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The Tyranny of the Minority

3/18/2021

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I was introduced to life in the hallowed halls of Congress when I was 12, old enough to tolerate a modicum of boredom, but young enough to recognize absurdity when I saw it. My father was scheduled to attend a conference in D.C. (we lived in Indiana at the time) so it was decided the whole family would go along for the ride. My dad said we’d get to see where and how laws were made (or not, as it turned out) before his conference started. 
 
The first day there, off we went to the Senate gallery, from whence we watched some grizzled “lawmaker” drone on about the number of boxcars sitting, unused, on sidings all over the country.* Happily for me, my tolerance for boredom being strained, we didn’t stay long, and after we left, I asked my dad what law they were talking about. 
 
“Oh, they weren’t talking about a law,” he explained. “That was just a filibuster.” He went on, of course, to explain what that meant. 
 
“Just a filibuster.” That was back in the days when a filibuster (a word which, incidentally, appears nowhere in the Constitution) meant someone had to stand up and speak for hours and hours to keep the senate from voting on a bill he didn’t want to pass. (Save for Margaret Chase Smith, they were all “hes” back then, more’s the pity.) I thought it a strange way for sentient adults to pass the time, but oh, well …
 
Now, however, the standing up and speaking for hours on end isn’t necessary. As Philip Bump explained in the Washington Post,“… In practical terms, filibusters these days are only rarely hours-long riffs driven by passion for a cause. They are much more frequently hand-wavey threats to offer such a speech, with the end game of forcing legislation to meet a supermajority standard before passage.”

By some arcane process a senator who knows he’s in the minority on the bill in question can, in effect, announce he’s conducting an imaginary filibuster to prevent the proposal moving through the august body enroute to
becoming a law. Sixty votes (a 3/5 majority) are required to overcome the tyranny of the minority he represents and move the proposal along in a process called “cloture.” 
 
Currently, Republicans all over the country have been pushing new state laws to make it ever more difficult for those with Democratic leanings to vote. In response, the House of Representatives, controlled by the Democrats, has passed the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. It is now up to the Senate, where Republicans threaten to block the proposal with a filibuster.
 
While the Democrats have a slim majority (48 Dems, 2 Independents, and the tie-breaking vote of VP Kamala Harris) and could either abolish the filibuster or make it harder (by requiring those marathon speeches, for instance), they hesitate. Why? Well, first, they’re not sure they’d have all 50 votes of the aforementioned senators and for another, when they’re the minority party, they sometimes like to use the filibuster themselves. 
 
The fact is that the proposed voting rights act is vital to our democracy. Without it, we face a future in which Republicans can dominate the electoral college without ever receiving a majority of the popular vote. That’s happened twice already in this young millennium and we’ve all seen how that’s turned out. The GOP is now pushing for new restrictions that would make it even more difficult for minorities and the disadvantaged to vote in 33 states. 
 
Why? In a recent Supreme Court hearing in Arizona, the attorney representing the Arizona Republican party explained that without the restriction in question, the Republicans would be “at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats.” In other words, the Republicans need to stack the deck to win. 
 
Preserve the filibuster? Or preserve democracy? That’s the issue here. Let your senator know which is more important to you.

​*Interestingly, the aforementioned trip to the nation's Capitol occurred in the last millennium. Apparently, the boxcar problem remained unsolved for a long time. I googled "boxcars on sidings" and found several newspaper articles complaining about the boxcar problem. They were published in newspapers in 2009.  Click here to see the Wall Street Journal coverage.

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"The Chaos of the End of Something"

1/19/2021

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My first days-long immersion in real-time TV began on Nov. 22, 1963 It was early in my fleeting career with the San Diego County Welfare Department. As a mid-morning orientation session wound down, a woman burst in saying, “The president’s been shot!” 
 
In that innocent time, the unthinkable didn’t compute, and someone asked, “The President of what?”
 
“The president!” the messenger insisted, “President Kennedy.”
 
Within an hour, county officials closed all public buildings and sent everybody home. I remember walking past a flag already at half-staff, driving home on a nearly empty freeway, hearing my husband’s car pull into the drive as I turned on the TV, and watching events unfold together until after the state funeral three days later. Real life had come to a standstill.
 
That sensation—the cancellation of real life and time—didn’t happen again, for me anyway, for nearly four decades. By then, 9/11/2001, I was working as a school counselor. Nursing a miserable cold, I called in sick to ask a clerk to reschedule my appointments.
 
“Do you have your TV on?” she snapped. I didn’t. “Turn it on and tell me what’s happening,” she said, and I did—just in time to see the South Tower of the World Trade Center tumble to the ground. 
 
Strange … how traumatic world events sear into your memory details that, in more normal times, would be so mundane you’d never recall them: a tone of voice, a flagpole, the sound of a car in the driveway, the blank face of a TV not yet tuned in to the day.
 
There have been other traumatic national events, of course: assassinations, mass shootings, cataclysmic hurricanes, demonstrations against systemic injustice.
But now this …
 
January 6th,  2021
 
How do we make sense of it? Spurred by a sitting president, a mob seeking to block the validation of a demonstrably legal election, ransacks the Capitol, calls for the hanging of Mike Pence, desecrates the halls where bills become laws, loots legislators’ offices, and flourishes Confederate flags in their frenzy. Once again, I’m glued to the TV.
 
