Author: RickNierenberg

In the last week of this campaign there has been so much attacking, that we have lost sight of where we need to go. Biden has a phrase, not unique, of Build Back Better. It sure sounds positive, but what does it mean? Here I am trying to find ways that, regardless of who is in the Oval Office at the end of January, that person will have to find a way for us all to do the building. I believe we need to build back better :

A shared wish to seek unity, to find common cause, common ground, shared values for our nation. The trust that our leaders will both recognize our differences and distinctions, and also try to bridge the divides, not widen them. That the policies and politics, both the real actions and the rhetoric will make it possible to work together and not against each other. A house divided against itself cannot long stand. Lincoln said that in the run up to the Civil War, it was true then and it is true now.

Trust that we can believe what our national  leadership says about the matters that affect us and are important to us. We may recognize that there are times when even the most honest of leaders will  bend the truth on one occasion or another to achieve a specific goal, but we to build back better a shared sense that our leaders can be trusted to be straight with the American people. 

We need to build back better a common acceptance and belief in certain norms with regard to the way our government is run, that it will be consistent and reliable, fair and predictable. That if one set of rules is applied to one administration, those set of rules should apply to another. We need to build back better a respect for our core institutions. Our courts, our congress, our national intelligence systems, our military, our police, our schools. That they are governed by rules which are fair, equal and transparent. Build back better an international sense of the reliability of our commitments.

Although this is not completely up to the government, we need to build back better a trust that there are common reliable sources of news and knowledge about the things that are affect us and important to us. Just facts. Not slanted, spun, biased and filtered. It used to be that people accepted the facts they heard from sources such as the networks, the great papers. We might have argued about whether or not we should be fighting in Vietnam, but we didn’t wonder whether the deaths in Vietnam were a hoax.

Build back a sense of accommodation and consensus. That does not mean compromise and abandonment of core principles, but it does mean finding ways to advance our goals in ways which recognize that there are multiple stack-holders and interests.

We need to build back better a recognition that economic opportunity and bounty has to be available across the spectrum of our people. Maybe not exactly even, but with some sense that changes in the system which vastly improve the lot of some while not keeping an eye out for others are not going to be sustainable.

Finally, we have to build back better our common identity as Americans. We are not blue states and red states, white Americans and black Americans, fascist Americans and Anarchist Americans, we are commonly Americans who in those challenging and divisive time need to come together to realize that we are all in this together and must move forward together. We share a history and a destiny, and the future is ours, together.

On the day that President Ronald Reagan was shot, when he was being wheeled into the operating room, he is said to have turned to the surgical team and said, “I hope you are Republicans”. “Mister President” the surgeon replied, “today the whole nation are Republicans”. The surgeon was correct, on the day that Ronald Reagan was shot, the whole nation were Republicans.

On the day it was revealed that President Trump had the Corona virus, the whole nation were not Republicans. True, most people realized that it does not square with our American sense of common decency to kick a person when they are down, to speak ill of the sick, and, appropriately, negative political ads were suspended, social media sites banned hopes for his worsening, politicians and pundits alike offered him, his family and his associates best  wishes for a speedy recovery, which is appropriate, but unlike in the days of Ronald Reagan, the president is sick, but we are far from all being “Republican,” even for the day.

That is sad. How could that have come to be?

If you will permit me to borrow a concept from pop psychology, that of the “emotional bank account” in which a person  in a relationship has to add love and support to a greater extent than they take it to keep a positive account,  I think we can look, if you will, at our “Unity” account, to see how much “unity” this president has added, compared to how much division he has sown, and ask where the balance may be.

There are many issues, valid issues, over which Americans of good faith might reasonably differ, and differ widely, and yet still not be divided from each other. Still remain unified in seeking a common interest for the country. How have those differences been consistently handled, framed and presented by this administration?

Start with immigration, the President’s first signature issue. Americans of good faith could have had a unifying discussion on how to weigh the rights of American workers to be protected from an influx of people who might offer unfair competition and balance that with our traditional image of ourselves as a beacon of refuge to those who would flee tyranny and throw their lot in with us. We could have balanced, in good faith, and with reasonable discussion in a spirit of consensus, consideration and reconciliation differing points of view. We could have reviewed our respect for the rule of law, our compassion for those in need, and the standard of adherence to precedent in finding a pathway, for example, for DACA recipients. Most importantly we could have sat down like adults of the same unified country and worked out compromises which would not have compromised our basic unity and cohesion as one nation. Did this president encourage us to do that- or did he use an emotional issue to divide us?

We could have found a way to balance a desire both to decrease unwanted pregnancies, to prevent unwelcome births, and also to minimize the frequency of abortion. We may have, through education,  discussion, compassion, and understanding found ways as a nation to find and build on common ground. It would have been possible. But the issue can also be used to sew distrust, division, contempt for each other and to introduce lines of permanent separation. Which has this issue been used to do? And by whom?

The same could be said for the second amendment. Americans of good faith could have sat down with each other, over the past several decades since Ronald Reagan was shot, and found acceptable accommodations by which Americans agreed that the second amendment rights could have been protected and yet gun safety regulation could have existed which might have prevented mad men from killing dozens of children at a crack. That could have been done, and done with unity and common understanding and purpose, but not when the passion of the issue is used to divide us. Who has done that?

On issue after issue, concern after concern, it is worth questioning whether the current administration has encouraged us to listen to each other, to hear the other’s concerns and to try to make common cause, seek consensus, and solution and compromise and accommodation, or rather to use differences on issues to split us from each other and to make, rather than “e pluribus unum”, out of many one, rather to split us from one together into two, too divided. And it is fair, I believe, to ask whether one party has, over the past decade, been more likely than the other to use issues to divide rather than unite. 

So we come back full circle to the Corona virus, to Covid 19, to the Pandemic. Traditionally it was believed that a common enemy could bring a fractured society together, and that differences between, say,  rich and poor, black and white, Democrat and Republican would dissolve, if not completely, then at least be suspended in the face of a common enemy. But somehow, that didn’t happen, not this time. Why not? What could have possibly been a more unifying attack to all of us than a new and unknown deadly illness? How could it not have pulled us together? 

But even this shared threat, this common catastrophe was somehow used to tear us apart. How did it became political whether we covered our noses and mouths, washed our hands, kept our distances, and conducted ourselves with respect for each other and for the science? Who encouraged that difference?  Who reveled in the divides? The administration shunned masks and social distance, at most paying them lip service while winking at those who ignored them. They  belittled those who wore masks, encouraged  supporters to flaunt recommendations to do so, undermined and humiliated states which mandated safety measures, (“Liberate Michigan”) and ridiculed the democratic candidates for struggling to model the safest behaviors. So even when confronting the prototype of a unifying threat, one which could have bound us closer together, which should have bound us together, an alien illness, the opportunity to find unity and common ground if only to protect ourselves, that opportunity has been squandered and trampled upon, and the divisions between us  all the more encouraged.

So now the President has contracted the Corona virus. And so have his wife, and his counsellor, his press secretary, and many of his political allies, whose lives are now at risk because it seemed somehow politically advantageous to define oneself by distinction from the other side who hid behind their masks and science and safety. All the people who attended his non-distanced, and purposefully non-masked Rose Garden ceremony to introduce his obviously divisive nomination during an actual election when they wouldn’t do their constitutional duty to hear the nominee of another president before an election year – all of those loyal people – their lives, and the lives of their families and close friends are now at risk. 

Let me be clear. I do not wish the President ill health, nor his family, nor his confederates. It is not in our American DNA to hope our political adversaries sicken and die, that is not the way we operate, at least with our better angels. But I do trust that  his supporters will understand and profit from learning  from this distinction.

That while President Reagan’s assassination attempt did indeed, and for some time after ‘make us all Republicans”, President Trumps illness decidedly does not have the same effect.

It is worth asking why.

And worth knowing that it is sad.

History buffs will recall that the Weimar Republic was the democratic government which ruled Germany from the end of the first world war until the ultimate victory at the polls, ascension to power, and then consolidation of total power of the national socialists was a centrist government. It was a democratic moderate government,  ultimately weakened to destruction by extremists on the right and the left. Neither the communists nor the nazis wanted a democratic moderate and central, progressive and inclusive government, and, in effect, they conspired to destroy it. 

In their insistence, each,  on their own non-reconciliatory and uncompromising stances, and in the continual escalation of violence in the streets, they together, by design, rendered Germany “unregierbar”,  un-governable. The hatred of each side for each other, their attacks, their intolerance, their lies, and the violence destroyed any chance Germany might have had to become a peaceful prosperous nation. Ultimately it fell prey to the designs of a megalomanic who proposed order, and ultimately brought chaos, destruction and terrible suffering. I know it is extreme, and I hope certainly too early, but I am genuinely frightened that the current momentum in the extremes of both the right and the left are taking on lives of their own, and that the unstoppable momentum of that chaos, if not addressed very responsibly, could make the USA ‘ungovernable’, that it could weaken our best chance to come back together, to come home to our real values, to come home to the America we love and yearn for.

As those who have done me the honor of reading so far know, I am desperate to find some way back as Americans to a shared sense of values and purpose, and a common unified ground. I have tried to identify core American values, and to question whether our current administration is taking us closer to these values, or further away. Spoiler alert, my conclusion has been that in this particular election, in order to come home to who we truly wish to be, our true purpose as a nation, we must elect a democratic slate, and reject the current demonism of adversaries as enemies that is making us more divided, polarized and in battle with each other than we have been in 150 years. I have been careful to say that this might not always be the case, that in my opinion we could easily entertain other republican administrations, even conservative ones, and not lose our essential nature and goodness as a nation. I voted for President Obama, but would not have been in the least ashamed had John McCain or Mitt Romney been president.

In previous posts, I have investigated values such as respect for fact, honesty and truth, decency, impartiality of justice, and, for the most part, derived our regard for those values from our history, literature, judicial writings, and such. Sadly, at this moment, I am much more viscerally than intellectually disturbed,  anxious, angry. I feel this post more deeply than I have those previous. I fear we are tearing ourselves apart. I know this may seem over the top, hyped up, and  melodramatic, and the analogy perhaps too extreme, but when I see pitched battles in the streets, I have to fear that we might be heading towards making something looking like a Weimar Republic out of our United States.

