The Center Holds

Thinking about choosing priorties for the next congress and beyond.

For quite a while now, I have felt no benefit to be obtained by sharing my perspectives in these pages. However, the stunning and truly unexpectedly robust election results have suggested there may be a growing national appetite to consider the risks, benefits, and burdens of governing principles of the last two years of this present administration. 

I have not had to reflect alone and within the private echo chamber of my own mind, as I had the opportunity to participate in a robust, pleasant, and comprehensive exchange, under the auspices of a generally well-respected advocacy group with one of the newly elected Democratic Party incoming Congressional members. This incoming freshman wisely introduced his talk with us by saying that certain issues would ultimately have to be considered in the coming presidential primaries for the 2028 election, that for the next two years Congress should find areas in which there is consensus rather than division, and to work for those shared values.

Each person in a crowded room was allowed, by way of introduction, to voice a concern which they would wish to communicate to the incoming and vastly more than expected democratic majority.

In listening, I was struck by two points. One was that there remain a few large schisms in the advice that well-connected and active democrats would give to an incoming congressman. The primary fault line, to my ears, surrounded so-called “accountability,” in which several people insisted on holding Republican so-called wrongdoers to account, and others argued, with just as much conviction, for “less investigation and more legislation”, some for the rule of law to be applied, and some to leave retribution to the wayside.

Additionally, it seemed that each person could argue passionately for their own approach and interest. Some stylistically: “stay fierce”, “be strong”, “hold their feet to the fire”, and others with quite detailed arguments in favor, for example, of reformed permitting policy for green projects. I found myself, in a perhaps polyannish manner, mumbling something to the effect of a “return to decency”. In the end, however, it was hard for me, at least, to hear an overriding structure, and ordering principles which could place and govern the broad array of  values, strategies, tactics and policies which define who is, and what is a “democrat”.

 Who and what should we be “fighting for”, or advocating for? How we should be approaching this unexpected and unbelievably special opportunity.

The people at the meeting, and the winners of the elections, have all extensively considered and reviewed these values and strategies. Certainly, in reading through the 2024 Democratic Party Platform, there are listed dozens and dozens of wishlists, principles and priorities, intermixed with extensive differentiation between the positions of the then incumbent democratic administration and the then-challenger, Donald Trump.

Still, in the midst of that detail offered, it felt to me that a more direct rendition of a few basic issues and a few basic principles in a systematic way could be beneficial to understand who we are as democrats. I felt compelled to offer in this long-neglected blog, since it seemed to me that the time might be ready, to write again after the many months of silence, and to try to articulate, for myself at least, what are the questions which democrats, and really, which Americans, need to look at answering now. The following is an outline of some of these issues, queries, and opportunities. If I could address a random imaginary someone whose job it will be to govern these next two years, I would hope they might look at the task with this kind of organization.

I have divided the offered questions/ideas into groups of issues, as bankers might say, tranches, collections of ideas to be addressed in different order. One person may not agree with another on any specific issue. The Democratic Party is said to be a “big tent”. I would hope that in some form, these are the kinds of questions which can be robustly, comprehensively, and vigorously discussed and debated. On those for which consensus quickly emerges, legislation might be able to be drafted which would move in the direction of addressing a goal or issue.

1. National Identity – Who are we, who should, and could we be?
   1. What is an American? Who are Americans? Who decides? Can we establish a baseline of ‘Election security’, one which will definitively preclude the kinds of threats and distractions we faced in 2020?
      1. Can we establish comprehensive, inclusive, accurate, universally accepted, and universally accessible unique identifiers for every citizen to reassure anyone concerned with, say, election security that all citizens vote and only citizens vote?
      2. Agreement on citizenship and general acceptance of the meaning of citizenship. Both native born and naturalized citizens are equally citizens. Can we reject or at least marginalize ethnic bigotry by insisting upon citizenship as being an equalizer? (Insisting on the principle and sharing that principle that whether you were born here, or passed whatever tests you took to make you a citizen, you belong here!)
      3. Immigration policy and practice that satisfies as many good-faith concerns as possible both for those already citizens and those who wish to be so.
         1. Secure borders which allow legitimate immigrants and asylum seekers in, and prevent those with no legal claim to enter, out.
         2. Reasonable, decent but secure distinction of which people should be given a path to stay here, and who should not. Who do we want to become a citizen, and who poses a threat and should be denied entry or deported?  Is there a way to do this decently, legally, with respect to both human rights and the broad sensibilities of the nation’s citizens and legal residents? What laws, what police practices, what policies, what monitors can be and should be put into place?
         3. Fair enforcement, even for those who qualify to be deported; enforcement which is both effective, efficient, and still within our human values.
            
   2. Shared and agreed  ‘facts/news’. Vetted sources, reestablishing trust in media. Reestablish the principle that “You are entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts!”
      1. Can we establish licensing policies, practices, and enforcement mechanisms which, consistent with the First Amendment, view the dissemination of news facts as a public service and put some standards on it? (We don’t allow poisoned food to be sold, but the near-billion-dollar Fox versus Dominion voting machine settlement suggests we allow poison news.)
      2.  Knowing that any government regulation can be abused (Jimmy Kimmel-related threats to the network as an example) can we find a way to increase the chances that what is disseminated as ‘news’ is, to a reasonable person’s standard, factual? 
      3. Can we find a way, consistent with the First Amendment to ensure that what is opinion or bias is clearly labelled as such and not news? 
      4. Can we find a way to grade news or facts or information as sanctioned, as we do for food or medicine, or perhaps graded, as we do for beef quality? Who would decide? Could non-partisan academicians or historians give mandatory ratings?
   3. Can we re-establish certain basic assumptions of norms and processes, “rules of the road? For example,
      1. can we establish by law or policy some normative consistencies, and assure that, for one example, either  Supreme Court nominees are considered in the year of an election, or that they are not, and hold that as a legally enforceable rule and norm regardless of which party is in power?
      2. Can we establish once and for all what a filibuster is, and how can it be used? Can it be suspended? By whom? The original meaning, from the Frank Capra film, seems to be that you can’t stop a Senator from finishing what they have to say, as long as they are speaking. Such a policy would at least limit filibusters to the number of hours a holdout can speak. 
      3. Can we establish an enforceable process by which force is employed? (other than the most dire and immediately threatening situations? 

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2. What should be our fundamental structure of economic, financial, monetary, and taxation policy? Is there a way both to foster,  support, and reward individual effort and achievement while at the same time optimizing the use of national resources and wealth for improvement of a shared common good?
   1. Can we agree that Tax policy should be fair, in that all earners bear at least a commensurate share of the burden? Can we establish laws which increase the likelihood that any tax bills would address that principle? Laws which make it difficult to radically change tax structure every time the administration changes parties?
   2. Can progressive taxation allow for effective but not prohibitively punitive distribution of burden to those best able to bear it? Can we look back at the tax structures of decades of great national leaps forward, such as the highway system of the 1950s, and find some parallels? 
   3. Can national investment be balanced both using tax revenues for quality of life and advancement of the nation as a whole?
      1. Can national directed investment serve multiple purposes by being able to
         1. Demand the most from those most capable to bear the largest tax burden, but not in a punitive or intolerable manner,
         2. create incentives and opportunities for consistent improvement in the national infrastructure in transportation, information, construction, and 
         3. allow for improvements in human quality of life?
   4. Can we find a mechanism to allow those who might disagree on specifics to broadly agree on national financial priorities?
      1. Pay down and/or restructure national debt to minimize the burden of growing interest. Can that be done, and how?
      2. Mitigate the vast and growing income and wealth inequality. Could focused but minimally punitive progressive tax policies with focused investments in specifying national priorities start to reverse and mitigate the 70 trillion dollars (!!!) said to have been transferred from the middle classes to the top 1% over the past fifty or so years?
      3. Balance spending needs among the largest and most rapidly growing tranches, such as military, health, and social needs.
      4. How can we present spending and taxation policies, and the concept of a social safety net to an American public raised to fear the spectre of the “socialist” bogeyman?

3. Choose among, coordinate, and balance needed shared infrastructure for ‘quality of human life’ improvement.
   1. Create more generalized access and availability to the populace for basic aspects of our shared lives.
      1. Health care and medical care are generally seen as a duty of society towards its populace in most other advanced nations. How can we optimize the delivery of health care to make it accessible, affordable, and of high quality? To balance the needs of the population with providers. Can AI and other advances both improve the quality and moderate the expense of health care?
         1. What are the models?
         2. Can we articulate the issues to a population who is repeatedly asked to vote on health care delivery?
         3. Can the national literacy surrounding payment structure and quality be broadened such that emotional appeals from individual stakeholders, which might distort issues, meet a greater understanding of the issues?
         4. Can we demystify terms like socialized medicine, Medicare for all, fee-for-service, preventative care, health maintenance, and view them as tools to solve an apparently insoluble dilemma?’