Once again, I’m struck by the sense that I’m living in another country, a country not my own. For a long time now, I’ve accepted the fact that this country is a violent one, uneasily hostage to gun-lovers and the NRA. But I’ve never thought … until now … that we would be threatened with insurrection, especially one triggered by a petulant sitting president. But here we are. 
 
It’s discouraging. Unexpectedly, however, I stumbled upon hope. In a classic example of what therapists call reframing, Anand Giridharadas, author and publisher of The.Ink newsletter and several books gave his take on the storming of the Capitol in a conversation with  Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC.
 
“This is not the chaos of the beginning of something," Giridharadas said, referring to the plundering of the Capitol. "This is the chaos of the end of something. … It’s not the engine of history. It’s the revolt against the engine of history. … It’s a funeral for white supremacy, a funeral for a kind of outdated, outmoded male power, a mourning for a time in which certain Americans could claim to be the default of an American and not have to share … What we’re trying to do is build a country that has never existed—a minority majority superpower.”
 
Food for thought, a glimmer of hope. Led by a thoughtful, competent President, much  work to be done by all of us.
 ​
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Another Country

1/4/2021

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Traveling in the Balkans a few years ago, I took a city tour with a local guide. I’m embarrassed to say now that I can’t be sure which country I was in at the time, though I believe it was Montenegro. Such is life on a cruise with way-too-brief shore excursions crammed into way-too-few days. Our city guide met us dockside, introduced herself and told us briefly about her background. 
 
“I’ve never moved,” she said, “but I’ve lived in three different countries.” Thus she described life where unrest and fighting sometimes results in an area being taken over by another nation, which then imposes a new name and a new regime on the land in question.
 
Here, in my lifetime, we’ve had none of that. But still … though the land where I’ve lived my entire life hasn’t changed its name nor its political structure, for the last four years I’ve often felt as though I’m living in another country. But then, a couple of months ago, we had an election. I started to breathe again as I looked forward to sane, experienced leadership and—belatedly—for the first time, a woman (yay!) in the second highest office in the land. It felt like a homecoming. 
 
But then … but then … the self-absorbed occupant of the most expensive government housing in the country decided he wanted to stay—the constitution, the law, and the time-honored tradition of the peaceful transfer of power be damned. And that, the peaceful transfer of power, never breached, is the keystone of this democratic republic.
 
As I write, I persist in believing that we’ll stave off this threat from the most ignorant and self-absorbed president ever to sully the oval office. I'd be even more optimistic if Republicans would follow the lead of their colleagues in Georgia. There, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger handled a one-hour phone call with the grace and aplomb of a diplomat as Trump demanded that he "find 11,780 votes" to put Trump over the top in that state.  Later,  Gabriel Sterling, Georgia voting systems implementation manager,  offered up a detailed televised answer to all the accusations of voting irregularities. 

I do worry about the Republican party as a whole, however. They brought us here and many of them are more than eager, even at this eleventh hour, when they should be ushering the wannabe tyrant out, to support him in his quest to overturn a free and fair election. The disregard for themselves, their constituents, and their constitutional duties  is mind-boggling. Who do they see when they look in the mirror?
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The Pandemic Shines a Light

12/17/2020

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When the Biden/Harris ticket was elected, I felt nothing but relief and gratitude. At the time (pre-Thanksgiving), I planned to write an upbeat column on those decidedly upbeat feelings. However, that wasn’t the way it turned out. I just couldn’t switch gears. What I actually wrote, my previous entry on Marj-inized, called “The Audacity of Hope,” is hardly sweetness and light.
 
Since then, I’ve tried to focus on the positives of the whole pandemic experience, both personally and politically. 
 
Personally, now in the tenth month of semi-isolation, what I’m most grateful for are pretty practical—things like Zoom, for instance. I’ve never been a fan of chatting on the phone with a disembodied voice, but video chats are different--more like “being there.” You feel more connected and the more you use it, the more normal it feels. I’ve watched my son and granddaughter tie-dye shirts a continent away and had frequent family visits with all three kids at once as their work schedules (and three-hour time differences) allowed. 
 
And every week, I’ve had chats with my two sibs (each of them hundreds of miles away), virtual Happy Hours with some of my favorite locals, video visits with a new friend, discussions in a virtual forum on topics ranging from politics and economics to religion and the challenges families face in these parlous times. In other words, with Zoom—and other video chat applications—I’ve stayed connected. Without that technology, the pandemic would have been so much more isolating. 
 
The Gift of Time

The pandemic has also brought the gift of time. Like magic, commitments were cancelled. While I often berate myself for accomplishing what feels like next to nothing in a mostly unscheduled day, I have reviewed hundreds of 35-millimeter slides, ferreted out the best and grouped them to go to a scanner. I’m beginning the daunting task of de-cluttering, no small feat when you’ve lived in the same house for 35 years. (How can that be?) Suddenly, it just makes sense to get to those “put-off-able” tasks now.
 
And finally, while the pandemic hasn’t made me or my family stronger, it has made me made me appreciate the bonds we have.
 
