Descent into Madness

Members of the current Republican Party are basically insane.

We are witnessing the complete unravelling of anything approaching reality for not only the Republican legislators in Congress, but also the Republican base.  Just watch what is happening as the trial for Trump's impeachment approaches.  Even though the Republican legislators were in as much physical jeopardy as the rest of the Congress, they are now taking the position that Trump should not be impeached and we should all forget January 6th and move on.   Really?

 

People who become legislators are supposed to be educated.  You will never persuade me that each and every one of the Republican House members and Senators (maybe with the exception of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert) doesn't in their heart of hearts know that Biden won the election and Trump incited the riots.  They are all cowards.  Their choice of self-interest over our democracy is breathtaking.

 

There apparently is no level Republicans will not descend to in order to pledge their fealty to Trump so they don't alienate his base and jeopardize their own chances for re-election.  What we have now in the United States of America is a Republican party that supports insurrection, will deny the right to vote to people of color, will support domestic terrorism, and will reject democracy as we have known it for the past 250 years.  They have all taken leave of their senses--basically become insane.

 

Accountability is meaningless to the Republicans.  Sedition and insurrection resulting in multiple deaths

directly incited by the President, as well as conspiring to plan the mob riots in the Capitol on January 6th by many high-ranking Republicans is acceptable to them.  A majority of Republicans endorsed and supported the Big Lie surrounding Trump's claim the election was stolen.  There is no other path for the rest of us except to shun them from American life.  Unless we are prepared to allow them to continue pressing their objectives to suppress voting, do everything possible to obstruct constructive legislation to solve the Corona virus problem, revise immigration policy, create new powerful guidelines for supporting our democracy, we will run the risk of seeing them in control again at some point.  

So where does that leave the rest of us?  Well, frankly, unless the Democratic Party is ready to simply disregard the Republicans, do away with the filibuster in the Senate, and attempt to push through legislation to solve some of the country's most pressing problems, we can expect complete obstruction from the Republicans.  Unfortunately, it looks like it will come to that.

 

Our only hope is to make as much progress as possible on the Biden agenda so that it will become abundantly clear to more and more of the population that Trumpism is a failure and those who support it have nothing constructive to offer our society.  They will become increasingly out of step with mainstream America.

 

It appears that the Democratic party is ready to take that step toward an orientation of 'kill or be killed'.  The hope of all Democrats after the election was that sanity would return to the Republican party.  Biden keeps preaching bi-partisanship, but he is going to take action at some point when he sees that is not possible.  Democrats have been fooled before when trying to push complex legislation.  Republicans made them negotiate and negotiate and when a compromise was finally reached, the Republicans voted against it anyway.  Obstruction was the strategy and more often than not they succeeded.  Not this time.

 This is a time that is as dangerous as the time of the Civil War.  Our nation is in danger of deconstructing unless the only sane political party remaining can wrest control of our future from those who would sacrifice that future on the altar of autocracy and violence. 

A Cleansing Dawn

The TV droned on as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris landed at Andrews on Tuesday evening.  I was only half paying attention, browsing the web when suddenly my attention was drawn to the TV as they arrived at the Reflecting Pool for the ceremony of remembrance.  Suddenly it got quiet as the images on TV became compelling.

I watched as they started speaking and the images continued....beautiful, patriotic and sad images.  Then there was this welling up in my throat, my eyes, and my very essence as the tears began to come....  I couldn't stop it.  I was surprised by it, overcome by it; I tried to hold it back but it would not be denied.  4 years of stuffed evil deep down in my subconscious demanding  release, broke free and there was no stopping it.  The enormity of the loss portrayed by the lights along the reflecting pool married to the images of the Washington Monument, the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial made my soul cry out.  I wept.  I wept remembering the images of grieving families we have been seeing for a year; I wept for the bravery of the nurses, doctors and selfless first responders; I wept for all that we had lost as a country at the filthy hands of those who tried to destroy it.

 

As I looked at the facebook posts and texts from people I know who revealed that they too were overcome, I was stunned by the weight of the burden we all have been carrying, the darkness of what we all had to bear.  

 

81 million of us have been waiting for yesterday.  We counted the hours and minutes until noon 

knowing that until that moment we were still in danger.  America stood still as the moment approached and when Kamala Harris stepped up for the swearing in, the tears came again.  This moment for me was cathartic.  Finally, we can begin again.  As I watched Joe Biden take the oath, I breathed out with unexpected relief!