2. Education.
   1. To whom should how much education be universally provided free of charge? 
   2. Should early childhood development be included in the publicly available care as are grade school and high school?
   3. Can we determine if everyone ‘needs’ college and can we find a way to provide college to all who benefit in such a manner as not to break everyone or saddle them with lifetime debt.
   4. Can we determine to what extent a population with higher education is of benefit to society as a whole and should be paid for as that benefit?
   5. For those who do not choose college in the traditional sense be given access to more specialized or trade educational tools, development of needed crafts and labor?
   6. Can we moderate and mitigate the current burden of student debt without unfairly burdening the loan provider?
3. Child care and elder care. Who needs it? How can we provide it? How can we pay for it? Where does it fit among other quality of life priorities? 
4. Creation and protection of public spaces
5. Rules regarding national parks.

4. Energy and climate Policy.
   1. Owing to the fact that some of our largest industries profit from the continued extraction of fossil fuels, and that the funds that process engenders can be used to provide electoral opportunities targeted to those who benefit from such energy production, including our present administration, it is hard to insist on policies which would inevitably lower those profits as a part of the election package any candidate offers. 

That said, is there an opportunity to:

1. Articulate a balance of risks, benefits, and burdens of fossil versus renewable fuels. 
2. Discover how best to make the growth and availability of energy available for as little expenditure as possible?
3.  Can regulation, permitting, and development be streamlined?
4. Recognizing that huge energy corporate infrastructure profits, find a way to balance the needs of society with a timely development of alternatives. 
5. Find and incentivize ways to decrease energy consumption for living, clean spaces, insulation, energy efficiency.
   1. Incentives to build energy-efficient buildings and transport systems
      
6. As a practical and political matter, given the vast disparity in the resources available, and the at present axiomatic connection between the availability of funds and electability, this cycle aside, a way will have to be developed to incentivize those who own the vast energy giant corporations to view energy diversification and conservation as in their long-term interests as well as the long-term interests of the planet which we both share.

5. Information technology,  dissemination, including new processes such as AI development.
   
   1. How to realize the dream for all Americans of that “information superhighway”. How to:
      1. provide universally available and accessible Broadband access,
      2.  provide and facilitate  computer, internet, and now AI literacy to the broad populace,
      3. allow for  safe, regulated introduction of newer technology including AI,
      4. balance benefits, risks, and costs of new technology, such as data centers, geographical distribution of data centers, 
      5. optimize ways to develop wire transmission and wireless transmission reaching all of America.

6. Rules, processes, norms governing diplomacy and military and international relationships.
   1. Although “foreign policy” traditionally falls within the purview more of the executive branch, and hence may be one of those areas which has to wait to be adjudicated in the next cycle’s presidential primaries and elections, a democratic coalition still needs to articulate, argue for, fight for, and facilitate changes in the last two years’ increasing policy of diplomacy and military. One could call this the
      

“How to place nice in the sandbox” clause

2. We have to discover and promulgate ways in which to
   1. pull back from the lawless use of military force, 
   2. establish both guardrails for when and how to order the use of military force and means to enforce those guardrails. There is an inherent tension between the principle that Congress declares war, but that the president is the “Commander in Chief”. How can we mitigate that inherent tension? 
   3. Insist with both our allies and adversaries on norms that delineate those behaviors which our nation cannot support, aid, abet, or tolerate. 
   4. Reestablish relationships with friends, allies, rivals, and even foes to maximize mutual benefit and avoid increasing risk and cost of conflict.
   5. Reaffirm to the extent possible, with international regulatory bodies without compromising national sovereignty. 
   6. Attempt to improve conflict resolution platforms as well as attempt to establish ‘honest brokers’. 
   7. Try to find ways to reestablish and reaffirm “rules of the road” to avoid the development of insoluble military crises. 
   8. Use strength as a deterrent, not a form of negotiation.

I do not suggest that congresses and parties have not asked these questions and more so in a broad, deep, and robust manner. I also do not suggest that by arguing and writing down, say, in a weekend retreat with breakout sessions, answers to these questions, progress would automatically come in realizing them.

I do suggest that, in my fairly consistent listening to dialogue in and around these questions, it would be useful to frame the multiplicity of single-issue arguments and individual priorities of both candidates and constituencies; there is room for and need for some overarching structure of inquiry and strategy, and it is my hope that in articulating the issues for myself, it might in some way encourage others to articulate and prioritize and systematize them as well.

Over the past year, since right before the inauguration, I have written a series of articles in which I took John McCain’s gracious concession speech words, “he will be my president too”, and argued that regardless of for whom we voted, “Donald Trump is my president too”, and that therefore history will not absolve us of accountability for what we do or don’t do during this era.

When I wrote the first installment, I did so with the hope that my fears would not be realized. It is harder now to make that assessment.

One is compelled to ask a question which I would have preferred never to have had to ask – are we crossing, or have we already crossed a red line, a ‘Rubicon’, beyond which we are now in an autocratic and increasingly dictatorial government? Have we turned away from, perhaps irrevocably, the rule of law, the constitutional guardrails, the standards and norms which were seemingly part of our national DNA – are they gone? Are we becoming, or have we already become, a police state, where the sole word of the executive, militarized and unanswerable, is on its way to the “F” word? You know, the original Fascists weren’t ashamed to be called Fascists. They called themselves Fascists.

Let’s just look at a few markers.

1. The US government, using a previously little-known but now heavily militarized force, the “Immigration and Customs Enforcement”, ICE, has increasingly detained people whose claim to be in this country has not yet been adjudicated.  In some cases, those arrested and detained have been citizens. These people, whose legal right to be here has been upheld in many cases, have nonetheless been sent to foreign prisons. And in some cases, to large homegrown detention facilities. Camps. The seeming disregard of basic human rights, which prisoners are meant to receive, such as basic health care, is now exposed to the world’s vision as a part, at least, of our new America. Even the strongly right-leaning US Supreme Court has called those actions illegal.
2. Persons here under valid student and worker visas have been detained and deported for expressing views unpopular with the government. Student visas and work permits are revoked, sometimes without notification, on the discretion of officials with no due process, based on the opinions expressed by the person, without any crimes being alleged, much less tried or proven.
3. Active-duty military and National Guard have been deployed into American cities and are threatened to be used for “training” against American citizens.  
4. The President has stated, perhaps joking, perhaps threatening that he wants to occupy Greenland, Panama, and even that he wants to make Canada our 51st state, which in other times might be an expression of affection, but now, if a joke, is joke in bad taste at best, as it undermines the rule of law and territorial integrity at the same time in which this bedrock principle is being threatened by many of our adversaries. He thinks he can arbitrarily rename a territory named before the formation of our nation.
5. This President of the United States has openly called minorities enemies, vermin, and garbage, and clearly targeted large groups, mostly along racial lines, as being ‘un-American’.
6. Prominent members of the “opposition” party have been threatened, manhandled, and denied access to these relatively secretive detention facilities, which it is their job to oversee. Again, what does our government not want us to know?
7. The executive branch has seized powers of financial disbursement, which are constitutionally mandated to Congress.
8. Members of the press have not only been denigrated and threatened, but the power of the state has been used in a clear attempt to silence them.
9. Legislators have been threatened with death by hanging for the ‘crime’ of advocating to our military simply that they do the job which they swore to do, which is to obey legal orders, but not to obey illegal orders. This is a time-honored principle, one established at Nuremberg, enshrined in our military codes, and publicly articulated by our Secretary of Defense, and a principle which, at least until now, preserved the honor of our brave men and women, who under this administration are now being put into impossible situations.
10. In what appears to many to be a direct violation of the explicit constitutional principle that Congress declares war, and without even the pretense to a congressional authority to use force, the military has been ordered to carry out lethal attacks on nearly one hundred unidentified, unindicted, untried, and un-convicted persons who, even if they were indicted, tried and convicted for the crime for which they are accused, selling drugs, would not face the death penalty.   

Are these “war crimes”? Well, where is the declaration of war?

Dare we compare to the rise of Fascism in the 1930’s?

One theme I have not been too shy to address in this series, as a short scroll down to prior years will show, has been whether the pattern of increasing authoritarianism echoes, if not mimics, the Germany of the 1930s. While such admittedly hyperbolic rhetoric was once considered to violate the rule not to touch this sacred third rail of politics, I am not the only one to muse on the question of whether we are, at the very least, headed down the road that German history illuminated for us 90 years ago. And if that hyperbole makes us wake up, and before it is far too late, turn aside, perhaps it will be worth it

We are certainly not at the point at which the German police state found itself by the end of the 1930s. However, as we witness an increasingly authoritarian-leaning government that has, in one short year, brought about all the changes listed above, it seems fair and reasonable to ask if we are uncomfortably far down that road which was tread to such a tragic conclusion, not so long ago and not so far away. Perhaps it is high time we see where the road leads and stop following it.

