The Enablers of Hope

One of my arch-conservative extreme right wing acquaintances just posted something on my Facebook page that has me hyperventilating:

The Democrats are doing Exactly what Hitler did... He used the Youth to disarm and Control the People This is scary!

I am stunned that he could even draw this parallel!  It shows the kind of mind numbing idiocy that afflicts one third of our population.  His reason for believing this ridiculous idea is that in his mind George Soros is behind it.  He is claiming (without presenting a shred of evidence, I might add) that Soros is funding the entire effort that culminated this weekend with millions of people worldwide demonstrating and standing for rational thinking about gun legislation.  I am aghast.

He is equating the Hitler Youth organization with the March for Life Organization.  For those of you who don’t remember what the Hitler Youth organization was, here is a short definition of its origins, mission and objectives from Wikipedia:

The members of the Hitler Youth were viewed as ensuring the future of Nazi Germany and were indoctrinated in Nazi ideology, including racism.  Many activities closely resembled military training, with weapons training, assault course circuits and basic tactics. The aim was to instill the motivation that would enable its members to fight faithfully for Nazi Germany as soldiers. There was great emphasis on physical fitness and hardness and military training than on academic study.  Sacrifice for the cause was inculcated into their training. The Hitler Youth were used to break up Church youth groups, and in anti-Church indoctrination, used to spy on religious classes and Bible studies and interfere with church attendance. Education and training programs for the Hitler Youth were designed to undermine the values of the traditional elitist structures of German society along with their privileges; their training also aimed at an obliteration of social and intellectual distinctions between the classes, so as to be replaced and dominated by the political goals of Hitler's totalitarian dictatorship.^[  Besides promoting a doctrine of classlessness, additional training was provided that linked state-identified enemies such as Jews with Germany's previous defeat in the First World War, and societal decline. As historian Richard Evans observes, "The songs they sang were Nazi songs. The books they read were Nazi books.

So, my ‘friend’ is trying to persuade all of us that there is an equivalence between the Nazi Youth movement and the goals and objectives of millions of rising teenagers who represent the new movement to obtain rational change in our society.  What he doesn’t even acknowledge is that the Hitler Youth was an organization that was designed to destroy societal norms and promote racism and authoritarian dictatorship.  How does that compare with millions of youth, their parents and other major parts of our society being angry at the segments of our population and government that value the possession of guns more than the lives of our children?  And by the way, is this all a Democratic plot?  The fact that some actually believe and promote this parallel is so appalling that it defies true definition!

There had to be a deficit somewhere in our educational system that resulted in people promoting that kind of thinking.  It is not rational.  However it seems, hopefully, that this line of reasoning is confined to a strata of our society that is going to pass from the scene sooner rather than later.  What the youth movement of today has illustrated is that the rising generation of Americans who are coming of age and will soon make their voting power felt are motivated by humanistic values and objectives as opposed to the economic cynicism of the previous generation.

This is a generation of Americans that is adept at social media and has a unified identity that previous generations could not achieve.  They are instantaneously connected and share common ideas and motivations.  They have grown up together in an environment where they all are afraid to go to school!  The current generation of adults never had that kind of fear on a daily basis which probably explains their inability to empathize with the anger, fear and frustration felt by victims of this ongoing assault.  It is this vacuous understanding that contributes to current non-action.

The February 14^th massacre at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida was the final cathartic tipping point that awakened the pent up and unrecognized emotional tsunami resulting from years of inaction and “thoughts and prayers” instead of much needed regulation.  It was bound to happen, but the surprise is that the wave of action and mobilization came from an unexpected source…the victims!  And these are no ordinary victims.  These are articulate, highly motivated, angry, victimized young people who have mastered the new communication technologies.  They want change and seem driven to rid our government of corrupt decision makers who take money from the NRA and then stand in the way of any kind of rational regulation.  It is inspiring.

So, what are the prospects for change given this new force in the electorate?