One of my sons caught Covid-19 in March, very early. All we knew then was that it was highly contagious, presented with unpredictable symptoms, had no known cure, and was often fatal. With him on the east coast, me on the west, and travel foolhardy, I stayed home in spite of that famous motherly instinct to fly to the rescue. We kept in touch with frequent phone calls, but as one day turned into another and his symptoms worsened, there were sleepless nights for both of us.  
Late one night I could tell he hardly had the strength to talk, but sensed he needed to feel connected. Finally, I said, “How would you like me to read to you?” With that, I pulled Marley and Me off the shelf and started reading. By the end of the first chapter, he was asleep. I was grateful not only that he had temporary relief from pain but that I had finally found something I could do to help. Sometimes the helper is as needy as the helped.  

A Blessing in Disguise
 
With such a bungled pandemic response from the government, finding anything to be grateful for on the political scene has been a challenge, but the glaring clarity with which we can now see the Republican Party is a blessing in disguise. Clarity has been bought at an unthinkable cost: millions sickened, hundreds of thousands dead, businesses ravaged, jobs lost, the economy decimated, political division a chasm.
 
However, the GOP now is a party exposed. It’s clear that, in its current iteration, it is incapable of governing. Inexplicably childlike in the face of a national bully, the party has been hijacked by an ignorant, heartless, self-serving man trapped in his own delusions. As if the craven cowardice of the past four years were not enough, now we have Republicans signing on to Trump’s many attempts to get the results of the election overturned. It boggles the mind. Trump, it seems, is stuck in the developmental phase child experts call the time of magical thinking—and his followers have signed on for the ride.
 
Meanwhile—and here’s the good part—prominent members of the party are beginning to hurtle out of the playpen. Consider, for instance, the creators of the Lincoln Project and the numbers who increasingly speak out on national news outlets--George Conway, Steve Schmidt, Justin Amash, Paul Mitchell, to name just a few. 
 
The Dying GOP

I’m not sure the Republican Party can be rehabilitated. The party’s performance in the Time of Trump has made it clear that they’re too immature to carry on in their current state. I’m grateful that the pandemic, coming on the heels of a chaotic three years, has clarified the need not only for a new administration, but for a new political party to replace the dying GOP. We need two parties, but we need both of them to represent legitimate principles in the political, economic, and social arenas, not to be sycophants of an inept and unqualified “leader.” 
 
Meanwhile, we have elected two adults, eminently qualified to take on the daunting tasks at hand: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. For that, I’m grateful. ​
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The Audacity of Hope

11/23/2020

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Well,  hallelujah! 

Belatedly, the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris has been recognized by the current administration. This means the new kids will have office space, briefings from key outgoing officers, and opportunities for a coordinated approach to planning a smooth transition enroute to Inauguration Day. 

Lately, I've been feeling like a minor character in a bad novel by an author who's lost control and can't figure out how to bring his miserable literary endeavor to an end. In this story, the main character, supposedly the hero of the piece, golfs around in the background while supporting players emerge from time to time to make a show of trying to save him. 

It's like being trapped in a John Grisham novel. His books keep your attention for awhile until at the end you're dropped off in an unsatisfactory place,  wondering how you got there.

It's a real-life Groundhog Day with none of the levity. Every day, we've had rising numbers of new coronavirus cases, Trump on the golf course, increases in the number of coronavirus deaths, Trump on the golf course, frivolous lawsuits filed in one state or another, Trump on the golf course,  judges' dismissals  of  said lawsuits ... Trump on the golf course.

He cares not how many die, how many families lose their homes; how many children go hungry, lose their parents, miss out on vital parts of their education, feel less and less secure; how many health care workers lose their lives as they try to save others.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and their appointees will face huge challenges. But at least it's realistic, now, to indulge in the audacity of hope.   
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Re-electing Trump: What Would That Say About Us?

10/31/2020

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We make generalizations about entire countries based on the bits of news we hear about them. Even with countries as similar to ours as the UK or Australia or New Zealand, most of us know little about their internal party politics or the belief systems of various groups within the citizenry. No doubt the same is true of those living in other countries when looking at our own.   
 
Thus, it made me think when I heard a talk show host inquire, “If we re-elect Donald Trump, what will that say about America?” With less than five days to go to the election, I immediately became too busy wondering how I would answer that question to hear the response of the interviewee. But here are a few thoughts that occurred to me:
 
It would say character is not important in America. It would say, for instance, that we’re fine with …
 
  • a leader whose lies are blatant, frequent and egregious 
  • a leader who forcefully separates infants and children from parents seeking a better life
  • a leader who publicly insults and mocks others 
  • a leader totally lacking in empathy and concern for others
  • a leader who believes there are "fine people" in the ranks of the white supremacists and has no plan for addressing the issues of persistent, systemic racism
  • a leader who lacks the courage to tell the truth about a roaring pandemic and to take the simple precautions that would serve as a model for protection—and who, even worse, holds “super spreader” campaign events endangering thousands of people while he knows full well he is placing them all in danger
 
  • Little known fact: The U.S. reported more new coronavirus cases (98,583) on Friday, Oct. 30th, than the entire number of cases (91,339) reported in China since the virus was first identified in December 2019. (Source, Laurie Garrett, prize-winning science journalist and author)
 
It would say that we accept a president who tramples on long-standing norms and uses his office for his own personal gain. It would say, for instance, that we’re fine with a leader who …
 
