Tag Archives: Trump

Outrage Without Power is Useless

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I have been seeing a number of social media posts in which people are venting their more-than-justifiable outrage at recent events of which George Floyd’s murder is probably the worst but far from the only case. It’s the worst because of the apparent quiet deliberation with which his execution was accomplished. Many of those posts are directed at the political process that has failed to address systemic racism and that led to the election of Donald Trump. Frustration is widespread, along with anger, despair and related emotions. The country-wide protests are just one manifestation.

There has also been considerable violence, much of it inflicted by police officers who are supposed to protect and defend the people  in the exercise of their constitutional privilege of free speech. We have seen many videos of police protectively escorting armed men and other almost-all-white people screaming about their “right” to refuse to wear masks for public health There have been a few videos of police aligning themselves with the protesters, to be sure, but the majority, based on my unscientific review, involve police engaged in unnecessary and unprovoked attacks on peaceful protesters.

There are also videos of violence perpetrated by mostly unknown people against businesses and police, some apparently just angry random acts and others designed to take advantage of the protest chaos to destroy property and steal whatever was at hand. In my view these acts are unjustifiable by any standard, even as we recognize the anger and pain of witnessing “official violence” over and over again. Violence begets violence and hate begets hate. In the end it doesn’t lead anywhere good for anyone and provides a convenient excuse for people to reject the awful realities that led to the protests.

Most people of good will are united in the belief that Donald Trump is the worst president in America history. The number of white people, of all ages, who have joined the protests has shocked the country. But there are intimations that the outrage and sadness experienced by Black people and now also by an apparent majority of white people may be directed at targets that will not contribute to meaningful solutions. Examples include statements to the effect that “if Joe Biden doesn’t pick XYZ as his VP, I am sitting out the election” and “if Biden doesn’t aggressively support policies A,B and C that were proposed by Bernie Sanders, I’m voting for the Green Party.” There are many variations and references to the outrage felt by “my group” with intransigent statements of “my way or the highway.” Some of them say Joe Biden is just another old white guy and a traditional politician who is a member of the political elite that is responsible for the state of society now.

As another admittedly old white guy, I am deeply troubled by these statements. There is no doubt, none whatsoever, that our society has much to account for. Donald Trump, who is in my view evil incarnate, is not alone responsible for that debt but he is responsible for unleashing the reactionary forces that hold a fantasy view of the America of the past that they somehow believe was “better” than now and thus follow the “make America great again” trope that Trump has promoted. Readers of this blog know where I stand on Trump so I’m not going to belabor that here today.

My main point here is those people whose righteous anger, frustration and pain have stirred their passions to new heights must, if they want American society to improve in meaningful, systemic ways, focus that rage on the right targets. As it stands, our political system, for better or worse, is based on a two-party political system that makes it impossible for third-party candidates to win major elections. It is, I am certain, a truism of American political life that no third-party candidate has a chance to be president. No matter how appealing single-issue or narrowly focused their platforms may be, anyone who votes for them is, in net effect, voting for the re-election of Donald Trump. The mathematics of this are undeniable. If we’re going to begin the process of healing the country and moving forward with a more progressive agenda, the election of Joe Biden is absolutely critical.

I have engaged a number of people on social media platforms on this question. Most of them are immovable. They make statements like “it’s better to vote for a moral platform than the continuation of the politics that got us to this sorry state.” No doubt, a morally superior agenda is to be desired. Accepting, for example, that the Green New Deal is such a morally outstanding program of ideas (which I do, for the record), the fact remains that no Green New Deal candidate is going to be elected president. Anyone who votes for a GND candidate is enhancing the voting power of the Republican Party that supports Trump and assuring that the exact opposite of the principles the GND supports will prevail.

That simply cannot be the morally superior choice among the available options. I have also heard the “my voting for the GND will teach them a lesson, that they can’t ignore us and carry on as before.” Same response. The “lesson” isn’t going to teach anyone anything if Donald Trump is re-elected.

Fundamentally, while the choice of leader is extremely important, in reality it is equally important the chosen leader select exceptional people to staff the key components of the government. The people who surround and advise the president are as important as the president himself. The president’s value system will guide these choices that ultimately control how the government makes policy and otherwise goes about its business. The truth of this principle can be clearly seen throughout the history of the Trump administration. Many of his key advisors and cabinet choices were picked for entirely the wrong reasons, leading to unprecedented graft and corruption. Trump’s administration has had no fewer than 14 indictments of key players, including campaign staff and senior advisors. Multiple cabinet members have left office in disgrace for various offenses against the public good.

The election of a president elects a related value system, a set of judgments about who are the right people to lead the country. While the president has the final word, much of what a president does is effectively controlled by the advisors/cabinet that he selects. This is how the president “forms a government” that can function and deliver on policy commitments for the common good of the people. Under Trump, the “best people” became a sick joke, but moving past that, the reality is that only the “best people” can do the job and you only get the best people if the value system of the president is sound.

I am one of the growing number of citizens who believe the November election is “for all the marbles” insofar as the American idea of democracy is concerned. I accept without hesitation or equivocation that the United States has failed terribly to live up to its aspirations as set out in the Declaration of Independence and as manifested in the Constitution. There is plenty of disappointment to cite, plenty of falling-short of our ideals. The weaknesses of the constitutional structures established in the country’s early years are quite evident, but very hard to change. What makes the US and is citizens “exceptional” is not the purity of what has been achieved but the aspirations to which the majority of our people and institutions continue to adhere.

So, we are left with what we have. That reality is most troubling, but for now, it is the cards we have been dealt. It is, therefore, imperative that the anger, frustration and pain of recent and past events be directed at the real targets of opportunity. Only by acquiring political power can the justified outrage be translated into action that can produce real change. Without power, the outrage is useless. The forces arrayed against change, against justice, are strong because they are also passionate in their beliefs, however much we may deride them. They hold enough political power to impose their craven agenda on everyone. The constitutional system gives them disproportionate leverage. To defeat them requires a massive show of political will and political action by those who believe the present system is fundamentally broken.

Voting on the basis of a single issue-set is not good enough. The choice in the 2020 election is between two different value systems. To give but one example, one of those value systems defends arresting, separating and literally putting in cages thousands of children brought into the country illegally, many of whom will never see their parents again. That value system assigns blame and fault, which drive their actions regardless of the human consequences. The other value system says that approach is morally wrong, that whatever policy we follow regarding illegal immigration, there is no justification for this treatment of minor children. That’s just one of the value choices involved in this election.

Another one, larger in scope, is the value system that maintains that truth is relative and ultimately is whatever the people in power say it is. That value system prevailed in, among others, Nazi Germany. It rejects science in favor of ideology. It is the path to dehumanization and totalitarianism. It is happening here, now. That is the real meaning behind the slogan “fake news.”

To stop it requires a massive show of political will and political action by those who believe the present system is fundamentally broken. We must choose among the real choices we have, not the ones we would prefer. Only with the exercise of intelligent choice now, can we reach the place where we have better choices, not because we are more angry or frightened than others but because we have the power to make the changes we need.

That concludes today’s sermon. Believe.

The Flynn Case — Lying Sanctified by Court

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I am not going to go on at length about this. By now, I hope those of you who watch the news about such things, are aware that the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has, in a 2-1 panel decision, intervened in a District Court judge’s consideration whether to permit the government to drop its prosecution of Michael Flynn for lying to the government.

Flynn admitted twice, I believe, under oath, that he had lied. The prosecution, under orders from Trump’s personal attorney/U.S. Attorney General William Barr, decided out of the blue that the government should not have been questioning Flynn in the first place and, therefore, his admitted lying was apparently unimportant.

The presiding judge, Emmet Sullivan, apparently thought, with justification, that something funny was going on and decided that, before granting the government’s motion to dismiss the prosecution, he would delve more deeply into what might be up. This, of course, sent the Trump administration into a delirious state and it sought a mandamus (a form of a court order, like an injunction, directed in this case to the District Court) from the Court of Appeals, thereby bypassing the problematic course of trying to get permission for an interlocutory appeal (normally one cannot appeal if the lower court has not entered a final order).

As forcefully noted by the dissenting opinion, the decision of the two judges in the majority effectively means there is zero chance for judicial oversight over dubious or corrupt decisions by prosecutors. In the Flynn case, there is good reason to believe that the decision to drop the prosecution was driven by the Attorney General who these days operates as if her Donald Trump’s personal attorney. Not least is the fact, as reported by Politico, that

Just before Barr’s decision to seek to abandon the case was revealed publicly, the Washington-based lawyer and Mueller office veteran who was the lead prosecutor on the case since its outset, Brandon Van Grack, formally withdrew in an apparent protest against the attorney general’s action. The other career prosecutor on the case, Jocelyn Ballantine, also declined to sign the motion.

https://politi.co/2YzNdtE

By granting the mandamus motion, the Court of Appeals took the extraordinary step of taking over the case and deciding it before the District Court had concluded its consideration and issued an opinion. This had the effect, clearly intended, of foreclosing any inquiry that might have revealed disturbing, to put it mildly, facts about the basis for the decision to end the prosecution.