What about the 1920s – the erosion of democratic norms in the Weimer Republic

I have a very close German friend to whom I showed a draft of this paper before I published it. He observed that it might be more instructive to reframe, or at least include, the pressures placed on German Democracy in the 1920s, which weakened that country’s conception and experience of democracy so much so as to allow totalitarianism to take hold so rapidly and so completely.

The factors that my friend identified as part of the disintegration of German democracy included:

1) the undermining of moderate and centrist democratic processes by extremism and uncompromising stances on both the right and the left, by both the Nazis and the Communists, to render the attempt to find democracy by seeking a middle ground ineffective and seemingly impotent.

2) Increased prevalence leading to increased acceptance and ultimately tolerance of violence as a means of political expression. Street battles, attacks by gangs from one side on the other, physical intimidation of political rivals, the prevention, in many cases, of speech by intimidation, and even political murder became common. How many of the actions of the Proud Boy types, and the riots of January 6, as well as murders of both legislators, judges, and how many attacks on the families of legislators and judges, have we in recent years borne witness to?

3) The subversion of independent, verifiable, and commonly accepted to be objective journalism and media was rampant in 1920s Germany, with each faction having its own journal and propaganda organ so that no one ultimately believed in any unified source of facts, truth, or analysis. By the time the 1930s brought the Nazis to power, there were fewer broadly accepted organs of objective truth and therefore easier to provide a steady diet of propaganda, anti minority and anti-outsider, and the concept of a fair, balanced and truthful press had been undermined and ultimately lost.

4) The erosion of faith in traditional institutions was largely because those institutions did not serve the isolated goals of varied segments of society. The very wealthy and elite, and the military, stopped believing that the institutions served their individual purposes and were willing to gamble on one-party rule that, they hoped, might.

In short, by the time the 1930s arrived, with Hitlers election, and by the time the then ruling Nazis fabricated, or used, the Reichstag fire as an opportunity to strip Germans of the rights which they had enjoyed under democracy, the search for a middle ground, safety and stability, trust in institutions and in a common mirror to society in the form of the press had been systematically stripped away. There was, therefore, by that time, little to prevent the rapid assumption of totalitarian rule. Thank you for that analysis, Ben. I think far too much the same can regretably be said of our nation these days.

It makes sense to include a focus on the early decade, the 1920s. We can raise the specter of what happened to the German democracy in the 1930s, and use that fearsome image to ask how we ourselves now fare, but in fact, while we may be crossing the “Rubicon”, we have not crossed it yet. Journalists are being harassed, not yet silenced. The warnings and steps towards the undermining and threatening our democratic system appear increasingly clear, too clear to ignore.

                 The oft-articulated cliché question about Germany is often: ‘How did they let it happen?’ The German police state apparatus had far more violent means at its disposal to suppress dissent and to coerce silence, if not support, than our present government has yet to manifest. Detention, torture, and murder had become a part of daily life for those who dared, too vigorously, to oppose the administration.

I fear many Americans, perhaps none more than my co-religionists will cringe and complain at my saying this, but given the vast difference in the coercive powers of the state, and given what seems to me a lack of really robust response on the part of our citizenry to what seems like an increasingly dictatorial regime, I find myself in the uncomfortable position of being more sympathetic with, and less antagonistic to the large proportion of the general German population who could not stop the onslaught of the eventual war and holocaust.

Now, before one labels me a “nazi sympathizer” and thereby ignores what I am trying to say, let me clarify that I do not sympathize with the tiny minority who actually operated the gas chambers, nor the people who actively supported a clearly racist regime. But then I am not in sympathy with those who wear masks and detain people who look different now. The majority of Germans did not vote for Hitler; however, history, writ large, insists nonetheless on holding “Germany” accountable for the most horrid events of the time. Polls say that the majority of Americans, even those who might have wanted the borders closed and so-called dangerous criminals removed, do not approve of what is happening now on the streets, in immigration hearings, parking lots, schools, and churches.

Understanding that the average German who did not wish to be tortured or killed had far less choice than we still do, I fear that unless we are alright with being asked by our grandchildren what we did at this time, it is high time we find a way to do something. Because, like the average citizen of that country, perhaps the one who was not so comfortable with the changes he was seeing, we will nonetheless be held by history accountable. Our nation’s honor will be held to account. We must find a way to do something.

I believe the majority of Americans do not, at the end of the day, support throwing their neighbors without trial into foreign prisons. Do not support blowing up suspected drug smugglers en masse without indictment, trial, or conviction. Do not support calling whole groups of their fellow citizens “garbage”.

I suspect that the majority of Americans do not support abandoning our allies, do not believe that Europe’s biggest problem is that it isn’t racist enough, and do not actually want the rest of the world to fear visiting our country or coming to our schools. But we will be held accountable if we allow our nation, which was once a beacon of human dignity, decency, and the rule of law, to become a modern-day hegemonist, minority hating, militarized police state where the rules of conduct no longer apply to us.

What can we do? Really, if we are headed down this road, what can we do? Well, here are some thoughts.

1. First off, and this should be explicitly stated. Political violence cannot be advocated, condoned, or tolerated. The murder, for example, of Charlie Kirk was simply murder. Political violence begets political violence. Not our path, one hopes.
   
2. Economic actions can send a message, but have to be carefully targeted. After all, it is often those merchants we know and trust who end up most damaged by a slipshod boycott. Perhaps there are targeted and specific opportunities to send a message, to make a difference. General calls one hears to ‘avoid holiday spending’ and such will have little chance of major effects.
   
3. I know that to real ‘progressives’ these cautions might sound feckless and impotent, especially after warning we are on the road to totalitarianism, but I continue to believe that the vast majority of our nation still yearn for a return to central, generally accepted principles. I don’t believe that an increasingly polarizing response will win the day. (Otherwise, why would this blog be called “The Center Holds”?)
   
4. Peaceful but hopefully increasingly mass demonstrations remain an attractive option. I am not an “organizer” type, but would love to see more public announcements of when and where voices and signs can be shared. Peaceful demonstrations are one way of letting the administration, our politicians, and the rest of the world know that we are not lockstep in agreement with what is being done in our name.
   
5. And that is the point. Those in political power need to know that there are consequences to taking actions that put our norms and laws, and standards at risk. We must not be silent. “Like and share”, and donate to people attacked. I cannot vote for Mark Kelly; I am not an Arizonan. But when the President threatened to hang him, I sent him money. I am not in complete alignment with everything Ilhan Omar says, but when the President called her “garbage”. I sent her money. Doesn’t have to be a lot – in fact, with the present economy, it cannot be a lot, but it is a voice.
   
6. The bottom line remains, for the present and hopefully future, that the only viable path back from the brink has to be through political action. If those who are sickened by what we see as a government whose actions in many cases cross or at best straddle the border of violent and lawless actions, in turn respond with violence and lawlessness, then we will risk the descent into the chaos which my German friend so articulately described with respect to his nation in the 1920s. As slow and as incremental, and perhaps lacking in immediate gratification it is, a steady and directed political return to decency remains, at least for the present, our only viable and best recourse. But we must do it.
   
7. I am aware that there are those who fear, myself included, that the present regime would not surrender power even if an election were lost. We saw that very thing on January 6th and the campaign of incitement that led up to it. This possibility can at present only be countered by trying to ensure that elections are so palpably clear that to resist abiding by their results is impossible. Of course, the republicans are doing everything they can to render victory for the democrats more difficult, redistricting and the like. To this very real and perhaps valid fear, I can only offer that if the situation were to occur in which a clear naked use of force to take over our democracy were to occur again, we would be in a different situation than our present one, and one which might demand a different response. For the present, it is in my view still the case that we are crossing, but have not crossed the Rubicon, the river of no return, and our best and only recourse remains increasing the vigor of political activity and communication.
   
8. Continue to support voices that call for reason and a return to balance. Try to both stay informed and support those news outlets that attempt to speak with facts and balance. Support public radio. Especially with the defunding campaign, I suggest we can all contribute, and become a member of public radio, and if appropriate to your market, public television.
   
9. Support candidates who oppose the present slide into authoritarianism. Those are, these days, usually democrats, but with the primary season coming up, perhaps a Republican might vote for a more moderate Republican. Contribute if you can. Volunteer if you can. It can be frustrating. I spent time and resources in 2024 and was frustrated, but we can’t give up.
   