  • refuses to release his income tax information and to place his assets in a blind trust as modern leaders have customarily done
  • sullies the White House by using it as a campaign venue, an act that technically makes criminals of his participating staff who are thus in violation of the Hatch Act
  • muddies the concept of the separation of powers—holding unprecedented gratuitous swearing-in ceremonies at the White House for his three conservative Supreme Court appointees
  • steers events and visitors, foreign and domestic, to venues he either owns or otherwise profits from himself
  • installs “acting” appointees to high office without Senate confirmation, then fires them at will, creating a revolving door of high-level officers, many with little background in the  endeavors they're tasked with supervising
 
Perhaps most damning, however, is what it would say, not about what we accept from a president, but about what we accept in ourselves. It would say, for instance …
 
  • that equal justice for all is not a priority
  • that, like Trump himself, we lack the ability to “walk in another’s shoes,” to imagine life homeless, or without health insurance, or without a reliable income that allows us to shelter and feed our families
  • that lower taxes, especially for the upper financial echelons, are more important than upgraded transportation and infrastructure; more important than solving the problems of homelessness and hunger; more important than health care for all; more important than a living wage as a minimum wage, affordable child care, or retraining programs for displaced workers; more important than vast wealth and income inequality that leaves millions with a poor quality of life and little hope for better
 
Finally, it would say that we don’t engage in critical thought. It would say, for instance …
 
  • that we can’t discern truth from lies
  • that we don’t recognize the dangers posed by a president who knows little history—our own or the history of world
  • that we fail to see parallels between armed troops’ clearing of protesters from a public square—to make way for a presidential photo op, of all things—and the modus operandi of authoritarians around the world
  • that we accept the word of a reckless, medically ignorant president, who mocks mask-wearing and social distancing, invites us all to his super-spreader events, and tells us the virus will magically disappear, over the word of scientifically trained, experienced doctors who tell us every day how we can best protect ourselves and others from illness
  • that we don’t realize a chaotic administration, more focused on undoing the work of a predecessor than on instituting forward-looking programs, may be entertaining, but is simply a failed administration
 
We can do better than this. We'll soon know whether enough of us make that choice. 
 
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Toxic Maskulinity

10/25/2020

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There’s a new kind of toxic masculinity. Contagious and more closely related to one’s political affiliation than to gender, it afflicts Republicans more than Democrats. Caused by an unusual  toxin, the word describing it should more accurately be spelled with a k, instead of a c. Toxic maskulinity: the fear of appearing weak while wearing a face mask.
 
We knew months ago—and so did Donald Trump—that the best things we could do to protect ourselves and others against covid 19 were pretty low tech: wear masks, keep “socially distant,” wash hands frequently, avoid crowds. The simplicity of all that makes the behavior of the man who aspires to a second term in the White House inexplicable. He refused for months to wear a mask or to require his staff to do so—and even now, does so only sporadically. 
 
Trump’s behavior makes sense only as a psychological aberration, a break from reality so profound that those around him—and others who support him—have been unable to resist the vortex swirling them all into a kind of collective insanity. Who of right mind would routinely risk their own and their family’s lives by refusing to take simple protective precautions? 
 
And what leader of right mind would hold events designed to lure those thus deranged—and most likely to vote for him—into the hazards we now call super spreader events? It makes no sense. 
 
But then, the fact that we elected him in 2016 made no sense, and very little has made sense since then. 
 
Hope is on the horizon. We have a stark choice between an ignorant, reckless, self-absorbed man who cannot lead and a proven, compassionate, thoughtful leader who understands the problems of real people.  A major bonus comes with the latter: Joe Biden has extensive foreign relations experience, first as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and later as Barack Obama’s foreign relations adviser. He knows history and geography and how to conduct himself like an adult. Distracted by the domestic disruption caused by Trump’s bungled non-response to the pandemic, we overlook at our peril the damage done to our relationships with allies and competitors on the international scene.
 
The next four years: We can begin the work of rescuing an endangered species—government of the people, by the people, and for the people—or we can swirl around in the vortex. Which will it be?
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Debate or Bully-ism?

9/30/2020

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The first so-called Presidential debate of 2020 wasn’t a debate at all. It was an exercise in bully-ism, nationally televised evidence that some people truly never grow up, and redundant proof that a child-man lives in the White House. It confirmed once more the wisdom of Maya Angelou's admonition: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” We all know who Trump is. I naively believed, however, that being on public display with a competitor clearly his superior would temper Trump's behavior. Au contraire! He displayed even more immaturity, more rudeness, more ugliness than I anticipated. … And my expectations were lower than a lizard’s belly. 

The “debate” was a contest between barbarism and civility. At first blush, it might appear that barbarism won. I didn't count the words, but I'm sure, if the win had been based on word count, the barbarian would have been the victor. After all, he used his own allotted time and some of Biden's, too. The agreement had been that each candidate would give a two-minute, uninterrupted response to the initial question in each of the six segments of the program. Those statements were to be followed by a few minutes of discussion--as in "give and take." You might be familiar with the concept; in debates of yore, this would have seen one candidate speaking at a time. Not so now.

Was anyone surprised when Trump jumped in to talk over both Joe Biden and moderator Chris Wallace as they spoke? Shortly, the event became a free-for-all, Trump performing with all the grace of a grizzly at a tailgate party and Biden treading a fine line: respond in kind or let the bully rant? It was a no-win choice. Meanwhile, Trump lied, bragged, dodged, and attacked the Biden family.  Did we know any more about his policies at the end of the night than we did at the beginning? (Does he have any policies? That's a question for another time. His "party." you know has no platform.)