The weakening and  erosion of our own American essential common unity and  humanity as a people is hastened when each side exploits the natural fault lines in our society, attempts to locate in the ‘other side’ weaknesses and target them, ignores truths which are inconvenient for their own position and exaggerates or heightens issues which make them feel they are winning. Each group has very sore spots, each ‘hot buttons’, and, ominously, each may have ‘red lines’. It serves no purpose to drive wedges into these fault lines, but that is exactly what we are being led into doing. Those fault lines are being, I fear, purposely exploited by those who wish to do us harm. But I will suspend that line of argument for the moment, and without attributing ultimate blame, just look at the evidence.

Let’s look at our so called “memes”, our Facebook posts, our Tweets, the images on our nightly news, and the focus directed at the most incendiary images, the most inflammatory narratives.

In the interest of fairness, I recognize that no one “side” has the monopoly on the exploitation of these wounds. I believe I can demonstrate that there are those on one side who more intentionally uses such fault lines to divide, but it is necessary and fair to realize the tendency among both. I will start by pointing a finger at the left, the “side” I most lean towards. 

There are more than enough of those who lean left who, in the name of being “fed up”, go way beyond reasonable protest and responsible discourse. Thinking you are on the right side of history gives no one license to practice random mayhem. The notion that any liberal wants destruction is not accurate, I loathe it. Most of us do. Most Americans on both left and right loathe the violence and the chaos. It does not give anyone cause for affection for the liberal agenda to see angry crowds burn cities, trash buildings, break windows.  That is true even if one can feel their anger. It does not make anyone want more to respect  the pain of those truly oppressed to see them dancing on our flag. The most reasonable, rational and compelling demands for improved community police relations are in no way served when the widely touted “defund the police” mantra sounds. No sensible person thinks a society devoid of a service who can enforce laws would long thrive.

Most to the point, when those who want to end police violence dress up as combatants, and all but dare the police to engage in nightly pitched battles, they do no service, but in fact do great harm  to the cause they, or we, are trying to represent. By becoming – or acting like – the radical and anarchistic left that the right accuses us of being, we play right into the hands of the worst instincts of the radical right.

Because that is exactly what the radical right wants. A radical right which has far more influence in this government than it has any right to have. They have, recent event show, much more leeway and license from the powers that be, and they want nothing more than a chance to fight. And the current administration seems to want nothing more than a chance to assert its military dominance over its citizens. That passes, in their mind, for order. It is, they believe, a value they can win on. Because the more chaos their rhetoric invokes, the more compelling the nightly images on the TV, facebook, instagram or twitter accounts.

But we can do nothing about what is happening on a national level until we make some sincere effort to address the pitched street battles on a personal level, and a social level, the “street warfare” among ourselves. We must recognize that the rhetoric we love to post, which makes us feel we have really scored the point, is also “drawing battle line” and weakening our chances to come together to continue to perfect our intended to be self perfecting union.

Here is a typical current Facebook meme..

Let’s leave aside the fact that Obama is spelled without an apostrophe. Perhaps it does not mean that the piece originated in a non-English speaking country. I don’t know – have my suspicions, but let’s let that go.

I know it is a visceral instinct to justify ones positions and to defend against attacks, and the best defense may be a good offense. But, and now, and with an eye to examining the effect of such a “meme”, let’s make a closer review of these assertions and see if we find them all to be accurate. If a friend were  saying them, de novo,  I would just feel my friend to be inaccurate.  But because, I believe, facebook friends  are just pushing a share button to pass along that which is written by others, I will call them what they are, lies. Because I don’t believe these inaccuracies were written by , and spread into our society by anyone who wishes well to the unity and success of our nation.

Let us just take a look at the first assertion. Although the clearly mis-quoted and purposely misunderstood “Christian country line”, and the patently false jobs growth claim are easily demonstrated to be wrong and intentionally so, I am particularly sensitive about the first statement, the claim that the right had to endure Obama’s “apologies”. It is meant as a personal insult, and to make us look weak. If it is not designed to anger and divide it could be. And it is wrong, it is not an accurate rendition of anything Obama actually said. I know,  because I had to research that very question in some depth. My next door neighbor, and very close actual personal friend, someone I would trust with my life, is, I am sorry, a committed Trump supporter.  He is a rock solid citizen, a true patriot, and a war hero, and so when he says something that strikes me as way off, I at least take as much time and effort as it needs to refute the claim. That was exactly what happened when he was particularly incensed one evening around August 6th about the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, and how Obama’s “apology” had ruined so much. It angered me to hear him say it, but I could not exactly put my finger on why it was so incendiary.

And so I researched it. I researched the claim in much more detail than it would serve here to lay out comprehensively. But suffice it to say that in an in depth analysis, word for word, several readings,  of the speech given by President Obama at Hiroshima, there is not a single word of apology. Not a breath. The speech is about the necessity of man, having such destructive weapons, to go forward to diplomatic relationships. Progressives at the time in fact faulted the president for refusing to apologize. The Japanese press, though gracious about Obama having even come to Hiroshima when no other sitting president had done so, obviously did not miss the fact that Obama had not apologized.

Having reviewed this literature in depth (the skeptical reader is invited to do the same, the full text of his remarks and current commentary are readily available) I remembered Romney’s attack, during their first debate on Obama as having started his presidency with an “apology” tour. Again, the memory offended me, and it struck me as false. Again, an in – depth review of the actual text and the supposed statements found no such apology, not a trace, and, in fact, in his acceptance of the Nobel prize Obama made it clear that he would never apologize for, or hesitate to use force in defending American interests. (I personally wish he had not hesitated in using force against Bashar Al Asad, but that is a longer discussion, on which I think I would agree with most right wing commentators anyway.)

Continuing to throw this offensive apology lie at President Obama is the sort of rhetoric which clearly divides rather than unites. It angers us. It is not true. And it does nothing to unite, but everything to divide.

To be fair, those of us leaning so called “left”, of which I count myself to some extent, have at times fallen into the temptation to  do the same thing. We could have had plenty of moral grounds from which to criticize this administration about the detention of children at the southern boarder. That is especially true given that their wish to seek asylum here celebrates what has traditionally been great about this country. But calling the detention centers “concentration camps”,  rhetoric of which I have to plead guilty, is inflammatory, it is incendiary, it does not seek agreement, it does not unit,  and its does play into the worsening divide. We seem to have, each of us, conspired in  the loss of a logical, rhetorical or “communication-able” center. We can all, with reason, analyze whether Donald Trump’s interpretation of the rule of law leads us closer or further away from the rule of law. But calling him a Nazi (as I must confess I have also, in heated discussion, done) is not accurate, and simply serves to divide, to insert another wedge, and to make reconciliation more difficult. So it is harmful when we call the right Nazis, and harmful when the right calls the left anarchists, and in both sides it is hyperbole to the degree of falsehood, leading to further division.

But now, it is not just rhetoric. 

No, things are taking a dangerous turn for the worse, now, and very rapidly.

Probably our deepest fault line, the only fault which goes so far into our foundation that its rupture could have the potential to rupture our society is the fault line around race. The fault line between black and white. So many of the others, rich and poor, those with opportunity and those without, those who view their society as primarily good and those who view it as predominantly harmful, those who see the local authorities as their friends, and those who fear them as enemies, those other fault lines start with race. For the last sixty years that fault line has been growing, we hoped, less dangerous, less divisive. Things progressed slowly, by fits and starts, but progressed consistently to be fairer, and we hoped less dangerous. Or perhaps that fault line was just hidden and simmering, because over the last ten years, someone has been hammering a wedge into that fault. And it is starting to cause an earthquake. Who would want to do that?

I do not believe that the hammering of a wedge into this fault line is innocent, I believe it intentional. But whether its origin is organic or planned, foreign born or domestic, simply and sincere or deviously planned and propagated, we do ourselves, our nation and our dreams great danger by promulgating it.

In what follows, there are a number of racial images and memes. I sincerely hope that I am not passing along these often incendiary images to in anyway endorse them. I want to suggest that the images do not have the effect to provoke meaningful dialogue, but rather to stoke divisions, fears and hatred.

In one sense one could ask what business do I, as a an older white guy, have in focusing attention on such a personal and provocative issue, but I think it would be willfully ignorant to ignore how this very deep sore spot is being exploited against the unity of our nationalpurpose.

I also do not suggest that those who pass along these images tropes and memes have explicitly racist agendas. But I would want those who do pass them to recognize that these images and memes are provocative, not of healing dialogue, but rather of increasing mutual distrust, hostility and the potential, and at times reality, of street violence. This does no one any service, other than those who wish to damage America’s essence and core.

The following Facebook meme recently received some national traction. I do not know who created it and placed it into circulation.

I would be surprised if the very image above itself is not right this moment generating visceral anger in readers of all political persuasions. I question whether that isn’t exactly what it is meant to do.

Let us investigate further what this interposition of memes is meant to evoke.

The reason that race features prominently in the police brutality story is that there is a pervasive pattern of white officers with excessive violence against black Americans in custody.

Is there a suggestion that there is a pattern of white children being killed by their black neighbors? I would think this meme is more appropriate as a crazy person having access to a gun.

The murder of a child is an awful, sickening, horrific event, and unforgivable. That is true for Cannon Hinnant. It was true for Emmet Till. It is true for the 1500 or so children who die a year in gang violence and drive by shootings. But let’s look at the comparison. The intention seems clear to me, it is to say that the protests against the killing of unarmed black men gaining national traction while the killing of this little child surely shows how biased the liberal media is, and is meant to say, essentially that the black lives you say matter, don’t really so much matter if you aren’t as outraged against Cannon Hinnant’s murder. Why are their no burning buildings over him, seems to be the implication? 

