A New Wake-up Call...

It is so discouraging to read the letters to the editor day after day in my local newspaper and see the divide between those who see Trump as divine and those who don't.  The vitriol and inability to see the lies and incompetence that have brought this country to the point of armed violence between the two camps is a sad harbinger of the end of democracy in the USA.

 

There apparently are a huge number of people who believe the Republican's claim that all the violence is caused by Democratic governors and mayors, and that Trump's inciting and encouragement of violence and vigilantism are perfectly alright and of no consequence.   There is no middle ground for these people.  Then there are the Democrats who are fumbling the argument for peaceful protest by cornering the opposite side and screaming in their faces and provoking self-defense and violent reaction.  This is so depressing.

 

I read a posted article on Facebook that tries to understand why we have reached this point and I think it bears consideration as one of the prime causes for where we find ourselves as a nation. The article posits that we have abandoned education as the primer for being a successful citizen.  Without an education in civics and history, we have set the stage for ignorant citizens who do not understand the foundations for the rule of law and the definition of democracy.  

Separate from that, here is passage that describes our American society and how we are blind to the state of our own acceptance of anti-democratic conditions.

 

 

Sort of makes you wonder, eh?

What Trump advocates or supporters do you know who would read the above and actually take a moment to consider its veracity?  I would venture none would.  The reality of the above view has yanked me back to reality.  Our government is broken.  How do you feel when 70+% of the population has a view or opinion about a significant issue like gun control, climate change, health care, etc. legislation never gets voted on or passed concerning those issues?  How does that exhibit responsive government?  It simply doesn't.

 

Unless we figure out a way to re-tool our representative government and reform our electoral process, the American Experiment will cease to exist---maybe even as soon as November 3, 2020.

It certainly starts with making sure everyone you know votes.  And don't disregard your local and statewide elections.  This is where real change originates.  Be sure you are selecting people who will truly represent us.

Beware the Sleepwalkers....

I sit here in the quiet of the morning, before the rush of tasks overtakes me.  I read my email, play Quiz Planet with my daughter who seems closer to me in London than any other human these days, and then turn to the Washington Post and the New York Times.  In just a few minutes I can scan the headlines and read a few opinion pieces, and suddenly the exhaustion of our national disease overwhelms me.

 

I don't ever remember being as depressed and hopeless feeling about our future.  My discovery that such a large portion of my countrymen are afflicted with insanity is so terribly unsettling.  It's sort of like walking along thinking everything is in balance, and then looking down and seeing that actually I am walking on a 3 inch wide ribbon of concrete that falls away on either side into an infinite abyss.  The sudden fear that a slight misstep will result in the loss of everything I counted on as stable reality is completely terrifying.

 

That is the way I feel every day now as the fulcrum of our existence as a country comes into view just a little over two months from now.  Maybe it is just the harsh presence of these absurd political conventions that have intruded into my reality with clarion calls warning of disaster and chaos if we don't vote 'their' way.  I survived the DNC mostly because I believe that if the Democrats win, we can at least salvage a chance to reconstitute our changing society and intelligently plan a future based on reason and truth.  But the RNC has frightened me.  I can only watch the summaries because if I watched the actual 'speeches' I think I might be driven to ultimate despair.  The people who I see talking there are sleepwalking; drugged into some cultish existence that is not reality based.  Where did these people come from??  Were they always there and I just wasn't aware of their presence?   Here's what the Washington Post says about the RNC convention:

"..a party that thinks it can get away with such an extraordinary juxtaposition at its convention — brashly flaunting a level of open corruption on national television, while recycling a tale of the opposition’s corruption (the Biden/Ukraine story) that is pure invention — is a party that simply does not think our institutions, the media included, are capable of meting out the most basic level of accountability any longer.

 

Trump campaigned in many ways the first time on his own corruption, and since politicians piously claiming to care about democratic norms aren’t delivering and are on the take themselves — voters might as well pick someone who will bend and break rules on their behalf.  That this remains appealing to many voters is grounds for introspection for us all."

