If We Last That Long......

Well, some good news for a change….America is waking up.  There are some patriots after all.  Murkowski, Collins, and McCain apparently have not lost their grip on reality.  I thought Lindsay Graham would have been the fourth of that quartet, but alas, after spitting fire over the prospective firing of Jeff Sessions and Bob Meuller, he caved and voted yes to a ‘Skinny’ measure that would hurt millions.  I ....almost loved him.

I am dumbfounded by the inability of what should be rational men and women to sit together and forge some repairs to the Affordable Care Act!  What is wrong with these people?  Are they hell bent on cutting off their noses to spite their faces??  Why can’t they stop being children and sit down with the opposition and craft something that will help people.  ACA is the law of the land.  It is treasonous to not administer the law, which is what the Executive Branch is threatening. 

Congressional Republicans, alas, seem to be single minded about destroying something that is actually working….flawed, but working!  In fact, the actual architecture of the ACA was created once upon a time by Conservative Republicans of the Heritage Foundation.  Mitt Romney actually passed a version of it in Massachusetts once upon a time and it worked pretty well..Somehow because ACA has the name Obama attached to it, it is suddenly poison.

Ah well, there is no explaining irrationality.  It simply is, and it is our responsibility to weed it out in 2018….if we last that long. 

On a positive note, here is a chart courtesy of MSNBC that shows an interesting and hopeful statistic:

This chart tracks the historical number of potential candidates who have filed as challengers to House seats and raised $5000 for the next years election.  This is encouraging.  Note that in 2009 the Republicans hit a high point in the number of challengers.  The 2010 election resulted in the Republicans gaining control of the House after Obama’s election in 2008.  What do you think this means for 2018?

So maybe there will be a return to reality next year…..if we last that long.

My clarion call has always been to engage our next generation in a call to public service.  It is the only way we can have a progressive vision for the future.  The ancient concretized Republican gerrymanderers must be rooted out to see any appreciable change.

And finally, it should give all of us some comfort that the separation of powers and inherent checks and balances that our genius founders implanted in the Constitution actually seem to work.  A bit creaky with age, but nonetheless effective.  As McCain aptly pointed out in the Senate a few days ago, the Congress is not ‘less than’ the Executive branch, it is ‘equal to’.  And slowly, some Republican Senators are actually realizing they have no fealty to an incompetent maniac.  We should all nourish their emerging awareness….if we last that long.

Tick, Tick, Tock!

I really want to write something a little more positive, but as each day unfolds we witness another egregious assault on the truth by Trump and his minions.  It is emotionally exhausting and all of us just twist our heads in bewilderment as we watch all of the carefully constructed elements of truth, justice and the American way circle the drain and disappear.

However, since the appearance at the Boy Scout Jamboree over the weekend by Trump, there seems to be a tangible, subtle change in the overall zeitgeist of the country regarding our angst over the continuing nightmare we are all living through.  It’s almost like this event has taken us one step too far, and it is dawning on more and more 'fence-sitters' that we have an immoral maniac in the White House. 

Many of us have expressed that sentiment before this moment, but now we are seeing cracks in the support of his supplicants.  It’s probable that his most ardent supporters will always blindly accept his actions and policy decisions, because to disagree with him or abandon him would mean that they had made a bad decision in voting for him.  That would mean they would have to admit that they were totally ‘conned’ by his campaign.  Never happen.

But now there are so many indications of madness (Transgender ban; irrational and constant blaming of Democrats and Clinton; incessant lying and distractive tweeting; clear non-understanding of even the most basic of issues; the vindictive accusations and threats to members of his own party) along with the inaction of the complete Republican machine with it’s inability to move any issue of consequence forward, that our government is paralyzed.  Paralyzed by constant conversation about how the Rule of Law is being fractured, we are all exhausted.

Turn on the news and see if there is anything being discussed that resembles debate about critical issues that our government is supposed to be dealing with. Crickets!  It seems that the Russians have succeeded in their objective, which has always been to create chaos in our democracy. 

For the past 7 months the Trump administration has dissembled so many of our societal safeguards, that it will take a long time to re-establish rationality and justice to our society once we rid ourselves of this abscess in our government.

