Critical National 2020 Elections

For the last year, nearly everything I've read about the coming national elections has been about how to defeat Trump and why that goal is so important. Perhaps that's a reflection of my leftist politics since it indicates I haven't paid much attention to articles extolling Trump's presidency (gag) and pumping up his re-election chances (super gag).

If you sit back and think about what has happened these past three plus years, it might be that the election of Democratic candidates for the Senate is at the very least as critical as kicking Trump back to New York City. I write that because of his many judicial, Supreme Court, Cabinet, and regulatory agency appointments. Unlike his Cabinet and agency appointments, judges and justices serve for life and Trump has appointed a ton of right-wingers to those positions. Some of those appointees will be with us for up to 40 and more years.

But even if Trump would be re-elected, God forbid, a Senate controlled by Democrats will limit his ability to appoint the worst of the conservative lot to the bench and to other prominent positions. And if you don't agree with that idea, simply consider Trump's recent announcement of his desire to appoint one of his White House attorneys as the Inspector General overseeing the two trillion-dollar covid-19 slush fund just passed by Congress. If that doesn’t give you pause, I’m not sure what would.

What I'd like you to consider is volunteering to work in the campaigns of Democratic candidates for the Senate. Yes, things right now prohibit such activities or constrain them drastically. But the current situation will not last forever. Plus, campaign contributions do not require you to leave the house or shake hands with potential voters, infected or not. I have no specific candidates in mind, only that they have the potential of defeating the sitting Republican Senator in whatever state you live.

Perhaps, during this period of extended time off from our "normal" lives, you might take time to consider how you could respond to this vital national issue. The last thing I want is for people to be so focused on defeating Trump that we lose the many battles for the Senate and have that rat bastard Mitch McConnell to deal with again.

Please think about what I'm proposing. I’m convinced electing Democratic candidates to the Senate is critical to our nation's future and that we all should be involved in trying to make a difference in this matter.

Today’s America: Unrelenting Demagoguery and Profiles in Cowardice

What are we, American citizens with little voice in the body politic other than the ability to vote, to think of events in today’s Washington? Especially, what are we to think about the actions and postures of Republican Senators regarding the impeachment of President Trump? Those questions are difficult, even gut-wrenchingly difficult, because we are all well-schooled in the powerful and seductive myths of America the Exceptional, America the Beautiful, America the Home of the Brave and Land of the Free. Yet, what we see happening in Washington gives the lie to those comforting myths.

I’m not interested in re-hashing the well-established facts about what President Trump did to merit impeachment. Without question, statements from his own mouth clearly establish his involvement in various nefarious acts. What I’m concerned about is the state of America as a political institution after three years of Trump’s unrelenting demagoguery and GOP Congressional profiles in cowardice as they turned sightless eyes to presidential perfidy.

If the authors of our founding documents and the famous Federalist Papers saw the effects of mindless partisanship and mind-numbingly brutal demagoguery, it was through a glass darkly. If they had been able to see clearly what their political system was capable of, they would have blanched at the thought of a Donald Trump aided by elected GOP sycophants and hastened to revise what they had written.

But that never happened. We are stuck with their blindness and with a political institution that seems to value partisanship over truth and factual reality. What to do? The situation is far from hopeless. Our eyes should be focused on unseating the Demagogue-In-Chief and as many of his GOP ass-kissers as we can and electing people who believe in the rule of law and in the People rather than in corporations.

The problem is a great many conservatives actively dislike or even detest Trump for the blatant asshole he is but will vote for him because he is appointing conservative judges/justices, is coming down hard on immigrants, and is reducing the regulatory duties of federal agencies; here you better be thinking clean air and clean water among many others. Those folks will never see the light of reason; we must ignore them and appeal to people who do. It will come down to one thing only: supporting and voting for a Democratic candidate who has a real chance to win in November.

If we want to change the current reality, all of us, and that means ALL OF US, have to get active in the coming political process. And that means NOW.

Ignoring the Deplorables

Remember when Hillary Clinton made that now infamous statement in a New York City campaign rally about half of Trump’s supporters belonging in a “basket of deplorables”? Here’s another important section of that statement about those supporters:

"They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic – Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he [Trump] has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America."

I don’t know about you but I instantly cringed when I heard Clinton’s speech despite agreeing with her characterization. My reaction was purely political; I strongly suspected it would damage Clinton and her campaign and felt she would have been better off if she had never said anything remotely like it.

