The Center Holds

On the eve of the inauguration, I published in these pages a blog entitled “He will be my president too,” a reference to John McCain’s exemplary gracious concession to then President-Elect Barack Obama. 

My blog that day was intended to have some taste of graciousness, but it was not all roses. I meant to emphasize a certain collective responsibility that we as Americans will all bear for the way the country moves in these next four years. It was meant both as an acknowledgment and a sounding of both hope and warning that whether we had voted for him or against him, Donald J Trump was about to be the President and we as Americans would ultimately be accountable for our actions in this time.

I made extensive references in that post to the way that the national socialist party transformed a democratic Germany into a one party dictatorship. Acknowledging that such comparisons always invite screams of hyperbole and inappropriateness, I also acknowledged that I am by no means the only one in this time to raise the concern. And while I explicitly expressed the fervent wish that such a comparison would never become accurate, I felt compelled to muse that it might do so, and wondered how we would be bound by morality, and our own safety to react.

So far, those specific warnings I voiced have not come to pass in the way I stated to be so feared. The incoming administration has not sought, at least publicly enough to invite reporting, to stifle the press or imprison its political adversaries. However, it has consistently taken actions and expressed positions that stretch, challenge, and undermine if not outright dismantle those traditional legal and normative standards that for many of us have come to define our constitutional republic.

The president has  taken regulatory actions which are viewed as unconstitutional , has refused to spend funds which had been mandated by Congress in violation of the separation of powers, a core pillar of our democracy. His dismantling of initiatives designed to promote fairness in the workplace and the military directly opposes Court judgments against discrimination on the basis of sex, for example, he has claimed that the executive branch has privileges both of personnel management, that is, hiring and firing, and financial function of departments which are explicitly reserved for the legislative branch and threaten what many scholars have already called a ‘constitutional crisis’, and his threats to birthright citizenship specifically contradict the literal wording of the Constitution .

Perhaps more alarming, if one needed more to be alarmed about, are his clearly stated territorial demands, in which he claims the right to take over sovereign countries, and territories under the legal purview of other Nato members, and he has publically claimed the right to take over and “own” territory explicit reserved by the UN and prior treaties to Gaza. Attempting to mask this claim as a favor to the people of Gaza, a clear statement from a real estate mogul to establish a new “Riviera” has to be recognized, and he has explicitly denied the current population the right of return. For those who think the comparison to Hitler is completely out of line, after hearing of his stated considerations to annex Panama, Greenland, Gaza, and – perhaps jokingly – Canada, one wonders where his “last territorial demand” will be.

I guess we could count our blessings, and point out that there have so far been no hostile press shuttered and no political adversaries jailed, tortured, or killed. Perhaps, we can tell ourselves, that the fears we have of a takeover of our democracy are exaggerated and inappropriate. And maybe they are. Still, there is cause, as one legislator publicly said, to be concerned we are at the “red alert” stage.

Perhaps we don’t need to wait for adversaries to be literally jailed. Elon Musk and his DOGE associates are widely reported to have penetrated deeply into both our social security system and IRS, already in four short weeks. Is it possible that those who have opposed who even questioned the present administration will soon find their taxes audited, or their social security checks delayed or disappeared? Perhaps our bank accounts as well. Do I grow paranoid here? I hope that is all this is. A fever dream.

But things grow increasingly topsy turvy. One month in and we are bargaining with aggressor nations, chastising our allies of eight decades, calling elected presidents under attack “dictators”, and taking actions that could widely be seen as encouraging democracies to vote in parties widely held to be Neo-nazis.

We are not yet at the stage of what I have termed “kinetic fascism”, by which I mean the use of the physically coercive power of the state to explicitly violate laws and rights. Still one would have to be seeing things through very cloudy or rosy glasses not to be concerned that enough norms have been swept away to be a tad bit alarmed. It has gotten, in one short month, to the point that the governor of a major state in an official public address, the State of the Union speech, specifically invoked the specter of the Nazis, and the recent security conference in Munich was compared to the conference in 1938 when the western powers, leaving the Czechs out of the conference, agreed to Hitler’s territorial demands. Like it or not, in one short month American leaders and world press are explicitly raising the specter of a resurgence, at least of the echoes of national socialism. History doesn’t repeat itself, as the saying goes, but it can rhyme. 

The question continues to be what, if anything, can be done.

In my last blog, before the inauguration, I suggested mostly relatively passive approaches. Now, four weeks in we have already had a large nationwide protest,  thankfully still peaceful from both sides. I confess though that after attending a protest in NYC I can see that there will be little benefit.  There were a dozen messages, mostly competing, addressed to diverse constituencies, and mostly unrealistic. The chant “Ho ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go!” is, with all due respect to those who coined it, not a viable message. First of all, there is no legal way for him to go, at least for the next four years, and one hopes no one is calling for extra-legal solutions! Yelling “fascist” up and down may make one feel good but is of no benefit.

What would we want? That Elon Musk stop playing with our tax returns? That Trump stop firing essential workers? That the administration stop using the justice system to at least appear to either buy cooperation, reward supporters no matter their crime, or use the arms of the government to enact personal retribution. Perhaps all these things.

I believe we need to consider responses. True, he won the election, but that does not mean unbridled, unregulated, unopposed, and uncommented upon acquiescence. We are not a monarchy, not yet. It is our right and duty to respond. It is a question of how. I view the range of responses to the events unfolding and likely to unfold as falling into four buckets, depending on what happens.

First, we can accept what is happening as within the bounds of a change in administration, whether we like it or not, and stay watchful. After all, despite our fears, there is no evidence of Elon Musk stopping any Social Security payments, whether the executive can trim its staff is being adjudicated, and like it or not Trump’s team has the right to make foreign policy decisions provided they do not violate international law. He has said he intends to take over Greenland, Panama, and Gaza, but so far we have seen no troop movements. We could just sit tight, keep our mouths shut, and continue to watch CNN, MSNBC, or even Fox News if that is your liking. Emotionally upsetting yes, but one could argue that as of yet we have seen him flirt with but not cross such a firm red line to mandate active response.

Second, we can protest. In writing, on air, in gatherings, peaceful gatherings, carry signs. “Sing songs, carry signs, mostly say ‘hurray for our side.” And this has a value, if enough people make it clear that some paths, such as DOGE having unfettered access to my bank accounts, gets enough people to carry enough signs, such as policy may be mitigated.

Third, there remains the question of “resistance”. What would resistance mean?

Let me make one thing perfectly clear, there is and remains no, none, zero justification for violent resistance, political violence is almost always wrong, it is not justified now, and one still hopes will never be. We are not now, and I hope never will be staring at the old cliches about meeting nazis at the doors with guns drawn, that is NOT and hopefully will never be in the cards for this country.

Still, there may be some actions which the new administration is taking which go so much against the values, standards and expectations which Americans have traditionally held, both for our own lives, such as our own privacy, and the long-standing traditions we have proudly held regarding our nation’s reputation on the world stage which make many of us feel that some serious response to the administration policy is in order.

One form of resistance is economic. This coming February 28th, for example, has been suggested and advertised as a “retail blackout”, a single day in which as many people as possible will agree to spend as little as possible. Such an action would serve more as an indication of widespread concern than a serious blow to the economy. 

Few at this point, are calling for extended boycotts, or general strikes, although such tactics have been used in other venues. But it is well worth considering one day of holding off any purchases to signal to those who have the wherewithal to fund campaigns that enough people want some norms honored to be able to inflict at least some temporary discomfort on the profit makers. 

Finally, the fourth and ultimately most effective response is neither ignoring, protesting, or resisting, but rather political change. I said above I was at a protest over this last President’s Day and it showed me more than anything, I hate to say it, but why Democrats lost.  A dozen different messages and a dozen different audiences and no one is really speaking to the concerns of the American people. 

One of many possible takeaways from the last election, and I know that Democrats love to wring our hands and blame ourselves, but there appeared to be no one or two unifying organizing principles.  Were we against billionaires, against tax cuts, against fascists, against homophobia? Were we in favor of Israel or Europe or Ukraine, or Gaza? Did we want to guarantee abortion rights, increase the representation of underprivileged minorities, fight for the working man, encourage innovation, improve our alliances, protect our borders, or protect immigrants? Those principles which were articulated were clearly not done so in way to galvanize support from a majority of the populace. How do we do that?

To recapture the confidence of the American people will take some serious consideration of what unifying principles affect and can be articulated to a deciding proportion of the population, and which must be left to the sidelines.

But that is a discussion for another day. 

I started this series of arguments with the blog “He is my president too”. We are all, now, if not responsible for what becomes of this nation, then at least likely to be held, by history, accountable. If, as others in far greater positions of authority than me have expressed, there are real concerns about going down a terrible hole, one reminiscent of the most dangerous holes in history, we need to be more diligent about paying attention.

Kamala Harris conceded her election but insisted she did not concede her principles. Hillary Clinton conceded her election saying explicitly that we owed the then president-elect “an open mind and a chance to lead.” In what might be one of our nation’s most gracious political moments, and certainly one for which he will always be remembered, John McCain said, the words, “He will be my president too”.  As a point of fact, regardless of whom we voted for or how we feel about it, if you remain a citizen of this country, at Monday noon, it will be the simple and undeniable truth, for each and every one of us, that Donald J Trump “will be my president too”.