One could answer that the obvious reason that one got universal attention and the other not, is that while the murderer of Cannon Hinnant is immediately apprehended and appropriately jailed, those who wear blue and kill black, albeit a tiny minority of those who wear blue to serve, often escape any sort of accountability. One could further point out that the occurrence of black men killing white children with impunity is not a common event in this country. It does not frequently happen. A search into the murders children, and there are about a thousand a year, finds almost no murders of white little children by black men. I searched for it.

It just isn’t there. This instance was the only one I found. There may be a few others.

Police who kill unarmed African Americans, yes that is a pervasive thing. And that is why it gets a larger share of national attention. We could all name half a dozen cases this year. And it shouldn’t take much to be able to fairly realize why a common and increasing national occurrence should get national attention, when an event of the sort you can’t find when searching for doesn’t. That doesn’t have to imply a widespread press conspiracy to ignore white deaths. That would not be an accurate assessment to any impartial analysis.

Such an attempt to have a careful and reasoned response however, is not meant with a return attempt to find reason and reconciliation. It does not serve the sense of righteousness to give in to a middle ground.

It is easier to get to feel that you are in the right, and that those of another opinion are the enemy:

The left, we are told, is the “Cancer of Society”. Do you think it helps a spirit of finding any sort of common ground when you call me “the cancer of society”.

I have to wonder. Is there another hidden implication? Does the meme give a subliminal message to white people to be afraid of black men, that they are coming for you. That meme is too old to be ignored.

I don’t know who created the original image, but if their intention were to subvert reasonable national dialogue and replace it with civil dissension, mutual distrust and hatred, and to invoke a level of anger which lessens the possibility of civil dialogue, then they would have succeeded. Who would benefit from that? Serious question. Cui bono?

Another meme:

Let’s just look at a handful of the responses (names of friends obviously deleted)

The fact is that both of these images are being used to bolster the passion, and not the reasonable dialogue between us. We should be Americans seeing both as instances of serious systemic problems in a nation which affects us all. Instead we are allowing ourselves to be polarized into warring camps.

A seventeen year old killing people with an assault weapon is lionized by some as hero and patriot. By others as a monster and a murderer.

The real issues are how, in this great, free and generally prosperous society, do children become taught to hate, and how do they get access to military weapons? And to ask whether it is true, and if so why, that one group of Americans gets a relative pass for actions which get another group shot in the street.

Calling for the death penalty, or even life in prison, for a seventeen year old can’t really seem quite right. But whatever penalties or rehabilitation or justice which we decide, as a society, is appropriate for 17 year olds who have become violent felons should apply to all Americans. That is not so unreasonable a thing to ask.

So as the rhetoric hardens and divides us, those who would like to hold the center feel a sinking fear that we have seen this before. The Weimar Republic’s center did not hold, it was replaced with street battles and chaos. One side, which was along with their opponents fomenting it, came out on top, and while that one extreme bathed in spectacular success – for a time, ultimately all was lost.

In citing, circulating, these clearly incendiary memes, are we all falling into a trap, which may have been set for us by our adversaries. Are we being lead steadily and I think not entirely innocently towards going to war with each other?  

We become no longer commonly seeking to be Americans, seeking together to solve common problems. We become  increasingly mortal enemies on opposite sides of a progressively unbridgeable divide.

So, finally, we come to the major question of the day, which of the candidates seeking (re)election to the United States Presidency leads us closer to unity, and which closer to division? Who will support the vision of a common cause, and who is more likely to suggest, promulgate, propose and encourage the memes which drive wedges into our most vulnerable fault lines?

Which candidate, do you think is most likely to make all Americans seek to find an increasingly elusive common cause with one another?

From my standpoint, the answer is clear. One side is clearly asking our citizens to find common ground. One is demonizing its opponents, calling them enemies of the people, and encouraging and celebrating the use of violence to suppress them.

This fall, unity is on the ballot.

We are not yet at the point or even, I pray not near the point where the sadly doomed Weimar Republic fell prey to the vicious political agendas of the Nazis on one side and the Communists on the other. Neither of those seemingly opposed visions sought to share values or common ground. They sought to destroy each other. And in doing so, ultimately brought destruction to their own nation, and the world.

We are not the Weimer Republic. Not yet.

But we may be hurtling in that direction.

For those who have followed my train of argument so far, I have been trying to derive what we share as true American values, and to ask whether the current administration serves our nation in the pursuit of those shared values.

In previous posts I have talked about coming home to those values, and looked at the respect for law and order, truth, honesty as shared values. Today I have looked at the following, what I believe, is a core American Value.

We value in general a certain decency, a certain dignity, a decorum, certain standards, and civility. We value respect for the dignity and the rights of individuals.
Ideally of all individuals. Of all races, colors, genders, creeds, nationalities, it is in our DNA to do so. We believe that individuals have intrinsic worth as human beings. We believe in a certain willingness to respectfully listen to one another. It also means a respect for certain traditional norms and standards. We don’t really value, in the long run, public servants or leaders who speak like street toughs and ‘hooligans’, who are ill mannered, ill tempered, crude. Although some may tolerate it to achieve other goals, I can’t really believe that taunts, slurs, insults, and ridicule are what Americans genuinely wish to see, to show their children, and to emulate in our leaders.

Donald Trump famously answered his first ever political debate question by arguing that there was “too much political correctness” in our society, and that it was to our detriment.

It is worth while looking at the question which brought him to that defense. He wasn’t being bursting through an imagined reticence on the part of others to ‘be straight and tell it like it is’ uncomfortable truth.

That first debate question from Megan Kelly was, “You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs’, ’slobs’ and disgusting animals.’ Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?’

It was a good question then, and remains a good question today, but the question should now be asked of us all. Is the sense of dignity, decency, civility and a standard of mutual respect something that we value in our society? Are these  shared American values? Is treating each other with respect something we wish to come home to?

It is not unusual to complain about the fact that Donald Trump started is political career in war against political correctness . And it is certainly true that modern journalists, political analysists and cultural and legal scholars have weighed in on this question without hesitation.

“We can’t function as a community of people and as a nation without certain standards of how we treat each other and how we respect some fundamental virtues imperative to being citizens of this great country and the world”. And, in fact, the statisticians among the press have counted hundreds of insults thrown by our president, more of which will be listed later, but those listed by Megan Kelly will suffice for now.

Journalists can then complain, but we have to ask,  is civility really a traditional American value? Is it something to which we aspire as a society? Or is Donald Trump right when he says that political correctness is “killing us as a country”, a concept he has shared along with those on the other side such as Bill Maher, who has called political correctness a “cancer on progressivism.”

Are dignity, decency, respect and decorum  in fact, a part of the guiding principles which our Founding Fathers and greatest leaders have instilled in us, and which we ignore to our detriment and deterioration? Or is it a lot of silliness about style and rhetoric, having nothing to do with substance and governance?

George Washington wrote when still a teenager a book of “110 Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation”. While it is rather difficult to find a record of an insult slung by him against his enemies (yes, they were enemies then, not enemies like the press, enemies like the British Army), he was not totally immune to a critical comment.  When he argued in his farewell address against Americans voting for their party loyalty rather than the common interest of the nation, (an example chosen at random, of course) he said it could enable the rise of “cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men” – stern rhetoric indeed, although I would argue carrying more dignity than “dumb as a rock”, “wacko”, “Lazy as a dog”, “low IQ individual” or “begging like a dog”. 

In Thomas Jefferson’s day there were two opposing political parties, the republicans and the Federalists, but at his inauguration he strove for a civil unity.

“Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all republicans: we are all federalists”. 

The value may not have been universal. True, Alexander Hamilton, as we see in today’s famous musical, insulted Aaron Burr enough to precipitate the dual which killed him. 

Hamilton had called Burr a  “profligate, a voluptuary in the extreme”, and proposed that if the country were to elect Aaron Burr as president they would be “signing their own death warrant”. We could quip that in writing in such an uncivil manner, Hamilton signed his own, but a better question might be how “voluptuary” compares with “disgusting animal” or “fat slob”. Merriam-Webster defines Voluptuary as “a person whose chief interests are luxury and the gratification of sensual appetites”, so I guess not so far off, just stated in a more erudite manner. In Hamilton’s day, though, apparently, the employment of rhetoric so uncivil was considered, at least in this case, impetus for the use of lethal force in response. While I would have liked to have cited Hamilton, as such a brilliant man,  as a proponent of civility, respect and dignity, I am left finding the fact that he was not always so, and the results of his lack of political correctness to be some sort of ironic object lesson in the practical worth of the value. 

Lincoln, in his second inaugural address, the war being won and opportunity indeed to gloat, “Did not try to elevate his popularity by boasting of his success…nor did he denounce his enemies…he did not insult his political opponents or accuse them of despicable…motives”.

 Not that he was completely afraid to offer criticism. Of his opponent he did once give in to a fiery nature and observed of Stephen Douglas, “His explanations explanatory of explanations explained are interminable”.  Perhaps he gets credit for a “low IQ individual” on that one.

The call for civility in our nation is not merely historical, it is in our religious demands. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops holds that “”the dignity of the human person is the foundation of a moral vision for society”. 

And finally, it is a national and not just a partisan value. Robert Michel, GOP representative from Illinois for 38 years who helped shepherd Ronald Reagan’s agenda through Congress said, “In a democracy there is a fundamental need for mutual respect. There is a need for a formal, public recognition of the ultimate dignity of those with whom we disagree – in a word, a need for civility – the public embodiment of the Golden rule. The corrosive effects of anger are slowly destroying what I would call our civic Government.”

So when Jeb Bush told Donald Trump, “You are not going to be able to insult your way to the presidency”  he was obviously not making an accurate statement, since history proved him wrong, but rather speaking from an ideal, an aspiration, a statement of the way, it seemed to him and to many, that things were supposed to be.