The winner was not the guy who spewed out the most words. The winner was Joe Biden. While Trump confirmed his immature, bull-in-the-china-shop ignorance; Biden showed us his capacity for empathy, his love of family, and his concern for those who are suffering health and economic devastation brought on by the coronavirus. He was as presidential as a guy can be while in the sights of a run-away bulldozer.

The absence of a policy discussion was a plus for Trump. With no party platform and no plan of his own, Trump goes wherever his impulses take him. A serious discussion of policies would have been such an inconvenient  handicap.

I can't help myself. I thought the best line of the night was uttered by CNN's Anderson Cooper in the “post-game” analysis when he described Donald Trump as “obesely immoral.” I’m not sure what that means,  but as one of my educator colleagues used to say, “It communicates.”

There’s no point in further debates unless the moderator—or another designated person—is given a “kill” switch which would enable them to turn off the microphone of the person not designated to speak. Some have even proposed putting the candidates in sound-proof booths like those used in high stakes game shows.  Unless some kind of controlling measures are instituted, the debates are an exercise in futility, of no value except for the purpose of highlighting the differences between an ignorant bully and an experienced, empathic leader. But we already knew  about that. 


In these chaotic times, get your day off to an equilibrious start, by reading the work of Heather Cox Richardson on Facebook. She describes herself as “a political historian who uses facts and history to make observations about contemporary American politics.” She posts a column nearly every day. They're always rational and cogent and deal with major events in the news. 

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Will the Democrats Get What They Don't Want?

3/9/2020

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The Democratic Party is fast becoming the poster child for the Alfred Adler theory that “neurotic safeguarding always gets you what you don’t want.” Those may not have been Adler’s exact words (he was, after all, Austrian, a psychiatrist in the late 19th-early 20th century), but I’m afraid it may be an accurate diagnosis of the Dems’ dilemma.
 
I’m hard-pressed to understand the swift winnowing of an excitingly diverse roster of candidates to a slate of two old, straight, white-guy pols. (I can say that because I’m old myself--and there are several old white guys among my favorite people.) There were many other entries in this race, and while both Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are experienced and qualified, this feels like recycling when what we need a fresh new product.
 
Think back: In the 2016 election, when many voters longed for a disrupter, someone who would tackle rampant income inequality, unaffordable health care, wage stagnation, and unbridled corporate greed, the Dems decided to run a moneyed candidate with long, deep ties to corporate powerhouses and super PACs, one who struggled to connect with voters on a personal level and who proposed little in the way of novel solutions to deep-seated problems. Yes, that candidate was Hillary Clinton, and perhaps the Dems thought selecting a woman made that a bold choice, but it didn’t. 
 
Back then, their other viable option was the aforementioned Mr. Sanders.  Like Clinton, he was far from warm and fuzzy. Unlike Clinton, he proclaimed himself a socialist (not the smartest thing he’s ever done) and ran to the left of almost everybody. But he did have ideas about addressing rampant income inequality, unaffordable health care, wage stagnation, and unbridled corporate greed. The Dems rejected him. 
 
Fast forward to 2020. This year … this year, we thought, would be different. In addition to Joe and Bernie, the Dems were offered a field of diverse candidates, including one who not only proposed fresh solutions to persistent problems—and had plans for carrying them out—but who also had what often seemed to be a nearly-sacrificial personal touch. How many little girls did she engage in the “pinky swear” to let them know they could be anything they chose? How many hours did she stay after rallies so everyone who wanted one could get a “selfie?” How many personal stories did she listen to on cold Midwestern nights?
 
Assertive, caring, smart, inspiring, Elizabeth Warren is the whole package. So why, on Super Tuesday, was she pushed out of contention by voters who swung to the two males now left in the race? Were they so traumatized by the disaster of 2016 that they believed no woman could win against our gender’s arch nemesis Trump? Could they not see the enormous difference between the two women in question?
 
Maybe. But this seems like the coward’s way out. It seems like neurotic safeguarding which—remember—always gets you what you don’t want. I hope I’m wrong.  
 
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No Perfect Candidate

2/29/2020

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Alas, as you’ve probably already noticed, there is no perfect Democratic candidate for the highest office in the land. Unfortunately, the early departures of qualified contenders, the late entry of moneyed wannabes, and a series of heated debates peopled by overwhelmed moderators and a shifting clutch of candidates haven’t made our job as voters any easier. 
 
It’s been almost as chaotic as the Trump administration.
 
How to pick your person? That is the question. For debate watchers, focusing on substance was often difficult, buried as it was beneath the parry and thrust of the players. And then, there was the proverbial complicating elephant in the room: Who is best able to 1) defeat Trump and 2) increase the numbers of Democrats in the House and Senate? One thing the debates did provide was a glimpse into some of the candidates’ telling personal traits which may bear on those questions. 
 
Amy Klobuchar, for instance, has the distinct ability to lower the temperature in the room. With the exception of an occasional dust-up when personally attacked, she calmed the cacophony when she spoke. Her soft-spoken demeanor belies a determined interior. She’s civil, proud of her Midwestern roots, and relates policy to the impact it has on real human lives. Forced to leave the hospital and her struggling newborn who remained there, she told a story every parent can relate to as when discussing the need for health care reform.
 