For some, such an admission might come as a possible opening to healing. For others, darker emotions stir, bitter and angry disappointments linger and flare, and the outlines of troubling decisions can be seen on the horizon. For some there remains a thin line between patriotic reconciliation to our nation’s unity, and acquiecence to something distinctly not of our American heritage. This will take some good faith reconciliation, I believe, for all of us.

Four years ago, I raised in these pages the specter of the USA echoing the fate of the Weimer Republic of the early German thirties. I asked if it were ever valid to make comparisons to the Nazis. I had trepidations about the moral acceptability of making any such suggested comparison. I feared, and stated so, that anything we might learn from such a comparison had to be considered in the light of it being insulting hyperbole to try to evoke any such a reflection. 

In this last presidential campaign, however, the comparison to fascism and nazism, whether odious or not, was raised many times, in many venues and by many people. The incoming president-elect was called a fascist, if not a nazi, by those ranging from the former chief of staff to his current political opponent, and so what might be referred to as ‘gracious’ by one could conceivably end up looking collaborationist to history. A good German who had voted for the Social Democrats in 1933 might not appear in such a flattering light to have asserted  “he is my chancellor too”.

One hopes that President Trump will not govern as a fascist, and much less a Nazi, and the end of his term in office will offer us nothing but good things to say about him. Perhaps history will demonstrate the comparison to be completely inaccurate and insulting. He has claimed to wish to be a great president for all Americans. We just won’t know, until we know.

We gain little be trying to redebate this last election. Those who voted for Trump did not see such an unflattering parallel, or perhaps discounted as hyperbole any suggestion of fascism. One may be forgiven, however, for being a little confused. After all, Trump rose back into power on a platform in which he explicitly targeted specific groups, and with what appear to be implicitly racial overtones. When he yearned for more immigration of Norwegians, he did not say that it was Norwegian immigrants who were poisoning our blood. While a perception of racial bias may not be completely fair and accurate, it is certainly fair to say  that candidate Trump used consistently dehumanizing and demonizing language about specific groups. It is also true that he has shown contempt for the institutions of the law, judges and juries, and the whole department of justice, that he showed contempt for the institutions such as a free press, that he now announces territorial ambitions,  and that he has clearly shown admiration for the use of both military and para-military force both on our own citizens and in the world at large. We can argue about whether he commands his own paramilitaries, but he did not discourage his followers from trying to use force to obtain a political end. I hope one can be forgiven for showing concern over seeing at least a trace of national socialist ideology in the man who on Monday next “will be my president too”.

Maybe, and I hope and pray so,  such fears are ungrounded, exaggerated and plain wrong. After all, the ‘minority’ which he targeted explicitly are those who have broken our own national immigration laws. He may, it has been argued, have genuinely believed that there had been widespread fraud in the last election and truly believed that it was his presidential duty to see that the laws, including law regarding elections, were faithfully executed. Perhaps Trump is no nazi, no fascist, but a genuine and serious patriot. The people have spoken. Donald Trump will be my President too.

This presents each of us with a clear responsibility and one for which it may be instructive to review history. Instructive, even if that history is felt by many to be applied unfairly and insultingly. 

In many instances, including Orban’s Hungary, Putin’s Russia, Mussolini’s Italy, Chavez’s and Maduro’s Venezuela, and, yes,  even the National Socialist German Workers Party were legitimately elected governments. They were duly charged with running the government for a country that its citizens viewed as threatened and in decline, and those who voted for these governments did so in the belief that this government would make their nation better and stronger. 

In each case, it required a specific journey from the day in which a democratically elected leader soon, or ultimately, assumed non-democratic control of the government. It was in some cases a long road, in some much shorter,  from that day the new government started until, for example,   the suppression of expression, the institution of territorial wars, and, in one case, the building, some seven or eight years later, of a vast and mostly hidden apparatus designed expressly for the elimination of a targeted minority. 

So even if it is unfair, insulting, unnecessary, ungracious and harmful to any chance of reconciliation to review the presidential campaign, and to accuse those who won of fascist sympathies, I hope it is not unfair or unreasonable to consider those steps which newly elected and authoritarian leading governments have historically used to guide their once democratic party into something other. 

The series of steps by which the NDSAP, the Nazi party, transformed a parliamentary democracy into a lethal dictatorship took but a few short months. These steps were initiated in the immediate wake of a fire which broke out under mysterious circumstances. The fire broke out in the Reichstag, the German version of our Capitol building. The government blamed the communists, but some speculate it was the Nazis themselves. Knowing, and taking advantage of the fact that when a populace is threatened and attacked, they act often in obedience to a central and national authority, the leaders of the Nazi party, then the largest party but not a majority,  forced through parliament, not without some coercion, an “Enabling Act”. This law,  stated to be temporary,  allowed the executive, the Chancellor, to act without legislative authority, with no checks or balances. It is natural and well known that in unusual circumstances, fear and a sense of patriotic fervor can lead to excesses, as we ourselves have seen in various instance. Using the power granted by the Enabling Act, opposition political parties were outlawed and dismantled, an opposing press was regulated and suppressed, labor unions were all stifled. Creating a secret police with no limits on their tactics, dissent was systematically and effectively eliminated with coercion, disappearance, detention, torture and extra-judicial executions. 

The next year the offices of Chancellor and President were unified, making Adolf Hitler the unified leader of the government and the nation, calling himself the “driver”, or in German, Der Fuhrer. Dissent within the party itself was eliminated in a 1934 counterrevolution in which thousands of intra-party dissidents, including the head of the storm troopers were executed, and in 1935 laws were passed essentially stripping Jews of citizenship. It was not until 1936, almost 4 years into the total dismantling of the democratic state, that Hitler made his first territorial claims in Europe which were to lead, then in three years to the outbreak of world war two.

God Forbid and God protect us, we do not have the political substrate which did Germany. The German democracy had been a young twenty years old after centuries of effective monarchy, while we have centuries of democracy to rely upon, and with grit and grace we will not go down the same road. Still, if we are to avoid it, we MUST be cognizant, aware and careful.

I would suggest, after reading and listening to many concerned voices including Madeline Albright, Rachel Maddow, Tom Snyder and others, as well as my own perhaps obsessive study of prior instances of fascism, that there are four major pillars which would support the contention that democracy had been supplanted.

1. Chaotic events may happen. We may have what history would later characterize as our own version of a Reichstag fire. If the executive branch were to use such events, or even without them to claim rights, privileges, processes which are traditionally performed by the legislative branch or the courts, this would be a troubling development. We have traditionally enjoyed a clear and specific separation of powers. If the executive refused to follow accepted legislative processes, standards, norms and most notably laws, or took actions which the courts forbade, this would be something to cause alarm.
   
2. Suppression or  punishment of political opponents would be a major red flag. There has been dialogue about putting various opposition leaders in jail. For what? If Hillary Clinton, or Jack Smith, or Liz Cheney or Jamie Raskin, or any of other dozens of legitimate political leaders were to find themselves facing legal retributive actions, criminal or civil, or to be targeted by, say, the IRS, immigration services, their travel limited, and certainly if, God Forbid, they were arrested, we would be in treacherous territory.
   
3. Suppression of the free press would be a major violation of the convenent between government and citizenry. I don’t mean calling it “fake news”, and “enemy of the people”, those phrases are a bit disgusting and anti-american, but not really what I mean. I am talking about taking stations off the air, refusing to renew broadcasting licenses, or bringing lawsuits (which has already started) or attempting to use the justice department to suppress, imprison, and intimidate reporters and journalists. Such actions would clearly cross a constitutional ‘red line’, and violate our most sacred rights.
   
4. The reliance on military force, and especially extra-judicial force, excessive force, coercive force, force unbounded by legal limits would be the final pillar. We do not, as of yet, have a secret state police and, if detained for an accused crime, we have a broad array of rights which have been in large measure supported and maintained. There are of course well publicized episodes of police brutality and even lethality. Those episodes, however, have been treated as crimes. If we were to witness increasing use of brutal force, extra-judicial force, excessive deadly force, for example, to suppress protest, that could herald a turning point. The creation, facilitation or tolerance of non-state extra-judicial paramilitary actors would herald a potentially fatal blow. Central American countries had their ‘death squads’. No one expects that. Such changes would inevitably be subtle. One doesn’t expect opposition politicians or journalists or protestors to simply  disappear into “Nacht und NebeL”, night and fog. But if, for example, “Proud Boys” and the like were found to be roughing up protestors at rallys with impunity, we would be in a completely different territory. If one found there to be enough use of official or paramilitary force to make one feel consistently intimated and afraid to speak up,  we would know we were in completely uncharted territory and one which would demand active opposition.

I hope that these are my own dream feverish paranoid fantasies and NONE of it occurs. I hope that Donald Trump, who will be my president too, will want history to remember him, not as the man who destroyed American democracy, but rather as one who led an outstandingly reparative and longingly remembered administration.

But what if that doesn’t happen, and the four pillars of democratic erosion begin consistently to appear. What can we do?