 
How is this important to our nation? Is it just damaging to our sensitive ears (or eyes on Twitter) to hear our current leader call opponents, journalists, and adversaries alike:

“Animals, stone cold animals, crooked flunkies, Fake news,  sick and biased agenda,  disgrace, a waste, totally unqualified, crime loving, crazy,  lightweight losers,  lowlife, incompetent, dumb, embarrassing, mediocre, low IQ individuals, wackos , lost souls, nut jobs, no talents, total disasters,  weak mentally and physically, total phony, Bozos, who cry like a baby, begs for money like a dog, clowns, dummy  dopes, dumb as a rock,  no honor hypocrite, desperate and weak.” To make fun of peoples looks,  calling anyone who doesn’t suck up to you, ” pathetic, sad jokes, treasonous, punch drunk, sleaze bags, buffoons, failures, fools,  scams, scum, , thugs, insane,” to say of prior leaders of your own party “choked like a dog”, that they are sick losers, frauds, psychos, little, dumb as a rock” (His chosen Secretary of State), “lazy as hell,  that people who seek asylum here “Infest country”, other nations are “shithole countries”, that immigrants are the  “worst criminals on earth”, to leave aside his nicknames of Pocahontas, goofy, sleepy and crooked.” 

Other than what an adherence to norms, why is this important to our nation? Do we really need to be civil, respectful, dignified?

 
It is important for one major reason. Remember when we were children we were told that “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me”?  That fact is that when one calls others denigrating and dehumanizing names, long enough, publicly enough, and from a high enough lecturn, in our society, names can lead to sticks and stones. 

From the presidential lecturn  undocumented immigrants are called animals,  and sure enough, they are now detained in conditions which we could have never tolerated before, horrendous enough to be called concentration camps.

From his bully pulpit, Trump calls for police to exercise violence. In my memory, police being told  “Don’t be too nice” speech sounds like an encouragement to police abuse, and even blasted by police chiefs for endorsing police brutality.

 Sure enough, it is not long before unidentified state militarized police are beating and gassing our fellow citizens. His violent rhetoric is said to have incited actual violence.

Trumps threats against protesters have been pervasive enough to gain attention in European literature, as the London School of Economics called his threats of violence against protestors as reflective of a racist oder defined by nationalism in our country.

In the words of one European academic journal, “The rise of Donald Trump relied on violence. Trumpism employed emotional evocations of violence – fear, threats, hatred and division, which at times erupted into physical displays of aggression”. 

In the end, though, we need to determine whether civility, dignity, mutual respect, and decency have been compromised by the current administration, and, if we find they have, whether this is the America to which we aspire to be.
Michelle Obama pointed out that the presidency does not make the man – it reveals who he is, and that our elections, ultimately reveal who we are.

I want to believe that our history, our founding, our most revered leaders and thinkers, and, at least until recently, our public behavior and standards of rhetoric and decorum as a nation have revealed us to be one in which decency, dignity and respect are a shared American value, common ground, something which unites us.
It is up to us all now to determine whether that remains to be so.

Come home America.

I am trying, as I have said from the beginning in this series, to find a common ground, to find and articulate the core values which we all share, which unify us as Americans.

This week I hope to look at the value of truth, honesty, and objectivity of inquiry as a true bedrock American value, and to ask whether that value is being well served by the current administration.

In the introductory post to this blog, “Come Home America” (scroll down later if you would, or click the link on the side bar), I listed what I thought were seven truly “core” American values. Fairness, rule of law, and so on.

As I phrased this value when I first started this blog: 

“We value truth, honesty, and also intellectual honesty. We don’t like it when politicians, scientists, public servants, the press, or anyone bends, slants or compromises facts, and the truth to fit their own private opinions and agendas. We may not all agree on what is true, but we value the honest pursuit of truth. We value a free exchange of ideas in a fair, open and available intellectual public square.

Is truth really an American Value?

The Father of our Country was well famed to be a truth teller. There is an apocryphal tale of George Washington telling his father “I cannot tell a lie” about cutting down his favorite cherry true, even when that inconvenient truth was likely to cost him a thrashing. That tale may or may not be 100% historically accurate,  still the core American value that such a story, even if it is myth represents is, I believe, a core American belief and value, the telling of truth even when inconvenient. 

Adam Schiff stated this hypothesis well, when he said, “America believes in a thing called truth. She does not believe we are entitled to our own alternate facts. She recoils at those who spread pernicious falsehoods. To her, truth matters. There is nothing more corrosive to a democracy than the idea that there is not truth”. We believe, in Biblical terms, that “Thou shalt not bear false witness” .

The United States Information Agency was established in 1953, at the height of the cold war, as a ‘full service public relations agency”, to articulate American values in “understanding, informing and influencing” foreign publics regarding the United states, and its long term director lists “directness/openness/honesty” as one of the American core values.

Recent reports of American values find that the majority think that truth is not over-rated. A very small minority, fewer than one in five think “lying is the American way”. Pew Research Center found that half of America now believes that news is “made up” and two thirds of us believe this phenomena damages faith in American government. More than half see it as detrimental to our confidence in each other.  And now about half view responsibility for made up news as our government, about half view it as the responsibility of activists. While only about a third think news is made up by journalists, over half see it as one of journalisms responsibility to reduce misinformation.

If really an American Value, is that value well served by our current administration?

One wonders.

It does not take much digging to determine whether the current administration has continued its desire to articulate ‘alternative facts’, near 25, 000 of them have been detailed.

Now, I am not going to dwell on the multiplicity of small, relatively inconsequential lies. It doesn’t really matter if the crowd size is grossly exaggerated at an inauguration, or even that the photographs were doctored. It doesn’t really matter that the ‘wall’ is not really being built,  or that Mexico was never going to pay for it, or even that he later lied about having claimed it in the first place.

It is a little strange, silly and self – serving when he says that the ‘green new deal’ envisions ‘knocking down all the buildings in Manhattan’. It is certainly a little more dangerous to insist with no evidence on the notion that central American governments are “sending the tough gang members, the real killers” to the US, but that fits into his overall anti-immigrant rhetoric and might be seen, generously, as symbolic rather than a real claim.It is certainly self-serving, although geo-politically and numerically inaccurate to claim that Saudi Arabia is buying $450 billion of arm sales. But much more threatening to our democracy to claim, without evidence,  or credible allegations that there is widespread voter fraud in Florida or California. 

These are among a multiplicity of ‘alternative facts’ cited by Donald Trump, in the most part to shine a positive, rosy, if exaggerated or “alternative” light on the perceived threats in the world and his actions to save us from them. Not all are massive, or life changing, some relatively trivial. It probably is not damaging to US security, for example, that when he says that Mar-a- Lago was built as a Southern White House”. Many of the ‘alternative facts’ are probably, in and of themselves, not so newsworthy,  and some, such as the Mar a Lago jibe could be called light banter.

Let us just look at a few, though, which are particularly concerning, particularly troubling. 

On the economy, for example, Trump did not, pre-pandemic at least, need to exaggerate his own accomplishments, nor to try to trash President Obama’s. But he did. During his most recent State of the Union address,  for example,  Trump referred to the prior administration as “years of economic decay, …jobless recovery…depletion of American wealth, a mentality of American decline and the downsizing of American destiny”.

Trump’s press secretary later said “President Trump reversed the floundering Obama/ Biden economy. Obama and Biden orchestrated the worse economic recovery in modern history….Democrats seek to take credit for the Trump economy”.

Really? Trump wouldn’t have needed to lie, or to condemn his predecessor in office, simply because up until the debacle of the Corona Virus pandemic, at least, things were humming along decently well. But Trump had to insist that this was “the best economy in US history”.

In fact, the GDP grew decently at 2.4 % in 2017, 2.9 in 2018, and 2.3 in 2019. Not trivial, and, yes, better than the average growth during Obama’s first term. But not the best economy ever. Not better than in President Clintons term, when it grew 4.5, 4.5 and 4.7 percent respectively in the last three years. If memory serves me, President Clinton was a democrat. 

Still Trumps growth was, at least pre-pandemic ,decent. It was better than the overall under George W. Bush.  But it was not as high as in the years 1962 to 1966 when it ranged from 4.4 to 6.6 under presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Remind me, were they…democrats? In fact the following graph shows the average GDP per president.

GDP growth under Trump (pre-pandemic) can be seen to be decent. Yes, better than Obama, or either Bush, better than under Ford.  But not as good as under Kennedy, Johnson, Reagan, Clinton, or even Jimmy Carter, (four out of five Democrats). So why call it “the best economy ever”? It isn’t. That is ….an ‘alternative fact’. This is a lie.

No more jobless recoveries? Really?The attached graph shows job growth for the years 2011 through 2019, the last six years of Obama’s presidency and the first three of Trump’s. 

The best year of growth in those years occurred during Obama’s tenure. Job growth certainly did not fall off in the Trump years, as the trendline shows, it stayed, well, about the same. Why call Obama’s years a “jobless recovery”? That is clearly a bald faced – well, let’s just call it an “alternative fact”. As a matter of fact, the much touted (pre-pandemic) unemployment was quite good. Not the best in history, though. That was in the Eisenhower administration at 2.5 %.

But, let’s look at it in context of the Obama years. 

In fact it can be readily seen that the unemployment rate, coming steadily down under Obama, continued to do so in the pre-pandemic Trump years. So why does Trump have to lie about it? He could tout his economic success, which would be truth, without trashing Obama’s, which makes it a lie.

The stock market has certainly accelerated. I suppose when you give a huge tax break to those in a position to put their money in the stock market it will do that. But it did not improve faster than under the Obama years. The following graph shows S&P improvement in both administrations.

And the following, the growth in the Dow Jones industrial average.

In short, while there is nothing wrong with Donald Trump feeling good about, and taking credit for a continuation of a very long trend of improving GDP, improving employment, and improving Stock Market values, it becomes an ‘alternative fact’ when he asserts, as he and his mouthpieces so often have, that he has the greatest economy ever or that he has rescued the economy or that his predecessor economy was a shambles. 

Alternative fact? No, it’s a lie. It’s a big lie, and with every repetition of the big lie by the head of government, lying becomes accepted. It becomes the norm. And while it is “never appropriate to compare someone to ‘you know who’, it has been said by someone whom one would not wish as a role model that “If you tell a like big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it”.