The looming threat is something we are unprepared to deal with—a real crisis that will require coherent administrative leadership to solve a problem like North Korea or a financial breakdown or something dramatic.

God help us if we face a crisis moment with Trump in the White House.  Let’s hope that this subtle change in our awareness of the menace of the “President” leads to renewed resolve before we fall victim to our own inaction.

Who Will Say "Enough!"?

Every day that dawns gives us another reason to fear for the future of our country.  I know all the reasons why everyone is so upset about this administration, but now I have a greater fear.

I read yesterday that all of us, Democrats, Republicans, Independents—are getting weary of the 24/7 Trumpiness of the news.  From all outlets we get a never-ending repeating stream of descriptions of all that we are losing, all that he is saying, endless analysis of every word and how everyone is outraged by this statement or that statement.

The fact is that the guy is anti-democracy.  Everything he is doing, feeling, demanding, lambasting, planning, arguing is:

a)simply not articulate enough to be understood; b)changes from moment to moment, confounding everyone;

c) truly destructive to his oath to defend the Constitution

All of that is compounded by a Republican party in power that chooses to remain powerless, pursues greed and has no compassion for anyone, puts party ahead of patriotism and allegiance to our Constitution, and believes that government should direct all our lives both biologically and economically even though they profess just the opposite.

But the fear I have is that we are all becoming desensitized to this new condition which is corrupting our perception of why we are in such peril.

Columnists are quick to talk a good game of why we should all be concerned, but what is happening to counter all this stuff going on?  Who is saying “Enough!”? 

No one.  Each egregious action or statement is met with eye-blinking disbelief, but no one is saying “Stop!”

Do my countrymen actually believe it’s ok to re-organize the Department of Justice so that the FBI and all police power should be at the beck and call of the President?  Trump suggested that last night in his interview.  Do all my countrymen really think that repealing the ACA will make things better?  Demonstrations by people all over the country seem to say otherwise, but Trump and our representatives seem to be the last people on earth to be able to be moved by them.

I have argued for a long time that we need to have a renewed effort to teach our children what the tenets of democracy are, in the context of re-invigorated efforts to teach civics and government.  If we don’t start doing that immediately, there will be no salvation from the disintegrating path we are on as a society.

-->

Someone in Congress or some powerful organizations in our society (AARP, ACLU, Disabled American Veterans, Amnesty International, Save the Children, BBB, Ted Talks, Council on Foreign Relations, Chamber of Commerce, American Medical Assn., League of Women Voters, Planned Parenthood, American Bar Assn., NAACP, etc.) needs to raise their collective hands and say, “Enough!  Impeach!”

When Does It Stop?

Every day just seems to make it worse.  How is it that Ivanka Trump is qualified enough to sit at the table with all the leaders at the G20 in place of her father, no less!  Does she have years of experience in government or years of training in macro-economics? 

We are watching our reputation as a country turn to dust.  The entire global community is now opposed most of the positions of the US on climate change, open trade issues, isolationist steel policies, Nato defense to name just a few major sticking points.

Then there was the meeting with Putin.  “It was an honor to meet you!”, says our President to the man who engineered and lead a cyber-attack on our country.  Where are those balls that he is supposed to have to stand up for our democracy?  It seems Vlad keeps them in little steel box in his pocket!

And in the middle of all this, our ‘President’ spends his time tweeting about John Podesta not turning over a server to the CIA, which is ludicrous on several levels.  Meeting with the leaders of the world is apparently less important than incorrectly blasting someone who is completely inconsequential to his current responsibilities. 

All of this is going to end badly.

Just how much of this are today’s Republicans going to stand for before they admit that the damage this man and his family are doing to our country is catastrophic.  When will insulting and denigrating our intelligence services and insulting and denigrating our former President finally precipitate action to save our democracy from its dismantling at the hands of our modern day Nero.

There is so much going wrong here that it is hard to imagine being able to fix it until Patriots finally emerge from the catatonia that currently defines the condition of Congress.  Democrats can’t do it alone.  What is it going to take?  Is there no salvation from this?  I can’t imagine the state of our republic by 2020.

It was only a few short months ago that I couldn’t conceive of Lindsay Graham or John McCain being President---I would welcome them with open arms now!