1. We must continue to work within the political system when possible. The democratic party is clearly in a state of despair and dissolution, however even from the beginning there are serious discussions about what must be done to regain the trust and affection of a large enough portion of the American people to win elections in the future. It is tempting, I am tempted, to stop sending money to democratic candidates and organizers. Those who want a free two party system to thrive need to evaluate those temptations, and stay involved.
   
2. Support and continue to listen to an independent and free press wherever it can be found. It might be tempting to give up on MSNBC as having been on the side of the “losers”, but now might be the most important time to follow Rachael Maddow. NPR, through whatever your local station is, WNYC in New York needs our ears, and, yes, our dollars, now more than ever.
   
3. There may come a time when initial steps towards authoritarian actions with respect to the above four pillars happens, and we have to increase the level of our protest. This would require courage, perhaps more than many of us think we have. Still there are steps before standing on the front lines. President Biden spoke of an oligarchy. Many in this “oligarchy” benefit directly from our participation. I am not yet ready to place blame, or perhaps to sacrifice my own technology created conveniences, but if steps toward a more totalitarian regime occurred and were countanenced, then perhaps I don’t need Facebook, Amazon or a Tesla.
   
4. There could come a time when we are asked, say, to report suspicious foreign appearing individuals. We may even be branded as responsible if we don’t. That would take enormous courage to refuse, but there is such a possibility. We must try as far as our courage will allow not to cooperate with what are conscious violating dictates. I don’t mean not to obey the laws when we can. But there is a balance between legitimate cooperation, and collaboration.
   
5. I do not look hungrily for mass protests and resistance in the street. I have run from police batons during the Vietnam war, and don’t look for opportunities to do so again. Further it would be particularly challenging in the face of increased miliary and paramilitary use of force. Still, should it come to that, the mass protests of the 1960s did, ultimately, have some effect on the conduct of the war. There could arise a time when we would have a moral calling to place our bodies on a line. I hope that never to happen. I am not sure where my own courage would allow me to stand.
   

I hope and pray that none of these fearsome possibilities ever come to pass. I hope and pray that we know within some short period that our fears were just fever dreams, and that the country is moving in a stable direction, that those immigrants who are deported are treated within the law, that Democrats in the house and senate continue to pontificate and Republicans continue to shout,  and left wing pundits continue to pound the desks, figuratively, in performative outrage, and that my Republican good friends and neighbors and I continue to freely shout at each other over holiday dinners, and that four years from now we go back to free and fair elections and anxiously await the results on election night, knowing either side might win.

But if something darker comes, we must be aware of it, to know what to watch for, and to keep our eyes open. For we are now all, collectively, responsible for it. We do not look back at the concentration camps in Europe and ask who voted for the social democrats and who for the national socialists. We are now all in this together, and we are all responsible for the outcome.

I like to be optimistic about the promise of America. I believe that the vision and values and the sanctity of our process and principles will hold, that, as in President Biden’s farewell address, the Statue of Liberty will sway but not crack.

And I know that the principles which have kept us moving shakily forward for 250 years will survive. I hope they survive embodied in this great nation. I have to hope so, because, like everyone else in our country, if this experiment fails and history records that we could not protect this dream, the responsibility will be on me, and everyone else like me.

Because for every citizen among us, on Monday at noon, Donald J Trump will be my president too.

I know it is the last day, and no one listens to me anyway, but my conscience would not let me rest if I do not do everything I can, every up to the last day. I am not a professional pundit or a political scientist, I am a doctor, but I have been voting for fifty years and following politics for 60 and I hope that if you are, hard to imagine, still undecided about who to vote for in tomorrow’s election you will take a few minutes, less than ten  I hope, to read these few paragraphs.

This election involves for me two aspects. One is common to all modern American elections. The other is unique to this particular one.

The core difference between the two parties, between right and left revolves around determining the appropriate relationship between the government and the individual, the most central axis of difference being the economic, financial connection. At its most basic level, it is a question of finding the best, most effective balance between the amount and manner that taxes are taken by the government, and the services it provides with the money it gets from those taxes. 

Broadly speaking, those with the most money tend to want their government to take as little as possible, and they do not generally need a great deal services which the government might provide, while those who are farther down the economic chain also would like to have to give up less of their money to taxes, but without as large a fund of resources of their own tend to need more things provided, supplied, or at least subsidized by their government.

While no one can say with total certainty what are the duties of the government to its populace, the Preamble to the Constitution gives us some clue when it says that our government is designed to “form a more perfect union, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare…”.  I think we can substitute the words “Well – being” for “Welfare” since the latter is a word so loaded with associations -welfare state, welfare queen, etc – but there is considerable room to discuss what it means to promote well – being.

Although there is debate over what is needed to “provide for the common defense”, most people of any political persuasion agree that in the modern age we don’t depend on farmers with muskets, and some proportion, perhaps even a large proportion of our taxes have to go to create, maintain and when necessary employ an effective and “lethal’ military.

“Promoting the general welfare” (well – being) does not garner so much agreement. We seem to agree there need to be roads and bridges, but how much tax money is needed to maintain and modernize them? We agree there needs to be some basic education provided and public schools reliably offer K through 12, but what about early childhood preparation? To what extent is it the government’s role, and hence a valid use of taxes, to offer the college level and advanced which is increasingly necessary to compete in transformative new technologies on the world stage? Health care, access to internet, clean water – all of these constitute goods and services over which it could be fruitful to discuss their potential value which the government could provide to the society and nation generally, as related to the tax burden which would be required to support those services.

And, parallel with setting expectations for that which a modern government should, could or must provide is the question of how to pay for it. Should each person pay an equal share of their income to taxes? Should the tax rate be progressive – higher earners paying a higher proportion of their high incomes. Or should they actually be able, through deductions, tax credits and other devices to pay a lower proportion of their incomes through taxes? Or should there be taxes on wealth – net worth – regardless of income? Or should there just be consumption taxes, sales taxes, so called “sin” taxes on liquor, tobacco and increasingly drugs such as cannabis. 

What is the best way for a government to raise the money it will require and for what services and to whom?

These are the primary issues which separate the two parties. Yes, there are some less consistent differences over the appropriate approach to international power balance and issue solution, with the left tending to look more for compromise and the right tending to look more to assert its view of national interest with power or its threat. And there are some differences regarding the role of the government in regulating private behavior, but for the most part, Republicans tend to represent those interests which thrive on a low tax base and minimal public services, and Democrats tend to represent those for who such services and actually needed to insure a decent life, and believe that from those to whom more has come (the wealthiest among us), more contribution can be expected.

This poses a fundamental dilemma in a democracy. Imagine that you represent the top, say, 5% (or 1%) of the population, and you are trying to hold to the majority of the population that you want to pay as little as possible of your massive share of the wealth to the government in taxes, and that, since you don’t need them yourself, you want that government to offer the minimum possible of services. Do you think the majority of people would rally around your flag? Probably not, so you have to find a way to present your idea to be as palatable as possible.

The right presents, basically, three general baskets of arguments to the populace to influence them to vote for keeping the taxes on the wealthiest as low as possible while using as few dollars on public services as they can get away with – a position which would otherwise somewhat hard to sell. I believe that one of these arguments, while wrong, is nonetheless offered fairly and in good faith. 

Two of the arguments are false and not innocently so.

The first, and I think fair argument, is to appeal to the notion of “supply side” economics, or “trickle down”, which suggests that since the wealth tend to be the entrepreneurs, the company creators, the job – givers, then any financial wind fall you give them will “trickle” or filter down to the rest of the citizens. I have discussed these arguments in the past, in some detail, so I won’t dwell on it the day before the election. Other than do say that extensive economic analysis have failed to prove it beneficial, that using the argument has in this country transferred a huge proportion of the nation’s wealth from the majority to the top few percent, and that the one time it was used, by Reagan, he started when the highest tax rate was 70% (!), and with his efforts it came down to fifty and at the end of his second term to the high twenties, still substantially higher than those levels proposed by the republicans today.

Still, whether the argument is a good one, or true or not, it is a good faith arguments.

The second set of arguments used are not innocent. 

The first of those two is just school yard name- calling. Now I grant that this occurs on both sides. For the record, although it is sometimes said, Donald Trump is NOT a Nazi. But neither is Kamala Harris a “communist”. Communism is an economic and political system whereby the State owns and controls all means of production. Instead of American Airlines, United Airlines, Delta, and South West, think one government airline with centrally chosen routes, and no profit motive. Instead of private and family farms, think the large collectivized state- run and directed farms of the Stalinist or Maoist eras. You grow what the state tells you to grow, and you don’t get anything more from working hard or not. Be fair, have you ever heard Kamala Harris, or any democrat call for the collectivization of any production industry? No, they never have because democrats have always explicitly and publicly called themselves capitalists, just ones who want more of a balance of taxes and services for the community. Both Biden and Harris have many times said “If you are a billionaire, God bless you, just pay your fair share”.

The second argument is even far more harmful. It is to demonize and dehumanize immigrants and find an “other” a scapegoat to blame for economic woes – even imagined ones.

Some degree of distrust of strangers is natural, it is born into us, it probably had survival benefits for our ancestors, the first humans. It just feels more comfortable to be around people like yourself, and seems a burden to, say, learn new languages to stay competitive in business or adapt to new cultures.