10. Speak to people, people you don’t necessarily agree with, and try to hear and share concerns. Ultimately, we are all in this together. I suspect many people voted for Trump, but not for what is going on now. If we fall into the trap that the other side has set, a trap of demonizing the opposition, we cannot pull back to any kind of center. Many of my neighbors and friends are still Trump supporters, and there are sometimes somewhat intense ‘discussions’, not always comfortable, but better to stay engaged if you can than to give up. In 1930s Germany, one could not safely engage one’s neighbors in a critical discussion about the government. We still can. And should.

BOTTOM LINE – DO SOMETHING

                  I recognize that this “blog” and its several iterations of a similar message have had little effect. My voice is too small. Still, I feel that I must do something at this time when, if we do nothing, I feel in my bones that we will be held by history to answer for it.

If everyone concerned tries to do something, to find their own voice and their own protest, if everyone concerned, to the degree they can, remains engaged and active when possible, if everyone, in whatever way we can, finds some way to raise an alarm when it needs to be raised, then perhaps the overall effect will be to turn around, or at least to slow what appears clearly to be a move in a very frightening and increasingly rapid direction.

 History will not ask if we voted for the “Social Democrats or the National Socialists”.

History will ask what we did during this time when our norms were under siege.

History will bid us remember that this is not someone else doing all this, and we are blameless, because, in fact:

“He is my President, too.”

Therefore, History will hold us accountable for those actions we take.

History will also hold us accountable for our passivity.

And our Silence.

The lowest rungs in hell are reserved for those who are neutral in a moral issue. So says Dante.

Over the past almost two year of this horrifyingly brutal conflict in the Middle East, Jews everywhere have struggled with wrenching conflict, both within themselves and between themselves. In my view, which those who read these pages know to be liberal and humanist, an initial and I confess mindless rage against Hamas had to give way, really over a period of weeks, to perhaps a month, first to a more nuanced view, and ultimately to a growing rage not against Hamas alone, but towards the Israeli right wing government which continued what was, I believe, an increasingly insupportable conduct of the war.

Some Jewish voices, even prominent ones such as Senator Schumer tried hard to pull Israel sensibilities from the brink, and numerous relatively smaller groups, such as “Not in our Name“, J-street, and Peace Now tried hard to shift the narrative from Israeli’s outrage at October 7 to the growing outrage at the increasingly brutal, indiscriminate and what started to appear criminal conduct of the Israeli military as guided by its right wing government.

I don’t need to tell you that, everyone knows it. Everyone also knows that there has been relative sparse protest from truly mainstream Jewish voices and organizations, granted with some exceptions.

Every attempt at criticism of Israel with teeth has prompted accusations of antisemitism, as if the Israeli right horrors where mainstream Judaism and indiscriminate destruction and starvation Jewish Values. They are not.

I have a particularly personal window on this controversy, as I have a step brother with who I was once very close but who has grown increasingly right wing and Right wing Zionist over the years. We continue to write, but it is clear there is no real communication. He sends me right wing pro-Israeli, and right wing republican propaganda (he calls them articles), and I try to respond with some reasoned perspective.

I know I will never convince him, however in the beginning of 2024, the election year and the first full year of the conflict, the situation had deteriorated in Gaza so much that I felt compelled to speak to him directly about a situation which had begun to divide us on an issue serious to Jews. No Jew wants to see Israel unsafe, but no Jew can tolerate Israel becoming, frankly, like Nazis. I know that word is a third rail, and causes some to react with their own rage enough to disregard anything else you say, and perhaps is not completely fair and accurate, but it points a direction which must be understood, in my view.

The issue of Israel, its right to exist, whether that right also depends on the rights of a equally viable state of Palestine and all the manifestations and consequences there of are complicated in one way, but very straightforward in another.

I know Jews all over the world are in pain and rage, and I know much of the world now hates Israel with justification, and is starting to hate Jews, perhaps also with some. I doubt whether there is anything I can say which will change one single mind. But to repeat, the Lowest rungs in hell are reserved for those neutral in a moral issue, so while I kept this argument essentially between myself and my Jewish brother for these does of months, I feel compelled to make it public now.

It is long, complex, a bit rambling (well, a lot rambling), and probably deserves an abstract or ‘executive summary’, but for me the tortured examination of the depth of the issues which I had to fight to explore in myself and articulate was in part the whole point. So here goes:

“Dear Ron, (January of 2024)

Over the last two months since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas I have found it increasingly difficult to respond to your many posts.

In almost every other subject over which we interact, we each have clearly delineated and 180 degree opposite positions, and we agree, virtually axiomatically, to completely disagree. The goals, values, beliefs and desires we each hold are, essentially, diametrically opposed, we each hold the other to be totally wrong, and we want completely opposite outcomes. And we agree to that. The most obvious example might be presidential politics, in which you like Trump and think he was a great president, while I think did the worst damage to the country of any enemy we have had.  You think Biden is one of the worst presidents, whereas I think he ranks among our greatest.  And so on, we could trace the same opposite impressions over virtually everything we discuss from politics, to social norms, to the pandemic, etc.

And, in a way, we sort of “like” to argue. “Like” might not be the right word, but, let us say we both feel, I think, some sort of delicious righteousness in vigorously opposing each other. Perhaps it’s biblical – Cain and Abel may be too homicidal an image, it might be more like Jacob and Esau, but between brothers there is always a simmering opposition, which perhaps helps each better define themselves. I sometimes find myself more articulate about my positions after “debunking” yours, and, since you think you are the debunker, I suspect you gain some sense of clarity from countering me.

In the case of the present war, however, we actually share, in some sense, a common goal. I also would like Israel continue to survive, to thrive, to grow in international stature, and be safe, respected and prosperous. I would like Judaism to be regarded as an essentially moral force, as an ethical model, and if I don’t necessarily think it has served as a “light unto the nations”, I wish for it to be regarded widely as an admirable moral code. I wish that the ancient creed of antisemitism and contempt for Jews, and racial hatred in general, would remain discredited and contemptable and unpopular among mainstream and civilized people. It became discredited briefly, after the second war drew direct line from racial hatred to mass murder. For a civilized time, now passing, it was simply morally unacceptable, at least to a very large segment of civilized society, to express anti-Semitic tropes. 

On October 7, I would submit, at least for the first few days, the vast majority of the vocal Western world, at least in so far as it was expressed in the press, felt and articulated revulsion and outrage for the attack by Hamas on mainland Israel. Most understood that it fit into a millennial’s long history of attacks on the Jewish people. Most, in the mainstream, at least, understood that Israel had the right to protect itself, to respond with force, to retaliate, and to take a military action to defend itself and deter the attackers. The President was widely supported when he moved formidable military assets into the region to deter those who would take advantage of the situation to further harm Israel. He did that at some considerable cost to his own political standing, as he knew that some in his base viewed Israel, in the long run, as the occupier, but he has always been a supporter of Israel, and believed it enough to publicly fly to Israel  and literally embrace Israel’s leader. And, at least at the very beginning, he received widespread support in most of the media and mainstream commentary.

(I will continue without the italics, it is still the same letter)

What has happened in the subsequent months, however, both the way that Israel has conducted the war, and the kinds of near daily comments both by the Israeli government, and by those mouth pieces for the Israeli right which you have sent me, have succeeded in transforming that initial outpouring of revulsion for Hamas and sympathy for Israel, completely around, in many cases. The vastly larger number of civilian casualties, the appearance of indiscriminate use of force, and the seeming contempt for the lives and rights of Palestinians, in Gaza but also in the West Bank with the settlers, has led to an increasing contempt for Israeli policy.  And this has led, increasingly, to allow a tolerance for an antisemitism which observers find, if still repugnant, at least increasingly understandable. This saddens me.  Deeply. But I confess I start to view both the antipathy toward the present Israeli government, and the subsequent creeping anti-Semitism, as a predictable outcome of the positions which you and the Israeli right, and your “ Jewish chosen people”  opinion leaders have held. And I am sad to see that value, which I think you and I both share, that Israel prosper, thrive and remain a moral guide, as being inevitably, perhaps permanently, and I am so sorry to have to say, understandably compromised and degraded by those positions you, and they, hold and articulate.

Let me attempt to further articulate and elucidate the reasoning.

When Israel first proclaimed its statehood, adjacent to a newly designated Palestinian state, and Israel accepted the partition but the Arabs did not, it seemed easy to hold forth an opinion on Israeli moral superiority, relative to their neighbors. It was argued, at least by the Jews and the United states government, that the Jews had right on their side because they had accepted their Arab neighbors with open arms and the neighbors responded with clenched fists and weapons.