 

I click on my link to my Facebook page and see who has read my blogs.  It is the only place I can vent and get reassurance.  There are those precious folks and friends I can count on to indicate agreement and support, but they are few.  And then I think about the body of work that I have put out there over the last year and wonder if people just think I am going mad and only showing anger and fear--I wonder if they are as scared as I am....

 

Then I look at some of the posts I see from people I actually know and my terror is compounded.  There is one of my relatives who thinks Trump is sent from Jesus.  Somehow, in spite of her professed adherence to her Christian values, she is blind to the Anti-Christ-like behavior of Trump and the failure of his policies which actually affect her--and yet her unblinking, irrational idolatry spews forth in her writing.  Then there is another fellow who I have worked with in the past, who is intelligent, caring, empathetic--a wonderful human being.  Yet he puts a list as long as the bible on Facebook with all the wonderful 'things' accomplished by Trump which are all fantasy and the product of lies and propaganda!  He, of course, will say that the facts are 'fake news', but they aren't!  They are facts/truth!!  What happened to his brain?

 

So completely depressing.

 

Well, my friends, (those who are walking the thin concrete line with me), what are we to do if the inflection point we all know is coming breaks not in our favor?  I know the antidote to fear is action, but I just don't have an answer.  I have always prided myself on having a plan--even if it has to be changed and adjusted, it is still a plan.  I don't have one after November 3.  Help me figure this out.  Please tell me what we do.......

 

  

Will There Be Joy in Mudville?

Ernest Lawrence Thayer wrote the now classic poem Casey at the Bat.  Casey was to be the salvation of the Mudville 9 baseball team and win the game with a much-expected home run.  As he swaggers to the plate the crowd is sure he will slam the ball into the stands and win the game.  But then, he strikes out and so -'there is no joy in Mudville--mighty Casey has struck out!'  

And let us hope that the 'Casey' of the Republican Party has the same fate.

 

In the words of writer Martin Gardner, "Casey is stripped of his style, his scorn, his haughty grandeur — how will he face his dejected fans? Who can ever convince them again that heroes exist? Casey is 'the incomparable symbol of the great and glorious poop-out,' and Gardner says, 'he is that and more: the figure who teaches us how misguided it is to pin all our hopes on one person we believe to be better than everyone else. In doing so, we will surely (re)discover the eternal principle of human fallibility."

 

We assuredly do not need to wait until the election is over to know that our Casey (Trump) is the metaphor for the epitome of human fallibility.  He has already convinced at least 65% of America that he qualifies for that distinction.  And now in his runnup to the 'plate' he swaggers and boasts again that 'only he' can make America great again.  Pshaw!

And as he swaggers, he has already internalized that he is losing!  Why else would he constantly say that he can only lose if the election is rigged.  Is he that sure that he is going to win?  I really don't think so. 

  

At every appearance he does all he can to convince his base and everyone else that mail-in voting is fraudulent.  He has absolutely no evidence to support that claim, but clearly that does not stop him.  He is saying it over and over....and of course there are those who only watch Fox News who believe him without hesitation.  The only way he believes he can win is to sew fear and doubt about the integrity of the election, and so he does that at all times.  Not only is he doing it in words, he does it in practice with his new Postmaster General who has done everything he can to hobble and kneecap the mechanism of the United States Postal Service.  The more he can disparage and damage the Postal Service, the more doubt he can sew, the more he can degrade public trust in the validity of our election.

Additionally he constantly says that mail-in voting is fraudulent while absentee balloting is not.  The problem is that there is no real difference, and of course he is unable to provide any evidence for his claims.  But of course that is his modus operandi....accuse but never provide proof.  His proof is that "many people have said...blah, blah, blah".  Those 'many people' can never be produced as evidence because they don't exist.

 

And then, philosophically, there is the whole question of whether an election can actually be won by a majority of votes.  Witness 2016 where Trump lost by over 3,000,000 votes and yet, miracle of miracles he still 'won' the election.  We potentially face that result again.  What does that say about our electoral process and the fairness of the whole scheme.  While all of us constantly raise the mantra of 'one man, one vote', does it really matter?  Apparently not, since we have had at least two of the last four elections decided in favor of the minority winner.  Is that what America is supposed to be?  I wonder......