But is is not new. In the movie “Gangs of New York” the native – born English protestant Americans make war on the new “invaders”, the Irish in the early 1800s.  That xenophobia persisted even almost to this day. I am old enough to remember President Kennedy having to go on television to assure the voter that as a Catholic he would still represent the US and not the Pope. The fear of strangers, the distrust of the immigrant extended to the Italian, the Jew,  the Spanish speaker, be they from Cuba, Puerto Rico, South America or Mexico, and it extended to Asias of every nation, India, China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam and Southeast Asia in their turn. True, it sometimes takes time, maybe even a generation or two for each new immigrant group to become a part of this great nation, which was formed from many into One, “E Pluribus Unum”.

And it might take serious and good faith, focused discussions to find the best way to integrate new immigrants safely and legally into a growing community without compromising the rights and well – being of those already here first. 

But when the hatred of the stanger is used, as it is being done now, to represent a new “emergency”, an “invasion”, used to sow fear, distrust, and to take your eyes away from the fact that one party wants to give more and more of the wealth of the nation to fewer and fewer people, tthen his demonization should be recognized for what it is.

Now, to back up, I said that issues over the optimum balance of goods and services, and these ways of talking about the issue, or, rather, to avoid talking about it, were common to every election. There is one issue that is completely specific to this one, and has NEVER happened before.

Let me propose a “thought experiment” – an imaginary situation. Imagine that on that Saturday afternoon in November of 2020, when the associated press, and every network from MSNBC to CNN to NBC, ABC, CBS and FOX announced that Joseph R Biden had been elected President, imagine the then President Trump calling a news conference  to congratulate the President – Elect (just as had been done in every single election before), and to say that he knew, say that history would be kinder to him than this election reflected, that no one could have predicted or better weathered the pandemic, and that he fully intended to run again because he knew in his heart that he was right, but that the people had spoken and he offered his support and congratulations to the new president. Imagine that. Just like in every election before.

We would have a much different situation, and although I personally would still have come out on the other side of the first issue common to all elections, that of the best relationship, tax and service wise, between the government and the individual, I would still respect the right of the former president to run, and feel that for many a vote for him was fair.

Sadly that is not what happened.

In this nation, our elections, and the rule of law which govern them, are our most precious treasure. It is that system which makes us America, which makes us envied as that shining city on the hill, as that beacon of freedom. When you undermine and attack our electoral system and the laws which adjudicate its legitimacy, you are undermining and attacking our deepest core essential pillar as Americans, you are attacking the United States itself, its essence. That which makes the US be the US.

Donald Trump had every right to his opinion about the election, and every right to ask that those opinions be tried in court. Courts considered and allowed him to present evidence. But when every single case was thrown out by the justice system which, itself the envy of the world, had developed over the centuries, then Donald Trump had, in the end, had “his day in court”. 

And when, given that every case had failed, and every single state legislature certified the electors who reflected the will of their individual states,  as was seen and heard on national televised news,  Biden was BY DEFINITION the elected president. Not because leftists say so. Because the Constitution states so, and also says that those votes will be reported out at a joint session of congress on January 6.

EVERY action taken by the former president after that week in December was therefore illegal, and was a crime against the United States. Read the report of the January 6th committee. Electing “alternative Electors” was illegal – and those who signed those documents are facing jail time. Pressuring DOJ officials to lie about the results was illegal, and the former president has been indicted in two jurisdictions for this crime. Trying to threaten his vice president to get him to break the law was illegal, and he is facing trial for that. And causing and inciting a mob to attack the capital to disrupt the Constitutionally mandated recognition of the new president was an ATTACK upon the United States, its core and essence.

There are, in my opinion, times when one view of the relationship of state and citizen is more appropriate, and the other not. There are probably times when it is worth taxing more and giving more service, sometimes when we should tax less and provide less. I voted for Jimmy Carter, but I was not sad when Ronald Reagan won and I think in many ways the country was well served to have him. I voted for Michael Dukakis but was not sad that George H. W. Bush won. I wanted Gore, and think George W. Bush did some not-so- good things. But I never thought he was anything but a patriot and I was never ashamed to have him be our president.

The current republican candidate is not a patriot, he has attacked the very essence of our nation.

If God forbid he should win tomorrow, I will be ashamed to have him be president.

And, quite bluntly, ashamed of ourselves as a nation that we let it happen.

I know it is little, and late, and unlikely that anyone will read this far, but if you have, thank you. And unlikely that it will change a vote. But I had to say it.

God bless, and God save, the United States.

Witnessing both sights – what appeared to be an institutionalized genuflection at the Republican National Convention, and then what has seemed a frenzied fascination with who would head the Democratic ticket brings to mind what I see as an obvious but always ignored basic truth about governing. While the current Trump-o-mania and the surrounding adulation with which he personally reshaped his party’s tone and face may be an exception which proves the rule, we do not elect just a single person. We do not even elect a team. When we elect, we choose a set of policies, practices, and laws, we choose between whole world views, different visions which will inform and determine virtually everything that comes with it, once we have chosen the individual with whom we have either fallen in love, or fallen in line.

The personality of Donald Trump is compelling and charismatic, and especially “lionized”, as it was with that incredibly compelling photo of him bloodied with a clenched fist raised can be intoxicating, even to his opponents. We need to stay cognizant, however, that we are not electing an image or even a person, no matter how charismatic and compelling.

We are electing a belief system and the policies which will put those beliefs into practice.

Although sporting a slightly altered hat and duds, one central tenet of Trump’s republicanism is not so hard to recognize. It is not Trump’s. It was not really Reagan’s, although it was his to champion, and his name was attached to it. Reaganomics, called “supply side economics” by its proponents, and   “trickle -down economics” by its detractors, is a concept whereby those with wealth and the means to create it justify policies which go to create the conditions by which those who’ve got will always get more.

If, we are told, we can just arrange the system, the theory holds, so that more resources flow to the top, those resources, like the gentle rain will “trickle down” and hydrate all growing plants below. Cut taxes, it is argued, and those who create wealth will have more funds with which to create more jobs. Cut regulations, which, it is complained, constrain the wealth creators, and they can just make more for everyone. It is thus argued that freeing up money for the wealthy allows them to hire more workers, pay them more, and invest more. Money directed to the top will extend to all below. As Reagan liked to say, “A rising tide raises all boats”.

One has to confess it is an attractive idea, and this attractive idea makes a kind of naive common sense.

There is a problem though. Not only does the idea not really work as advertised, but really the idea shouldn’t really work. It shouldn’t work for the same reason that Socialism doesn’t really work, at least so we are always taught. Socialism, and ‘trickle – down economics’, both go against human nature.

Think about it. If you are making the money you need to take care of your basic needs, that is what you do. When you start to make a bit more, that is, your discretionary income starts to rise, you can start to get a few more and better toys and treats. Yes, it is true, that at a certain point, you will start to employ, say, a housekeeper, who then benefits from your employment. If the tax structure rewards you for it, and perhaps even if not, you may give some to charity. But for the most part, those funds will accrue more and more to yourself, and more and more to be centralized within your own world. And that is natural. We would expect it to be so. Unless one is remarkably more a saint than I, the windfalls of profits and of tax cuts do not really flow downhill to the society and economy at large.

But don’t rely on me. I am not an economist. Let’s see what economists say.

When you go to Google and ask “Do trickle down economics work” the first answer that comes up is an “AI OVERVIEW” which says as its first line that trickle -down economics has not been shown to work. Let’s ignore AI – I am personally trying to pretend it doesn’t exist. “Then why are you using Google” one might ask, but skipping that to an actual article by an actual person, an economist, we find:

One London School of Economics study found that when British Tory Prime Ministers had announced tax cuts for top earners to boost the economy, it created economic turmoil. If it was known to be such a good idea – why?  Because it spooked the markets, the economists tell us,  as it was based on the “discredited theory” of ‘trickle down’ economics. The article cites Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump as politicians elected on its premises.

The paper seeks to give not just opinion. The article cites a 2020 study by the London School of Economics and Kings College of the effects of major tax cuts for the rich in 18 wealthy nations over five decades. Their conclusion was that “the rich got richer but there was no meaningful effect on employment or economic growth”.

In explaining why cutting taxes for the rich did not really affect an increased distribution of money to those lower in the economic food chain, it was argued that senior executives unbridled by taxes tend to argue more aggressively to increase their own compensation (and, I would speculate the value of wealthy stock owners) “at the direct expense of workers lower down the income distribution”.

The LSE researches found no evidence across 18 advanced economies spanning 5 decades that tax cuts directed at the wealthy serve to bring about economic expansion, that the funds they don’t pay in taxes do indeed make the richer but do not benefit the economy as a whole.

Let’s look more directly at this type of economy, not in a study of 18 countries, but where it was tried most relevant to the US voter. Our own.  Ronald Reagan based his campaign, as is Donald Trump doing now, on the ‘trickle -down’ concept. He was so connected with the theory that it was called “Reaganomics”. I know that the former president Trump wants to claim this idea as his own, but it is not new.