There is perhaps nothing more crucial for a leader than to tell the truth about threats to the national security. True, details of operations in action are secret. It would not have been expected for FDR to have given the details of the Normandy invasion, or for Obama to announce that he was planning a raid on Bin Laden in Pakistan. However if FDR had said that we had the Axis ‘totally under control’ during the first weeks of 1942, or Kennedy had claimed the Bay of Pigs as a spectacular success, we would have thought them ill serving both the country, and, to my point today, ill serving the truth we expect from our leaders. 

During the six months during which more Americans have been lost than in WWI, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan together,  Trump has said, “We have it totally under control” (we didn’t), that we had “pretty much shut it down coming from China” (we hadn’t), that “by April it goes miraculously away” (it didn’t), that “people are recovering and it was actually less” (not actually),  that it was “very much under control in the USA” (never was), that “within a couple of days it is going to be down to close to zero” ( soon after 1000 deaths a day in NYC alone), that it was the democrats “new hoax” (not such a funny hoax), that the “Swine flu where nearly 13,000 people died was poorly handled”,(!) that “anybody who wants a test can get a test” (not even true now, let alone on March 6 when it was said). He said “wouldn’t it be great to have all of the Churches full” on Easter (consider the implications).

On face masks, he said “It’s going to be, really, a voluntary thing. You can do it. You don’t have to do it. I’m choosing not to do it, but some people may want to do it, and that’s okay. It may be good. Probably will. They’re making a recommendation. It’s only a recommendation”.

I will not belabor this point any further, it is tragically too well known to everyone. My major point is not to review the (mis)handling of the worst threat to our national security , and the costliest loss of life since the second world war, but rather to continue to ask whether the statements made by this administration are more in keeping with real facts, or with alternative facts. 

Only 28% of Americans say they have a lot of trust in what the president says about the pandemic.

Still, those of our nation who support President Trump could still defend him. The ‘little white lies’ about things like crowd sizes mean little from a known and celebrated showman, it is just part of the act. The continual bragging about your economy and denigrating your predecessors? Well, economics is an arcane field, there are multiple different indicators and measures, perhaps one could in some semblance of good faith, ignore some, elevate others, exaggerate a bit around the edges, make a claim for effect and still not really be “dishonest”. As far as the pandemic, well, no one had a crystal ball, perhaps he is just looking at the bright side.

The area in which the misrepresentation of fact is truly corrosive to our democracy is where it touches directly upon those instruments of our society which are intended, designed, built and maintained to monitor, regulate and enforce our rule of law and the legitimacy of our government. There is reason why it is illegeal to lie about elections, or to lie to the FBI, or to lie to congress. Such lies subvert the very basis of our democracy.

Calling the Russia investigation a “hoax” when all of the US intelligence agencies found systemic and pervasive attempts by Russia to subvert our election for your own advantage – that is not being completely honest with the American people. Saying that the Mueller report exonerates the president, when in fact that conclusion is generous to a fault, the fault being obstruction (read the original report if you don’t agree, and compare it to Barr’s statement. I have, word for word) is not being honest, as was his role, it is misrepresenting an incredibly important conclusion to your bosses liking. In his role as the supposed chief law enforcement officer, that is a lie.

Saying your opponent wants to defund the police when he has said the opposite is a lie. Saying you don’t accept foreign help in your election when in fact you use the nations arsenal to coerce it are lies. Saying your opponent will “hurt God” when he is the only church goer between you, those representations are not true. If we look within at what feels like objective representation, truth, honesty, we know those are not. Most of us could not put our hand on a Bible to assert any of the things Donald Trump says about his political opponents – they are, essentially, mostly lies.

In subverting public trust in both media and normative institutions, calling the media “absolute scum”, “fake news”, “totally dishonest people” and “the enemy of the people”, in subverting the normative non-political functioning of government as the “dep state”, in subverting the trust in public scientific sources and authorities, such as advocating drugs when not deemed safe, the current administration has undermined the very notion of objective truth. Trust in the government has become partisan, not national. Majorities find declining trust in American leaders, and each other, and a majority also find that an impediment to solving our nations problems. A majority think that President Trump is someone who lies. Two thirds believe that foreign leaders have less trust in the US since Trump became president. 

Perhaps most importantly, the habit of misrepresenting the truth to the point of non-recognizability has pervaded the way we talk to either about the issues and the politicians.

I recently received a Facebook meme from a friend. It showed President and Michelle Obama smiling, and said “Obama – 8 years and 3 accomplishments. Making school lunches inedible, insurance unaffordable, and police lives unimportant”.

Kind of catchy tune, I can see how it would feel good to a Trump supporter to pass on. But is does it really as an example of our American ideal of truth?

Let’s just take a very brief look. School lunches inedible? 

True, Michelle Obama made it a focus of her tenure as first lady to improve the nutritional value of school lunches. Specifically, she worked to change standards to look for daily fruits and vegetables, whole grain rich foods, low fat dairy and reduction of fats in general. And, while studies showed the lunches were healthier, truth be told, some students found their lunches “yucky”. 

While obesity rates are soaring, and children’s obesity is recognized as a national health problem, and while the health risks of obesity are well known and rising, I’ll give it to you those who object to this concern for health, some kids don’t like to eat their vegetables.  Bad leadership to make them try, though? Hmm.

Health insurance  unaffordable?

Well, studies showed both increased access to health care and report of good health, that it decreased the chances of being uninsured, and, in fact, while premiums for some plans, especially the more expansive ones did rise, the rise in premiums overall was less than it had been in prior years.

Finally, and this one perhaps the most damning because it is not only false but inflammatory, making “police lives unimportant”. 

Here is a sampling of what President Obama said at a funeral for five fallen  police officers in Dallas.

“Your work and the work of police officers across the country is like no other. From the moment you put on that uniform, you have answered a call that at any moment, even in the briefest interaction, may but your life in harm’s way. Like police officers across the country, these man and their families shared a commitment to something larger than themselves. The reward comes in knowing that our entire way of life in America depends on the rule of law, that the maintenance of that law is a hard and daily labor. These men, this department, this is the America I know. We know that the overwhelming majority of police officers to an incredibly hard and dangerous job fairly and professionally. They are deserving of our respect and not our scorn. Hope does not arise by putting  our fellow man down, it is found by lifting others up. And that’s what I take away from the lives of these outstanding men. We cannot match the sacrifices made by Officers Zamarippa, and Ahrens, Krol, Smith and Thompson, but surely we can try to match their sense of service. We cannot match their courage, but we can strive to match their devotion” . 

So the catchy little meme about the “3 accomplishments of Obama’s 8 years”? Alternative facts. Not the truth. Friends, these are not what we grew up to represent as true. You may not have taken the time research it or reflect upon it, but you are, perhaps unwittingly, and in the unfortunately common practice of the administration you support – passing along flat out lies.

So finally, after investigating the multiple claims, assertions, implications, representations coming from the current administration, claims ranging from the size of the crowds at the inauguration or the present rallies, claims about the state of the economy, the prior economy, the pandemic and its end, statements about Obama’s statements about the police, the history of Mar-a-lago, and the health of school lunches included, in reflecting upon the way the current cabinet subverts the truth to defend the chief executive, in how we have come to talk about political questions to each other, asserting not just our own opinions but our own facts, let’s just go back to the basic question.

Are truth, honesty, the effort to report facts objectively to the population American values? Does the present administrations relationship to the truth, to objectivity, to honesty make you more or less likely to believe in the truth telling of the American government? Has this American value been well served these three and a half years? Do you think another four would serve it better?

We share American values. One of them is that we respect the truth. If one shares the American value of respect for the truth, the current administration does not represent your American values.

Come home America. Come back to we really are.

The tearing down of monuments and painting of graffiti on statues of men whom some revere and some revile shines a light on one of the most potent emotional triggers we can see in this increasingly volatile and at times violent cultural conflagration.

In a larger sense though, if we can take one step back from the fury and contempt with which some seek to erase and some to defend these icons of “heritage and tradition”, it is all about “identity”. Racial, ethnic, political identity are all, in the end, extraordinarily personal.

Wouldn’t it be an amazing thing if, out of this seeming cauldron, one could forge a larger and more shared identify?

We have an unprecedented and, yes, exceptional opportunity as Americans. Our identity is not static. “We” are not stuck with who “we are” at any given time. “We” can be who we are seeking and striving and yearning to be. Moving ever forward, sometimes in fits and starts, sometimes with regressions and detours, but always guided by shared ideals, values and yearnings. Principles which were articulated for us, if not always embodied, over generations upon generations of men and women. Some heroes, some – well – not so much, and some ordinary folk, participants and witnesses. Generations who have argued, dreamed, struggled, fought and died to bring to be more genuine, more actual, the dream which has yet to be, for everyone real.

We are all part of it, if we can see it that way. Yes, Jefferson held slaves, but he also articulated a vision which lasts and will God Willing, continue to last. Such internal and shared contradictions are intrinsic to our struggle to become, they are who we are. The same men who pledged their sacred honor and gave their lives to affirm that “all men are created equal” were unwilling to see that three fifths of a person is not equality. The country later fought a bloody civil war to settle the issue.

And finally, the guiding principle that all men are created equal prevailed. That principle was eventually enshrined in our shared ‘sacred text’, our constitution.
Whether or not we are Americans does not depend on whose side our ancestors fought, but on the fact that we commonly share the heritage that our basic principles of freedom, justice and equality were fought for, died for, and prevailed to he established anew as form and fiber of our nation.

Such battles continued and continue to this day for so many of us. For those whose distant ancestors came from Africa, Asia, and the Americas. For women. For those whose gender identity and sexual orientation are not binary. For those who follow the “Judeo-Christian” tradition. And for those who do not.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could find a common identity which embraces the struggle for ever more and more freedom and justice, and does not get tied to where one’s ancestors fall along the lines of that struggle?

Wouldn’t it be amazing if could realize that being an American means believing and dreaming that all men are created equal and endowed with the right to life, liberty and justice, even if at any given moment, including the present moment, that dream has not yet come true?