I believe if one goes into a fair amount of documented history of the opinions and communications of the Zionist founders, the notion of open armed Jews does not bear scrutiny, however I will hold off arguing that point and refer you to more learned reviews by Israelis themselves, such as Avi Shlaim’s The Iron Wall. Even if it could be accepted that this narrative were , initially, accurate, however, it is no longer really compelling. In a post Oslo world, it seems clear to me, and I think to many in the world, including our own government and all European governments, the rest of the world, to say nothing of the Arab states, that the burden of refusal and rejection has shifted, that it is no longer the Arabs who refuse reconciliation, but rather the responsibility for the obstruction and rejection of another people falls disproportionately, though of course not exclusively,  on Israel.  And specifically, on the Israeli right wing. This coalition, powered largely by the settlers, who have governed through Netanyahu for many decades, have consistently refused the open hand offered by Arafat on the White House lawn, and have killed not only Palestinians but even their own Prime Minister to prevent it’s being a meaningful reconciliation. You can pretend that Israel has extended a hand of peace and been rejected, but I don’t think there are many fair-minded persons who accept that as a true characterization. 

Let’s look at the initial assertion of moral superiority for the Israeli acceptance of partition in the first place. Those who argue for Israel’s moral high ground have held the narrative that the Jewish people, having finally returned to their traditional homeland, after unimaginable suffering and cataclysm – most recently the horrors of the second world war – proclaimed their state asking for peace and welcoming their neighbors, but that it was the Arab hatred and intransigence and refusal to accept their new neighbors in peace and friendship which has led to the decades of strife which Israel sought to avoid, wishing only to live in peace. It is therefore implied and characterized that the refusal of the Arab population and surrounding states to accept the new Jewish neighbor was inherently “EVIL”, that such a refusal could have only reflected “anti-Semitism,” a true evil of which the most recent example, the unprovoked murder of millions including children was clearly, and by any sane and decent person’s standards, a monumental EVIL. 

But I think it bears closer examination whether the reluctance to accept the interposition of a uniquely non-Arab state into territory which had been primarily Arab for centuries is, in and of itself evil. It was certainly not generous.  A generous spirit might have accepted the influx of these Jewish immigrants from a clearly hostile outer world, recently decimated, into a land mass which, if you counted all of the Arab world clearly could have accommodated them. But the fact that the immigrants wanted to establish their own culture and dis-invite those already living there tended to invoke resentment and active resistance. Was that resistance “evil”? Perhaps. But perhaps not. After all, European Christians killed European Jews, so why, it can be imagined as a fair position, should Asian Muslims have to pay for it?

I personally believe that a compelling argument clearly exists for the right of the Jewish people to return to their homeland. I think I can well reason and well articulate that right. There are Biblical, historical, moral, legal and practical bases for the argument for the right of the Jewish people to establish in a portion of the legal Palestinian mandate a Jewish state. I believe I could argue this convincingly, and apparently so could many others, since the United Nations, ultimately charged with making the decision on the question, did accept and codify this right of return of a large Jewish people to the territory of Palestine to establish a state. But, just as the Balfour declaration clearly and explicitly spelled out, such a right of return depends also in the fair and just treatment of the Arab population who were already living there.  That was the deal both as articulated by the British when they held the land, and by the UN when given the decision.

I can see that the original refusal of the Arabs to accept partition put them at a moral disadvantage. However automatically branding those who resisted it as ‘evil’ has some moral drawbacks. One might understand that someone who had lived on a land as an equal neighbor for some generations might not be so keen to give up sovereignty to outsiders because some so-called international body ordained it.  And those who, like many of the commentators you support, deny an equal and reciprocal consideration for the Palestinian Arabs, while condemning the original Palestinian Arabs consideration for them undercuts the same demand for recognition of Israel as legitimate that they, the Jewish commentators,  take as axiomatic. 

Orthodox Jews, especially the ultra-orthodox, as are the settlers, insist as the basis of their claim to the whole of Palestine, that “God gave them the land”. While I recognize that this narrative may have kept the Jewish people surviving over the millennia, and seemingly miraculously to regain their ancient homeland, from the outside, from the world’s perspective, I hope you can see that real estate promises reportedly made by a small ethnicity’s tribal deity to their war lord, which sustained their courage in battle three thousand years ago do not automatically constitute compelling legal tender in a more modern era.

Native Americans believe that the land cannot be owned, but I suspect you would not judge yourself evil for using whatever power you possessed, even force, to keep a Native American tribe of families from removing from you the benefits of ownership of what you consider “your” land. It might theoretically be shown, for example, that the Aztec God Queztoquatal had promised the entire North American continent to his people. I don’t know if that is true, but if, for the sake of argument, it were – one might still hesitate to brand it evil if the people of your neighborhood resisted and resented the imposition by the Mexican Army of an Aztec Homeland in your neighborhood of Los Angeles. You might resent and resist and oppose with all force necessary, even though Mexico did, in fact,  hold the land for hundreds of years, and even if the rest of the world agreed, in, say, an imaginary United Nations declaration, to give the land to them. The insistence of the newly returned Aztec population that they were happy to share and live in peace with their hosts in Beverly Hills, might not assuage your resentment and resistance. We would not brand your resistance as EVIL.

We brand the horrific anti-Semitism of National Socialism as one of the great evils of history, and rightfully so. It was. There is no conceivable way to justify the systematic slaughter of millions of non-combatants for the purposes of racial purification. Short of accepting the underlying Nazi belief, that some groups are so inherently superior to others that they have the right to destroy them, to make an imagined racially pure world better, which is in itself an evil proposition, the “Holocaust”, as we have come to refer the part of the second world war which was directed against Jews, was inherently purely evil.

Although you want to brand it such, however, the impulse to resist the imposition of foreign dominance and ethnic division over the land where there had been none for two thousand years is not inherently “evil”. The creation of a Jewish State on land which had not been under control may have been, and I think was, justified by a whole set of circumstances, however it was of necessity done at the expense of a population who lived there and had their own identity and their own claims to the land. And when two people have claims to the same land, some fair and sustainable agreement needs to be made to accommodate both of their rights. 

Israel’s claim to have been the only ones willing to make the accommodation may have been true during the initial phases of its existence, (a close view of the history shows that not to be true), however even if such a claim had at one time been true, that claim has clearly no longer been true since 1993, since Oslo, since the Palestinians, after Egypt and Jordan, had clearly and publicly accepted the state of Israel with the understanding that Palestinian autonomy would ensue.

That did not happen, and the fault for its failure is almost universally, and I believe accurately attributed to the Israeli right wing. Almost immediately the Israelis started to invade in force and continue the occupation of the territory commonly considered to be the basis of a Palestinian state with increasing settlements, widely considered, and I believe correctly considered to be illegal. An Israeli Jew murdered Rabin. Doesn’t the Torah forbid murder?

An Israeli Jew mass murdered Palestinians at worship. And the Israeli government approved of, permitted or ignored the continual encroachment on Palestinian land.

Adding insult to injury, you and your right wing commentators,  implicitly as well as explicitly denied the very existence of the Palestinian people. What was initially considered immoral, the refusal of Arabs to accept the existence of the Jewish state, calling it, for example, the “Zionist entity”, was mirrored in the rhetoric and actions of the Israeli right, so that ultimately there is little to distinguish the moral legitimacy of them and those on the Arab side, increasingly a minority, who denied that right to Israel. Hamas, in doing so, was becoming increasingly in the minority as a party who denied Israel’s existence as the PLA and numerous surrounding states explicitly accepted Israel. However the opposite happened on the Israeli side with increasingly loud, and powerful voices opposed and denied the existence of Palestinian sovereignty and railed increasingly against the legitimate aspirations of the people to have, just as do the Jews, their own land.

You deny the existence of Palestine. Your argument is that the name was given by the Romans to offset the hegemony of the Jews. Fair enough. I guess that means that there was a Palestine since the days of the Roman Empire. Actually before. The first use of the term was the Greek historian Herodotus. There was a Palestine for 2500 years. And Palestinians. There was Palestine, and there were Palestinians before there was a Europe, a Germany, a France, a Russia. There was a Palestine, and Palestinians almost two thousand years before there was a USA, or Americans. Palestinians lived in Palestine through empires, through the Ottomans, and the Balfour Declaration in which England looked with favor upon the establishment of a Jewish state, the statement read:

“His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non – Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

“in Palestine”

You like to claim that there was no nation of Palestine, but clearly the British government, and history recognize that there is a Palestine. You like to claim that the people of Palestine are not Palestinians but just ‘plain ol’ Arabs’, but they could just as easily say the European Jews who flooded the area were just Europeans. You don’t get to define the identity of other groups.

So, you might rightfully ask, why was Jordan not compelled to create an independent Palestinian state when it controlled the land?

And you would be right. Jordan should have done so. The Hashemite Monarchy of Jordan inappropriately occupied the land of Palestine. Palestine should have been born in the land which Jordan held after 1948. It is a flaw in the Arab claim to moral superiority that they did not to so. That is a point. However, when the 1967 war concluded with Israel having pushed the Jordanians off Palestinian land, they should have given it, as it was originally meant to be given, and as it was awarded by the same Partition agreement which had created a homeland for the Jews in Palestine.