But it’s not over until the last batter is out. Any judge on the Court of Appeals, including Judge Robert Wilkins who wrote the blistering dissent, can ask the full court to hear the case. Judge Sullivan, for reasons not clear, has put all dates on hold. This may signal his intention to seek an en banc consideration or something else. He could be planning to comply with the Circuit Court order but with an “opinion” on the case as he now views it. Time will tell.

Who Am I?

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The current upheaval over the treatment of Black people in America has stimulated some troubling memories and questions for me. I’m sure I’m not alone.

First, some history. It’s usually good to start at the beginning. I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. One of the local “jokes” was that Memphis was actually part of Mississippi. This meant that the “culture” of Memphis, particularly race-related, was more like Mississippi than Tennessee. Tennessee had actually been “two states” during the Civil War, with the eastern part, heavily mountainous and not connected to the cotton-focused agrarian economy of the Deep South, aligned with the “north.”

In Memphis, it was often said that “cotton is king.” Indeed, situated on the mighty Mississippi River, Memphis at that time was a major depot for shipping of cotton delivered mainly from points south. One of the highlights of life in those days was the Cotton Carnival, a huge citywide series of fancy-dress balls, a large parade, selection of a King and Queen and various princesses plus other events celebrating the cotton that sustained the local economy. The reality that the cotton-based economy had developed on the backs of Black slaves was not much mentioned or considered. It simply wasn’t “relevant.”

The history of the Cotton Carnival, started in 1931 and now called Carnival Memphis, can be seen at https://carnivalmemphis.org/carnival-history/ including a brief but revealing video montage of the Cotton Carnival parade and this strange photo:

 

At the time, I did not know the origin of the “cotton is king” mythology but, come to find out, it originated, not surprisingly, with a South Carolina pro-slavery politician (owned 300), James Henry Hammond, who made a speech in 1858, declaring that,

In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. … It constitutes the very mudsill of society …. You dare not make war on cotton — no power on earth dares make war upon it. Cotton is king.

https://bit.ly/3fKWzbG That, of course, turned out to be quite wrong a few years later. If you choose to read Hammond’s story in Wikipedia, brace yourself as he is reported to have been, among other things, a serial rapist, a fact that did not prevent his being elected to the U.S. Senate.

Most of the young boys I grew up with were overt racists. The n-word was used in normal conversation to refer to all Black people. These boys thought all Black people were ignorant, dirty, untrustworthy and dangerous. I seriously doubt, however, that any of them actually knew any Black people, except possibly in their role as maids or people who performed menial tasks for their parents. For reasons I still cannot explain, I was the odd- man-out in this racially problematic environment. This was partly because I did know two Black people, one a Black man who worked in my father’s carpet business and the other was Beanie, my grandmother’s maid/housekeeper/cook/attendant. Both of these people were naturally kind, among the best people I have ever known.

I am still bothered by an incident involving Beanie. When I returned to Memphis from college at Christmas holiday time my freshman year, it was expected that Beanie would prepare all my favorite foods for a true feast at my grandmother’s place. Beanie was an extraordinary cook. When it was time for Beanie finally to go home, I insisted on driving her. She reluctantly agreed but insisted on sitting in the back seat. When I pressed for an explanation, she said it would be trouble for her if she were seen in her neighborhood driving in the front seat with a white man. Such were the wages of our sins.

The hostility of whites to Black people, and Black people’s apparent acceptance of that reality, made no sense to me. As a non-practicing Jewish person, I was acutely aware of the oft-heard theme in my family and elsewhere that Jews were the subject of class discrimination, placing them below other white people but above Black people in the social/economic hierarchy. That discrimination didn’t make sense either and felt like a constant wounding. I could not understand what these considerations (being Black or Jewish) had to do with anything important, with what kind of person you were.

In any case, I think my personal interactions with Black people from a very early age likely shaped my thinking and left me “out” of the typical racial attitudes held by my friends. Whenever the subject came up, which was rare, and I asked, “why do you hate Negroes,” no one could ever answer coherently. They just did. They thought it was obvious why they should fear and hate them. And it was not a question they thought was important. It was just how things were.

One of the consequences of my upbringing in this environment was that I “identified” as “southern.” Questions of “identity” as such did not come up in those days, of course, but it was clear to me that I was “southern.” When fate delivered me to Yale University in 1960 in New Haven, CT, the “southern” contingent found its members quickly and during early and long nights in Vanderbilt Hall on the Old Campus quadrangle, students would sometimes open their windows to shout. It was common for someone to scream “I am not a number” and slam his window. A contest of sorts emerged and we “southern” boys met the “Yankees” singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic with robust renditions of Dixie.

This exchange wasn’t about race; there were few Black students in that class, and I don’t believe anyone thought of it as a racial thing. It was just “who we were.” We missed home and this was a way, I suspect, of proclaiming that. We didn’t much think about the complex and troubled history of the key words:

I wish I was in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten,
….
In Dixie Land where I was born in, early on a frosty mornin’,
….
Then I wish I was in Dixie, hooray! hooray!
In Dixie Land I’ll take my stand to live and die in Dixie….

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_(song) for more on that. Looking back, however, it is horrifying and shameful that we were so ignorant about this subject. The words of the song are prescient because those who still believe in it are stuck in what they imagine are the “old times” and happily proclaim their willingness to “take my stand to live and die in Dixie.” The question is, stand for what?

Fast forward a full lifetime in which I have been blessed to, among other things, have traveled the world and interacted with people from many cultures, some quite alien to our own. From those experiences I came away with one major impression – ordinary people everywhere want pretty much the same things: an opportunity for personal development and security from want. In short, they desire personal freedom, the chance to grow, to have a family, to get an education. Everywhere I went, it was the same.

Fast forward again. The United States is torn apart by the realization by many, almost certainly the majority, that something is fundamentally wrong with our society. While Donald Trump is not responsible for this condition, he has sponsored, promoted and encouraged division from the very first moment of his presidency. The reality is that he is playing on something that already existed. It took the murder of a Black man by police, one of many such events over many years, to once again shatter the veneer that has enabled American society to overlook this gaping hole in our history and in our national morality.

One of the many consequences is the movement to take down the symbols of our hateful past – the statues, the paintings, the flags and other indications of our troubled history. The central question now, at long last though not for the first time, is “what does it mean to be an American?”

That question is really one of identity. What symbols do you identify with? And why?

While enjoying the light breeze in Central Park Sunday morning, my wife observed that there were many statues in the Park whose provenance she did not know. I thought, that’s pretty normal; many of these things we “see” but do not really think about unless we have a particular reason to observe more closely. These are in a sense failed symbols most of the time. Even tourists often don’t pay attention; these symbols are no different to our conscious minds than the trees and rock formations that cover the Park.

But there are some such symbols that we do notice. In our case a good example was the Confederate soldier statue that, until recently, stood in the middle of the intersection of South Washington Street and Prince Street in Alexandria, VA where we lived for many years.  I suspect that we were conscious of it because of its peculiar location that forced you to veer slightly around it when driving north on Prince. We often wondered aloud why the statue was still there in what had become a politically liberal community.

The many proposals to remove these symbols of the Confederacy have sparked a fierce reaction among many Americans who claim that these monuments are not symbols of racism but are only reflective of their “heritage” and their “history.” These are puzzling claims.

It is 2020. Americans are still arguing that statues of Confederate soldiers who fought against the country in order to preserve the system of slavery – the ownership of one person by another in which the slave was forced to provide free labor to enrich the other – on which the economy of the south had been based are related in some way to their current conception of themselves.

The question that puzzles me about this is: why would anyone in 2020 see his identity as tied to the “heritage” of slavery and treason against the country?  The Confederacy lost the Civil War. Why are so many people attached to the iconography of a defeated political entity? Americans typically do not think of themselves as “losers.” Most astute observers agree that the Vietnam War was lost, but even then, many Americans refused to accept the idea that America “lost” a fight.

Why then do so many Americans reimagine the Civil War as a conflict over “states’ rights” when the main, if not only, “states right” at issue was the power of people to own other people for the purpose of extracting free labor from them? These folks are not going around regularly pondering the complex relationship between the federal and state governments or how that relationship is affected by the structure and language of the Constitution.

There are many options available for building an identity, but these people are passionate, sometimes to the point of violence, that these symbols reflect who they really are.