For those who are new to this blog, and perhaps because it bears repeating to those who have visited “TheCenterHolds” before, my purpose is to argue that our best hope, in our seeming to fracture society, is to come back together to a shared set of values, to find and articulate again what makes us Americans, what we believe. To come home, America.

In order to move toward that goal I tried to articulate for myself what I believe are our major core values I found seven, true for me, and listed them in one of the first posts. My plan was to take each goal and to ask whether where we are now was moving us further or away as a nation from those core values. Not a secret, or a mystery novel, my ultimate conclusion will be that at this moment in history, his rhetoric aside, the current president is taking us far astream from our real values, and that for this particular election we should vote Democratic. Note, that may not always be the case. There will be times when Conservatives should vote Republican, and Liberals vote Democrat. This, I will continue to argue, for those who really love our nation and what it stands for, is not such a time.

I hope to demonstrate that idea, to the extant I can, without nasty personal insults and attacks, which may be emotionally satisfying but do not contribute to unify us. Rather I hope to derive my conclusions from a view of our common American-ness, our shared values.

In this particular post I will investigate the following value, which I listed as number 3, after fairness and rule of law. I believe, as Americans:

We value a reliability, trustworthiness, dependability of our respect for tradition, our adherence to precedent, and to principle. That our word is our bond, and that we are as ‘good as our word’, both at home and abroad. That when we give our word, that when we make an agreement we can be expected to keep it. We respect that value in individuals, calling it by names like integrity, and we value it as a nation. We expect that our allies can count on us. That we will keep up our end of a bargain, that we will hold fast, not blindly, but whenever we can, to  our word, to our principles, to our ideals, our norms and traditions.

The current president spoke a great deal about heritage and tradition in his address, described as dark, before Mount Rushmore.

I will return to that speech further on, but for the moment I would argue, along side of him, that as Americans we value our heritage and tradition, but assert that in our best traditions we share the value that when we give our word, it should mean something. We value reliability and trustworthiness, and we expect that our allies should be able to count on us.We value that others know we will stick to our word, and keep our end of the bargain.

In viewing such a withdrawal from deals we had made, publicly committed to, and which had, in fact induced our bargaining counterparts to take real actions, some have said, for example, that “Americas standing in the world has dropped catastrophically”.

Since taking office the current president has reneged upon many international agreements. There is no shortage of pointed criticism and concerns voiced over the abandonment of these agreements. Some of which had been negotiated, signed and approved by Congress, such as  the Iran Nuclear Deal,  and the Intermediate range nuclear forces treaty; some of which were internationally agreements with adhered to by every other country, such as the Paris Climate accords, some were only at the late negotiation stage, such as the TPP. Some were organizations to which we had long belonged, such as UNESCO and the UN Human Rights Council. 

To be fair (as fairness is another shared American value about which I plan to write another time!), the complete picture is probably more nuanced than that. While it is true that “the United States has long understood international legal commitments to be binding, both internationally and domestically” the application of international law to American legal climate and decision making is complex.The American reputation for compliance with international law, viz a viz the  European Union was not viewed as pristine, even before the Trump administration, however in an extensive analysis published a year before the last election one conclusion was that “the behavior of the US demonstrates, not an across-the-board hostility toward international law, much less rampant noncompliance, but primarily ambivalence about consenting to and internalizing international legal commitments in specific areas”, and while we had violated laws regarding institution of force in some instances,”the general record” before Trump “of US compliance with international human rights and other bodies of law is nevertheless comparatively strong.”

Why should we adhere to international agreements? Professor of Law and Politics at the University of Pennsylvania, former Director of a Harvard School of International Relations, Beth Simmons,  recognizing that” through the four hundred years of its existence international law has been in most cases scrupoulously observed”,wrote a comprehensive article categorizing the multiple analyses legal and political scholars have made concerning the costs and benefits of compliance with international law. 

Defining such agreements as “authoritative commitments to codify customary practices into explicit international legal instruments. She recognizes that in entering such an agreement a state voluntarily gives up one aspect of their sovereignty.They do so, she points out, with reluctance, because with the inevitable rise in global interdependence there grows the desire (I might say need) for greater regularity and predictability,  it allows each state, in return for a sacrifice of a degree of freedom of action to have greater influence over other states policies”.

From one standpoint, that of the so called “realists”, international behavior is governed by power and that when agreements hold it is because of “convergent interests or prevailing power dynamics”. From another, a so called “rational” approach, international agreements can help states solve common problems which they might not be able to solve any other way. The stability engendered when nations hold to agreements  serves to enhance a collective good, from which each participant benefits.    

 The “normative lens” which most concern me here, holds that a government’s compliance with international agreement reflects ‘democratic norms related to the rule of law”. “In this view, normative standards of appropriate conduct are socially constructed reference points against which state behavior can be gauged. (p85)  We expect that ideas, beliefs and standards of behavior influence governments adherence to international agreements.As one Oxford  professor of international relationships put it,  law influences compliance “only in the presence of a social system marked by shared norms and beliefs”. Renowned Harvard Law professor Roger Fisher  observed that  “rules will be better complied with when they follow commonly held notions of fairness and morality “.

Which brings us back to Trump’s speech before Mount Rushmore. He calls for the defense of heritage and tradition. I for one wonder whether the frank and relatively unprecedented withdrawal from our agreements with other nations does not in itself defile our most treasured heritage and tradition. 

But lets investigate the issues further. 

He started out, of course, lauding those principles which we are do deeply share, and rightly called the American revolution  a “revolution in the pursuit of justice, liberty, equality and prosperity.” Of course this  begs the question of whether we have achieved that stated intention, many continue to ask whether we have achieved our dream of just and equal pursuit of liberty and prosperity.

In just a few lines,however, he changes his tone, and says about those very people who are seeking a more equal and just pursuit in his words of liberty and prosperity that they are waging ‘a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heros, erase our  values and indoctrinate our children”.

Which heroes, history and values is he talking about? The confederate generals who waged war against the United States (that is the constitutional definition of treason by the way)? In service of the value of slavery? How indoctrinate our children?
Yes, you could argue and I think very reasonably so that all in all, good and perhaps not so good, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson did more to promote our shared identity as values than did anyone else. But Robert E Lee? Stonewall Jackson? Yes, let’s preserve history – but not pretend that these men fought for the promulgation of American values. They fought to tear them down. To deface our great nation forever. The confederate flag is not our history – it is the flag of a defeated enemy of the United States.

“The left wing cultural revolution”, he says, is “designed to overthrow the American revolution”, that those who want a park without statues of traitors actually wish to “destroy the very civilization”! Wasn’t our American revolution based on the overthrow of tyranny? Why is it not quintessential American, when a group of Americans see its rights trampled on (or, perhaps, kneeled upon) to stand up and fight for those rights?

Our children, the current president says, are taught in school to “hate their own country”, that a “radical view of American history is a web of lies”. That they defile the memory of  “Washington,Jefferson,Lincoln, and Roosevelt”. Really? As I remember each of these men were willing to tear down a few statues, in some cases actual statues, to promulgate certain ideals, that this president quotes more than supports. Interestingly he says quite accurately in quoting Dr Martin Luther King Jr that our founding fathers had given our founding fathers a “promissory note to every future generation and that our mission was to fully embrace our founding ideals”.

That is correct, Mr President, that is exactly what Martin Luther King exhorted us to do, as did Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and yes, Reagan and Obama. To hold fast to our ideals.

Our heritage, our tradition, our values, as they say our “DNA” is built not an acquiesce to the symbols authority. We don’t have to curtsey and kiss the ring. Our heritage is built on the continual and inexorable march closer and closer to the ideals to which our Founders pledged their sacred honor. We are not there yet. But we are headed there.

We overthrew the yoke of English colonial hegemony, we fought a civil war to liberate Americans of African descent from the tyranny of their slave holders (bearing the confederate flag), we fought to give women the vote, and a larger voice, and equal pay, we fought for the rights of all people to attend public schools and dine in public places, and for those of all sexual orientations and gender identities to share in the great American experiment of freedom and liberty and justice, the very tradition which Trump extolled before Mount Rushmore.

So when our black American brothers and sisters are treated so consistently like our founding fathers were by their English masters, as less than their fellow countrymen, it is our American tradition to protest. Black Lives Matter, and Colin Kaepernick, and those who were driven from the square in front of the White House are today’s true patriots.

And if you are looking for Traditions and Heritage to defend, maybe start with the idea that our word is our bond and if we put our name on an agreement we will not be the ones to break it.

Somehow I like to hope that the American people share that value more than one that says that you can declare who spends ten years in jail for expressing a right to freedom of expression. 

I like to think that is a shared value, common ground.

2.We value a rule of law which is consistent, impartial, evenly distributed and upheld, that the law for one person is the same as for another. That justice is separate from politics, that there is a consistent and agreed upon set of constructs, principles and norms which govern every person fairly and impartially. That every man and woman has “their day in court”, and that the courts are fair and honest. That justice is, as they call it, “blind”.

For those of you new to this blog, and for those returning to see the newest post, allow me to introduce what I am doing.

I believe, like Abraham Lincoln said even before he was president that a house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe that as Americans we do have common ground, shared values and beliefs that make us one nation. I believe this underlying unity has been obscured by the past years of partisan politics and rancor, and that to survive and thrive as the nation we all wish it to be, we must “Come Home” to our bedrock believes. I have in the first post of this series, (scroll down to America Come Home) tried to articulate for myself and share what I believe those key shared values might be.

In this post, I wish to explore one of those values, that of the rule of law.

Todays papers – I mean that in the literal way, “today, as in the day I am writing this – are filled with serious questions about whether the nation has lost its way with regard to the rule of law. Front page articles are taking our Attorney General to task for not adhering to bedrock judicial principle.

As with every post, my hope is to offer what I believe is a clearly shared common value, to explore the nature of that value, to investigate whether and how the particular value  really is one of our American core believes, and then to ask whether the current administration is taking our nation closer to, or further away from holding to our real core shared values.