But rather than go on ad infinitum about the history and the agreements, perhaps it is best to skip ahead to the day the Israeli government and representatives of the PLO sat down to discuss forging an agreement. They agreed then to let the past be past, and to start at the present moment, that there were two distinct national identities living within the land encompassed by Israel and the disputed territories, and it would be in the interests of peace and justice to work out an arrangement which was mutually acceptable and beneficial. The skeleton of such an agreement was developed and signed on the White House Lawn by the respective leaders of the two entities. This was the OSLO agreement.

You observe that a later attempt to make peace, in 2000, was rebuffed by Yasir Arafat. That statement is disputed, and some Israeli writer have observed that what was billed as an “absolute no” on Arafat’s part was in fact a qualified yes, but I will leave that argument aside. What is clear is that in the years between the Oslo agreement and the Camp David meeting, it has been Israel, far more than the Palestinians, who subverted the peace promised by that agreement. The murder of the prime minister who offered his hand in peace, the mass murder of Muslims at prayer,  compounded with the relentless settlement activity, worsened by moronically provocative political stunts such as Sharon’s traipsing through the Palestinian holy places, all indicated to many western observers that the Israeli government had never been acting in good faith. Never acting in good faith when it indicated willingness to recognize the rights of the Palestinians, reciprocal to their own, that they have a sovereign, free and autonomous state. Rather Israel maintained an increasingly obtrusive and oppressive presence on lands viewed, Ron, by virtually the entire world except a vocal right wing Jewish segment to be morally and legally Palestinian land.

So where does that leave us? Does this occupation justify the horrific attacks on civilians of October 7^th? Of course not. That was an ugly, brutal, murderous and insupportable action. It did not fall within the boundaries of acceptable protest and no one should say it should. Such an action needs to be retaliated against, deterred, punished and prevented, in so far as possible, from occurring again. Israel has, like any nation, the right, and the duty to defend itself.

However a reasoned evaluation, and one not blinded by emotion, would recognize, as the Secretary General of the United Nations stated, to much Jewish outrage, but accurately, that this horrendous attack, while not excused by, did in fact occur against the backdrop of over half a century of usurpation, occupation and tyranny, one maintained by a continued use of overwhelmingly asymmetric military might, and considered by most of the world including the UN and every government of the US to be illegal.

One central tenant to the outrage against Hamas’ actions is that they are born out of an intractable refusal to accept the acceptance of a Jewish state. A fair examination of the Israeli position over the last 30 years, however, has been similarly intransigent in its refusal to accept a Palestinian state. Such intransigence is couched in the myth that the Israelis would make peace if only there were Palestinians willing to do so. But the facts show this to be self-servingly inaccurate – a lie- and the policy of the right-wing government to prop up Hamas so as to render the PLA less potent just exposes that lie.

So here is the rub. We can say that Israel “has the right to defend itself”. But it does not have the right to suppress the rights and aspirations of millions of the non-Jewish population who lived in those lands for multiple generations. And when Israel uses continued military means to maintain such suppression, it can only expect that ultimately it will receive a military response. And if that military response is horrifically barbaric,  as was the attack on Oct 7, then perhaps that should serve as an opportunity for the Jewish state to show its moral superiority, and show itself to truly be “a light unto the nations”.

Israel has, sadly, not done so. Israel has responded in a manner which is widely believed to be similarly barbaric. It is believed so, by essentially the entire rest of the world, even the present (Biden) administration which sacrificed most of its base to literally hug Netanyahu, and send the naval assets needed to protect Israel from what would have been thousands more casualties.

The immorality of Israel’s response is not, solely, or even primarily in the ferocity and indiscriminateness of its response. It has been pointed out that our response in the second world war included bombing of population center in which the factories of war were inevitably placed. The immorality is more primarily in Israel’s avowed and now increased refusal to address the underlying, and I believe, immoral situation which lay the ground in which the seeds of Hamas’ brutality were allowed to grow. A better ground could have led to the growth of a far more accommodating and peace-loving Palestinian government, but Netanyahu, his settlers and the Israeli right refused to allow it.

So now, Hama’s avowed refusal to tolerate a Jewish State, and its overly barbaric and indiscriminate and intentionally ugly use of force is echoed by Israel’s avowed refusal to tolerate a Palestinian state, and its barbaric, indiscriminate, use of force – leaving out the sexual violation, of course – is pretty symmetrical. There is not all that much moral difference between the two.

Israel could have responded differently. It could have insisted on the right to defend and deter, to punish and prevent, while at the same time recognizing and affirming that the rage and frustration which lead to Hamas must be addressed, and – when Hamas has been defeated- a new rebirth of a process by which the Palestinian people would have their aspirations to a fair and just national reconciliation would occur. Had that been the Israeli position, then I believe the excessive balance of casualties inevitable in an asymmetric conflict would have been more readily accepted.

As it is now, and I am speaking as a Jew who would love not to have to say this, Israel has squandered its moral high ground, and is now, from Oslo on, and especially now, the aggressor, and the balance of good and evil – to the extent that those exist – is shifting steadily toward the Israelis being one of the evils. Hamas is “evil”. So is the current Israeli government. Hamas represents the Palestinians in Gaza. The current Israeli right represents the majority (slim that it is) of the Israelis. Israel has shifted steadily toward being the evil. Or, shall we say, an equal partner in the evil.

It gives me no joy to say that, and I think there are still roughly half of the Jewish state and Jewish population who would have it otherwise. I hope that this war, when it is over, so thoroughly and permanently discredits Israel’s right wing and current government that the other side prevails. But I am not I the least optimistic about it.

Which brings us to “anti-Semitism”. You have long held that to oppose Israeli right wing foreign and domestic policy was inherently anti-Semitic, and I have maintained that one can read the parashot, celebrate the holidays, light the candles and consider oneself a Jew and still oppose Israeli policy. One can support and embrace Judaism as a religion, and still believe that, at least post Oslo, the fault for rejecting and making impossible the opening to peace, is preponderantly on the Israeli side.

The rhetoric you continue to send, however, forces one to blur the lines between being anti – Israeli right wing (which I proudly am), and anti-Semitic – a label I would prefer not to have to accept. You send me the thoughts of people you support, who speak not for Israel, but for their own version of Judaism, and whom I find clearly odious. 

Dennis Praeger, for example, has nothing to do with the Israeli government, he is an American Jewish opinion leader. When he says that October 7 happened because “the Jews are ‘chosen’”, it is hard not to grow a bit more anti-Semitic. “Chosen”? Really? It couldn’t be because the Palestinian aspirations have been systematically squelched by an increasingly repressive government who pretends to want peace and practices nothing but violent suppression. It couldn’t be that the Israeli right has consistently made meaningless the efforts of those Palestinians, and those Israelis, who would struggle peacefully for lasting and mutually advantageous peace. It couldn’t be that this climate, one in which accommodation is increasingly shown to be fruitless, leaving only violence as a tactic. It couldn’t be any of these reasons – it has to be that the “Jews are Chosen”.

Do you know that Palestinians in the occupied territories are subject to indefinite detention without trial? No different than apartheid. That lands are arbitrarily taken in a manner viewed by the entire world, and the united states as illegal.  That the Palestinian authority who attempted to find some common ground with Israel, accepted its existence within a public handshake and was systematically undercut. That those who want peace in Israel, including a Prime Minister, are murdered. That Gaza is systematically deprived of access to the world. It couldn’t be any of those. It has to be that the “Jews are Chosen”? 

It is this kind of tribal hubris, the notion that only Israel has any ‘right’ on its side, and that any challenge of this right makes you an anti-Semite in line with the Nazis, which leads one, sadly, toward a distaste for the moral sense of the Jews. The attack, as horrific as it was, also shows that the status quo ante is unacceptable to a huge population which is kept under tyrannical conditions. Everyone else in the world sees that.  The refusal of what you consider to be observant Jews to recognize that is a moral failure, a failure which it becomes increasingly hard to label “Israeli Right” and detach from Jews as a culture. This failure is not uniquely associated with Jews – certainly Hamas shares it – but it hardly argues for the ‘light unto the nations’ status that you claim, and therefore leads in its hypocrisy to distaste for Jewish moral standing.

And, although I trust it comes from a small minority – at least I hope that your Greenfield character doesn’t speak for many – the blatant religious bigotry of many of your commentators towards Islam, a rhetoric which I regard as the moral equivalent of Der Sturmer, especially coming from a representative of a people who should, more than anyone, know how horrid can be the consequences of ethnic hatred is truly abhorrent and renders a little less credible your complaints of anti-Semitism.