Expect real political involvement by this new generation in November.  We are going to see a hopeful change in the complexion of our representatives.  It will take two more election cycles for a complete change to be effected, but each successive election will move the needle away from where it rests now.  Perhaps the most important impact will be a change in control in the House of Representatives that will break the chains of incompetence and rigid economic servility to lobbyists and vested interests that have gridlocked our democracy.

There are new energetic and intelligent voices in the political biosphere that are

going to push progress and change.    It will take time, but what we have witnessed over the past couple of months is the first real indication that there is hope on the horizon.

--> The most important thing that you can do?  Vote in the primaries and the general election….be sure that the people you support do not take money from corporations and vested interests that operate NOT in your best interest.  Representatives work for US!  Never forget that.

Are You Scared Yet?

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Don’t you feel like you are in an 18-wheeler and hurtling down a hill with no brakes?  Instinctively you know that one of the upcoming curves is going to be too sharp to survive….

That is what we all are feeling after the last 48 hours and the departure of Gen. McMaster and the appointment of John Bolton.  It is clear that President Trump has morphed into a President that wants to exercise increasing power, and erase whatever boundaries remain to our system of checks and balances and separation of powers.  Think about this---he is appointing people to run our government who are commentators at Fox News and expert at throwing verbal bombshells!  The complexion of our governing officials has changed overnight to emphasize impulsiveness, conspiracy theory and warmongering!

Mueller’s Russia probe is clearly in danger at the hands of the new legal team led by Fox News commentator, DeGenova—well known for his unsubstantiated belief that the “Deep State” is conspiring to frame President Trump for unwarranted crimes.  War looms on the horizon as the National Security Advisor appointee Bolton, known and reviled for his long held desire to attack North Korea pre-emptively and to trash the Iran Agreement that will assuredly lead to renewed activity by the Iranians to develop nuclear weapons, assumes his post.  This surely will lead to Israeli action and middle east conflict.  The new Secretary of State nominee, Mike Pompeo, shares the same yearning for conflict with North Korea and Iran.  Our fearless President just imposed $60 billion in new tariff restrictions on China that will surely result in an economic counterattack that will make our lives here in the US more expensive.  (And yet our ‘fearless’ President doesn’t have the guts to walk down the hall and ‘face-to-face’ ask a 3 Star General to leave his post.)

There is genuine fear and panic amongst long time diplomats and foreign policy experts that our country is out of control and being managed by an impulsive man and his supplicants who really don’t have a clue about what forces they are unleashing in the world.  Our allies are truly unnerved and fearful of any kind of situation that would require an allied response from the US.  Since our President is now universally recognized to be a liar, they cannot believe anything that emerges from his mouth.

In addition, our President is unsurprisingly a misogynistic, narcissistic, disgusting human being who has no respect for women or his marriage for that matter.  He consorts with porn stars and tries to pay them off to keep them silent about his indiscretions while his wife was nursing their newborn son!

And where are the mealy-mouthed lemming-like Republicans?  In the face of Trump going to ‘war’ against Mueller, after he unceremoniously fired his Secretary of State and his National Security Advisor, the Republicans believe that there is no reason to protect the Special Counsel from being summarily fired.  Really?

There is so much going on in this maelstrom that it is hard to keep up with the disintegrating sinkhole that has become our government.

History will remember that Republicans let Pandora out of the box when they nominated this miscreant for President.  It will also hopefully record the return to reason that will start this November on election day.

It's a Race Against Time!

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Our democracy is on the line.  If it wasn’t clear before today; it is crystal clear now.  The firing of Andrew McCabe less than 48 hours before he was to retire is the canary in the coal mine.  Aside from being simply cruel to a 21 year veteran of law enforcement who protected his country every day, this action exposes and affirms the conspiracy on the part of the Trump administration to bring down the rule of law, obstruct justice and discredit the reputation and credibility of anyone who would testify for Mueller in an obstruction of justice indictment against Trump.