I strongly suspect that the Confederacy identifiers’ actual knowledge about the conditions that led to the Civil War, and its aftermath is shallow at best and for most it is just a set of simplistic and false ideas about what happened and why. And I am even more convinced that they have blocked out, if they ever knew it, the history of what happened after the war and that continued until at least the mid-1950s, sanctioned by the Supreme Court throughout.

I recall that in my own eighth grade American History class, our teacher informed us that in our reading and discussion of the Civil War there was to be no mention of slavery. That was not, she said, what the war was about and therefore we were to avoid the subject. Instead, we spent our time memorizing the names and dates of major battles.

That was in the 1950’s, of course, more than a half-century ago. While I hope that educators today are more informed than that, the truth is I don’t really know what is taught to children these days. Maybe that is part of the answer to my question.

But I suspect there is something else, something deeper, at work and I think it’s just plain racism. I just saw a video on Twitter of a white woman sitting in the back of a pickup truck covered in Confederate flags. She is holding a large such flag and shouting at someone off-camera: “I will teach my grandkids to hate you all,” as she drapes herself in the flag, raises a fist and says “KKK.”

This is not a unique event. Huge swaths of Americans are in thrall of Donald Trump’s overtly racist policies. Neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville chanting Nazi slogans and Trump said there were “fine people [pause] on both sides.” Trump has facilitated the public emergence of an overtly racist class of Americans who are attracted to his idea that America was once “great” and that he will make it “great again.” It is these same people who identify with the Confederate flag and statues of Confederate soldiers and politicians who tried to destroy the country and waged war that killed 750,000 men in arms and an untold number of “civilians.”

Racism seems to be the only unifying principle behind all this. The virulent response to the removal of statuary that, bizarrely, sits in, among other places, the hallowed halls of Congress cannot be explained by anything else. The “history” and “heritage” represented by the Confederate flag and monuments of traitors who fought against the country so they could retain the slavery system is the concept at the heart of racism historically: that Black people are a subordinate and inferior people whose biological destiny is to be under the heel of the superior white race. There is much scholarship on this history, including recently Stamped from the Beginning, Ibram X. Kendi’s National Book Award-winning Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, the documented revelations in which will stun you.

If it’s not racism, what could it be? Adherence to a mythology that conflicts with the very “idea of America,” the notion of American “exceptionalism” on which we have for so long rested our moral-superiority hats, must have a powerful source. If you stood up at a meeting and announced only that, “I want to be identified with losers, people who identify with a vile ideology from the distant past,” most people would think you had a screw loose. But if the meeting were in rural West Virginia or South Carolina and you then broke into Dixie, it’s likely most of the people there would immediately understand and rise to join you in the chorus: In Dixie Land I’ll take my stand to live and die in Dixie.

Good old times are not forgotten.

 

A Hero for the Times

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People who know me well are aware that I have no heroes. All of them were murdered in the troubled 1960s. Since then, no one person emerged as a true hero, although Barack Obama came close. When he was elected, I fooled myself into believing that America had changed, that the bigotry and willful ignorance I had seen growing up in Memphis had receded and that great times lay ahead. I was wrong. As the Obama presidency proceeded, the Republican Party morphed into essentially what it is today and managed to block many of Obama’s greatest potential achievements.

The final blow to my aspirations for the country came when a relic of our ugly past, the Electoral College, worked to put Donald Trump in the White House. Every day of his administration is a tragic reminder that we could have had an intelligent, articulate, committed woman as president. A lot went wrong, of course, not just the flawed Constitutional structures put in place to placate rural and southern interests and that handed the national leadership to Trump with a minority of votes. It doesn’t much matter now. Trump is president and, as fate can do, his incompetence and corruption have been laid bare for the world to see, a bleeding open sore on what was one of the greatest countries on the planet, flawed but pure of aspiration, in need of much work but full of hope and promise.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a catastrophe for humanity. It was also an opportunity for the putative “leader of the free world” to show that, for all his obvious flaws, he could rise to the occasion and steer the country through one of its greatest challenges in a century. It was an opportunity to put to rest the oft-stated concern that, faced with a genuine crisis (threat of nuclear attack, for example), Trump’s staggering incompetence would destroy us. COVID-19 is not a nuclear attack but Trump still failed in almost every way imaginable. In the future I will devote much of my time in this blog illustrating those failures in the hope that the people of this country will rise to the occasion as Trump did not and remove him from office once and for all.

Meanwhile, I want to recognize another leader who emerged from the gloom and despair of the pandemic to do what needed to be done, to say what needed to be said, who did the right thing. He was already an experienced leader of government, the political head of the state with the largest Gross Domestic Product per capita, a major driver of the national economy: New York.

New York City, the centerpiece of the state and the gateway to the nation for travelers from around the world, became the epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis. As of today, the World Health Organization reports 8,385,440 total cases and 450,686 deaths worldwide. The United States leads the entire world in both cases and deaths: 118,365 souls lost. New York City, the most densely populated metropolis in the country, quickly developed the most infections and ultimately, so far, more than 17, 546 deaths, as it was flooded by millions of travelers from Europe who brought the virus with them while the federal government hyper-focused on China. In my neighborhood alone, there were 616 cases and 43 deaths. Yesterday, there were fewer deaths than that in the entire city.

Mt. Sinai West Hospital sits immediately adjacent to our apartment building. You can walk to the Emergency Room 50 steps or so down the street. As the city emptied out under the lockdown that started in mid-March, way too late, we were witness to the relentless parade of ambulances bringing critically ill patients to the hospital.

There are two points to be made here. One, the president held a series of daily “press conferences” involving a task force headed by the Vice President and the leading medical authorities at the Center for Disease Control, among others. It quickly became apparent that these events were really for the president to promote himself as the successful defender of the country against the virus, even as the cases and death toll continued to rise. He simply denied any facts that made him look bad. He paraded a random group of corporate leaders in to praise him. He descended into a clown show in which he proposed that the government health authorities investigate injecting bleach into the body or using light of some kind. He promoted the use of drugs for which there was no medical support and which multiple studies indicated could be dangerous to large swaths of the public. He stopped the conferences when his staff finally convinced him that they were counterproductive to his goal of self-promotion and re-election.

Second point: in New York, people who were paying attention saw a completely different approach, one based on scientific facts and evidence. These were the daily briefings by New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo. In the last of these briefings, the Governor reported that a total of 59 million viewers had watched these presentations, each of which involved an opening statement and questions from reporters. The Governor always had staff and sometimes important guests, with him to help address questions, most notably Melissa DeRosa (Secretary to the Governor). In the wake of the George Floyd murder, Cuomo devoted substantial parts of each briefing to addressing the issues around policing practices. He proposed specific legislation that was passed immediately and signed at one of the briefings.

Cuomo proved to be a lifeline for many of us who were quarantined in our apartments.
My wife and I found great comfort in his rational, fact-based approach, his appeal to the better selves of New Yorkers and his repeated admissions that this was personal for him, too. In March he proposed Matilda’s Law, an executive order with the force of law, named for his elderly mother and aimed at protecting the elderly and the vulnerable by putting New York “on pause” with special guidelines for the elderly. We tuned in almost every day, as did millions of people around the world seeking some truth and objectivity in the maelstrom of falsity and self-serving lies from Trump and his enablers.

I won’t go on about this. Cuomo, like all prominent political leaders, has his critics. But whatever mistakes may have been made in his management of the COVID-19 crisis, they appear to be very few and given all the circumstances, understandable and not consequential. I do not believe anyone can legitimately say he did not do his best for the people of New York. The results are clear and undeniable. The cases and deaths attributable to the virus are now the lowest in the country. As the Governor put it, “from the worst to first.”

I urge you to watch this video of Cuomo’s final statement and the video that follows it. It’s less than 13 minutes long. Compare this to Donald Trump’s performance on any issue on any day. This is what actual leadership looks like. What a refreshing experience, even in the midst of the most terrifying situation. Cuomo’s handling of these events will be written about in textbooks and studied in leadership programs for years to come. The 13 minutes you spend watching this will be well spent.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=274891703966298&ref=watch_permalink

America, We Have a Problem

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Readers old enough or well-versed in space flight history will recognize my playing off the famous statement from Apollo 13 Commander James Lovell, shortly after an explosion aboard the spacecraft enroute to the moon: “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” So calm you might have thought he was just reporting routine fuel burn information.

I had the honor of working briefly with Commander Lovell, then retired, in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. He was exceptionally gracious and willing to do whatever was asked. Our communications team at what was then the American Society of Travel Agents had the idea to have an astronaut film a public service announcement emphasizing that it was safe to fly again. We filmed it at O’Hare Airport, showing Lovell picking up a boarding pass, confidently going through the new security system. The PSA was seen by more than 200 million people.

