read On Tyranny-Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, by Timothy Snyder, a measly 126 pages. Finally, if you want to dig deeply into some of the mysteries of the behaviors of voters whose conduct you consider self-defeating and borderline insane. I commend to you two tomes that I guarantee will open your eyes to ideas you never dreamed of: Thinking, Fast & Slow, by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, and Behave – the Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, by Robert Sapolsky [skip the details on endocrinology, unless you really dig that sort of stuff].

To conclude, for now, I believe the following to be more likely true than not:

1. Trump’s election was unlawfully procured through interference by, and his collusion with one or more foreign powers; the more he fumes and fulminates against this idea, the more likely it seems to be true;

2. Trump has violated Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution by failing to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed;”

3. Trump has violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution, Article I, Section 9;

4. Trump is guilty of obstruction of justice, which qualifies as a “high crime” or “misdemeanor” under the Constitution, Article 2, Section 4, and, in the specific circumstances, is guilty of treason as well;

5. Trump and members of his family and officials appointed by him, along with Republican members of Congress, have engaged in a conspiracy to conceal evidence of crimes by them and others and to prevent the full investigation and prosecution of such crimes by appropriate government authorities.

I also believe the following truths are now indisputable:

1. Democratic norms are under active siege by a president who neither understands nor cares about such norms;

2. While the prospect of indictment of the president as a result of Special Prosecutor Mueller’s investigation is highly appealing, there is little chance that such a move is going to occur soon and it will, in any case, provoke a lengthy constitutional crisis that will end up in the Supreme Court and therefore not afford a near-term solution to the governance crisis that confronts the nation;

3. The most immediate and most important defense against the oligarchical theocracy, or the theocratic oligarchy, if you prefer, that the president, vice president and Republican Congress want to establish, and to some degree have already established, is for the Democratic Party to take control of Congress in the 2018 elections;

4. Democratic control of both houses of Congress would immediately create an insurmountable bulwark against further destruction of democracy by the administration and lay the framework for removal and prosecution of the Trump gang and its enablers;

5. Trump’s sycophantic supporters are preparing to defend him with aggressive voter turnout and contributions of huge amounts of money. Nonetheless, Democrats must overwhelm them at the polls if we are to turn the tide against the fascist practices of this administration. If we fail, we will face two more years of entrenchment, destruction of the independence of the judiciary and undermining of the free press. The loss of those two elements of the Constitution’s system of checks and balances will make it very difficult, perhaps impossible, to turn back the tide. It’s 2018 or nothing.

6. Every American should view this situation as a grave threat to their well-being and the well-being of their families present and future. It is time for the Democratic Party leadership to start leading politically and for the personal ambitions and agendas of the old guard to yield the floor to the generations that will have the most to lose if the foundations of democracy are not restored. Remember that those who fail to heed the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.

7. It is time for a game plan that does not repeat the same mistakes that led to the disastrous defeat in 2016. The Republicans know the same things we know about what happened. They have a keen understanding of their political base and how to stimulate it to action on behalf of their agenda. Trump’s base is uninterested in the truth about him or his policies; they have created their own truths in which they choose to believe and nothing is going to change most of them. It is therefore absolutely essential that every potential Democratic vote be cast in every district. There have been a few interim wins in replacement contests, but these are no laurels on which to rest. Democrats cannot afford to give up any seat that is potentially winnable. It’s now or never.

On Tyranny – Read It Now

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On his CNN show last Sunday, Fareed Zakaria recommended that viewers read On Tyranny, by noted Yale University Professor of History, Timothy Snyder. You can read about him here: http://history.yale.edu/people/timothy-snyder.

The subtitle of the 126-page book is “Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.” Using examples from the history of Europe and other places where dictatorships and far-right authoritarian regimes have arisen, Snyder sets out advice, well-grounded in history, of how people in the United States should respond to the threats to democracy that are now flourishing in the United States. Some of the “lessons” may seem simple in their expression, but Snyder powerfully connects them to historical experience elsewhere. It is a “how to” guide to resisting the slide toward authoritarian governance.

The compelling first chapter, for example, is entitled “Do not obey in advance” and explains the concept of “anticipatory obedience” and where it can lead. I found Chapter 17 particularly compelling. It’s titled “Listen for dangerous words” and explains it this way:

“A Nazi leader out-maneuvers his opponents by manufacturing a general conviction the present moment is exceptional, and then transforming that state of exception into a permanent emergency. Citizens then trade real freedom for fake safety.” [On Tyranny at 100].

On Tyranny is an important work that should be read by everyone interested in the disrupted and disruptive political situation faced by the United States under the Trump administration.

I have thought a lot about the source of this book’s power. In part, I think, it derives from the very brevity of the messages and supporting material. The 126 pages are only 4.5 by 6.75 inches – you can carry in the back pocket of your jeans

But the call-outs are not merely cheap and easy aphorisms. They are deep concepts that should be absorbed and acted upon by all who want to preserve the Land of the Free. If you are concerned about what is happening to America under the Trump administration, you should read this book. You can find it here: http://amzn.to/2ouLXHs and here: http://bit.ly/2oRXmx8.