Today I would like to investigate something about the nature of one key shared value, a shared belief and aspiration for a nation in which we can trust in the rule of law. I articulate that value as above.

Impartial Justice

This is a bedrock principle of the founding of our nation, perhaps among the few truly bedrock principles.

We are Americans in part because we believe and affirm that humans are endowed with certain unalienable rights The federal judiciary is the principal guardian of the rights conferred by the constitution.  Americans have accepted the principle that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what is constitutional and what is not. While the final arbiter, the Supreme Court is neither the sole symptom nor manifestation of the rule of equal justice, impartial justice, but rather represents the vast body of laws, codes, and the system of enforcement, trial of fact, and then assessment of the correct application of that  law. This complex system  forms the vast fibers, sinews of trust, really which make up the rule of law by which we as a nation strive to order our interaction and commerce.

What is the source of the strength of the highest court, and the judicial system. It cannot only be the capacity of force, for we believe as another bedrock principle that government governs by “consent of the governed”. Presidential Medal of Freedom winner under Ronald Reagan, Irving Kaufman, while  Chief Judge of the US 2nd court of appeals states quite definitively , “What, then, is the source of the Court’s strength? The Court’s only armor is the cloak of public trust; its sole ammunition, the collective hopes of our society. When, in the public mind, the Court is functioning as an apolitical, wise and impartial tribunal, the people of our nation – even those citizens to whom the results may be anathema – have evinced a willingness to abide by its decisions.” Unless the public believes that issues of great moment, he argues, are decided by reference to constitutional principles that transcend shifting political vicissitudes, the Court’s stature as an independent body is in jeopardy. Our basic notion of rule of law is eroded when the vaunted and hallowed objectivity of  judicial system, our justice department, our courts, and our law enforcement agencies become intertwined, commingled and rendered less pure by an untoward pollution by partisan politics. 

In an extensive legal analysis, Kaufman traces the history and meaning of Judicial independence  in a landmark article on the Columbia Law review. “Aware that unbridled government prerogative can easily engender an unending cycle of tyranny followed by revolt, the framers chose to make all exercises of national power subject to the rule of a higher law: a constitution drawing its authority directly from the will of the people”

Having stated this Principle, the judge proceeds then to trace the history of our ideal of judicial independence through its origins in English law.He delineates the foundation, from before our existence as an independent nation, of the idea that law, once enacted, once “rightly decided and approved, ” has a supremacy over and limits sovereign power. Early legal commentators in then very royally governed England insisted  that the “the Crown was accountable to the law because the law makes the king”, that the natural order was that “his own laws bind the lawgiver”. One prominent early  English jurist articulated that the  “King hath no prerogative  but that which the law of the land allows him”.

In fact, back in ‘merry old England’ days, when the Sovereign James II challenged such a conception, and argued that the King, as absolute sovereign of England. was empowered to dispense with any of the laws of government which he found necessary, when he denied the principle of the law’s supremacy over the dictates of the sovereign, he was deposed by force of arms and Parliament “effectively assumed the sovereign power of England” as the Sovereign permanently renounced claim to absolute power.

That tradition of an impartial judiciary, so hard won in England, was also a judicial goal in colonial America, with one jurist arguing that the impartial and independent administration of justice was a requirement to ensure the safety both of the citizens persons and possessions. It was in some measure a British attempt to maintain control over colonial judges, including a statute passed by parliament in 1774 making Massachusetts judges dependent on the crown, which Kaufman argues  shortly lead to “public outcry, public violence and ultimately revolution”.

The change of nationhood did not erase, but rather strengthened this principle. In framing the constitution, it was understood, in Kaufman’s words, that “the security of individual rights could be preserved only if the legislative and executive powers were kept within the limits prescribed by a higher fundamental law.” They realized that their bold experiment could succeed only if “judicial power were kept absolutely separate and distinct from the executive and legislative branches”. While the concept of separation of powers tolerates some overlap of functions, it will not tolerate “undue or injurious intrusion by one branch into the sphere of another”.

Situations can be seen to test these concepts. The current fallout regarding the firing of US attorney Berman,  is thought by some to be an attempt to subvert the separation of the principled separation of justice from politics. Professor Austin Serat, for example, distinguished professor of law at Amherst college, has offered the opinion that “Berman’s firing has highlighted the Trump administration’s eagerness to once again subjugate the apparatus of American justice to the president’s personal and political agenda. It is the latest post-impeachment purge of officials deemed insufficiently loyal to the president.”

To determine whether this is a fair characterization requires some investigation of the laws, customs rules and norms governing the role of the US attorney and its relationship to the political process. At the risk of being redundant, the purpose of this blog is to discover then articulate some of the shared values and common ground we hold as Americans, and then to determine how they apply to the current administration and the choice we have in November. 

Judicial impartiality constitutes an essential element of due process, and affirms that judges must be free to act without fear of personal consequences, for example termination. Duke University Law professor Sara Sun Beale has written extensively on the role of US attorneys, and has presented a very  comprehensive review of history and role of the US attorney especially in the light of the relationship between the role of politics and the prosecutorial function of the US attorney .

She points out that the Court has held that the President, in order to fulfill his duty to ensure that the laws are “faithfully executed” must be able to remove subordinate executive branch officers who are not performing to his liking, and that Congress should not interfere with that prerogative. What if the role that officer is fulfilling, however, is to investigate actions by the President, as it may be seen to be in the present case of the firing of Attorney Berman? “It is quite evident that one who holds his office only during the pleasure of another cannot be depended upon to maintain an attitude of independence against the latter’s will”.( site above)

The impetus for her incredibly well documented questioning the relationship of political motivation in the US attorney’s role arose in part from the “public firestorm” which flared from the notion  that political considerations may have influenced a wide range of judicial decisions under the George W Bush administration.That concern erupted over the firing of 9 US attorneys  in 2006. Only two had been terminated by a president in the twenty five years prior to 2006. Beale questioned whether this political influence had “tarnished the reputation and credibility” of the justice department. At the time inspector general reports found the department improperly used political considerations to hire judges, interns and prosecutors

 US attorneys are appointed by the president, and serve at his pleasure, but once chosen they are ““expected to leave behind partisan politics, adhering to the norm of prosecutorial neutrality”. There was serious concern for mechanisms to “help insulate U.S. attorneys from the improper partisan pressures that may arise from within the executive branch”(italics mine).

Beale outlines an extensive history of the progressive centralization of power from state control to one residing with the Attorney General and that office, which she terms “main justice”. The bottom line is that while the Attorney General had had authority over US attorneys since before the time of the Civil War, it took some decades before an organizational structure existed to extend central judicial authority to the widely distributed web of US attorneys. Over the twentieth century the central department of justice assumed greater control over the dispersed justice system, both through increasing communication technology, deferral on the part of local offices in particularly complex cases, and also the assumption of increased formal regulatory authority by Main Justice. The broad and pervasive centralization of judicial priority setting was much accelerated by the focus on anti-terrorism activities following September 11.

While Professor Beale goes on to say “the appears to be general agreement that from the outset the position was regarded as a ‘political plum’ that went to party stalwarts”, she articulates how clearly threatening to our notion of impartial justice this political entanglement can be.  She quotes a judicial scholar who was also an Attorney General of the United States  going so as far as to say, “this treatment of it(the position of US attorney) as a reward for political activity is a serious menace to enforcement of law.” 

I think we have every reason now, then, to ask, whether these current interventions by the Attorney General into who retains the role of US attorney will have the effect, as it is arguably its intention, to be a ‘serious menace to the enforcement of law’, in this case, who knows, just throwing it out there, enforcement of laws pertaining to activities of his boss, the current president.

Former judges openly call our nation’s ‘highest law enforcement officer’, the Attorney General, a “lying bully who is determined to subvert the independence of our nation’s prosecutors” .

And, according to columnist Max Boot, albeit not a Trump fan, it is impossible to give Barr the benefit of the doubt, because, Barr distorted the findings of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation; overruled line prosecutors to recommend a more lenient sentence for Trump crony Roger Stone; tried to dismiss the charges to which Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn had already pleaded guilty; and has appointed investigators to investigate the investigators who probed the connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. A retired federal judge concluded that the attempted dismissal of charges against Flynn was “clear evidence of gross prosecutorial abuse,” and more than 1,900 Justice Department alumni have called for Barr to resign.

In a sense Trump didn’t start this, but his enablers made huge strides in laying the ground work for a disregard of law and norms. The Constitution says that the Senate shall advise and consent to Supreme Court Justices. It doesn’t specify the election year exception. Even without his refusal to hear witnesses in an impeachment trial (John Bolton, anyone?) his refusal to do his constitutional duty damaged the rule of law, immeasurably.

What is my bottom line here? I hope, with this series of posts to test whether the current administration is taking our nation closer to, or further away from our core shared values, bedrock principles and common ground as Americans. I believe I can demonstrate strictly from these first principles that it does not.

There will be times when we can have honest and substantive elections regarding conservative versus liberal policies, and which will make our nation better.

This election is not such a time. We must reject the current administration because its values are not our American values. Today are argued that the respect for the impartial rule of law in this administration is not our American respect for law.

There will be other elections, but this time, we must reject Trumpism.

Come Home America.

The Center, our center, must hold.