I often think of those days in which our country was united in support of intelligently and safely getting the country moving again in the wake of the attacks that shut down air travel.

After the events of the past five or six, or is it 100 or the 56,575 days since the Civil War ended, I also often think of the ending of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet in which the Prince addresses the warring Capulet and Montague families:

See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.
And I for winking at your discords too
Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punish’d.

The Prince’s fine words are ultimately not enough to quell the irrational conflict between the families as they vie for who will create the better remembrance of the dead children. Thus, the Prince ends the play with,

A glooming peace this morning with it brings,
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head.
Go hence to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

As I wrote recently, we seem to have learned nothing. Hate breeds hate. Violence breeds violence. Hate and violence reside in the ignorance of those who only see the “other” as less than human. It has been ever thus. Our beloved Constitution counted slaves as only 3/5 of a free person for purposes of congressional apportionment, thereby increasing the representation in Congress of states that legalized ownership of one person by another. The “North” won the Civil War but lost the peace. After “Reconstruction,” we reverted to Jim Crow and then segregation and it wasn’t just in the South that racism drove our politics.

That is part of the ugly truth of the history of the United States. Having spent my formative years in Memphis, Tennessee, often jokingly referred to as “really part of Mississippi,” I grew up all too familiar with the way racism robbed people of their dignity, their ability to earn a decent living and an equal education and, often of their lives without meaningful recourse.

Now in 21st century not much seems to have changed. Aside from income inequality, educational deprivation, and all the rest, we have again and again seen outrageous acts of white people against black people that go unaddressed. And those acts are often by police who have been given what the law calls “color of authority” to bear arms and enforce the law on the streets. They are given the benefit of the doubt in most close cases.

We all understand that their job is difficult and dangerous. There are many bad actors in our society, as in all societies, and we depend on the police to protect everyone else. The theory is that with good police protection, the citizenry does not have to arm itself and prepare to “take the law into its own hands” when it believes the police power needs to be invoked. That’s the theory.

Most police, I continue to believe, are honest, hard-working people trying to do the right thing. Their job does involve danger. That is why, among other things, they are provided training, advanced weapons and communications tools. I participated in one-day “school” in Alexandria, VA a few years ago, providing exposure to some of the tools and training that the police there were given. It was impressive. It also was discordant with some things I had personally witnessed on the streets of Old Town Alexandria in which police officers behaved in an unhinged way toward citizens who had engaged in minor violations of traffic laws. The line is a fine one.

It is also true that there are many police who cannot conform to norms of conduct. I have read stories of medical personnel saying they have treated many injured police officers and were stunned to see how many “white power” and similar tattoos they had.

So, finally, to the main issue for today. Multiple American cities are in turmoil. Protests have turned violent and the violence has been met with more violence, by the local police backed by state police and National Guard forces in full combat gear with military grade vehicles and weapons. To be sure, the LEOs are usually outnumbered but the protesters are unarmed at least usually. There are exceptions, of course, but the evidence so far is that the protesters’ main weapons are water bottles and traffic cones. And their bodies. Multiple videos have surfaced of police crashing cars into crowds of protesters, pepper spraying passively protesting individuals, physically attacking unarmed women and on and on.

Meanwhile, of course, the inevitable has happened. We are told, and there is no reason to doubt, that much of the violence (burning of buildings, destruction of storefronts, looting) has been caused by people from out-of-state to the city in which they were arrested. I expect that the affected cities will “throw the book” at these provocateurs; surely by now there is a state law everywhere for crossing a state line to perform terrorist acts or something similar.

I say this is inevitable because it simply is. Society, sadly, includes many people who are unwilling or unable to comply with law. It also includes people who, for reasons of ideology, will try to coopt a protest to make the protesters look bad. The right-wing media and the politicians to whom they cater will then try to shift the narrative to “it’s not a legitimate peaceful protest because, look, it’s looters and arsonists, etc etc.” This is a familiar refrain that is often, wittingly or otherwise, legitimized by the mainstream media. It doesn’t take long on the main channels to realize that the violence is getting most of the attention. It always does. And that’s part of why it happens.

The obsession with the violence obscures critically important issues that arise every time we are in this situation.

The major police presence at the scene of protests does not just happen. The police has a command structure. Orders are given. In light of the scenes of police behaving in inexplicably violent and seemingly random ways, it’s more than fair to ask, indeed, it’s essential to know:

What role do the police have? Stop the protest? Arrest as many protesters as possible? Just wait and crack down after the curfew? Why are they on the street?

Without focus, they seem intent on attacking demonstrators. Their role of protecting property seems minor or irrelevant to their reason for being there.

What instructions were the police given?

The videos I have seen tend to show large numbers of police either blocking protesters’ path or trying to push protest groups into particular spaces. If they are resisted, they react explosively. The videos show police using batons in repeated blows to protesters on the ground and multiple instances of pepper spray being used against unsuspecting, fully complying individuals.

Where are the police on-site leaders during these events?

There appears to be little or no leadership. If it’s present, the leadership seems to condone if not actually order these attacks.

One situation that brings the above question sharply into focus is a video of a roughly few dozen police marching down a residential street in Minneapolis, screaming at residents to “get inside.” The person who was apparently on her front porch filming this and expressing surprise at the force appearing on her street is suddenly fired out with either paint balls or rubber bullets. They flee inside. Fortunately, no one was hit in the face or worse.

In another video that has attracted the attention of the Mayor of New York City and the Governor of New York State, a police car drives up to a metal rack, similar to a bike rack, being held by a large group of protestors in the middle of the street. The car stops. Water bottles and a bag are thrown at the car. Another police car appears and passes the stopped car on its right and plows ahead into the protesters. The first car then moves rapidly against the metal rack, driving it and the protesters holding it sharply backwards. Many people go down. It appears, miraculously, that no one was killed. But they easily could have been.

I understand that the police in those cars may have felt threatened. But they could have backed up. If they had a critical reason to advance at that particular moment, despite the risk to the protesters, it will presumably be disclosed in the forthcoming investigation ordered by the Governor to be conducted independently by the state attorney general.

It is difficult to understand how these seemingly random acts of police violence contribute to anything positive.

Why were the police sent into these situations? Do they not employ spotters and have advanced communications to produce high-grade situational awareness?

The police in the Minneapolis residential video can be heard issuing the order “light ‘em up” just before the shooting starts.

Is that what the police are for? To “light ‘em up?” Rough them up so they’ll want to go home?

There is, of course, another way. There is a video from Flint, Michigan, one of the most troubled communities in recent history, in which the sheriff tells the protesters, “we’re with you. We’ve put down our batons. Let’s make this a parade…. My officers love you…. Where do you want to go?…. we’ll march all night. Tell us what you want.” The result: protesters want their selfies with the sheriff and peace prevails.

Another image shows police on one knee in solidarity with protestors, while yet another shows Kansas City police holding signs that say, “End Police Brutality.”

I want to make three other points. First, Governor Cuomo, whose work on the pandemic has been, in my judgment, exceptional, passionately addressed the protests in his briefing today. He, of course, decried the violence. Fine. He also offered several specific proposals to change the way things work. He mentioned having independent review of complaints about police conduct, saying “self-policing just doesn’t work.” He argued for a uniform state law across the country on what constitutes “excessive force.” Both are good ideas.

But they do not go to or anywhere near the root problem, which is the persistence of racism throughout the United States. We won’t eliminate racism everywhere overnight, especially given the history that has brought us to this sad day. But, is it not time to address racism in the police departments around the country? Surely, it is not acceptable to have police be members of white supremacy organizations. Surely, there are ways to detect suppressed racism and subliminal bias and racist attitudes through testing and investigation. What is missing is the will to do it. There is simply no excuse to have racist cops on the force. On any police force. Yet, judging from the events of the past five days, likely to be repeated tonight, there is a staggering amount of racism rampant among our law enforcement services.

Next, I have been disappointed, stunned really, to see that the past five days of protests have seen few if any political or religious leaders on the streets with the protesters. This is not how it was during the Vietnam protests. We often had major political figures with us and “handlers” who understand how to keep the crowd’s “temperature” down when “outside agitators” tried to provoke violence. And it wasn’t that way during the major civil rights protests and the Women’s March.

Finally, I truly understand how horrified many people are about the looting, burning and rioting of some of the protesters. Related to the other points I’ve made, however, is the proposition that if you don’t given people anything to hold on to, they will just choose something at random. This usually has bad outcomes, as it did this week. We might have expected that the president of the country would step into that void but was kept busy throwing red meat to his political base with tweets promising “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons” would be used against protesters if they breached the security perimeter of the White House. Then, the president took the day off.  Nothing more need to be said about this total failure of leadership except that it, yet again, shows how unfit Donald Trump is to lead the country.