It is just so enervating!  It seems like every day we are subjected to another indignity visited upon our nation and our nation’s highest office by perhaps one of the crudest, mendacious scumbags we have ever seen.  It is stunning that we were all asleep when the voters put this cretin in office.

We are all tired. 

Remember the days of Clinton, Bush and Obama where you could go for weeks on end without really focusing on politics; when life was consumed with our daily habits and routines?  Now we endure daily scandals and announcements from our Executive Branch that are usually lies and half-truths.  A concerted effort is being made to bring authoritarian government to our Constitutional Republic. 

Our President openly admires leaders like Putin, Duterte, Erdogan, Xi Jinping.  He is fighting a war against law enforcement, denigrating the FBI, the Department of Justice, the Special Counsel.  He tries to distract us from pursuing his relationship with the Russians with a scandal about his relationship with a pornstar and his efforts to muzzle her. 

He is firing the only defense the country had against his impulsive ‘gut’ driven decision making process.  Out go, Tillerson (not that he was so great) Cohn, Macmaster, Comey, McCabe, Baker, and others who were purportedly the country’s defense against incompetence.  His cabinet choices are all disappearing too because of their corrupt behavior and living large off the taxpayer dollar: Carson, Pruitt, Price, Schulkin, maybe Sessions.  New appointees will be media stars and people who are supplicants of Trump: Pompeo, Kudler, Zinke, Perry.

All our mechanisms of government are being dismantled piece by piece:  State—no new appointees to replace all the ones who have left because Tillerson has been such a disaster.  Environmental Protection—a huge number of regulations have been done away with that will undo all the progress we have made cleaning up our air, water and environment.  Justice—strategic campaign to remove anyone of authority who could be a threat in litigation against him.

The former Republican party has made their deal with the devil.  Now they are reaping what they have sown.  Recent reporting has claimed that Trump’s behavior has changed and become more aggressive and unhinged with regard to his decision making.

We should be worried. 

Without any responsible counsel, (remember he has fired most everyone we considered protectors of rationality) he could lead us into war or other unconscionable directions.  Republicans are still cowed by him….why?....because they still see him as their route to remaking our society in an image that only self aggrandizes all of them and feeds money to their sponsors and special interests.

In his recent twitter outburst this past weekend he denigrates and discredits Robert Mueller repeatedly and calls for the shutdown of his probe.  He accuses him of partisan witch hunting.  May I remind you that Mueller was unanimously confirmed for an additional term by the entire Senate on Obama’s recommendation in July of 2011.  Mueller is not a Democrat or a Republican…..he is an American, and a patriot above all.

The exhaustion we are all feeling as a result of all this is just symptomatic of our inability to focus on really important issues facing our country.  Trump is focused on the footsteps getting louder in the hallway of the people coming to get him.  His strategy of deflection and misdirection is all he can think about.  All of this could not be a stronger indication of why he is unfit for the job of President.  And at the end of the day, it is ‘we the people’ who will suffer the most.

There are movements afoot by citizens who are interested in “Making America GOOD Again!”  If you get the opportunity, listen to Rep. Beto O’Rourke from Texas who is running for the Senate against Ted Cruz.  He is an example of where we need to go as a country and what we should be doing to regenerate the integrity, honesty, and compassion of government.

There is a wave developing in our country.  All the intermediate elections we have seen since Trump took office are showing the mounting evidence of approaching change.  Personally, I am hoping for a tsunami of change that will bring back the respect I once had for the concept of representative government.  What we have now is government by corporations and special interests.  What is germinating in the hinterlands is renewed government in the service of the actual citizens.

Nothing happens fast in life, most especially changes in how we govern ourselves.  But one year from now, hopefully we will see significant changes in our House of Representatives.  We will see Democrats in control, many more women in positions of leadership, and a move to impeach the rot that has infected our White House.  Hopefully we will see the disappearance of self-absorbed, self aggrandizing politicians whose time has most assuredly expired, rejected by a newly awakened citizenry.