One of most predictable, insidious and crippling impediments to genuine problem solving in the  negotiation between opposing parties or even groups with competing interests is the tendency for the extremes of both sides to hijack the agenda, and thereby start to redefine the terms of the discussion in such a manner that those in each camp who seek accommodation and solution, even though they may constitute the clear majority, are marginalized, made less relevant, prevented from compromise and reasonable solutions with shared wins disappear.
I heard the lecturer in a seminar  on negotiation tactics challenged that some problems defy a negotiated settlement, and the example posed was peace between the warring parties in the middle east. “The solution can only come” he answered, “when we realize that the moderates on both sides have more in common with each other than they do with the extremes of their own side”.
Imagine, for example that the moderates on each side of a territorial conflict are trying to work out together reasonable boundaries and rules of engagement by which they can move towards a shared common peace and prosperity. Each sides moderates are trying to weigh what the can give, what they must keep and how can they compromise. The extremes, however, on each side, however, believe that the other side has no right to any of the territory, and in fact has no right to exist. There are inevitably those within the extreme fringes of both camps who believe they have the right, duty and opportunity to intervene in the dialogue by, say, blowing up a restaurant, or by expelling families from a village. These extreme actions force the moderates further away from a common ground, force each side into an increasingly polarized and unreconcilable position, and tend to make any solution impossible. The agenda, one of finding a mutually beneficial compromise, gets hijacked to protecting oneself or maintaining order.
I don’t want to get side tracked into discussing it in detail but rather wish to point out as an example some of what has happened over the last two weeks in the USA concerning the issues of racial disparity in policing and how to find a meaningful solution to an issue which I believe most people recognize as a problem.
Any mass protest will draw some who find an opportunity to cause some mayhem. I believe most moderates both on the relatively right and the relatively left of the nation would have wanted to move through that towards confronting and solving some of the more pressing underlying problems.
The president took a far extreme position of insisting that so called law and order be maintained by the use of overwhelming force, invoking the militarization of the police and calling for the possibility of lethal force.
A more moderate and much larger segment responded with enormous peaceful marches and protests, and condemnation of the president by a very large and respected cohort of military and political leaders, even of his own party. It seemed that  the effort of the extreme to hijack the agenda away from the need to find meaningful progress in the relationship between police and population was not successful, had in fact backfired, and a large, general, perhaps actionable consensus seemed about to form that such progress was necessary and that until it came, there would be large but peaceful expressions of protest, including some as creative as renaming the site of the greatest police violence “Black Lives Matter” Plaza. I am sure the president loved that.
But then the extreme on the other side decided it was their turn to hijack the agenda. The city council of Minneapolis voted to disband the police.
Shall we imagine what would happen then? Lets say the thousands of police officers agreed, and simply laid down their badges,  (but not their guns!) and walked off the job. Maybe a couple of these dismissed officers now need to put food on the table. Where better to take it than from businesses, stores and the other citizens. They have the guns, they can do it. What are you going, call the police?
I am not going to go further with this train of thought, this argument, because this example in itself is not the point, the point I wish to make is that we must be on guard, no matter where we fall along a political spectrum, to guard against the inevitable tendency for the extremes, the fringes, to take over the conversation, and prevent a meaningful solution to the problem.
A house divided against itself cannot stand. The center must hold. We must find ways to seek common cause based on those values which we can discover we share.
The current site, the blogs and posts, is dedicated towards trying to find our common shared values and to arguing that we must come back as a nation to that shared center before we move forward.
In these pages I will try to derive what core American values are, and whether they are being pursued in the government we presently have.
So far there are three pages.
The next will take an historical episode in which the center could no hold, and look at some of the aspects and results of that time.

It is exaggeration, hyperbole and the cry of “the sky is falling” to say that these last few weeks have brought us to the brink of a new civil war. We are not in a new civil war.

It is not exaggeration to say, however that these few weeks have shown us that we could be heading towards one. The vast differences in the way whole swaths of the citizenry view current events, and more importantly, each other shows us, and shows the world that the divisions run so deep that civil war, I mean a real civil war, are no longer simply unimaginable. More seasoned observers have said as much.

Armed men calling themselves patriots occupy government buildings to protect what they call their rights, then threaten mayhem on others marching to protect the rights of others.

Our president not only threatens but uses active duty military to harm those engaged in their constitutional right of peaceable assembly, while some citizens on their own volition use deadly force against individuals in law enforcement.

Still the vast vast majority both of protestors and police, the vast vast majority I hope of those on moderate right and moderate left desperately want our nation to come together and succeed, survive and thrive.

But the extremes, the fringes of any movement tend to be able to hijack the agenda of the middle. If tens of thousands of police are concerned and compassionate professionals, a few dozen nation wide captured across a nation on video can brand the whole group an occupying force. If hundreds of thousands of citizens trying to find a way to peacefully but forcefully bring to a nations conscience the death of unarmed black men at the hands of that small group of police who abuse their power, well then a few hundred looters and arsonists can brand that movement as anarchists.

We must not let the extremes in our politics hijack the agenda of an entire nation, which is to make the lot of all improve, to survive and grow and thrive as a nation.

This blog is intended as a vehicle over the next few months to try to argue for us to search for and act on common ground a shared values.

I believe, and will try to articulate that in this particular election, our only hope as a nation, our hope to find common ground, will be to come home, come back, to the more sensible and centrist choice. In this case, this time, I will argue that the only sensible choice is the Democratic Party. Joe Biden is an experienced, sensible, and decent man, and could help bring us back in the direction if not all the way to the destination of being a unified nation.

Note, that may not always be true and perhaps not in every election, but this time it is.

Over the next few months I will try to discover and articulate what I believe are our shared values, our truths, our common ground.

I hope the reader will participate and share.

I have been sitting down to try to seek, understand, list and express what seem to me to be our core American values. I know I am not alone in feeling real fear and foreboding that our great nation, this great experiment in democracy, liberty and justice is precarious, that it is in danger.

America, we must come home.

We must find common ground. Remember our shared values. Reconnect with some unity of purpose.

Yes, I know. These are cliches. Shibboleths. Everyone says them. “All men are created equal”. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. “To form a more perfect Union”. These words once possessed near religious meaning. The were enough to create a nation. But what do they mean now? Too often empty expressions. Catch slogans. Blah blahs.

I have tried to discover, for myself, what do I believe are our common values. What binds us together as a people, a culture, a nation, an idea. If in fact, anything does. If we articulate what are our values, those ideals and principles we all really share, then maybe we can determine if we are being true to them, and if not, how might we be.

I started by listing for myself as many of what I believed were truly core American values as I could. Then I looked through my somewhat chaotic list of values several times, trying to find common threads, to group them, to make coherent what looked almost random.

I found that, in broad strokes, our American values, for me, fall into seven basic categories and principles.

1) We value a general respect for fairness.
Not that everybody’s lot be equal, but that the system is fair for everyone.
That the rules are developed in a manner which we can see and understand.
That the rules are applied evenly.
That everyone has the opportunity to make of themselves as much as their ability and effort can take them.
That we give each other a fair shake.
That each of us is expected to play by the rules.

2) We value a rule of law which is consistent, impartial, evenly distributed and upheld.

That the law for one person is the same as the law for another.
That justice is separate from politics, that leaders don’t use the judicial arm of the state to enforce their political purposes.
That there is a consistent and agreed upon set of constructs, principles and norms which govern every person fairly and impartially.
That every man and woman has “their day in court”.
That the courts are fair and honest.
That justice is, as they call it, “blind”.

3) We value a reliability, trustworthiness, dependability of our respect for tradition, our adherence to precedent, and to principle.

That our word is our bond, and that we are as ‘good as our word’, both at home and abroad.
That when we give our word, that when we make an agreement we can be expected to keep it.
We respect that value in individuals, calling it by names like integrity, and we value it as a nation.
We expect that our allies can count on us.
We expect that we will keep up our end of a bargain, that we will hold fast, not blindly, but whenever we can, to our end of the bargain to our word, to our principles, to our ideals, our norms and traditions.

4) We value truth, and honesty.
And also intellectual honesty. We don’t like it when politicians, scientists, public servants, the press, or anyone bends, slants or compromises facts, and the truth to fit their own private opinions and agendas.
We may not all agree on what is true, but we value the honest pursuit of truth.
We value a free exchange of ideas in a fair, open and available intellectual public square.

5) We value respect for the dignity and the rights of individuals.
Ideally of all individuals. Of all races, colors, genders, creeds, nationalities, it is in our DNA to do so.
We believe that individuals have intrinsic worth as human beings. Well meaning Americans may differ on whether that dignity and intrinsic worth of an individual automatically guarantees them, say, entrance to the country, for example, or government assistance – and those are fair policy disagreements to have, but as Americans we value individual rights and dignity. That includes those rights enshrined in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, of course, such as the right to peaceable assembly and a free press, but it also means a respect for certain traditional norms and standards. Although some may tolerate it to achieve other goals, I can’t really believe that taunts, slurs, insults, and ridicule are not what Americans wish to emulate in leaders.

6) We value in general a certain decency, a certain dignity, a decorum, standards, civility.
A certain willingness to respectfully listen to one another.
We may for a time decry “political correctness”, but we don’t really value in the long run public servants or leaders who speak like street toughs and ‘hooligans’, who are ill mannered, ill tempered, crude.

7) We value the ideal of progress, opportunity, a chance to succeed.
We cherish that each individual have a chance to have that mythical American Dream.
We value the ideal that each generation leaves the nation better than they found it.
We value the belief that we continue to improve and that the lives our our children will be filled with more opportunities and a better world than we had.
We value the notion that humanity can get better. We may not believe it, but we value it.

Of course there are so more things we value, our lives and our families and our safety, security, shelter, and the like, but those are common to all mankind. And I am sure there are values which I have either left out or expressed differently than others would have them, but the categories of values expressed above capture, I hope, a good deal of what it means to be an American.

And, America, we have to come home. Come home to American values. Come home to ourselves. To who we really are.

Now, I don’t wish to be too coy, or devious, or to make out as if this is part of mystery novel with an unexpected ending. This is at heart the beginning of a political statement, a series of political statements. The thesis of these statements will be that in the coming election the only way to come home and to honor our values as Americans is to vote democratic.

Note please, note well that I am not claiming that this will always be the case. There could well arise in future elections candidates who are conservatives, republicans for whom one could vote and still be upholding in every respect those values we cherish as Americans.

But not this time.

In future writings, and very soon I hope, I intend to show specifically why, based on these above stated values and on the actions of the current president and administration, to come home, to be America again, means to reject Donald Trump.

For the moment, and this is The Moment, I would respectfully beg the reader to consider these values, to ask if these are really fairly called American values, and if so, to ask how well they are being represented in the current administration and the environment they have created.

Then we well talk again soon.