Déjà vu All Over Again – We’ve Learned Nothing

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Minneapolis burns. Los Angeles. Memphis, Louisville. Others.

A police officer in full view of multiple people, including store surveillance cameras, calmly kills an unarmed, non-resisting person accused of trying to pass a fake $20 bill. The unarmed, non-resisting man is a big man, imposing stature, but not resisting. His hands are in cuffs behind his back. The police officer forces him to the ground on his face, or maybe he sits down on his own. Maybe he said something offensive or even threatening. So what? He is cuffed and defenseless. The officer places a knee on the man’s neck. The man complains “I can’t breathe.” Multiple times. The officer ignores him. The other three officers on the scene ignore him. Witnesses plead with the police to check the man, but they are ignored. The man stops breathing. Still the police officer sits on his neck. The man dies.

The man dies in the presence and under the complete control of FOUR ARMED POLICE OFFICERS EQUIPPED WITH PEPPER SPRAY, TASERS, CLUBS, SIDEARMS. IF the man said something threatening to the officer OR IF the man did “resist” by passively dropping to the ground, under what police procedure and training did one of the four officers to think that the appropriate response was to sit on the man’s neck until he died? Is it even conceivable that police procedure condones this practice? Anywhere in the United States?

The prosecutor goes on TV and says there is “other evidence” indicating no crime was committed. What evidence? No comment. Why, then, did the prosecutor think it was a good idea to tell everyone he already had doubts about what virtually every non-racist person on the planet believed was almost certainly a crime – the deliberate taking of a life without justification under color of authority? Again.

All four of the officers have been fired so they are not among the strike force of hundreds of police now sent to suppress the, surprise, rioting and looting that have broken out in the wake of yet another “good people on both sides” scenario. The police use tear gas, pepper spray, fire hoses, among other things, against the crowds of enraged protestors.

Many people who were silent in the immediate aftermath of the video releases that at least raised a presumption that a police officer had, for the how-manyieth-time, killed an unarmed, non-resisting black person have come out clutching their pearls over the terrible rioting and looting. Sure, there may have been a problem with the police conduct – maybe, who knows, there could be an explanation, let’s wait for all the evidence, don’t jump to conclusions –but rioting and looting? Outrageous. Taking property? Unacceptable. Must meet force with force. Law and order. Restore peace by whatever means. Call out the National Guard.

And if you’re the president of the United States, what do you do? Well, our current president calls people names, threatens to “take control” with the military and “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Here is part of Trump’s actual message:

These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!

You don’t need a degree in linguistics to get the president’s message: “I will declare martial law and I approve of the National Guard/military shooting protesters who are rioting and looting. That’ll show ‘em who’s the boss.”

The victim here was a black man named George Floyd. His name joins the pantheon of unarmed black people killed by police in circumstances where other means of addressing the “situation” were readily available. Often the “situation” is really just that a black or brown-skinned person was involved. Involved in the sense of just being there. Despite the availability of other options, the police in these cases chose the lethal option. It’s not an accident. It’s a choice. And in virtually every case, the police are exonerated. There have been a few exceptions, but precious few.

The officer who killed George Floyd had 18 complaints on his record. One of the other four had six complaints and was involved in a settled lawsuit alleging use of excessive force among other things. https://cnn.it/2M8R3mm

All four officers in the present case have been fired. Fine, but not enough. Not even close. They will no doubt face civil suits whether or not the City of Minneapolis takes action against them. Why they are still at large is unknown and inexplicable on the known facts. Reminds us of the initial reaction of authorities in Georgia to the killing of Ahmaud Arbery. The “there is other evidence” position of the prosecutor is very close, too close, to “good people on both sides,” the president’s unsubtle endorsement of the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. The mind boggles at the thinking behind the prosecutor making such a statement while refusing to describe the evidence. But, rest assured, he will study this case really hard and be sure the law is followed. Rest assured.

While you’re waiting for the prosecutor, think about this. What would the operative difference be if, instead of kneeling on Floyd’s neck, the policeman had rolled him over, pinning his cuffed hands under his body, sat on his chest and choked him to death with his fingers? Any real difference?

The Minnesota GOP had plenty to say about the beaches being closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, but I can’t find anything they have had to say about the killing of George Floyd. No doubt, they are “extremely concerned” that there has been violence and property loss. They likely joined the Trump-led GOP chorus of outrage at Colin Kaepernick peacefully protesting by kneeling at a football game during the playing of the National Anthem. They can’t have it both ways. Peaceful protest – Noooo! Riots and looting – Noooo! The real message, obvious to me and others, is, “don’t be black.”

As a society, if that term still applies, we appear to have learned nothing. Armed racists threaten legislators over pandemic lockdown and masking policies, and no one lifts a finger. Police are expected, and do, stand in rows while being screamed at by AR-15 carrying vigilantes complaining about their “rights.” No one is arrested. In Minneapolis, on the other hand, today’s protesters were pepper sprayed by the driver of a passing police car for no discernable reason except a “take that” attitude by an unhinged and uncontrolled police force. The officers surely know they are being filmed but they are not concerned there will be repercussions if they wantonly attack protesters.

I get that police are under a lot of stress. I support the police almost all the time, but not when unarmed black and brown people are killed and there were readily available alternatives to the use of deadly force. Police are supposedly trained and re-trained on the use of deadly force. Presumably their calm under stress is evaluated carefully before they are unleashed on the community carrying an array of weaponry, some of which can be used to kill. Or maybe not. Maybe in Minneapolis and the countless other places where these violations of human rights have occurred the police are not really trained. They are just armed and sent into the community with instructions to “keep the peace” however they choose. Is this possible?

In the George Floyd case, ironically and painfully, the police didn’t need to use anything but handcuffs to kill a man. We have learned nothing from all the prior cases. And the president of the United States just fans the flames with hostile rhetoric, showing yet again his complete unfitness to hold office. Still, the Grand Ole Party is apparently silent. They sat silently and voted to acquit Trump when he was impeached for extorting a foreign government, allowing him to withhold relevant evidence and witnesses. They sat silently while Trump’s henchman Attorney General William Barr lied and distorted the Mueller Report. They preach law and order while the president’s immigration policy separates families and leaves small children parentless, in some cases forever, locking them in cages in concentration camps.

This is but a small sample of what Republican leadership has created in America. All the racism can’t be blamed on them, but they have endorsed and facilitated it over and over. And when the police yet again kill an unarmed and defenseless black person, they sit silently until their leader speaks and incites further hatred, dividing the country even further.

How long does the white conservative establishment think the underclass which is huge and growing is going to continue to tolerate this blatant racism and discrimination? Do they not understand that when large numbers of citizens no longer feel invested in the established order and peaceful change of that order is foreclosed, they lose their connection to that society and their justified but ignored and resisted rage boils over? How long do they think this can continue without serious and violent consequences becoming the order of the day, as the unwarranted killings of unarmed black and brown people has become the order of the day?

November is coming, not soon enough, but it’s coming. The good people of this country had better put an end to the Republican leadership that has brought us to this place. The consequences of failure are too grim to imagine, but it seems certain that the failing light of democracy that, at least in principle, was the founding dream and aspiration of this country will be extinguished if change is not achieved. That sounds apocalyptic, I know, but don’t believe it can’t happen here. It can and it will, unless we stop it. ENOUGH!

 

 

COVID-19 & New American Mantra: I Only Care About Me

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It was Memorial Day. What is that, exactly? It’s a day to remember and honor Americans who died while serving in the U.S. military, especially those who died in combat. Whether or not you approve or disapprove of a particular war, or indeed all wars, it is, in concept and intention, a somber occasion. It’s a time for reflection and showing respect.

The United States has adopted some strange ways of recognizing this occasion, although the phenomenon is not unique to Memorial Day. Most people get the day off from work. Some watch the televised memorials over the weekend; some watch the president and other dignitaries pay their respects officially by, for example, placing a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington Cemetery.

Many others see the day only as a holiday occasion and this year, in particular, there was greater emphasis on the “re-opening” of the country following the various lockdowns driven by the coronavirus epidemic. I have no idea what the ratio was of celebrants to serious observers, but if the scene on Alabama’s beaches is any guide, a very large number of Americans saw this day as simply an excuse to abandon caution and head out for a good time. Multiple videos showed massive crowding at swimming pools in Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri and the Ace Speedway in North Carolina, among others. Masks and social distancing were largely absent. St. Louis County officials called the scenes an “international example of bad judgment.” https://wapo.st/3gqBjcD

To be clear, I don’t care much what any individual chooses to do regarding protecting himself or throwing caution to the winds in pursuit of belief that he has a constitutional right to do what he pleases. Freedom, American values and all of that, are what each individual decides they mean for herself.