Bernie Sanders, in contrast, heated things up. He filled the room. I found myself wondering whether he listens. Much as I like many of the things he stands for, he came across as dogmatic and opinionated. And I can never quite get over the sense that there’s something tone-deaf about a politician who labels himself a “socialist” in a country where that innocuous term scares so many voters who confuse it with Russian-style communism.
 
Like Sanders, Elizabeth Warren is passionate

​ 
 in her beliefs and consistent in her message though she did some fine tuning in the course of the debates.  Like Joe Biden, she has a compelling life story. She’s assertive in exactly the way we’ve come to know and expect since the days she helped create the Consumer Protection Bureau. Like Klobuchar, she has the ability to clarify her policy positions with the down-to-earth examples of the lives of real people.
 
On the debate stage, Joe Biden has been forced out of the roles he’s played so well over the years—comforter at times of horrific violence (who doesn’t remember Sandy Hook?), elder advisor to Barack Obama, extemporaneous speaker par excellence when awarded the Medal of Freedom at the end of his vice presidential term. His debate performances have been, let’s say, “various.” While there’s still a lot of the warm, supportive “Uncle Joe,” there have been been moments of hesitation, though he seemed to hit his stride as the debates rolled on.
 
Then there’s Pete Buttigieg, whom I first “met” in the middle of a sleepless night. Unable to return to my slumbers, I had turned on the TV, which usually sends me right back to Dreamland. Morning Joe was on, and they announced that some guy I’d never heard of would be the next guest. I turned over and prepared to doze off, but that guy was Mayor Pete and soon I was wide awake as he rolled out his proposal for changing the way we constitute the Supreme Court. He was thoughtful, articulate, and informed. I was impressed. And in the debates, he’s been sure-footed, confident, and not at all intimidated by a field of rivals, some of whom are twice his age and infinitely more experienced. ​

As for Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, I have only one thing to say: Money. I haven’t seen enough of either of them to offer much in the way of comment. However: Money. If we hope to survive as a democracy, one of the many issues we must attend to is campaign finance reform. No-one should be allowed to buy their way into the presidency. We’ve already tried that. 
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Dems, What Are You Thinking?                                                                _______________________________________________________________

4/17/2019

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​What are the Democrats thinking? Actually, I think the real question is this: Are the Democrats thinking?
 
In March, Tom Perez, chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), announced the committee was barring Fox News from hosting or even televising any of the Dems’ debates leading up to next year’s primaries. 
 
At the time, I thought to myself, “Well, that’s stupid.” Where will you find a higher concentration of Trump-leaning voters than in the living rooms where Fox News is standard fare? What better way to reach the millions who’ve followed the Pied Piper down the path towards their own destruction? 
 
Passing up an easy opportunity to introduce the diverse and thoughtful field of Democratic hopefuls (an embarrassment of riches if ever there was one) to people who voted for Trump in the last election is like turning down a million in cash because the bills are a little rumpled. 
 
Recently, you may remember, Bernie Sanders appeared at a Fox News town hall. The questions asked were intelligent and pertinent and gave Sanders ample opportunity to explain where he stands on many vital issues. The audience occasionally cheered Sanders and booed (gently) the two Fox moderators. It was a civil event, as “fair and balanced” as the town halls on any other national network.
 
Now, more Dems are exploring the possibility of Fox town hall appearances. Even after Sanders garnered nearly twice as many viewers on Fox as he had for an earlier event on CNN, however, Perez has not changed his stance. To paraphrase a well-known meme, nevertheless he persisted.
 
The Democratic Party made fatal gaffes in the runup to the election of 2016 and the outcome wasn't good. Under current leadership, it seems they may be in danger of shooting themselves in the foot (okay, feet) once again.
 
Really, Dems? Play smarter.  Please!
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Dysfunction Junction                                                                               _______________________________________________________________

3/29/2019

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Mental health therapists subscribe to various theories to understand and work with their clientele. One established school of thought is based on “family systems,” and a cornerstone of that theory is the belief that the thorny behavior of the “identified patient,” whom all believe to be the source of the family problems, is actually a response to dysfunction within the family as a whole.
 
As I watched Donald Trump’s reaction to the recent news that Robert Mueller had concluded his investigation into the shenanigans of the Trump administration, it occurred to me that the U.S. currently is just one crushingly dysfunctional family system.
 
In this paradigm the President (you may have already figured this out) is the identified patient. But it’s complicated.
 
​There are four main players in this sprawling family: The Congress, the Supreme Court, the President, and We the People, and all of us have contributed to this disarray. Trump isn’t the underlying cause. He’s just the most flagrant and savage symptom.
 
What roles do the rest of us play?
 
Let’s start with Congress, the creatures of Article I, the cornerstone of democracy, the representatives of We the People, the makers of laws, the keepers of the coffers. Heady stuff—and demanding of time and attention. 
 
But because of our dysfunctional system—no term limits, ineffectual campaign cash constraints, demands by both parties that members of Congress spend hours every day “dialing (donors) for dollars”—legislators’ focus is too often on winning the next election and too rarely on educating themselves on the issues and making the best decisions they can for the people who sent them there. As a result, beholden to the donors whose largesse they’ve sought, their votes often reflect their devotion to their donors—and themselves.
 