 

For all of our professed self-righteousness about the sanctity of our electoral process, we continue to accept the patently unfair result of a person who gets less votes than his opponent winning the office.  That is.....well....stupid.  We are stupid.  We accept that result.  We accept the corruption of gerrymandering, voter suppression, illegal campaign contributions, lying by candidates about their opponents and themselves.  We are complicitly corrupt in the end.

 

I am interested, in a detached kind of way, to see what the result of this campaign season is going to be.  We know that Trump will lie and conduct the most degenerate kind of campaign.  He will claim a rigged election unless he wins and then we will have to go through hell before a resolution is actualized.  Given our level of exhaustion already, should we even care?

 

I guess I will give this election one last shot at saving our nation.  I will do my best to get everyone to vote, even though I truly fear it may not help in the end.  There is wickedness in the land of Mudville, and even though Casey may strike out, the Mudville 9 may win anyway.  It will then be time to give up baseball. 

Outrage!

Of all the egregious hurtful insults to our democracy by the Trump administration, the effort to cripple the US Postal Service is perhaps the clearest cut 'lance to the heart' threatening our republic since Trump took office.  He openly admitted that he will do all he can to block crucial supplemental funding to the Post Office to handle the surge in postal traffic resulting from voting by mail in the upcoming election.  And at the same time, he has declared that he will not sign a relief bill that is desperately needed to mitigate the suffering of the millions of unemployed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic--why?... because it provides for that USPS support.  The fact that Republicans equally use voting-by-mail doesn't matter.  The chaos will allow him to claim the election is rigged.

 

What he is saying is that he is afraid that if we are allowed to vote by mail he will lose the election, so therefore he is not going to allow it.  I wonder what the founding fathers would say to that.  There could not be a clearer and more nefarious effort to thwart the foundation of our democracy.  Our right to vote is fundamental.  Trump is saying that he is not going to let us exercise this fundamental right because it might cause him to fail in his bid for re-election.

 

Louis DeJoy, Trump's appointee to the position of Postmaster General, has instituted policies that will cripple the ability of the USPS to handle the millions of ballots that will flood the system because a majority of Americans are frightened to vote in person and risk exposure to the pandemic virus.  DeJoy has shortened hours and declared there will be no overtime.  He has decommissioned from service sorting machinery to be used to handle the surge in traffic.  He has told postal workers to let mail pile up at the Post Office suppressing delivery.  He has mandated that mail ballots be treated as bulk mail, making it less likely to be delivered on time and making mail that is not delivered eligible to be 'recycled' (destroyed).  He has also changed procedures for delivering mail resulting in not enough time to sort mail in the mornings before delivery, which will delay the delivery.  He has ousted two top officials and reshuffled the positions of two dozen other officials that will cause chaos and delay mail and critical prescription drug shipments for veterans and seniors.  He was removing mailboxes until today when there was a hue and cry to stop doing it.

 

"The whole nefarious effort is to suppress millions of mail-in ballots and threaten the voting rights of millions of Americans setting the stage for a breach of our Constitution.", said Rep. Peter Fazio, Democrat of Oregon.

 

Since we are aware of this effort, which Trump has clearly stated is his objective, why are we not able to thwart it?  Surely there must be some legislative action the House of Representatives can take to insure that the support is supplied where needed.  I get the feeling that while everyone is outraged that Trump is taking these actions, there is no way to prevent him from crippling the Post Office and following through with his threat, especially since his appointee is following his instructions.   Why can't the House of Representatives find a way to defund his wall; initiate some sort of judicial action; hold back other funds that he wants.....something!!!

 

The only way Trump apparently can be stopped is for the Republicans in Congress to finally stand up for  our fundamental right to vote.  I actually don't think they will!  To a man (with the possible exception of Mitt Romney) they are complicit in this dagger to the heart of our democracy.  They are failing their oath to defend and protect the Constitution by not defending our right to vote.   They have no right to serve the citizens of this great country.  They are traitors.

 

Wickedness is in the highest levels of our government.   If this effort succeeds, will we risk our lives and vote in person in spite of the pandemic?  How many more Americans will die as a result?  We may have to find out the hard way in order to finally rid ourselves of the scourge of Trump and his sycophants.