However, the line is drawn when an individual’s choices infringe on the rights and values of others, including the right to be protected from dangerous behavior. This is why we have speed limits, stop signs, protection of minors from certain types of work and many other restrictions on what we might individually be inclined to do. This is not hard to understand. True, there are violations of the speed limit, seat belt laws and the others every day by someone somewhere, often many someones. According to Rhino Lawyers, on average the police issue 112,000 driving citations a day! https://bit.ly/3gndAKd Some of these are for inadvertent mistakes and many are for deliberate decisions to, for example, disobey speed limits. And, of course, most violators of the rules of the road are not brought to justice. Sometimes, these behaviors lead to tragedies, resulting in deaths, disabilities, lawsuits and so on.

We are in the middle of a global health pandemic with similar deadly consequences, so far, in the United States for 100,000 individuals (exactly 99,498 as I write) and roughly as many families. Globally, the deaths exceed 348,000 out of more than 5.5 million cases. It is highly likely that the reported numbers understate the actual case and death toll. https://bit.ly/2ZL3soy No end is in sight. There is no “remedy” or “cure” that can be administered reliably to the stricken. All ages and demographics are affected, some more than others, but no sector is immune. There is no vaccine and none in the offing any time soon. Many more will fall ill and many more will die before this is “over,” if it ever is. Like the flu, COVID-19 may be with us forever.

Returning then to individual behavior, I repeat that if an individual wants to risk his life on the chance that he won’t be infected, so be it. Do whatever you want with your own life, provided that doing so does not place others involuntarily at risk.

Consider these statements from people interviewed at a packed Alabama beach yesterday, where there was no active enforcement of the policy that groups should consist only of same-family members:

“I’m just here to have fun and meet everybody and be cool, you know.”

Recent college graduate: “I don’t want to die but if [death] is what God has in store for my life, that’s ok.”

“If we get it, we get it…. We’re just going to handle it as a family and just get over it because that’s what a family does.”

“People die from the flu also.”

“I get it, I get it. The survival rate is so high…. we’re all going to get sick from something eventually.”

“If he’s not wearing a mask, I’m not wearing a mask; if he’s not worried, I’m not worried,” young male referencing Donald Trump.

“When it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go.”

[https://cnn.it/3d4HG3c]

Such fatalism is fine for individuals who have no contact with other people but most of these people likely have plenty of social contacts. Their “decision” to risk sickness, permanent injury and even death at the hands of the coronavirus thus exposes many others to the same risk whether they want to take it or not.

This is a degree of selfishness, openly and proudly displayed, that should be of profound concern to everyone. These people are living by the “principle” that says, “I only care about me and no one else. My rights and privileges, my freedoms to do whatever I want are more important than the welfare of anyone else that I may come in contact with, including children, elderly people with compromised immune systems or co-morbidities. I am all that matters. Me, Me, Me.”

This comes not just from the very young or the older young restless/reckless who often think they are invulnerable and whose cerebral cortexes, science informs us, are not fully developed and often make bad decisions. People of all ages and with families were interviewed on the Alabama beach. These are our “fellow Americans,” for whose “freedoms,” many men and women gave their lives in foreign wars. I doubt that if we could ask the fallen warriors whether this is what they meant to sacrifice for, most all would say, “no, we did not act selflessly just so others could be so selfish and indifferent to the welfare of others.”

But this is the contemporary reality of life in the United States. It’s not happening in just one place and it’s not just the product of needing to re-open the economy. This is blatant selfish behavior. These people include some of the angry, usually white, people who have carried guns into some state capitols, without being challenged, to demand re-opening. Like the people at the beaches and pools this weekend, they refuse to wear masks or engage in social distancing to protect others. While shouting and waving flags and signs about their “rights,” these selfish people make clear that don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves. Other people’s rights to be free of disease and to avoid contact with high-risk people and behaviors mean nothing to them.

Having witnessed the ravages of this disease up close and personal, my patience with these people has been consumed. The tank is empty. I am fearful of my reaction if I continue to encounter unmasked people on the streets of New York when we dare to venture out. They were everywhere this Memorial Day weekend when we walked for the first time in two months. The Governor of New York has observed that wearing a mask is simply the “right thing to do.” Still, many are unmoved. They just don’t care.

As tempting as it is to wish they all get infected, that would just expose even more people, including health care workers, to the consequences of their reckless and morally bankrupt insensitivity and that would be wrong. So, I try not to be vengeful. It is hard. This kind of indifference to the fate of other people seems un-American. It seems inhuman. No one can claim valid religious conviction to justify this, though many do so. There is no true religion anywhere that says, “do for yourself and to hell with everyone else.” That, however, is where we are.

 

 

Some Lessons Learned from the Pandemic

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In listening to another press briefing by New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo, I have noticed that he has consistently emphasized that much of what is being experienced, and governments’ responses, has never been faced in modern times. His related point is that if we want to avoid repeating the results of the past few months, we must learn from these experiences and change the way we do things going forward. We should not, he argues, just seek to restore everything from the past but build a new and better future based on the lessons learned during the pandemic. The possibilities are probably limitless but a few of them leap out at me.

Reliance on Foreign Supply

One big one is that as a society, we have come to rely on foreign sources, often but not solely from China, for many critical supplies, including medical supplies that are essential to addressing pandemic-driven illness. Cuomo correctly notes that the United States was ill-prepared to face an emergency of this nature, even though health experts have been predicting for years that a serious pandemic was virtually certain to occur.

How did we come to this situation? At the root of it, I suggest, is the “consumer mentality” of our evolved culture. Recognizing how broadly I am generalizing, it seems true that Americans generally lust for more and more “stuff” and the cheaper the price, the better. To accommodate this demand, our “free market” system of commerce turns to markets where labor and other factors permit the mass production of almost everything we lust for at prices below what they could be produced for domestically, remarkably even after the cost of transportation is accounted for. If you examine the origin labels on most of what you buy, you will see that most of it comes from China, South Korea, Vietnam and other countries in the Far East that are as far from here as you can physically get (except possibly for Australia).

Faced with these challenges from “foreign competition,” many American companies have closed their U.S. facilities and “shipped production overseas.” These decisions are supported, and sometimes even promoted, by the U.S. tax code, with the result that domestic jobs in hundreds of industries have been decimated and entire communities and even whole cities have been laid to waste. Youngstown, Ohio is one I am familiar with but there are many others all over the country.

These outcomes have not changed the demand for ever cheaper goods and have permitted companies like Amazon to dominate the supply chain for an astounding array of goods and services. If we are to believe the “reviews” on Amazon and elsewhere, much of what is produced in China and delivered in the U.S. is of low quality, but it’s “cheap” and it sells. What doesn’t sell is down-streamed through a largely invisible chain of distribution and re-distribution that sees a lot of this “stuff” for sale in so-called “dollar stores” and even second-hand shops.

If the only products we were considering were consumer electronics and such, the American lust for more and cheaper stuff would be somewhat less concerning, unless you ask someone who lives in a community devastated by the “foreign competition” that sucked local jobs dry and left the workers with nothing productive or remunerative to do.

Now comes the pandemic and we discover to our deep sorrow that we don’t have enough medical supplies to provide care of the swelling numbers of patients, many more of whom are going to die without it. Getting more supplies is now a global issue, as competition for scarce supplies erupts among countries and, we now learn, even between the states and our own federal government. The result is higher prices for everyone and still there is often a shortage requiring ordinary citizens to, for example, sew masks to try to protect healthcare workers on the front lines of patient care. If you’ve tried to buy your own masks from a foreign supplier, you may have learned, as I did, that much of the foreign supply is poorly made and often useless. And, of course, mask prices are now through the roof because government health policies are rigorously promoting/requiring mask use.

Another issue is that the federal government has allowed more than 100 coronavirus tests into the marketplace without full review. Many of these tests are sub-standard or worse. https://wapo.st/3c7V4TC

The lesson is clear, although the solutions are complicated and will, as with all major changes, take time. The United States should never again allow itself to be dependent on any foreign country for critical medical supplies. There will, of course, be a price to be paid for achieving this. Some things likely will cost more to produce here than in the “labor mills” of China. Americans will not willingly submit to the mass-production practices, and attendant low wages and poor working conditions, that dominate Chinese and other Far East manufacturing processes. So be it. Related to this is the question of foreign ownership of American companies, a readily available backdoor to foreign control of American business. We have to learn and change or face these problems all over again.

Tying Access to Health Insurance to Employment

Most Americans of working age buy health insurance provided/purchased through their employer. Putting aside ongoing issues of price/quality and coverage of options, not to mention extraordinary complexity of what is and is not covered, the real problem with this system is that when you lose your job, you lose your insurance as well. In normal circumstances, you have the option of paying for interim coverage through the COBRA program but there is no employer contribution, so the premiums are extremely high. There is also a time limit. COBRA can be a life-saver but it is economically challenging to put it mildly and highly disruptive.

