The Center Holds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was not happy that he was still president.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This president is apparently different.

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

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

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

We will never be America again.

I hope I am being paranoid today. I hope that the President – Elect’s calm demeanor, counsel to have patience and conciliatory message will win the day. But prominent commentators are worried and see danger. I have a bad feeling about this. I hope I am just being paranoid. We shall see.

After a day of full out joy and jubilation at Joe Biden’s election, it appears the current president may be digging in to use the weapons of government as a tool in such a manner as to run perilously close to the borders of authoritarianism. I hesitate to use the word fascism, because the overwhelmingly negative connotations of the word make it difficult to use with objectivity. However Trump’s behavior smacks of it.  Fascism is the establishment of unified political control, usually by a right wing “strong man”, heralded by the use of governmental instruments of force to suppress dissent. Cancelling the results of an election and using military force to eliminate or intimidate opposition would be key factors in such a transition. Historians see troubling parallels, and the very rapid escalation in the last twenty – four hours should give cause for deep concern, if not genuine fear, to all who respect the norms of freedom. To all who treasure the sacred expectations, standards and processes in what could turn out to be our frighteningly fragile democracy. 

Refusal to accept the results of an election would be typical of a fascist regime. Every other election been called by the AP since 1848. For well over one hundred and fifty years. And one of the reasons it is respected is its consistency. The AP, unlike the networks, held back in calling the 2000 election. The same crop of politicians who now decry the “media calling the election” were only too happy with media calls in 2016, and in fact in every other election since before the Civil War. 

But we could tolerate taking a few days to grouse, complain and blame. What we cannot tolerate, and will not survive as a democracy is what appears to be a systematic attempt to use the instruments of state power, which belong to the American people, as instruments to impose the political will of one party and suppress the dissent of the other. We do not use the powers of police and military to enforce one party rule. That is totalitarianism. 

Yet that is what it appears this president is willing to do.  

Trump’s instruction to William Barr to aggressively seek out evidence of election fraud, even as increasingly public officials, even Republicans of stature deny it is so egregious a misuse of power that it has lead career prosecutors to resign in protest. 

CNN reports that Richard Pilger, director of the elections crimes branch in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, told colleagues in an email that the attorney general was issuing “an important new policy abrogating the forty-year-old Non-Interference Policy for ballot fraud investigations in the period prior to elections becoming certified and uncontested.” Pilger also forwarded the memo to colleagues in his resignation letter.” The nation’s most senior person responsible for the integrity of our election process, in other words, cannot stomach the obvious authoritarian interference by this administration.

The use of state power against his political opponents has long been a Trump Trick, but so far it has been rhetorical (“Lock her up”), partially because he has been busy using state power to protect his own cronies from the law, and partially because he has received some push back from a legal system which still clings to independence. However many career prosecutors have called Trump a danger to the rule of law, and many have warned that a second Trump administration would lead to much greater dangers of the totalitarian abuse of state police power.

As dangerous and abhorrent as this authoritarian transformation of the norms of our justice system is, it’s threat to our democracy is palpably worsened by Trump’s second and even more alarming move yesterday, which was to fire the Secretary of Defense Mike Esper.

Now why would he do that? Could it be that Esper is on record as refusing to allow the military to be used as a tool to crush political dissent? He said as much when federal forces using tear gas, stun grenades and helicopter air waves to disperse peaceful protestors. One might conclude, with fear and revulsion, that Trump is preparing the ground to employ active duty military to violently suppress the overwhelming protest he must know he will receive if/when he does whatever he can to suppress the people’s voice. I shudder to wonder whether he is preparing the ground to have someone in place, should, God forbid, it come to that. Someone who would not balk at the raw use of the military to hold on to power. Else why fire a secretary of defense in what is already a vulnerable period, the transition time in what the world regards as the last weeks of your administration?

He has replaced Esper with Chris Miller, who has a strong resume in counter terrorism, more than in classical military. Some who know Miller say of him that “he will not be that person who is going to help achieve political objectives using the department’s tremendous resources and authorities”.  One can hope. LOL But it is also said about him that in his counterintelligence career he was known to focus “on fusing intelligence with local …dynamics to navigate complex urban battlefields”. 

Let us just pray that the complex urban battlefields which Trump has chosen him to navigate are not our own.

Of course, it is too early to worry. Things will proceed according to reason, fairness and law, Republicans will stand for decency, and the republic will endure. 

Won’t it?

I had told myself that after the election, win, lose or draw, I would give up on blogging, tweeting, commenting and facebooking about it all for an indefinite time. I had spent too many hundreds of hours, too much money and too much emotional resources, I realistically have little to no effect, and that enormous energy spent could be used elsewhere.