It was embarrassing for the Reagan administration for their own budget director David Stockman to point out in an interview with the Atlantic saying that:

“It’s kind of hard to sell ‘trickle down,’ so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really ‘trickle down.’ Supply-side is ‘trickle-down’ theory.

— David Stockman, The Atlantic“

Embarrassing articles aside, we can ask whether what was then called “Reaganomics” succeeded or failed. As with most complexities we get some mixed answers. It has been shown that inflation and unemployment did , in fact, fall in the Reagan years, and most people who were thinking about such things forty years ago can remember the 1980s as a time of economic expansion, at least until the major setback in 1987.

Economists point out, however, that the changes in growth which were seen during the Reagan years were explained more by business cycles,  and monetary policy than by the tax cuts directed at the wealthy.

What is abundantly clear is that budget deficits sky-rocketed during the Reagan years.

This was in large measure due to an increase in defense spending

It has been argued that by decreasing top tax rates, revenue was paradoxically increased, which is what would have been hoped by the supply siders – namely that the increased productivity spurred by the tax cuts would offset the decreased tax percentage and increase revenue, and the graph shows that it did.

What should be noticed is that revenues increased about $100 per person over the years of the Reagan administration, for a total of about 15% over the eight years following the tax law change.

This did not compensate for the increases in spending

a point made even by conservative journalists.

What is even more noticeable is that the tax rates that President Reagan cut started at a whopping 70% as the top bracket, went down to 28% at the end of his term, and for the majority of the 1980s, an era which we remember as prosperous, the top bracket tax was 50%. Far greater than the 21% Trump seems to think it necessary to increase.

The national debt was 907.7 billion a month before Reagan was elected, and it was 2.6 Trillion the month before his presidency ended. It more than doubled.

And it increased steadily also as a percentage of GDP.

Supply side, then, ‘trickle -down’ economics does not improve the economic outlook for the nation as a whole. It makes the rich richer.

So if trickle – down economics, as Reagan promoted and which now Trump is also claiming as if the idea were his own, does not help the overall economy, and any increase in production is more than compensated by an increase in debt, who then exactly does it help?

Income inequality is measured in a number of ways

“The Gini Index is a summary measure of income inequality. The Gini coefficient incorporates the detailed shared data into a single statistic, which summarizes the dispersion of income across the entire income distribution. The Gini coefficient ranges from 0, indicating perfect equality (where everyone receives an equal share), to 1, perfect inequality (where only one recipient or group of recipients receives all the income).

Leaving aside that our nation is, save Singapore, at the absolute top of the world’s income inequality,

we can look at how our own income inequality faired under different administrations.

The following graph shows the evolution of the Gini index, in other words, of measured income inequality, over the last century.

It is clear that the measure had steadily risen in the years before the Great Depression, and that it had been steadily falling through the recovery, and through the second world war, and then continuing through the booming post – war years of the 50s and even through the tumultuous 70s, when it started to tick up. Then came along Reagan and his institution of  ‘supply side/trickle- down  economics’ and income inequality spiked, reversing decades and shoots straight up. This major measure of inequality increased by 15% in the Reagan – Bush years before moderating to almost steady during the Clinton presidency and a more moderate rise under George W Bush.

Here is another graph of the Gini index under the last 30 years which then includes the Trump years.

Take a look at the lower panel which shows the percentage change in this index of inequality. Notice that income inequality remains essentially flat from 1993 through 2016, as we referred to above. A jump up or down a percentage lasting a year or two perhaps.

Now notice from 2016 the steady climb through from the time the Trump tax cuts went into effect in January 2018. A steady rise. Our nations became far more unequal in those years. The super- rich got richer. The others, well, not so much. But then, that was what the policy was designed to accompish.

Another way to look at income inequality is by what economists call “quintiles”. You divide the nation as a whole into fifths, top fifth, next to top fifth, etc., to bottom fifth, and look at the income of each as a function of time.

The graph shows median household income separated by quintiles over several decades. The top quintile continues to garner more and more income, as the middle classes, the second, third, fourth, and fifth quintiles stay static. For the top 5% the effect is even more marked.

How about the proportion of the nation’s wealth?

The following graph shows the percentage of household wealth held by groups over the last 35 years.

The top 0.1% of the nation’s population hold almost 14% of its wealth.

The top 1 % of the population hold over 30% of its wealth.

The top 10 % of the population hold over 2/3 of its wealth.

The bottom half of the country, that is HALF OF THE COUNTRY hold LESS THAN 3% of the nation’s wealth.

And this effect has clearly gotten more stark over the years of the Trump tax cuts (which, by the way, are still in effect).

Under ‘Supply Side economics’,  national debt increases, income inequality increases, wealth disparity increases, and the promised general prosperity for all is just not seen. As the London economists cited above found, the rich get richer, they gain a steadily larger share of the nation’s wealth, the middle class has its increases comparatively stagnant,  their share of the nation’s wealth becomes smaller and the nation goes into debt.

Now why on earth would the majority of a nation’s citizens, who remain almost by definition somewhere in the middle class, continue to vote for that? I will leave that for a later argument, but we can start by wondering whether the very wealthiest in our nation, those who give large sums to the Republican party, are so concerned that their jobs may be taken away by illegal immigrants.

When we look at that genuinely compelling photograph, and look at the American Lion Roaring, it might be helpful to remember that what we are electing is not his clenched fist or even his roar, but what he is roaring about – his beliefs about our nation and the policies he would bring about. What he roared was voiced clearly and plainly at the Republican Convention. It is a call to return to an economic policy which brings wealth to the richest, little to the rest, which has been shown to worsen the debt, and which, in a study at a major economic institution, a study of many nations over many years, just does not do what it is supposed to do.

If we are really electing a plan and a vision rather than a photo, a personality, and a caption, perhaps we need to understand better what that plan and what that vision is.

I have for a long time and in sometimes heated arguments with my daughter argued that Joe Biden had been an outstanding president, the best and only real candidate to run this year. And like all democrats, Thursday night’s debate gave rise to shock, deep sadness, terror and panic.

The question which everyone is asking themselves, if not each other, silently if not openly, is not whether the President had a “bad night”, or whether he is slower than he used to be or stumbles on his words. We are forced to ask, but most cases unwilling to utter the question,  “Is there something medically wrong with Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities? Are his faculties actually deteriorating?”

This is not a question which the audience, or the commentators, or the pundits or even the family can accurately answer. It requires a professional medical and neurological assessment.

True, he came roaring back the next day, and – if you just listen to the words, or read them, was able to make a multitude of intelligent cogent points in the debate itself. But the cliché about dementia or even an aging memory is that we can remember with total clarity events or arguments from earlier in our lives but have trouble processing a new question, or a question asked, as was perhaps the case with the moderators, in a slightly different form than we expected. It appeared that Joe Biden could not logically process new questions to give cogent answers. Was this a sign of actual dementia?

We cannot answer that question with a journalistic or political voice vote. It will require an actual neurologic evaluation to either to put the question to rest, in which case we move on, or to confirm our fears, in which case we need to consider the consequences.

As most people reading this blog already know, I am an emergency room doctor. I am not a neurologist. We are, however, almost daily asked to consider whether and how a patient, usually but not always an older patient, has a change in mental status. In cognitive ability.

I am not referring to the obvious – stroke, coma, seizure. I mean the subtle change, what I call “this is not my father” syndrome. The family, for some reason it is usually the daughters, brings their 80 year -old father in because “he is not right”. “He is not himself”. “You don’t know my father -he is sharp as a tack –this is not my father!”

I have found that these vague but definite reports of a palpable change in the mental facility or personality of the person might end up resolving into three categories:

1. The unmasking of a gradual but comfortably ignored onset of dementia. We hear at first that he is ‘sharp as a tack,’ but with questioning, well, this actually started sometime last year, and he wasn’t himself at Thanksgiving, and then at Cousin Margaret’s wedding, etc. etc. It has been some time coming, but the family just didn’t really want to see it until he wandered off and something had to be done today.
   
2. An acute medical issue such as stroke, infection, chemical imbalance or drug interaction which looks like cognitive decline but resolves as soon as the medical issue is addressed. He had been fine until he fell three weeks ago, and is getting slowly worse. CT shows blood pressing on his brain. We take out the blood and he is back to arguing quantum physics with his best friend the physicist.
   
3. A rare but serious rapidly progressive medical dementia – Parkinson’s, Lewy body dementia, slow virus infection like Jakob-Creutzfelt, and other rare occurences. I saw a case of Jakob-Creutzfelt disease during my medical residency, when a captain of industry had a very slow onset of what looked like a personality change – sharper, meaner, less tolerant. Then his logic started to fail, then speech, then movement and he was dead in months. Rare, very very rare, but devastating.

And it takes a specific, focused medical and neurologic evaluation, often using extensive technology to separate these. But the bottom line is – these are medical questions and they are not going to be solved by the press, the pundits, the party hierarchy, or even the family – without expert medical help.

Here would be my suggestion to the President’s team. (Don’t you wish there were some way to get suggestions to the president’s team, other than just talking to ourselves in a bubble?)