So, what could be done? What could be done to turn around what I fear could become and inevitable and pervasive antipathy both for Israel, and for Jews. An antipathy which will become widely spread and believed to be justifiable. After Auschwitz, any hint of anti-Semitism was intolerable. As things are going now, absent a real change in policy and practice, the intolerance for anti-Semitism which the Jews enjoyed for over a half century will morph into a common, and accepted as justifiable renewed anti-Semitism. How can Israel, and how can worldwide Jews stop that?

The answer comes from within Judaism itself. The notion of Teshuva and Tzedakah. That one turns way from one’s evil ways, looks within and sees the flaw, resolves to right the flaw, and to make amends. The same process which Jews undergo every single year during the High Holidays would go a long distance toward making any moral objective observer say, well maybe there is something to Judaism after all.

First – to resolve not only to neutralize Hamas, and the violent rejectionism it represents, but also to resolve and affirm explicitly and publicly that Israeli policy also manifests a violent rejectionism. That the rejection of Palestinian autonomy is also immoral. And that the dissolution of the Hamas terrorism, and it must come,  must also entail the dissolution of the right wing colonial/imperialistic urge to take over the land, west bank and Gaza, which is clearly recognized by EVERY OTHER ENTITY IN THE WORLD except the Israeli right and their sympathizers, as a just and appropriate Palestinian national homeland.

This resolution must come with the recognition that the decades of occupation have, while perhaps unwisely pursued as some sort of misguided security guarantee, must be amended for, and Israel must explicitly and publicly resolve to join with many other nations to rebuild both Gaza and the West Bank to be viable and sustainable and livable territories.

Israel must work actively and explicitly to support both those Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs who want to make an accommodated Peace together, and actively and explicitly reject those who, like Hamas and the Israeli Settlers alike, think that using force to expel the other is an acceptable, actionable, or moral goal.

Finally, Israel must explicitly and publicly acknowledge that sincere efforts (and they must be sincere, robust and verifiable) to create and support a viable and just state of Palestine to live peacefully and in cooperation with the Jewish state of Israel has to also be connected with the resolution of the long antipathy with the Arab states, and that – having come to terms with a viable and acceptable and safe Palestinian state – that Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the Gulf States, and perhaps, sometime in the mid-century even Iran, to be a region of cooperation and mutual regard.

If all this were to happen, Israel, and the Jewish people could rightly reclaim the mantle of a moral force, and original moral force, and fulfill its biblical mandate to be a light unto the nations. 

At present, however, all this is all a pipe dream. Most likely the Israeli right will have its way, will destroy Gaza, kill a hundred thousand civilians,  and rule over its ruins in such a way as to eradicate forever any chance of Israel’s moral standing being regained. And, eventually, probably in the time it takes the orphaned babies of today to grow up under tyranny to become the resentful hatred filled willing suicide bombers of twenty some years from now. 

And when they rise up against Israel, there will be few to stand with Israel, and most to stand against it. 

And, if God Forbid, it goes that horrible way, as it appears to be going now, I cannot say which side I would stand with.

Just thought you might find important the thoughts of someone outside your circle who also thinks about these things.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rick”

I wrote that letter in early 2024. I am so sad that it is as relevant now as then.

This is the third in a series in these pages under the initial title “He will be my president too”. I wrote the first installment  before the inauguration. I invoked the late John McCain’s gracious words saying “He will be my president too”. My point was not just to be gracious and welcoming, but rather to assert that whatever actions were now taken in the name of the United States were, in essence, ‘on our watch’. I did not shy from invoking the specter of 1933 Germany in pointing out events that could herald the onset of totalitarianism. I expressed the hope that my fears were paranoid but insisted that should they come to pass, we should be on notice.

I published the blog, but I did not publicize it. I thought it would be, in a way, akin to ‘poor sportsmanship’ to invoke a clearly prejudicial and ugly allusion to national socialism even before the new president had, what Hillary Clinton had once called “an open mind and the chance to govern”.

By late February I wrote again to cite actions taken within the first month of the administration which flirted with, if not surpassed the boundaries of law our founding fathers had intended to be used to protect us against tyrants. I talked about the balance of politics, the relation between protest and resistance, and politics, supporting candidates was still a primary goal. I touched on the possible need for public demonstrations, speaking out and even economic activities such as blackouts and boycotts might still be appropriate.

Again, I published but did not publicize the blog. It was still only one month into the administration, an administration which was still testing its boundaries and there were still a very large number of observations, analysis and criticism in the usual circles, radio, television, talk shows, etc. I thought it still not quite justified to put out with fanfare a point of view that asked, in effect, if we were becoming a totalitarian state.

In the last days, it appears to me, and to many, that the feared slide into totalitarianism is occurring at a more rapid rate, and demanding more and more that those who can say something.

This has come to a head with the administration’s decision to depart a cohort of migrants which is labeled Venezuelan gang members, but more crucially, to do so in what appears to be direct and specific defiance of a court order. Herein would be a clear indication of totalitarianism, in which the executive branch, the single leader, intentionally ignored and defied a branch of government designed by the founding fathers as equal, and meant to serve as a check and balance on any executive who wanted to run outside of its boundaries.

“First they came for…”

The administration is very clever in its defiance of the court. In my first published but unpublicized blog, I argued that one bright ‘red line’, for which actual resistance on the street might be called for would be the arrest of political enemies. As they called it in Germany, “Nacht und Nebel”, night and fog, when social democrats who did not embrace the new Chancellors’ policies heard a knock on their door and simply disappeared.  That has not happened. To public figures. So far. So far no one has tried to arrest Jamie Raskin, Adam Schiff, Liz Cheney, Hillary Clinton, and so on. Being clever, they are taking their first “test cases” out on people who are already quite unpopular.

This puts the opposition in the uncomfortable position of having to defend the rule of law and the ‘rights of the accused’ in defense of people whom most people find odious already. No one really wants to be seen as standing up for a bunch of accused South American gang members, so one who wants to stand for the Constitution is put into the the uncomfortable position of either acquiescing to a violation of the constitutionally mandated separation of powers or standing up for people everyone thinks are criminals.

But think about it. Are these so-called Venezuelan gang members convicted criminals? If they were, the president would not have to invoke a law from the 19th century designed to protect the US from the internal working of people who were citizens of countries with whom the US was at war. If these alleged gang members were convicted alien criminals, the law would already have them ready to deport, as even Biden deported aliens convicted of felonies.

Perhaps the Trump administration has every legal right to deport illegal aliens who have not been convicted of a crime other than undocumented entry. That is its policy and the administration was elected to do that. Perhaps it has every right to prioritize certain groups and gang members would be one of them. However, when the law is enforced in cases of clear crimes, the rights of the state with respect to the rights of the accused are asserted, adjudicated, and balanced. It is the Judge, and the judicial system, not the prosecutor, or the executive branch, who decides whether the law is being appropriately and legally applied. 

It appears that the Trump administration may have clearly violated a court order to desist and allow a court to review his application of the Enemy Aliens Act . To determine if that is the case, a judge has ordered a hearing. The administration appears to have defied the hearing.

If true, this is a clear violation of the role of the courts in drawing the boundaries between legal and not. As such it would be a clear step, perhaps the first clear step into the realm of literal totalitarianism.

However, the administration is smart. If the administration broke the law, if they defied a valid court injunction, they did so in violation of the rights of a detested minority. Who is going to stand up and fight for some Venezuelan “gang members”? Who is going to insist each have their ‘day in court’? Not such a popular stand.

We might remind ourselves of the words of German Pastor Martin Niemoller. Worth reading and taking to heart.

“First, they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.”

Leaning outside of the boundaries of the law

Our laws are meant to protect even those we detest. If it turns out, on a legal hearing, that each of these individual Venezuelans are criminals who can by right be deported, then so be it. But the Judge has asked a simple thing, that their cases be adjudicated. That is called due process. If the administration is allowed to simply “disappear” individuals, like the South American dictatorships of the previous times in Chile, Brazil, and Argentina, then we have crossed the line. If individuals are allowed to disappear into the night, in a Nacht und Nebel operation, then we have embarked down the path which Germany started to tread in the thirties. Where can that path lead?

Another example where the law may be being ignored or circumvented can be seen in the case of the Palestinian activist, Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested and is likely to be deported despite being a green card holder, with a student visa and married to a pregnant American wife. He is being deported, arguably, for making remarks that the administration finds offensive. I can sympathize with the offense. Hamas is a terrorist organization, and by no means popular. I have no interest in seeing them prosper. Still, our nation is founded on the principle that one has the right to say unpopular things. More importantly, those who are accused of breaking the law have to be afforded the right of due process. If Mahmoud Khalil can be shown to have incited violence, then let that charge be brought and defended in court. That is what our country is – or until now always was – about.

And in another clear violation of our nation’s norms , the current president is trying to void the pardons the prior president gave when in office. Rich, after the blanket pardons of over a thousand violent lawbreakers.