But, from today’s perspective of seeing Trump as President for three years, you have to ask yourself: was Clinton wrong in her assessment? Are many of his supporters white nationalists, racists, sexists, homophobes, xenophobes, and right wing-nuts who are militantly anti-immigration? Obviously.

The question you should be asking yourself is, so what? What I mean is, if you are a student of American history you should not be surprised by Clinton’s characterization since it is right on target. Come on, slavery is a dark stain on our vaunted political system. You think slave owners and those Northern bankers and manufacturers who supported them weren’t racists? Immigrant Germans, Irish, Italians, Jews and many others in succeeding waves were reviled and treated like vermin by white Americans. Japanese, Chinese, East Asians, and others were denied the right of citizenship because they were not white. Women were denied the vote for nearly a hundred and fifty years and the Equal Rights Amendment still has very little chance of passing. African-Americans were systematically terrorized by state and local governments during Jim Crow while the federal government and judiciary turned their blind eyes elsewhere while favoring white Americans.

My point is simple. A substantial proportion of Americans have always been white nationalists, racists, sexists, homophobes, xenophobes, and right wing-nuts who are militantly anti-immigration. If Democrats are to be successful in defeating that rapscallion Trump, we have to stop looking at those deplorables and instead remember the other basket of people in Hillary Clinton’s statement at that rally in New York City:

"But . . . that "other" basket of people are people who feel the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures; and they're just desperate for change. It doesn't really even matter where it comes from. They don't buy everything he says, but — he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won't wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they're in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well."

It’s that other basket Democrats/liberals must focus on, not the deplorables whose minds are made up and most likely won’t be changed. My great fear is that the present leading presidential candidates have not fully grasped what I believe is the most salient point in this election: appealing to the liberal base will bring the same results as in 2016. And that spells disaster for this country.

Letter to Congress

The companies profiting from tracking our every move via cell phone apps with software development kits (SDK) can’t be expected to voluntarily limit their practices. Please don’t even think that the data those companies are collecting are really anonymous, because that has been shown to be demonstrably false (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/location-tracking-cell-phone.html). If a hacker wanted, she could track the movements of the nation’s elected leadership and top security officials using their cell phone data from their homes to their offices and back and know every place where they went in between and every person with a cell phone they came in contact with. Right now no law prevents data gathering companies from selling that data to whoever wants to buy it, whether for commercial, political, or nefarious purposes.

The plain truth is we, the American public, no longer have a real choice about our privacy because unregulated cell phone tracking affects nearly everyone indiscriminately. The solution is straightforward and simple: Congress has to step in to protect the privacy of consumers and their rights as American citizens by passing basic laws to protect people from a largely unregulated industry that already has demonstrated it recognizes few boundaries regarding privacy. We need those laws now and it does not matter which political party we support since everyone with a cell phone is being tracked. Everyone.

So, the question boils down to this: what are you going to do to protect our privacy rights from firms that are now organized specifically to exploit our cell phone location data? I’m specifically talking about laws that should control what companies can do with the location data they collect. A pertinent example is “purpose limitation,” which means companies can only use location data for the reason they specify and not sell it to other firms to do with it what they want. It’s time to get moving on this extraordinarily important issue. The real question is where will you be in that effort?

Canyon Dreams: a Book to Treasure

For many of us, searching for that great book, the one with the story that hooks you through the heart and refuses to let go, is a sort of a Holy Grail journey, never to be satisfied; though some stories come close, most do not. For me, Canyon Dreams is the real deal, that once in a lifetime tale that makes you laugh and cry, makes you wonder why the world is so fucked up, keeps you on the edge of your chair, and makes you want to hug the characters who leap off the pages and into your heart.

Canyon Dreams is an unlikely tale of a little known sports phenomena, rez ball, that frenetic version of high school basketball played in the tribal reservations of the arid Southwest. Although it is a sports story, at heart it is so much more that it's difficult for me to articulate this amazing book's many incredible facets.

Instead of focusing on the game, the author, the masterful Michael Powell (New York Times sports columnist), presents non-linear vignettes from the life of a community and culture that is foreign to almost all Americans, the Navajo, and subtly pulls the reader into the story until you feel the joy, suffering, pain, and hopes-dreams of the players, and understand the drive of their indomitable coach, Raul Mendoza, who refuses to let his players or the many students he counsels slip into despair and suicide.