1. Announce that, while he still feels young, sharp and vital, there have been enough messages from media, from friends, from events, and now from this debate performance, which he has watched, that he cannot ignore the possibility that there might, might be something worsening in his thought processes.
2. Acknowledge that it is his duty not only to himself and his family but to the American people to answer the question, once it has now been raised.
3. Recognize that we democrats have always supported public science, and vowed to follow the science.
4. Set up publicly, explicitly and transparently a specific medical evaluation session. Check into Walter Reed hospital for a week. Invite the top neurologic physicians in the country to join a team of the doctors there. One of the heads of NIH neurology, Dr Walter Koroshetz, was a medical student where I was a resident, and he is one of the nation’s, and perhaps history’s smartest doctors. Ask the chairs of neurology of Harvard, Yale, Hopkins, Penn, to join and conduct a week – long assessment. CTs, MRIs, cognitive tests, EEGs, intra-cranial dopplers – the works.
5. Set up a press conference with the doctors at the end of the session.

One of three outcomes is possible:

1. Reversible temporary illness. His serum sodium was low, they corrected it, now he can debate ten Donald Trumps.
2. He is absolutely fine. It was a bad night. He stumbled over a couple of words, got a little nervous and it took a while to get back, but his points, his ability to synthesize and understand arguments is completely intact. Then we go on doubly resolved that Joe Biden is the man for the job.
3. He has either a slowly progressive or a more rapidly progressive medical dementia. In that case, he steps aside, adding to his legacy his perspective, ability to reflect on himself, and to put the country first. He retires with sadness, but as a great hero.

How the party would handle that can be widely debated. Anyone who reads this blog knows I have ideas about that, but since today’s purpose is to offer a medical opinion, I will leave it at that.

I have loved Joe Biden, and think he is a great president. Had he encountered less active opposition he could have left one of our nation’s greatest legacies. I know his heart is in the right place. I hope he will take the opportunity to have a clear impartial medical evaluation to inform his decisions.

If he is A-Ok, then we must stand with him.

If not, then he must make the appropriate decisions.

A week at Walter Reed would tell us which is the correct way.

1. Academic institutions in the United States, at least public institutions, have a duty to support and enable free, open, and respectful dialogue and exploration of ideas, even when those ideas are not popular, or are unpleasant, even offensive to some.  This right to free speech and open dialogue must be protected, and its protection is the responsibility of our academic institutions and the nation.
   
   
2. The right to freedom of speech and expression has never been intended to be without any limitations, restrictions or regulations whatsoever. There have always been expected boundaries. The classic almost cliché’ example is the prohibition against shouting “fire” in the crowded theater, as it constitutes a clear and present danger to those around. But it is more than that -restrictions have long existed against libel, against communicating secret information to an enemy, against telling lies in financial or tax matters, as well as prohibitions against outright threats,  intimidation and harassment. All of these forms of speech can be restricted or laden with legal consequences.
   
   
3. It is a challenge to our democracy and to any civil society that at times the balance between what constitutes free and protected speech and that which crosses the line into threat, intimidation and harassment is not always completely clear. Sometimes it does have to be viewed in context. And this context includes history.
   
   These questions about context can be seen, for example, in issues over sexual harassment, when the act of making a work – place or place of education “uncomfortable on the basis of sex” can be sanctioned even when it involves ‘only’ speech. Who decides what is harassment is often the person reporting being harassed. I think our society has come to accept that as appropriate, even when subject to adjudication.
   
   
4. Regardless of where one places the balance between perceived freedom of expression, and threat/intimidation and harassment, there is no basis whatsoever to claim that the right of free expression includes a right to interfere with the legitimate movement and freedom of legitimite action of others. I may have the right to stand on a public soapbox and claim one side or the other has no right to act in a way it is acting, or even, to be extreme, so say it has no right to exist.  But I never have the right to block you from going about your legitimate business, such as going to class, or of forcing you to listen to me. When one party takes over a building and prevents such legitimate business from being conducted there, it is no longer free speech, it is trespassing and therefore invokes and deserves consequences. It may be moral to have done so – civil disobedience has been a part of many freedom movements, but one cannot expect to break those laws and be unpunished.
   
   
5. Individuals have every right to articulate very unpopular positions, as long as they do not engage in direct threat, intimidation or harassment – which might be in the eyes of the beholder, such as in the case of sexual harassment, subject to adjudication. When protesters interfere with the rightful movement of others, such as blocking their entrance or egress to campus or daily attendance of classes, and especially when they take over administration buildings, and the like in protest, it is no longer protected speech, or speech at all, and those who engage cannot expect to be spared disciplinary or even legal consequences. The institution and the political entity governing the area in which these more physical or invasive actions are clearly occurring, be it university, city, state or nation, has the right, and in fact the duty to intervene. It may not be wise, or in the institution’s long – run interest to use force to intervene, but the institution has the right, within reasonable limits, to do so.
   
   
6. The important point about protest, which too often gets lost when the argument turns to shouting is that protest is intended to induce discussion, and should ideally have the effect of creating opportunities for genuine dialogue. Of having a chance, tiny though it may be, to change minds, to open eyes, to touch hearts and make the other consider, or reconsider the certainty of their beliefs. Such an effect can be possible between those who are open – minded enough to hear another’s point of view. This is not possible for those who are unwilling to listen, or hear anyone else’s opinion.
   
   
7. Those unable to hear, or unwilling to listen to the other have become the more dominant voices both on campus and in the rest of the world. I have argued before in these pages, in a different context, that the “extreme position always has the ability to hijack the agenda,” and render actual dialogue or problem- solving impossible.
   
   That has happened in the current situation in Israel/Palestine/Gaza. The extremes have hijacked the agenda, rendering moderates increasingly silenced. Those in control of the actions on both sides have shown a consistent unwillingness and inability to allow the others consideration of their point of view, thus ensuring that dialogue and compromise became impossible and force has become, in the minds of many, the only alternative.
   
   
8. There are extremes on both sides. I believe that the Israeli right wing is just as extreme as is Hamas, in its refusal to consider the point of view, the rights, the argument, the identity, the dignity, and the humanity of the Palestinian people – those Arabs whose families lived in Palestine for the last two thousand years.  Netanyahu and his right-wing extremists in some cases have gone so far as to deny that there is any such thing as a Palestinian history, identity, or right to a national homeland. They have insisted on the progressive use of force, and force – protected settlement, to take possession of a disputed land and hold it as much as they can for the exclusive reserve of their own ethnicity.
   
   The same is true of Hamas, who reject any right of a Jewish entity in the land of their history homeland, in which they governed for a thousand years and which they have spoken of every year for the last two millennia, and reject it with as much, or even more vitriol than the Israeli right. Both extremes have done everything they can to discredit, stifle, and render impotent those moderate voices, both within their own side and that of the other, which would seek to find a solution with common benefits to both.  
   
   We can argue about “who started it”, and who is “more to blame”, but the fact is that the horrors of October 7, and the horrors of the Israeli response to October 7, both grow out of the unwillingness to seek a commonly beneficial or at least acceptable solution. Hamas insists it will have nothing other than the elimination of Israel from the land they claim as Palestine. The Israeli right insist (although until the present conflict brought it out into the open somewhat more clandestinely), that they will have nothing less than the elimination of the Palestinians from the land they claim as Israel.
   
   
9. Both extremes have succeeded – if their goal was to silence the voices crying for mutual and peaceful compromise. Both extremes have succeeded – if their goals were to make a bilaterally acceptable solution impossible.
   
   
10. The only hope for a solution which does not ultimately irreversibly damage or destroy both parties is for the moderates on each side to insist on taking back the agenda, to insist on talking to each other. Talking starts with listening to each other – even when it is hard to hear and offensive. While accepting that you may not share the other’s opinion, other views have to be given some consideration. There is something right in them.
    
    And that is also the only way to bring our campuses back to the sites for constructive and intelligent dialogue which they are meant to be.

Otherwise, it has every risk of becoming mutual destruction.

Hello again.

I have not entered a post on these pages since January 13^th 2021, shortly after the events of January 6th and a week before the inauguration of  President Biden. In the run-up to the election, I  posted fifteen articles. The first was entitled “Come Home America”. I pleaded for the need to return together to certain key, core, common values, to find our way back to norms and practices which we share, or should share, to define ourselves as Americans, as citizens of these great United States.

I asserted at that time that we share as key values fairness,  the rule of law, and equal justice.  We demand the reliability and dependability of our traditions. We demand from our leaders some measure, at least, of truth, honesty, and integrity.  At our core, Americans value respect for the dignity of individuals. We tend to admire decency, dignity, and decorum.

I suggested that one of our most cherished values was the impartial and equitable administration of justice. I argued that the progressive appearance of politicization of our justice system by the then-president compromised public trust in what was traditionally among our most respected institutions.

When President Biden was elected, to a chorus of refusals to accept it,  by the then administration, I attempted to use a logical systematic process to ask that Americans think clearly and dispassionately through the issue. I titled that article “Our Democracy is at Stake”. That was months before January 6, 2021, a day I could not have imagined ever occurring.

In early November 2020, when Trump fired his Secretary of Defense, I wondered if there was reason to be afraid. I called upon real “patriots” to act like it, to stand for the honor and tradition of our nation. Finally, after the chaos and mayhem of January 6^th, but before the transition of the presidency, I responded to the branding of the election fraud caper as “the big lie”, and wondered whether it was ever fair to compare anything to Nazis.