You must ask yourselves as parents and grandparents, when your children and grandchildren ask you why nobody was able to put a stop to this degeneration of our society and country,

 “What did YOU do to reverse the slide toward autocracy and acceptance of lies, and warfare on our institutions of law?”

We must be able to answer, “We saw the danger and we moved against it!”

We must, at the very least, carefully select who will represent us in the next Congress.  Most importantly, we must use our most precious democratic prerogative.  We must VOTE—If Pennsylvania’s recent interim election won by Conor Lamb is any indication---Every vote counts!

Its Always Darkest Before the Dawn

Last night I stayed up until 1:00am watching the election returns for a congressional race in Western Pennsylvania.  I sat on the edge of my seat as the returns rolled in, waiting for the indication that Democrat Conor Lamb had squeeked out a victory over the Republican Rick Saccone in what has historically been a solid Republican district.  Whether he won or not was not really significant.  What was significant was that there had been a 20 point change in preference in that district in only 18 months since the general election and what that means for the future. 

Lamb apparently won, and the Republicans nationwide are now officially worried about the prospects for losing the House next year in Congress.   As my mother would say, “Halavai!” Could it be that finally we are seeing the pendulum begin swinging back the other way?  Hopefully and maybe!

The horror of this is that we still must wait another 11 months to see any change in direction as a republic, assuming a positive Democratic result in the midterm elections.

Over the past 16 months we have witnessed the deconstruction of our government and the rise of a kind of collective despair expressed by the majority of our citizens.  (Remember everyone, only 1/3 of the electorate at best, consistently supports the current Republican agenda)  It feels like a generalized, increasing sense of desperation as we watch the mechanisms of our government groan and creak from the strange ways it is being twisted and tangled by a corrupt Republican majority.

The real damage we are suffering, however, is the fading of norms of behavior that we always considered essential to citizenship in the United States: courtesy, honor, truth, good character, integrity. Instead we see the resurgence of less appealing traits like lying, cursing and foul language, character assassination, sexual predation, rudeness, crudeness, cruelty, hypocrisy, misogyny—all exampled in good measure by the President of the United States and his lemming-like sycophants in Congress.  The acceptance of this behavior by evangelicals, all the sheep of the Republican Party who parrot the pronouncements of Trump, McConnell and Ryan without question, and who abdicate their responsibility to protect our children, our citizens, and our Constitution from evil, both foreign and domestic is the real threat.

Our legislators have failed us.  On subjects like preventing further cyber attacks by Russia, gun control, climate change, income equality, and a whole host of other important issues, Republicans have used their positions in Congress to obfuscate, obstruct, stall, stonewall and generally try to enrich themselves at taxpayer’s expense.  They misquote, mislead, and spin everything in ways that are untrue or half true.  The Republicans, as exampled by the House Intelligence Committee majority unilaterally closing down the Russia investigation, would rather protect the President than our country’s security and sovereignty.  Apparently if there is any evidence or proof of collusion or continued attack by the Russians on our democracy, they would just rather not know about it!  How demoralizing!

The youth revolt on gun control is a bellwether for a renaissance of the lost mores and ideals implicit in representative government, democracy and citizenship in the America that we all thought were our solid foundation; only to witness their slow fading away over the past several decades. 

These young citizens give us hope for the change we all yearn for that will bring back the country we feel we have lost.  A cultural change needs to occur and the teens leading this movement are showing us how deeply we are mired in the paralysis of partisanship and division.  They are showing us a way to redeem ourselves.  These are the victims of our national and state legislators inability to act and they will not stand for it anymore.  I can’t wait for them to be eligible to vote.

The recent special elections and interim election replacements are also bellwether events that portend change.  The implicit wave of change hinted at by the results of these special elections gives us optimism that intelligence, compassion, and humanity in government will soon return as the cleansing purge of the midterm elections begins to clean the rot away from the mouldy grip of compromised representative government that holds us in its grip.

It cannot happen fast enough!