I had planned one further and last post in which I was going to be pretentious enough to offer my ‘advice’ to the President and Vice-president elect, and that that advice was going to be to LISTEN. To have a “Listening Tour” of the vast swath of states in the middle of this country, just to listen and try to learn what it has been that democrats have missed for so long. I think such an outreach would be healing to all.

It is, I confess, saddening to feel that I have to record one more argument before that more positive vision which would, and will, precede a protracted “radio silence” on my part, and that is to ask those people who are following the 45th president down that sink hole of refusing to accept the election results to just stop and think about it logically. To use your heads which can be objective, not for the moment your hearts, which I know must be hurt and angry and disappointed.

I get it. You are pissed. There is room for some “pay back”. There were protracted marches in November 2016 with people chanting “Not my President”, and so there is certainly room for some resentment and wish to get back. I would just ask those who want to pay back whether they remember the outgoing administration, or the then defeated candidate of the other party obstructing the transition. As I recall, protests nonwithstanding, Hillary was gracious and Barack Obama helpful. But never mind that. Let’s just look at the logic.

The current president has made the assertion that there was wide spread voter fraud and if there hadn’t been, he would have won.

Now I know that science and expert analysis are considered suspect by some, but everyone wants, I believe, to be logical, consistent and thoughtful. Those are not uniquely Democratic values, they are American, bipartisan, and human.

We can analyze the assertion logically, asking three questions.

One. Would a Biden victory be so unusual, so unexpected that we have to invoke outside factors to account for such an occurrence? If an occurrence is totally unanticipated and makes no sense, then we have to look for a cause. I voted for McGovern against Reagan (yes, I am that old!) but I was not in the least surprised when Reagan won in histories largest landslide. Reagan was enormously popular, enormously well liked, the country as safe and prosperous, and even though many of us didn’t like his conservativism, every one ‘liked’ him. It was no surprise that 49 states were red that year. If McGovern had won – then we would have had to wonder why!

In 2016 Clinton was strongly and consistently favored to win in virtually every poll, and that is why when Trump won, people may have wondered about other factors, and that may be why the Russia story gained such traction.

Don’t think of your self as arguing with me. If you were to ask yourself, in your most logical mind, and be as honest with that logical mind as if you were – say – speaking in front of God, is it really that surprising that Biden would win? After all, Hillary won the popular vote by millions. And while Trump may well have been one of our nations more consequential presidents, he was never one of its most widely popular. He spoke to his base, and his general popularity never topped 50%. It may have touched it the day they killed Isis’s leader, but dropped back and has never been more than in the 40’s. Then he was impeached, and received a bipartisan vote to convict, although well less than that needed to convict. Shortly after the Corona virus hit, the economy collapsed, and despite a steady drumbeat that it was soon over, millions are infected, hundreds of thousands dead, tens of millions out of work. Furthermore, Biden’s lead in the polls has been consistent and universal, so much so that democrats had to work overtime to keep themselves from growing complacent.

So, if even the most ardent Trump supporter is truly honest, I think they would have to answer question one, “is it really all that surprising that Biden would win”, “is it so unexpected a finding that you have to invoke another factor”, that no, a Biden victory was not so unexpected or unusual that one has to assume some other factor. Even if you wanted Trump to win, you would have had to admit that the opposite result was likely.

Two. Is there any actual evidence of voter fraud? Not that you thought there had to be, or assumed there were, or were told there was. Has anyone come forth with real data, or witnesses, or documents to show that tens of thousands of improper ballots were cast? If there were such evidence – wouldn’t it have surfaced? The president will have his day in court, and the chance to submit evidence. So far no one has seen any, and every such noted fiery eyed socialist liberals as Chris Christie and President George W Bush have said the election was fair. You know, the idea of innocent until proven guilty was all the rage when Democrats asserted electoral malfeasance on the part of the Trump campaign. Why so quick to assume interference now?

Three. Is the source of the accusation an impartial and objective source? If, for example, the UN, or some international body, or an impartial public watch dog, or, some respected bipartisan committee raised a flag – someone detached from either campaign and independently interested in the justice and impartiality of the American electoral system -then I might say it was time wonder. In this case, the only party crying foul is the person who lost the election.

When a sports team is convincingly beaten, and raises objections over the referees calls, do we suggest playing the game over?

Just use logic. There is no reason, for anyone who has had eyes open for the last several years to doubt that the Biden victory was at least as likely, based on history, popularity, approval ratings, and polls, as the opposite. There is no evidence which has been accepted as credible to a court or to a public voice of voter fraud, and there is every reason to recognize that the one party crying foul is the only person to benefit.

Let’s just use our heads.

Our democracy and the world’s regard is at stake.

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.