The root problem is the connection between employment and insurance. There is no reason I know that this connection is immutable. Other systems exist in developed countries and seem to produce adequate or even superior protection for insureds. I am not an expert in all this, but it seems clear from the public dialogue about this that many people are invested in the current system, including the insurance companies. Many people are also opposed to greater direct government involvement on the grounds that it is “socialism.” The result is that the public discussion has partisan and irrational components that prevent a rational consideration of alternatives.

Of course, there is the issue of Obamacare that was intended to, among other things, give people the option of obtaining healthcare independent of an employer. In the gig economy that’s vital because so many people are independent contractors. When everyone’s health is tied together, as it is in a pandemic, we should be very concerned about people without health insurance and sick leave, but the Trump administration is working very hard to destroy Obamacare without proposing a replacement. Trump has, of course, denied that he is trying to end Obamacare and in particular has denied that he wants to eliminate insurance coverage of pre-existing conditions. Trump is lying about that. The Department of Justice is actively pressing litigation that would do precisely what Trump says he is not trying to do.

It is, however, clear that viable alternatives to the present system, whether it is Obamacare or something else, do exist and should be evaluated in a calmer, more rational way. I don’t know how to get there, but our society as a whole is paying a dear price for its failure to address this issue. The pandemic that has, as of this writing, led to nearly 40 million unemployed persons, has pushed evaluation of this issue to the top of the list of “must do” tasks as the United States tries to figure out what its future will be.

 

 

 

 

Donald Trump – American Terrorist, The Enemy Within – Part 1 of Many

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By now we are well accustomed to learning about a mass shooting somewhere in the U.S. and seeing the statement that authorities are determining whether the killing represents an act of terrorism or “merely” something else. The “else” is, presumably, less serious, less grievous, less disturbing, at least if you’re not among the victims or their families.

But there is another kind of terrorism that that may not directly lead to deaths but that has broad impact on many more people and leads to, among other things, loss of freedom. I refer to political terrorism. We know about it from observing other countries with “less democratic” and “less free” societies. In those countries, you step out of line, and you get imprisoned, disappeared, shot, poisoned and so on. If you’re “lucky,” you just lose your job, maybe your home and possessions and possibly your reputation. Political terrorism can take other forms as well. Among them are public humiliation, shunning and so on.

In one way or another, all of these non-violent (so far) forms of political terrorism have arrived on our shores and are embodied in the practices of the Trump administration. They didn’t come from overseas, however, and can’t be blamed on “foreigners” or “immigrants.” These are all home-grown right here in the US of A. USA! USA! USA! All part of “Make America Great Again.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines “domestic terrorism” as “Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.” https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/terrorism  The FBI’s definition of “international terrorism” also includes a violence component.

The common elements are “violent crimes” and bitideological goals” that in the domestic case arise from domestic “political, religious, social, racial, or environmental” beliefs.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of “terrorism” is broader: “the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.”  bit.ly/2zbV86n The root “terror” means “a state of intense or overwhelming fear.” No physical violence is required.

When I started this post, Donald Trump had already become the quintessential American-bred political terrorist. Here is some, a tiny fraction, of the overwhelming, incontrovertible proof. The only potentially missing element is violence but in the United States, at least for now, fear serves almost as well as violence to fulfill the monarchical aspirations of the putative dictator that sits in the people’s house.

It was fear, for example, that motivated Trump’s henchmen in the United States Senate, who, refusing to look at the evidence, but with plenty of proof before them even without additional witnesses, decided to ignore their oaths of office and constitutional obligations by voting against the Articles of Impeachment. It is reliably reported by a U.S. Senator present on the scene that “In Private, Republicans Admit They Acquitted Trump Out of Fear,” https://nyti.ms/395DTAs

In the United States Senate, like in many spheres of life, fear does the business…. History has indeed taught us that when it comes to the instincts that drive us, fear has no rival…. Playing on that fear, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, sought a quick impeachment trial for President Trump with as little attention to it as possible. Reporters, who usually roam the Capitol freely, have been cordoned off like cattle in select areas. Mr. McConnell ordered limited camera views in the Senate chamber so only presenters — not absent senators — could be seen.

And barely a peep from Republican lawmakers.

One journalist remarked to me, “How in the world can these senators walk around here upright when they have no backbone?”

Fear has a way of bending us….

For the stay-in-office-at-all-cost representatives and senators, fear is the motivator. They are afraid that Mr. Trump might give them a nickname like “Low Energy Jeb” and “Lyin’ Ted,” or that he might tweet about their disloyalty. Or — worst of all — that he might come to their state to campaign against them in the Republican primary. They worry:

“Will the hosts on Fox attack me?”

“Will the mouthpieces on talk radio go after me?”

“Will the Twitter trolls turn their followers against me?”

My colleagues know they all just might. There’s an old Russian proverb: The tallest blade of grass is the first cut by the scythe. In private, many of my colleagues agree that the president is reckless and unfit. They admit his lies. And they acknowledge what he did was wrong. They know this president has done things Richard Nixon never did. And they know that more damning evidence is likely to come out….

I have asked some of them, “If the Senate votes to acquit, what will you do to keep this president from getting worse?” Their responses have been shrugs and sheepish looks.

They stop short of explicitly saying that they are afraid. We all want to think that we always stand up for right and fight against wrong. But history does not look kindly on politicians who cannot fathom a fate worse than losing an upcoming election. They might claim fealty to their cause — those tax cuts — but often it’s a simple attachment to power that keeps them captured.

As Senator Murray said on the Senate floor in 2002, “We can act out of fear” or “we can stick to our principles.” Unfortunately, in this Senate, fear has had its way. In November, the American people will have theirs.

When I started drafting this post, Trump was operating through non-violent fear, but that has changed. Trump wants the country to “reopen” and doesn’t much care how many people are exposed to the death-dealing coronavirus in the process. He was tweeted to his followers that they should LIBERATE Michigan, Virginia and Minnesota, leading to swarms of his lunatic followers blocking entrances to hospitals, calling for the firing of one of the few experts who seem to know what’s going on and intimidating a few governors into prematurely reopening beaches and other public places. Groups of angry people, almost all white men, many carrying guns, bearing Confederate flags and emblazoned with swastikas have descended on some state capitols to “demand” that the governor re-open immediately. In some cases, they have physically challenged police assigned to protect state property and personnel from violence and interference with government processes. Wearing no masks, they have screamed directly in the faces of officers who, presumably following orders, simply stood their ground and made no arrests.

These actions, at the behest of the President of the United States, are acts of terrorism by any reasonable definition. Trump is willfully inciting violence against state authorities who will not bend to his insane will by reopening their states to dangerous behaviors that will kill people as certainly as a Trump-adoring neo-Nazi with an AR-15. The appearance of Confederate battle flags and swastikas at these gatherings of Trump supporters are clear evidence of their beliefs.

To be clear, I am in complete agreement that the First Amendment allows people to peacefully protest government policy, no matter how misguided that protest may be. But, as I had to tell a (now former) Facebook friend the other day, the right to protest does not confer the right to endanger others. Society has adopted rules and processes, some of which are slower to move than we would like, to protect everyone’s “rights.” So, to use a well-worn example, you cannot shout fire in a darkened theater, and you can’t drive 50 in a 25 mph school zone. Those “freedoms” are limited to protect others freedom.

The “reopen immediately” crowd seem to think they are the only ones with “rights” that matter. Trump has openly encouraged them, calling them “good people.” He said the same thing about the neo-Nazi crowd that marched in Charlottesville, leading to the death of a counter-protester.

Further evidence of Trump’s fondness for Nazis and what they stand for lies in his decision to dishonor the Presidential Medal of Freedom by awarding it to Rush Limbaugh, whose career, as described by Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post, Feb. 5, 2020, has been marked by “hate-filled racism, homophobia and misogyny, all characteristics favored by Donald Trump throughout his own career. https://wapo.st/35y1UiK This is the same medal previously given to the likes of Rosa Parks, Elie Wiesel and George Balanchine.

Citing multiple examples, Rubin noted that Limbaugh is the “embodiment of divisive, hateful right-wing media rhetoric, which, just like Trump, casts Democrats as evil and the media as enemies of the people.” Further, “a president who considers himself as president of only his supporters and who has debased and cheapened our language and our politics, making the reprehensible perfectly acceptable, would of course want to honor someone of Limbaugh’s ilk.”

Republicans, who claim to be offended by the accusation they were knuckling under to Trump on impeachment (before they knuckled under on impeachment) and collapse on the fainting couch when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) rips up her copy of Trump’s historically divisive and dishonest address, cheer Trump’s selection….