The Post Office is the foundation of what makes us a coherent society, and Trump is purposefully destroying it piece by piece.  Why are we letting him do that??  Journalists from around the world are commenting that our democracy is in its last days.  They can see from afar what we are all too numb to see right in front of us.  If we don't stand up for our country, we are going to wake up on a bright sunny morning in the very near future and America will be gone.  We better push back......

 

  

"It Is What It Is"....and It Ain't Good!

Let's face it.  Our country is spiraling down and the bottom has yet to be reached.  That is because we have no choice but to endure the next 5 months with Donald Trump running the country.  Even unbiased observers can see that we have no unified plan to control the pandemic and we are going to lose upwards of 300,000 American lives between now and December.  In addition there are overt actions being taken by Trump cronies to crumble the post office in advance of the election to foil mail-in balloting; deliver census information destructively early so Trump can corrupt the re-apportionment process by not including harder to count populations, cover up scandals at the State Department,  and other egregious actions to destroy our democratic institutions.

 

There are too many efforts to lie to us, mislead us with false information about everything from the weather to a coverup about our ambassador to England trying to perhaps bribe the English government to move the British Open to Donald Trump's Turnberry Golf Course!  There is complete incompetence by the Republican party and the Senate in formulating a pandemic relief bill in Congress.  They don't even know what they want to propose!  The Republican senators have been asleep for so long that they are completely out of touch with the majority of the country.  Instead, they held a Judiciary Committee hearing this week about Hillary Clinton's email pseudo-scandal from four years ago, and tried to ambush former Asst. Attorney General Sally Yates into admitting some fantasy about spying on the 2016 Trump campaign by the Obama administration.  It's insane when you consider all the really important things they should be concerned about!

 

What any legitimate President and Congress would be doing is finding ways to make mail-in voting safer and more secure--that is if you are interested in preserving our democratic principles.  How about a national logistical plan to distribute testing materials, PPE equipment and other supplies, and a unified plan for lowering the infection curve?  Do we see any of that?  No, the best the President and the Republicans can do is say about the virus is, "It'll just go away!  It is what it is....."

 

Honestly, is there any reason to support this guy and his sycophantic supporters for four more years of this kind of horrific leadership?  Is there any reason to believe that he or his party can somehow fix our devastated economy when there is no understanding or acceptance of the science behind the pandemic's ravaging our country?  The current leaders don't understand that stopping the virus is the key to resurrecting the economy and the plight of the unemployed.  They are just too stupid.

 

And what about all those stupid people who somehow don't get that wearing a mask might actually depress the spread of the virus?  Are the hormones and greedy desires of all those young people, who believe they are immortal, so strong that they cannot fathom that their selfishness will be the cause of 60,000 unnecessary deaths between now and December?  Who are these people?  Hmmm ---they are the same people who love Donald Trump, who leads them over the cliff of ignorance into the depths of despair ---for all of us.

 

Michelle Obama revealed her nagging and persistent depression from the current state of our nation and the nefarious people running things.  It was an immediate touchstone for me, and I daresay 65% of the rest of the US.  This feeling of despair that there is really nothing any of us can do right now is pervasive.  The only thing we can do is move as 'one' in a unified way to repudiate all these people, and essentially 'run them out of town' in the election in November.  As I watch the commentators talk about the sorry state of affairs, I do notice that the people they bring on for discussion are young people in their 30s and 40s.  They are intelligent and angry and motivated.  I am seeing mayors of small towns and larger cities.  I am listening to researchers, doctors, attorneys, journalists, businessmen and women, politicians.  They all are in positions of ascending power and they are energized, and my belief is that they will save the day.

 

What we are witnessing is no less than the end of an epoch.  There is a new breed of citizen that is ascending to power and they will remake our country. I believe that we are going to see a tsunami of intelligent, engaged citizens who will displace the current Republican leaders whose only purpose is to try to engage in methods and actions to maintain power and  oppress current citizens who they consider irrelevant.  It may take a few election cycles to rid ourselves of them, but I believe the process will begin in earnest in November.

 

I just hope there is something left to save.