I have written nothing on this blog since. I thought,  naively, as it has turned out, that things would go back to normal, and imagined that when 2024 rolled around we would be considered a normal Republican – conservative, pro-business, pro-military, anti-big government but fundamentally American, against President Biden, a generally pro-labor democrat, social safety conscious, pro- negotiation over confrontation and in favor of using the levers of government, as most liberals believe is right, to help those among us most in need.

In other words, I imagined we would return to contests between two persons committed to upholding real American values, in a contest to determine the best way to realize those values and serve this nation.

That is not what has come to pass.  In my mind, it could not be clearer that only one side in this contest articulates or embodies anything resembling our core American values.

And so, after three years, and knowing full well that nothing I say will have an influence, I nonetheless feel compelled to say something.

This round, I find myself somewhat informed by a larger body of literature concerning what it means to be an American. A well-respected friend, University of Connecticut President – Emeritus Susan Herbst wrote an excellent book and the inception of our modern broad notion of public opinion and its effects. A Troubled Birth traces the growth in the 30s of the concept of an American consensus opinion. In that outstanding work, she cites several excellent works that look at the development of an American consensus of values, including Wendy Wall’s Inventing the American Way, and Margaret Mead’s And keep Your Powder Dry, among others.  I hope, again, to find something common in our heritage to allow me to argue and perhaps convince some that whether you are a progressive or a moderate Democrat, an Independent, or a centrist or conservative Republican, it is still necessary if you wish to aspire to be a true American, that you vote against Trump and Trumpism.

The opinions I express in the coming year will remain my own, but I will attempt to derive some of what I will consider as core American identity from these excellent works,  as well as others I can find.

It remains my purpose to argue that returning Donald Trump to the White House would be far in violation of our core key values as Americans. I trust I will be among tens of thousands of voices making that argument, perhaps most notably the still Honorable Liz Cheney, and hopefully, many tens of millions agreeing with it.

I hope that there will be some readership, and some consideration in the coming months as, once again after these several years, I try to invoke more informed analyses to support my contention that, as I stated in that blog title from years ago, it is time for America to Come Home.

It has become a universal “truism’,   a bedrock principle of modern political discourse that we must not make any comparisons whatsoever to the Nazis.  “Nothing is like the Holocaust” goes the universal demand, so don’t even think of drawing any parallels between whatever is going on now and Nazi Germany. Anyone who dares to do so has their moral compass ridiculed and their opinion “cancelled”, and any calls for unity automatically disregarded. One doesn’t have to be Jewish to find any whiff of such comparison offensive.

Fair enough, for the sake of intellectual and historical honesty and perspective, and, more importantly, on what should be universally and obvious moral grounds, no one should, or even really could, minimize or trivialize the horrors of the Holocaust. 

That injunction should not prevent us, however, from understanding what can and could happen in our modern world with reference to what happened back then. If we cannot actually learn from the past, then we really may be doomed to repeat it. And we cannot learn from it if we are not allowed to openly look at it. So, while it is in some measure true that “nothing is like the Holocaust”, I submit that it is not at all true that nothing is like the way Nazism subverted and destroyed the German democracy. We ignore to our peril the opportunity to apply what we could have learned and should have learned to what could happen right here and right now. 

To learn from the comparison we should not focus our attention on what happened in hidden camps in German occupied Poland, between late 1941 and mid 1945. We should look instead at what was happening in broad daylight in Germany in 1923, twenty years earlier. That is  when Hitler was bringing into being and force his own peculiarly totalitarian form of government by marshaling the violent force of his followers. That was the time of his initially failed coup, his Munich Beer Hall Putsch and the development of his  SA ‘Storm Troops’ to disrupt and subvert the normal  elective processes.

Hitler told his followers that in fact they were the real victims. He made them believe that it was both their right and their duty to use whatever means necessary to take back what was rightfully theirs, he said, and which had been stolen from them.

Germany was being treated very unfairly, he maintained. I think some scholars might wonder if this argument has some merit. Germany, some argue was forced to bear an inordinate burden for what was in many ways the shared responsibility of many nations for entering that war.

What is less true, though, but more germane to our present concern, is the connected and then often cited assertion, by pro-Nazis, that Germany had not legitimately lost the First World War. Not on the battlefield. German territory was never invaded, after all. Many Germans believed that Germany had been “sold out”. They had been cheated, so his argument went. Germany’s economy, the Nazis said, had been shattered by traitors within, and by international banks without. (Guess who those might have been?).

Hitler and to this day some proto-nazis have made the argument, which many heard and supported with glee, that a fraudulently defeated Germany had been betrayed by certain specific traitorous ‘others’, who had conspired with a completely hostile and dishonorable circle of enemy states to rob Germany of its rightful place.

Modern scholars would, one hopes, find this assertion untrue, the claim that Germany had been cheated out of its rightful First World War victory by the communists, globalists and Jews who had sold it out from within. We might call such an inflammatory assertion a “Big Lie”. But tens of millions came to believe it, and still do. And, so, the argument would go, if a normal peaceful democratic process was not properly honoring their ’Truth”, if they had “no one to go to” as one of our present day ‘protestors’/insurrectionists argued on tape, why should they not have the right to take to the streets? To do whatever was necessary. To enforce their just rights. With force if necessary. By fighting like hell. Trial by combat. And to silence the voices of those who would argue.

This is exactly the playbook Hitler used, to argue his followers had been wronged, that they had the right to any recourse, then silencing dissent first by force in the streets, then in the Reichstag, finally using the ballot box to grant him the emergency powers he needed to end democracy.

Is it possible to see parallels? Are we permitted to look at the possibility that there might be parallels? And that we could learn from them?

Start with the assertion that their just victory had been stolen. Let’s see if we can find any parallels between what is happening now, and Joseph Goebbels technique of the Big Lie. Trumpists have continued to assert that Biden had not legitimately been elected president.

Well, the United States of America has a process by which we choose our leaders.

Leaders are not monarchical, or hereditary. They are not chosen, in Giuliani’s words, in “trial by combat”. They do not rule by divine right. Leaders are elected by the people.

The United States of America has developed, systematically and universally, over its near two hundred and fifty year history a series of processes, procedures, norms and standards by which we run our elections. The details of those procedures differ from state to state, as ‘states rights’ is in our DNA, but each state has clearly delineated its own procedures. Each state empowers, as it has done for our entire nation’s history, election officials, supervisors and government entities to conduct and ensure the electoral integrity – Secretaries of State, Governors. It differs by state. 

Once the votes have been counted, as done in each state and by law, history, and tradition, they are certified officially by the state. Elections are not determined by the networks calls, but the AP has accurately reported the results of the votes every election since 1848. Still, they are not official until certified. But once certified, it is the role of the Congress simply to report the counts, and codify those counts.

The process is, and has been, for this near quarter millennium of our history, considered sacred to our nation.

Now, it is always possible that one candidate or the other may feel that the rules, even supervised, guarded, and processed by the best and most noble of state officials, did not work in a particular case and that the results were false. Such an opinion is their right. If they feel ’cheated’, they have a recourse. This is a recourse granted to every citizen. They can sue in our nation’s 250 year  experienced court system.

Even if suits have been adjudicated, as they were in this case, by dozens of courts, more than sixty at last reported count, if the party claiming that they have been aggrieved still feels so, they can appeal the courts decision. And if they disagree with the appeals court’s decision, they can appeal that decision to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court then, as it has for hundreds of years, will choose to hear, or choose not to hear, or rule on the matter. The Supreme Court’s decision is the final check, balance, and certification. And always has been.

Once the vote has been counted, reported, recounted, certified by the supervisors, and then in the state houses, and any challenges adjudicated, reached the Supreme Court and the matter concluded, then the results are final.

This is the way the United States of America chooses its leaders.

Joseph R Biden Jr is the elected president of the United States, not because the dems say so, or the left says so, or the ‘libtards’ say so. Joseph R Biden Jr is the elected President because the United States of America says so. In exactly same way as the United States has ALWAYS said who its president was.

To say otherwise, at this point, is a BIG LIE. By definition, by the way the USA chooses its leaders, Biden is the President- Elect.

You may not like it. But if you try to disrupt the accepted electoral process by which  the United States of America certifies its elections, then you are trying to disrupt the United States.

So is there a real difference between brown shirts trying unsuccessfully to topple the elected German government in 1923 Munich and right wing extremists beating defenders, even the police with sticks and bats and fire extinguishers to unsuccessfully topple the duly elected American government?

History showed us that the Nazis used their temporarily failed coup to regroup, and double down on their message and their techniques, that they ultimately prevailed at the ballot box, used their combination of raw force and persuasion and lead the world into nightmare.

We do not have to do that. We can turn back from this abyss.

To turn away from this ugly abyss would mean to reaffirm, not by party, but together in unity as a nation, that when push comes to shove, as it has done a week ago today at the Capitol, we will reject the actions which can, in my opinion, rightfully be compared to Nazism, and come home to America.