Although I am not usually a fan of sports literature, I can tell you without exaggeration that the book is truly extraordinary and should be on your reading list.

Trump Is Impeached

Question: Is it time to celebrate or time to rail against the blatant bias of Donald Trump’s political opponents?

I am not a Trump apologist but neither are my eyes closed to the human weaknesses and venality so well exposed by the actions of both Democrats and Republicans in Washington and in state assemblies throughout the country. Let’s be honest; the lack of civility has long been a prominent feature of American politics. Without getting overtly religious, I suppose we can call it the result of what Catholics believe is Original Sin that affects all humans. Whether you accept that doctrine or not is somewhat immaterial as most people believe it expresses the innate weakness of humans and our propensity to commit acts that are harmful. In other words, we believe being “sinful” is part of the human condition.

Assuming that statement to be true, then why are so many liberals upset with the behavior of President Trump? After all, Jack Kennedy slept around with plenty of women not his spouse and was not roundly condemned or held up to public ridicule. As did Presidents Johnson and Warren Harding. Either President Reagan or Vice-President Bush was involved up to his eyeballs in the Irangate scandal yet neither suffered consequences of that illegal behavior. President Bush Jr. lied shamelessly to the American public and to Congress about Saddam Hussein and he skated. Yeah, Trump isn't perfect but who is?

What is it about Trump that has rubbed so many Democrats and others so raw until the only remedy they can see is impeachment? Here’s my take on that fascinating subject.

Many Americans more or less wrote off George W and people like Sarah Palin as amiable idiots and not as pathological or serial liars. Most of those Americans believe Donald Trump has not discovered any lines he would hesitate to cross in the pursuit of wealth and self-aggrandizement. I believe anti-Trumpers see him as so brazenly immoral and unstable that he is inherently dangerous to the very institutional fabric on which America was built.

Here’s why I believe anti-Trumpers pushed so hard for his impeachment. For those Americans, Trump’s extraordinary character flaws are so grotesque and contemptable they put him beyond the pale of acceptable behavior. He flaunts convention, thumbs his nose at what had previously been universally accepted presidential norms, openly and unashamedly lies about what impartial observers recognize as factual, lacks ordinary decency and morality, exhibits such extreme narcissism that would in other circumstances be ludicrous, ignores and publically berates his advisors, is unabashedly vulgar and dishonest, and engages in abusive bullying. Hey, what’s to like about the guy?

Well, many conservatives love Trump because they see him as ripping the false facades from his political opponents, showing them to be the “whitened sepulchers” they are. Yeah, he’s a bully but he bullies people who need to be taken down a peg or two. Maybe his Twitter posts are a little rough but he says what he feels, which is something Washington politicians have never done. Plus, his judicial appointments have conservatives dancing in the streets. Hey, what’s not to like about the guy?

We have a situation where impeachment will solve not one thing and thus all America, blue state/red state, will have to wait until November 2020 for a definitive solution. Not very satisfactory but our Founders never thought our political system would fail so spectacularly and thus failed themselves and our nation by not incorporating in the Constitution more stringent safeguards against blind political partisanship.

Why I Support Donald Trump

Donald Trump has taken America to new heights, no doubt. His accomplishments in changing America are unparalleled. What other President has done any of the following?

• Corrected the electoral process by proving the election was rigged and that millions of fraudulent votes were cast for Hillary Clinton. 

• Treated immigrants with appropriate disdain while restricting their due process rights.

• Normalized mendacity as he demonized the press for “fake news” stories. 

• Characterized neo-Nazis and white supremacists as “fine people.” 

• Taken money from state governors staying at his hotels. 

• Bragged about grabbing beautiful women by their "pussies."

• Hosted high-level foreign officials and their delegations at his golf clubs and hotels. 

• Offered to host a GS 7 summit at his Miami resort-golf course. 

• Sided with Russia against his own intelligence services. 

• Called Haiti and African nations “shit-hole” countries. 

• Praised a dictator who has subjected his people to crushing poverty and famine as he rides in bullet-proof limos and is a leading purchaser of the world’s most expensive liquors. 

• Held up his National Security Council professional staff to public ridicule. 

• Pressured the elected leader of a foreign nation to collect dirt on a political opponent running for the American presidency.

The answer to all these questions is simple: No President, ever. EVER. What remarkable accomplishments. That’s why I’m proud to support Trump for King, I mean President. MAGA.