Trump’s great lie is convincing Americans that white males no matter what their conduct — Brett Kavanaugh, convicted war criminals and, most of all, himself — are victims of elites. That, in turn, gives them license to unleash bigotry and engage in intolerable, unhinged conduct, all in the name of vindicating themselves from oppression. That mentality of grievance, propagated effectively by Limbaugh, is nothing more than cover for white nationalism. The country should denounce, not honor, its practitioners.

Here are a few of Limbaugh’s other statements that Trump agrees with; apologies to those who find these deeply offensive. It is important that they not be lost to history. Limbaugh speaks:

“Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?”.

[To an African American female caller] “Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.”

“I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”

“You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray [the confessed assassin of Martin Luther King]. We miss you, James. Godspeed.”

“Women should not be allowed on juries where the accused is a stud.”

“Socks is the White House cat. But did you know there is also a White House dog?” while holding up a photo of 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton on his 1993 TV show.

“Holocaust? Ninety million Indians? Only four million left? They all have casinos — what’s to complain about?”

Discussing the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison: “It’s sort of like hazing, a fraternity prank. Sort of like that kind of fun.”

Those are the principles that appeal to Donald Trump and apparently to roughly a third of the American voting population.  Terrorism by any other name is still terrorism. November is coming. Prepare.

Sinking the Ship of State

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Watching the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic is like watching a panicked group of passengers rushing from side to side of a listing ship, each time reacting late and making the boat rock more severely, eventually leading to its swamping.

While Trump continues to gaslight Americans every day in his so-call press conferences, the undeniable facts are that he was warned early, rejected what he heard, ignored reality in favor of sloganeering and cheerleading for a losing hand and failed across the board to take appropriate action to prepare for and fight the pandemic. This incompetent lunatic continues to tweet about how good the TV ratings are while thousands of Americans are dying. Trump doesn’t understand that people in car accidents get good “ratings” too as passing drivers become rubberneckers who can’t help but slow down and stare at the wreckage.

Trump’s meltdowns and attacks on the press at his press conferences are, for reasons that defy understanding, given continuous national TV coverage by networks and cable services, although of late, some of them have cut away when, as always happens, Trump begins his delusional rants about what a great job he’s done. All of the fact-checking done by responsible journalists conclude that virtually every one of Trump’s press conferences is laced with lies, deflections and distortions. He makes statements that are demonstrably untrue and when questioned, attacks the person who asked the questions.

One conclusion to be drawn from this is that Trump doesn’t see these “press conferences” as means of conveying truthful information, or even inspirational messages, to the press or the American public. He sees them as opportunities to glorify himself, little more than campaign events for his re-election. And, as always, a cast of Republican sycophants in and outside Congress readily defends his failures with still more lies and distortions.

A good example of Republican representatives distorting the record, mostly by omitting inconvenient facts, is the video of Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) that is circulating on Facebook and Twitter. Crenshaw is good at dissembling, appearing oh so reasonable (“I’m not blaming the Democrats” while in fact blaming the Democrats). His demeanor suggests a thoughtful man just trying to set the record straight, but, as occurred throughout the phony Senate “trial” of Trump’s impeachment, leaving out key information is not making the record better. It is rewriting history to make Trump look better. It’s a hopeless task, but Republicans know that much of their political base is so enamored of them that they can be relied upon to believe almost anything. Take a look at this: https://wapo.st/3cyFf8n, a solid fact-checking of Crenshaw’s false narrative.

Trump himself, possibly aware at some deep level that his actions and inactions have been a disaster for America and Americans, like the crowd on the troubled boat, changes targets for his deflections almost daily. One day it is former President Obama’s fault, the next day it’s the Democratic governors, the next day it’s China or the World Health Organization, then back to Obama. Anybody but Trump and the incompetent corps of White House lackeys who report to him from their knees.

None of this is a surprise. Concerned observations have been worrying over the possibility that during his term, Trump would face an emergency he could not handle. Much of the speculation about this had to do with a possible military confrontation, but it turns out it was something else, perhaps with even greater consequences. In a sense, the entire world is at war with itself and the putative Leader of the Free World has come up short at every turn.

One report says a Republican congressman had argued it was better for people to die than to face severe economic losses even if they are relatively short-lived. This is revelatory of the Republican philosophy that values money over everything else. I have to wonder whether these people would be elected if an express element of their political platform were that their parents and other family members should sacrifice their lives so that the economy could be restored to its former glories sooner. Maybe the electorate that installed them would think that’s just fine. It’s hard to be surprised by any degradation of moral principles in the world of Donald Trump.

Now we see that Republican governors in multiple states have decided to follow their fuhrer into hell by reopening business in their states, withdrawing the social distancing orders and generally saying “let the chips fall as they may.” That might be okay if the “chips” weren’t people. Contrast this with the evaluation of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo who has been asked “why can’t you just open up businesses in counties that have few or no COVID cases?” Cuomo explained the obvious: that the virus, and the people who carry it, don’t know about county boundaries. Open restaurants in County A while keeping them closed in County B will simply result in people from County B descending on the restaurants in County A and end up sharing their infections. The result, when looked at one county at a time, is that the infection rate will simply go up in both counties.

This is not rocket science, but just as Republicans reject climate science among other scientific principles, people who don’t want to be inconvenienced any further will simply disregard principles of responsible behavior. Cuomo has discussed this at length in his daily press briefings, noting that (close paraphrase), “I can’t force people to comply. All I can do is persuasively explain the facts of the situation and urge them to comply. And when I do that well, most New Yorkers do comply, which is why we’re seeing the positive results in hospitalizations and other indicators.”

So, the choice is to follow sensible principles that are working to reduce infections or go ahead and open up massage parlors, hair salons, beaches, restaurants and the rest and “let the chips fall where they may.” It would be one thing if the people screaming about their “rights” and “freedoms” to disregard sensible practices would be turned away from overwhelmed medical facilities and sent to suffer, and in many cases die, on their own away from anyone else they might infect. But that’s not how our systems, such as they are, work and it’s not how viruses behave. It’s almost amusing, but not, that many of the protestors following Trump’s LIBERATE call-to-action to demand their freedom from lockdown orders are wearing masks and other protective gear even as they scream at medical personnel. And many of them, it should also be noted, carried Confederate flags and Nazi swastikas as they demanded “freedom.” Irony is not a strong force among these people.

Speaking of Nazis, William Barr, the part-time Attorney General of the U.S. and full-time consigliere for Trump, has declared that the Department of Justice will join private lawsuits on the plaintiff’s side if he concludes that the governors are imposing restrictions that, under well-thought-out standards such as “going too far,” violate the Constitution. https://bloom.bg/2ywzOIo In a statement that plainly makes DOJ an arm of the White House political agenda, Barr said,

“We have to give businesses more freedom to operate in a way that’s reasonably safe,” Barr said. “To the extent that governors don’t and impinge on either civil rights or on the national commerce — our common market that we have here — then we’ll have to address that.”

Asking the courts to address issues of this nature reminds me of that wonderful song, “In the Year 2525.” If you don’t remember it, go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izQB2-Kmiic

Barr, who lacks a medical degree, went further,

“You can’t just keep on feeding the patient chemotherapy and say well, we’re killing the cancer, because we were getting to the point where we’re killing the patient,” Barr said. “And now is the time that we have to start looking ahead and adjusting to more targeted therapies.”

Barr appears as unaware as Trump that we are not “killing the cancer.” Barr apparently lost his thinking capacity when he signed on as Trump’s consigliere and now believes that he knows everything about everything.

How will DOJ determine what state business operations are “reasonably safe” is undetermined. Trump’s own articulation of the standards states should follow for “reopening” has been as unstable as everything else the Trump administration does.  His standards didn’t last 24 hours, as pointed out by Washington Governor Jay Inslee who said Trump had gone “off the rails.”

Trump has managed to destabilize one of the strongest economies in the world while bringing death and misery to millions. Their blood is on his hands and it can’t be brushed or washed off with more self-adulatory platitudes. Much of this could have been avoided, but the president doesn’t read and he doesn’t listen. He thinks he already knows everything he needs to know. We are aware of this because it has told us so, repeatedly, and his behavior shows his corrupt incompetence every day. So, as Trump veers one way and then the other way, his followers do the same and the Ship of State rocks back and forth, teetering ever closer to the brink of complete disaster. All the gains against the virus, made at such huge human and economic costs, may disappear literally in a few days if the states follow the medical advice of the fool-in-chief and his ignoramus Attorney General.

We will know who is responsible even as Trump tries to blame someone or some many others. He is out of excuses. Not even Putin can cover up the catastrophe Trump has brought about. Start the countdown.