And now the crisis, the administration appears to be explicitly flaunting a direct court order. The court ordered a stop, the administration refused, and is refusing to account for its refusal. A clear violation of the role of the judiciary.

Think about this. The Administration has taken a step, arresting, deporting and sending to prisons in foreign lands a group of individuals, many of whom admittedly have not been even accused of a crime, much less convicted. And when a judge attempts to investigate whether the law has been misused, the judicial authority is ignored and mocked by no less than our Attorney General, who one might hope would be considered about the rule of law.

In short, we are now at, or coming damn close to a critical juncture where the current administration either has stepped over or has walked right up to the wall protecting the rule of law and leaned over.

The administration thinks it can run roughshod over the law because the people they are sending to foreign prisons, quite fairly called concentration camps, are not popular.

If he can violate the law for one group, why not another? Like Pastor Niemoller’s poem, what about when they come for you?

Who can and can’t be treated outside of the law?

If the administration can round up one group, why not another? Why not progressive activists, transgender activists, and advocates of boycotts? Why not ‘lunatic liberals’, or articulate trade unionists? Why not Hispanics? Recent documented immigrants from Muslim countries? Canadians? Why not Jews?

The fact that he couldn’t just round up trade unionists, progressives, transgender activists, Canadians and Jews is because, like everyone else in this country, all of these groups, disliked by someone, have certain rights. All of these groups, as it should be for everyone in this country, have the right to avoid illegal search and seizure, and non-warranted arrest, and in any case, have the right to due process. To a hearing. To confront their accusers and present evidence in their defence. Those are fundamental rights.

The rights of non-citizens, even undocumented non-citizens are different than they are for citizens, of course. But there is still a body of laws about these people.

Where do those rights come from? Well, of course, we all know that the Declaration of Independence says that they come from God, that they are inalienable, and that we are all born equal with him. And, of course, we also know, as did the 3/5 person slaves and the women who couldn’t vote and now can’t get elected and the George Floyds of the world still know that we are not all created exactly equal. We can still, or at least until recently could, turn to the Constitution. And by the Constitution, I don’t just mean a piece of paper, but the norms, standards and processes, the judicial habits and conditions that have to the best of our ability always stood solid.

If those norms and standards and processes no longer stand, if the government can target whomever it finds convenient, expedient, and popular to target, and can with impunity deny them the rights they are guaranteed by the constitution, then there becomes no reason why Donald Trump or any future present could not simply round up the Jews. Or the Hispanics, or the transgenders, gays, progressives, or the Democrats. Niemoller’s words ring all too frightening prescient – if we cannot stand up now, then we may never stand up again.

I don’t know what a genuine legal review would say about these particular deported Venezuelan tattoo wearers. Perhaps closer legal scrutiny would in fact have revealed that they had every basis to be deported. Perhaps they have committed crimes for which they should be imprisoned. But there are laws to govern that, and systems by which the laws and the facts get sifted, and the Judge wished to use these laws and processes to investigate these actions. Our system has always said he had the right and duty to do so. If this stands unchallenged, then perhaps it might have been a nacht und nebel operation and we are truly facing a thirties Germany situation.

Which brings us back to the question I have tried to address in each of these series of three blogs.

What can we do in the face of what appears to either have become, or about to become an authoritarian state, operating beyond the limits of the law?

When does acceptance become conformity, and conformity become compliance, and compliance become complicity? And finally, when does complicity become culpability?

Where are the lines to be drawn between politics and protest, protest and passive resistance? When must passive resistance morph into a more active resistance?

Unfortunately, there are no clear and easy answers, and any answer carries the risk of failure and the risk of harm. I do think there are some principles.

Principles which might govern politics, protest and resistance

I believe we have to carefully discern between that which is odious from that which is illegal. It might be odious to fire thousands of workers. But if the administration follows certain procedures, it is probably not illegal. It might be in the long run economically ruinous, and certainly damaging to all of our alliances, but it is not illegal to impose whatever tariffs he thinks fit – that is legally the president’s right. It might be odious to betray a hitherto ally amid a fight for its survival in favor of a butcher and dictator, and it might risk making meaningless American commitments to its allies, friends, and principles. As disgusting as it is, however, the President must have some broad rights within the realm of foreign policy, and it is probably not illegal to humiliate a wartime ally. Disgusting perhaps but probably not illegal.

It is not illegal to deport undocumented immigrants provided one follows the legal guidelines to do so. 

It is, however, illegal to violate court orders. That is what appeals courts and the Supreme Court are made for. And when an administration intentionally and deliberately defies a court order, it is defying and defiling the rule of law which has made this country great and stable for so long.

And it is not helpful to pretend that what is happening is not happening. When the executive branch violates the law and defies the courts this is authoritarianism leading into fascism. Maybe not all the way there yet but clearly on the road. Let us not try to evade and redefine and waffle and pretend it is not.

It remains never appropriate to use force as a means of protest. AND That includes setting fire to Tesla dealerships and throwing eggs at Tesla Drivers. That is never appropriate.

Not only would violence never work, because the government’s control of arms would be vastly greater than the citizenry would ever be. Violence is almost always immoral, serving only to cause mayhem and destruction.

Most importantly, violence might inevitably invoke the very transformation we wish to avoid. After all, the Nazi “enabling” law which granted the powers of dictatorship took place after the Reichstag fire. Without trying to litigate who started that fire, I think it would not be helpful for any protest to, by analogy, start fires – that would only invite, and to some justify, the violence in return we wish to avoid. We can march, we can boycott, we can swear never to drive a Tesla, but we can’t in any kind of conscience burn them.

I think another guiding principle is that short of violence, all forms of protest may be justified. It might be marching. It might be writing letters. It might be avoiding buying certain products.

I have spoken to and heard of Europeans who wonder why millions of us are not out in the streets?

Perhaps the best form of resistance remains vigorous politics. Find and support the right people. Try to speak and listen.

I write this blog as one form of protest. It is meant to aim my tiny little flashlight on what, appears more and more to me to be happening in broad daylight in front of our eyes. Writing it continues to be done in the hopes that, as the blog’s masthead states so plainly, the “center” should hold.

If protest becomes violence then we take a step towards the chaos of totalitarianism. And if protest becomes impotent acceptance, we take a step towards the imposed order of totalitarianism. I still hope that there is, at some point in the future, a return, or perhaps a step forward – to normalcy in which the principles and processes that have governed our nation for so long return and are promulgated and celebrated. But they are not so now, and we MUST speak out.

I don’t do it without fear. I believe there is some possibility, small, but not zero, that my speaking out, and likely with no effect, may end up damaging me personally. It is in taking some action despite that fear that I proceed.

No, I don’t believe I am likely to be tortured to death in a concentration camp, nor to fall out a high window. I am not important enough for that, even if we were there, which thankfully and obviously we are not. Yet. Still, the fact that such an idea has to occur at all in my mind in the (so far still) United States of America is troubling. Perhaps I will be stopped at the border trying to return from a vacation abroad to be denied entry. Just like the legally visa-protected Lebanese physician. Or deported like the legal visa activist. Or my taxes audited like the former FBI directors. ( they won’t find anything, we are like goody two shoes when it comes to tax compliance!) I hope that doesn’t happen, of course, but we have an administration that makes it a point of pride to respond to its critics in as forceful a manner as possible. (Perhaps I should be glad that the readers of this blog probably number in the single digits, keeps me from being anybody’s threat)

What can anyone do? Well, whatever you think to do, you can do. Read the news critically, listen if you wish to Fox, but also to CNN, and MSNBC, and national news. Do not, as much as it is tempting to, just tune out. Now when you are needed most. Listen to NPR, and contribute money if you can. Contribute, although it seems fruitless, to those democrats, or even if that suits your more to moderate republicans who are trying to hold power to account. Protest, on the streets, when necessary, against the truly odious. 

Most centrally, to the core, we have to recognize and accept that whether any one of us voted for the current president or against him, we are all in this together now. Ask yourself if the daily assault on court orders, the rule of law, or our alliances is where you want this nation to go. If the destruction of those norms and processes, and those laws that have kept this nation moving forward for two hundred and fifty years is a good thing.

Ask yourself if you think a president whose first address to our nation’s pre-eminent law enforcement agency best serves us by dwelling on personal grievance and repetition of a baseless conspiracy targeting trust in our most precious gift, our vote. As yourself if you want those who assaulted police to go free. If you think legal visas and green cards should be rendered meaningless.

Then try to find any way you can,  and try, although it will always be hard, to do, peacefully always, what you can do.

Because in the end, each of us will not be asked whether we voted for the national socialists or the social democrats. We will be asked what we did when things started to change, to preserve the nation’s historical commitment to law and the Constitution.

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.