Right now all the above is baked into the system, but congressional dysfunction is complicated by the fact that one of the major parties (and you know which one it is) has allowed itself to be taken hostage by the most unhinged, juvenile, and cruel president ever to darken the White House doors. Don’t you wonder what happens to those legislators’ self-respect? … What return they’re getting on their “investment” in moral turpitude? 
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Then there’s the Supreme Court, once considered the ultimate protection from injustice and power run amok. That, of course, was before we discovered there is such a phenomenon as a Supreme Court run amok: Bush v. Gore? Citizens United? District of Columbia v. Heller? Just to name a few. A majority of the court having been appointed by Republicans, this allegedly non-partisan group is a major colluder in our current dysfunction.
 
Of the three major players here (president, Congress, Court) the Supremes are undoubtedly the most securely insulated from outside pressures. This makes their most inexplicable rulings (money is speech; corporations are people, for instance) simply confounding. To whom are they beholden? One wonders. 
 
It’s easy to blame all of the above for a political system that operates in chaos, rewards the wealthy with tax breaks, slashes holes in the social safety net, maintains a de facto two-tier system of justice, visits cruelty upon the downtrodden, and practices discrimination against those who are in any way “different.”
 
We can criticize those at the top all we want, but … we put them there. It’s up to us to sort the wheat from the chaff and elect legislators, and a president, who represent not their donors but their constituents. Not an easy task, especially in a country where education is undervalued, teachers are underpaid, test scores are king, and so many are woefully uninformed. 
 
We all need to understand the structure and functions of government, be able to separate fact from opinion, think critically, and provide reasoned support for our opinions. How are we doing with that? What do the raucous revelers at Trump’s rambling rants tell us about their readiness to vote?
 
Government is serious business. Voters who prefer a bloviating megalomaniac to the serious candidates now coming forward with new ideas, clear-eyed observations, and humanitarian policy proposals clearly lack the tools needed to cast an intelligent vote. Unless we elect a responsible president and informed, articulate legislators, we’re complicit in the threatened devastation of our democratic (small “d”) way of life. ​
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Fighting Trump Torpor                                                                            _______________________________________________________________

2/26/2019

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I’ve been silent, so to speak, for a month. Until recently, it’s been hard to exercise restraint as I watch the craven and impolitic decisions emanating from the White House and the cowardly politicians (you know who they are) who won’t stand up to the man ensconced therein. Now, however, while I’m not indifferent, I am unschockable, and I’ve fallen into the Trump torpor commentators have feared.
 
Trump rambles through the verbal wilderness, and I mute the TV. I know he will lie. I know he’ll denigrate the work and wisdom and warnings of experienced national leaders; I know he’s easy prey for Putin and Kim Jong Un and the Saudis; I know he has a damningly inflated opinion of his own brain; I know flattery works; I know…I know…I know. And some days I just don’t care.
 
I can’t respect the man or the knowledge and wisdom of those who put him there. And, while we’re on the subject, let me point out that the politicians who helped him onto his perch on the catbird seat aren’t only those of the Republican stripe. The blame lies with all those who, for years, have pandered to wealthy donors in order to serve their highest priority—holding onto their own powerful perches—rather than serving the true interests of their constituencies. The gaping income gap, the national debt, the stagnation (or reduction) of wages, welfare for the rich at the expense of those who live on the edge of survival, crumbling infrastructure, failing schools—all those and more are largely attributable to legislators who have failed us.
 
Remember that old saw? Which comes first—the chicken or the egg? Do we have failing schools because we have failing legislators? Or do we have failing legislators because we have failing schools?
 
Regardless of the answer, the dilemma we’ve created for ourselves is partially (but only partially) the result of two obvious factors: The first, a flawed system, which not only tolerates blatant gerrymandering but also holds the country hostage with an antiquated electoral college; the second, an inadequately educated populace, often poorly served by schools that fail to adequately teach history, the basics of democracy, and critical thinking skills.
 
Neither of these situations—or any of the other causes of our malaise—will be corrected any time soon. In the meantime, we need to fight Trump torpor. 
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Did God Choose Trump?                                                                          _______________________________________________________________

2/1/2019

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I’ve never subscribed to the old saw that “everything happens for a reason.” After all, it’s easy enough, after the fact, to make up plausible reasons for almost anything. At 21, you rear end another car and a few months later marry the hapless driver you met in the aftermath. You say, “Well, that’s why that accident happened. It was to bring Raymond into my life.”
 
No. The accident happened because you were fishing for your cell phone which started ringing somewhere in the bowels of your handbag and you took your eyes off the road to search, you ninny! 
 
As a result, you crashed into Raymond’s life, which as far as we know was going along swimmingly at the time. Now, I know if you’re of a certain bent, you’re likely to come back with something like, “Well, but God wanted me to be with Raymond and that’s why the accident happened” or words to that effect. That’s a belief you happen to have. Proof of causation? No. 
 
After a few blessed weeks of relative silence, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders recently emerged to proclaim her belief that God wants Donald Trump to be president of the United States. I respectfully (more or less) disagree, and I was heartened—though shocked—to find an article in a publication called Premier Christianity also questioning Sanders’ belief. 
 
It’s a sad state of affairs when we assume a publication with any kind of Christian connection is going to spew forth offensive, ill-founded claims. Nevertheless, seeing (in my Google search) the title “Q&A: Did God want Donald Trump to be president?” I was steeled for an evangelical (another misused term) diatribe supporting his presidency. 
 