It is time for any one who even wants to pretend to love this country and what it stands for to stand up, affirm that the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA HAS CHOSEN ITS PRESIDENT, to utterly reject and condemn the use of violence, force and lies to deny it, and to pledge, if not to actively support the new President, then at least to accept and affirm the legitimacy of the new administration. To work, either for or against its agenda, in the accepted political means of doing so. In the way in which we have always done.

Next, to affirm the sanctity of our systems, our processes. To strive to continue to improve them, yes, but not to denigrate them as worthy of attack. The elections are not fraud. The other party are not the enemy, news is not fake, the press is not the “enemy of the people” and your country has not been stolen because you voted for the person who did not win this time.

I hated that Donald Trump had been elected president. I yearned to elect another president at this very next election, and did what I could to comment on, criticize and condemn the actions of his which I thought were antithetical to our nation’s values.

Trumps first impeachment (doesn’t that sound strange, Trumps ‘first’ impeachment?) was not because he had been elected president. It was because as president he was alleged to have committed crimes and misdemeanors. I say ‘alleged’ because he was acquitted. So he remained, according to our nations laws, norms, procedures and practices, president.

I was not happy that he was still president.

But I never denied that he was, in fact, President.

And I never advocated or encouraged or  hinted for the use of force to stop  him.

Because I would prefer, if I can avoid it, not to be compared to the Nazis.

I am interested in a legal question regarding liability, and would welcome the input of any attorneys or legal scholars who chance to read this – a legal opinion.

Dr Fauci, whom I believe would be be viewed by any reasonable person as having an expert opinion, said Sunday, publicly  on CNN, that  that in the six administrations he has served there has been a necessary and orderly transition of knowledge, especially in dealing with a national emergency. He also said that there was no question that our national response to Covid would be improved by such an orderly and timely transition. This implies that not doing so damages our response, at least it implies so  to me, as I believe it would to any reasonable person (that is, I believe, a legal concept).

 I recognize that there is no such thing as “criminal liability” for a sitting president, but I wonder if a president can be held civilly and financially liable for harm done, to life  and limb, in acting outside of his duties as president? Acting, for example, in a strictly political capacity. Acting in such a manner that a “reasonable person” would find responsibility for harm. The question of what a “reasonable person” would conclude, or do is not a trivial question, but it is not insoluble and as matter of fact, juries have to decide it on a daily basis.

First, what would a ‘reasonable person’ conclude about the election results? Well, the Associated Press, which has called elections every time since 1848, has been joined by all major networks, including the three large broadcast networks, CNN and even Fox News, in calling this election by a wide margin, 306-232 electoral votes. While it may be true that there are left to be a few legal challenges out there, election officials all over the country have maintained the elections were free and fair, and the president’s own National Security service as certified this as the most secure election ever. The states which Biden won back have been previously so commonly democratic that they were, until 2016, called a ‘Blue Wall’. So would it not be a reasonable guess  that they might revert to their traditional pattern? Also, there has never been a time this year in which Mr Biden was not substantially ahead, not only in national polls but in battleground states. Therefore, my question is, would it be fair to assume that a ‘reasonable person’ would conclude that it is at least more likely than not that Joe Biden will be ascertained to be the President – Elect?

After all, given that Biden is ahead 306 – 232, he could lose legal battles in the two largest states of the most recent four, PA and GA, and still be at 270. He would have to lose three of the four states, PA,GA,AZ and NV, to fall behind, by large enough margins to reverse substantial leads, and since there are no law suits which have won and most dismissed, wouldn’t  a ‘reasonable person”, legal term, be likely to conclude that there is at least a substantial  likelihood is that Biden is the next president.

Now we know that there exists a time honored tradition that the person elected president has access to information needed to make a smooth and safe transition. This is considered necessary to the safety and security of the nation, and it is traditional enough at this point to be considered, I believe, by a reasonable person, to be the standard expectation. So, I would ask, if a reasonable person would conclude Biden is at least as likely as not to be the next president, and knowing that the  tradition, at least over this last half century is for there to be an orderly transition, wouldn’t a reasonable person be likely to conclude that in refusing to conduct such a transition, Trump is acting outside of a nationally recognized standard?

Now to continue, we have a nationally recognized health expert who argues publicly that failure to adhere to this traditional standard compromises our ability to contain this pandemic, which will naturally lead to more deaths. So – my question is, can Donald Trump be held civilly liable, – not criminally, but financially, for excess deaths which occur over the next several months over that number  which could have been predicted, based on current best – or at least better case scenarios?

After all, he is not functioning in an official government capacity to refuse transition to the almost universally acknowledged President – Elect,at least  I think few “reasonable persons” would find so. He is functioning as a political candidate disappointed with the results of an election.

So, if such a claim could be made, one question which would arise would become how to  calculate the number of ‘extra’ deaths. 

We have models of likely mortality. The one quoted in the same CNN interview suggests 439,000 by March 1. Dr. Fauci has said that optimum care could “blunt that” number. How could we quantify a number that it could be blunted by? Say, just to take a number from thin air, that we could lower that curve by 100,000 if we had the best possible response. And  now say we don’t do so, because our best response was hampered by the delay in transition of knowledge to the incoming party responsible. Wouldn’t it be likely that a reasonable person could conclude that this failure to blunt, and the consequent loss of one hundred thousand extra lives was at least partially because of the delay in transfer of knowledge? In failing to proceed in a timely fashion with the long standard of transition of power, couldn’t Trump then be argued to be at least partially responsible for those extra deaths?

How responsible would he be? What proportion? That is always difficult to ascertain in any tort action I believe, and is often an area of contention in malpractice suits. Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that failure to transfer knowledge and access to planning in a timely and responsible manner translates to a small percentage of the blame for excess mortality. Say 10% to be very conservative.

So, if we could have, as Dr Fauci phrased it, “blunted the curve” by 100,000 deaths, but don’t, and if 10% of that, or 10, 000 extra deaths were judged to be the result of Trumps improperly delayed transition practice, one could ask,  How much would the legal liability be for those unnecessary deaths?

Well certainly in the realm of medical malpractice an unnecessary death can be quite costly. How about a simple, faultless, insurance type death settlement. Is there information on that? That is hard to find, since we have a litigious society and a wrongful death action may get millions, but in Canada, for example, where torts are less a matter of jury settlements, I saw quotes from $49 to $80 thousand being standard. Taking the lower figure and adjusting for the exchange rate it seems about 40, 000 if a more or less usual settlement, so to be conservative let’s take 30,000 USD.

My question then, if there are attorneys interested I weighing in, is this. Could it be argued that if Donald Trump does not move promptly to begin an orderly transition of knowledge, preparation and responsibility, at least in this one area, and it is subsequently estimated that this failure is accountable for say, 10,000 extra deaths (about a week and a half worth), could he be held liable for at least $300,000,000 in wrongful death settlements?

Now, to look for some protection for the president, and how he could lay off some of that accountability. For his own protection, if he were to be sued, could he then turn around and lay some of that accountability off on the legal counsel leading him to make this delay? Would, for example, Rudy Giuliani bear some of the financial responsibility? I doubt that those in the news media who counsel him to delay could be “in-pleaded” into any fine or settlement, since they have no duty to protect the president? His legal counsel though? I wonder.

Of course the fact that Dr Fauci only yesterday gave a public statement about the likelihood of improving the pandemic’s mortality with a prompt transition, and today is the first business day after, I should imagine that if Donald Trump began such a transition today, or even tomorrow he would be shielded from any possible legal action over the last week’s delay. I should think it prudent of the President’s counsel to advise him to do so.

Would any attorneys be interested in weighing in on this question?

In 2016, with four states still uncalled, and with no where near “all” the votes counted in any state, Donald Trump accepted the results, when it was clear, by whatever algorithms the AP uses, that they could call the election.

Hillary Clinton, as has been our expectation, standard and norm for almost two hundred and fifty years, called the president – elect to congratulate him, and the next day publicly conceded very graciously. President Obama invited the surprise winner to the White House, and offered to assist the transition in any way possible.

It is our most sacred America tradition to have elections, and when the election is over, to proceed with a peaceful and orderly transition to the new government.

It amazes me that any of you, whom I know to harbor love of this country, are not willing to champion the most fundamental principle. This principle, without which, we are hardly America at all.

It would be one of history’s greatest tragedies for the USA to be allowed by those who can stop it to degenerate into this authoritarian nightmare, a proto-fascist ‘Former’ USA.

You who say you are patriots: NOW is the time to show you place your country above your hurt feelings.

I may have been bitterly disappointed, and candidly ashamed, that DJT had been elected president. But I did not deny it. I did not take down the flag that flies in front of my house. And although I know some did, I did not march in the street chanting “not my president”, nor question his right to be there.

More importantly, the administration and party that was in power at that time did not actively oppose or refuse the results.

Before that election, I received a Facebook meme which I knew was a lie. It was that President Obama had said he may not accept the results. I knew it was a lie because I knew the President would never do that.

This president is apparently different.

Americans. Patriots. The votes have all been counted now. The sources which have called elections for two hundred and fifty years, and who called the 2016 election, have now spoken. The allegations of impropriety have been tried in court. The election officials- even the Republicans in Georgia have certified it as untainted.

It is time to remember NOW, that we are America.

If we do not, not only will we never be great again.

We will never be America again.