Instead, what I got was a reasoned counter argument by writer Alex Williams to Sanders’ assumption. Williams wrote:
​“Scripture shows that, on the whole, God is the God of the underdog. He’s about taking folks who are low and raising them high, to a calling. … that to me doesn’t feel like the story of Donald Trump. I would love to ask Sarah Sanders: ‘If God chose Trump then did he choose Obama too?’ And I suspect she might say no. And if she did, I would ask her: ‘So was God having an off day at that point, was he just not powerful at that point?’”
Analyze. Question. Study history. Understand our electoral system. Recognize that we are the ones responsible for the nightmare we’re living right now, and it's up to us to correct it. 
 
Enough said. 
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Time's Up (We Can Dream Anyway)                                                           ________________________________________________________________

8/8/2018

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​I used to be a proponent of campaign spending limits—and still would be if I thought it had a better chance of survival than a lizard in the path of a Mack truck. Likewise, I support limiting campaign season to something less than a full-time occupation—say, three months in advance of a primary, another three or four before a November election. The time left over by collapsing the time on the campaign trail might be used by incumbents to try legislatingfor a change. (Take a minute to wrap your head around that one.)
 
Not to mention any names, but some people prefer electioneering to governing. Not to mention any names, but this is especially true of folks who know nothing about government, who think (just for instance) that judges “sign bills” and whose idea of consultation with foreign policy experts is (just for instance) “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.” What??? 
 
But I digress. We really need to talk about Congress.

Legislative Posts Captivate 

In that arena, I’m willing to abandon my fixation on the undeniable need for campaign finance reform in favor of limits on the number of terms a legislator may serve. I say this because it has become increasingly clear that legislative posts are so captivating that otherwise rational, sentient beings are not only willing, but positively eager to sell their souls in order to hang onto them. Limiting the length of time they spend in the moral rot along the Potomac would afford them the opportunity to redeem themselves by going home and performing productive work—provided, of course, they resist the temptation to dive deeper into the swamp and join the K Street crowd instead. This is a dubious assumption we mustn’t make. But that’s a topic for another time.
 
Freeing the Beholden

As voters, we stand to benefit from term limits in a number of ways, most notably by freeing (or perhaps forcing) our elected “leaders” to vote their conscience. Look at it this way: If you’d been held hostage by the likes of Donald Trump simply because you feared losing your job, imagine going to DC for a final term. You can’t be re-elected because you’re term-limited. Imagine the freedom. Imagine thinking for yourself. Imagine speaking your genuine truth. Imagine casting a vote that actually serves the common good.  
 
And one more thing. Remember elementary school? Taking turns? Sharing? The founders didn’t expect legislating to be a lifetime job. In no endeavor are fresh eyes, diverse backgrounds, independent thought, and sundry passions (notof a sexual nature, in case you’re wondering) more vital to healthy functioning. 
​The law of averages would dictate that there are some fine, upstanding legislators in our capitol. But when the party of the president controls both houses of Congress and that party allows itself to be held hostage to a bloviating, ignorant “leader,” the jig is up. Clearly, the only goal of most Republicans in Congress is to get re-elected.
 
This is not to say that Democrats aren’t driven by the same goal; it’s just that I can’t remember them ever being driven into such paroxysms of lunacy that they went along like sleepy sheep to (just for instance) …

  • the wanton willy-nilly separation of children from loving parents 
  • lining of the presidential pockets with blatant violations of the emoluments clause
  • presidential secrecy regarding tax returns
  • expensive photo ops, AKA “summits” (you know—with Kim Jong Un and Putin)  
  • gratuitous hostility to our allies
  • transformation of the White House into a “reality” psychodrama
  • exploding deficits
  • tax cuts for cronies and crumbs for the rest of us
  • the failure of ordinary civil conduct in favor of juvenile tweets, verbal mocking, insults, and attacks in endless campaign style rallies (Incidentally, are taxpayers funding all that hoopla and, if so, why?)
 
Seriously? Why?

You get the picture. How does Congress take this guy seriously? And why?
 
I’ve already told you. The perks, the connections, the attention, the status, maybe some book deals down the line—and who knows what else? I realize what common wisdom says: term limits are “unwise … impractical … will never happen … “
 
Yes … and an African American can never be elected president … and women can never make it in politics … and you just have to put up and shut up when it comes to sexual harassment … and people will never give up smoking ……

​
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Gotta Love Alabama                                                                               _______________________________________________________________

12/14/2017

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I was born in Maryland, grew up in Indiana, went to boarding school in New York, and have spent most of my adult life in California, but right now I love Alabama, a state I’ve never seen. Alabama has sparked what we’d almost lost—hope, trust in our fellow human beings, a belief that, in the words of Martin Luther King, “the arc of the moral universe … bends toward justice.”
 
When the race to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions was called for Democrat Doug Jones last Tuesday, I was astonished by my own elation. We’ve lived in Trump’s swamp for less than a year, but it feels like half a lifetime, and Jones’ victory over child predator Roy Moore was like a beacon on a moonless night. There is, that election seems to say, a way out of the morass into which we’ve stumbled, this swamp peopled—worse yet, too often governed—by sexual predators, liars, swindlers, and worshippers of the great god Mammon.
 
Chances are the Republicans will pass their cynically conceived, gift-to-the-wealthy tax “reform” (Merry Christmas, billionaires), but if indeed the arc bends toward justice, their sway will be short lived. The power of the ballot box. Need I say more?        
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    Thoughts for Our Time

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