 

The rest of the day was blessedly free of fear.  There is still the danger from those who would steal our democracy, but now there is a new beginning and resolve-- renewing our commitments as Americans and to our Constitution.  

 

It is so liberating to be relieved of the nagging fear that no one is in control of our destiny.  Tonight we go to sleep with a new sense of hope, and like babies who blithely drift off to sleep feeling safe, we rest knowing there is a new competence in those who protect us and our democracy.  

 

It was a close call.  It is not over yet; the challenges are multiple and daunting, but there is a new sheriff in town and he and his posse have vowed to keep us safe and to take charge.

 

The page has finally turned.  We all are smiling.  Life can be good again. 

Never Again?

My family escaped the Holocaust.  They were never really in danger from it.  My maternal ancestors emigrated to New York in the 1880s, and my paternal grandparents came here from Ukraine in 1890.  We all know the stories; we have heard them from so many of our friends and acquaintances over the years who did escape the horror.  As a boy, I grew up with these stories and studied them in school.  And even in my youth and twenties and thirties, I looked back at events like Kristallnacht and the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and thought to myself, how in the world could people sit by and watch these things take place without any sense of moral revulsion.  How was it possible for the evil force of Naziism to gain purchase in Germany and Europe?  There are plenty of tales, novels and films that demonstrate and exhibit the power of Hitler and how his charisma and power was able to overwhelm what I thought should have been a moral certainty that could have stopped it all.  I never really was able to comprehend how that sinister force could take hold in a nation and silence righteousness and civilized thought. 

Until now......

 

The force that is stalking our land now is clearly similar.  This is a force and a movement that is based on lies--lies that are furthered endlessly by a group of people who are not believers in truth based on facts.  These lies are not new, they have been in our consciousness for the last 50 years on an increasing

basis.  "Mainstream Republicans and conservative commentators have been pushing the idea that Democrats can only win elections through fraud for decades.  These beliefs rest on racist and nativist tropes that date back to Reconstruction in the South and Tammany Hall in the North", writes Jamelle Bouie in the New York Times today.  He details examples of Republican accusations of fraud that have happened increasingly over the years in tandem with increasing Republican efforts to suppress voter registration and prevent voters being able to vote at the polls, specifically targeted to locations with majority black and brown voters.

 

Enter Donald Trump 6 years ago with his relentless attacks on the Democrats, peddling lies about everything from stealing elections to fomenting violence (which is really ironic given last week).  Over the past 5 years, starting with Trump's lies about Obama being not born in America and ending with his steady lies about the election being stolen, all his allies and conservative media relentlessly repeated the lie that has essentially brainwashed millions of people, including racists, white supremacists, anti-semites, conspiracy theorists and all manner of not very bright impressionable supplicants who bought into his endless rage and incitement.  He and the rest of the Republican Party kept repeating the lies after the 2020 election, even in the face of clear evidence that there was no fraud, no stealing of the election.  Senators and Representatives are so afraid of Trump and his ability to somehow ruin their political careers that they all kept on promulgating the lies.

 

Trump seethed with increasing rage and his sycophants followed suit, professing the veracity of a lie that had no evidence....still has no evidence to support any of it.  As the process of the electoral college verification followed its inexorable path toward conclusion on January 6th, Trump tried at every step to enlist his followers and the conservative media to shout the lie from every platform he could muster.  He sent his lackey Guilliani out to file over 60 lawsuits to overturn the election, all of which the courts rejected for lack of evidence or just because they were just plain stupid.  But that didn't deter the Republicans from repeating the lie, using the lie to sanctimoniously object to the counting of the Electoral votes in an attempt to overturn a legal election, blaming the Democrats for  'stealing the election'.  The Republicans unabashedly supported the invalidation of the votes of over 10 million people.  They decided that the Constitution was invalid as far as they were concerned.  The people were, and still are in the case of over half the Republican caucus, prepared to claim that Joe Biden is not legitimately the incoming President.  You ask them how they can believe that and they say, "Everyone knows it!!"  In reality, all these legislators know that it is a lie and still they try to use it for their own political benefit.  They continue to lie to their constituents.  Why?  They are afraid Trump's base will not re-elect them or they are just riding the lie for their own political motives--people like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz.

 

Anyone with a modicum of intelligence and a belief in the incontrovertible truth simply based on facts, has to be able to know what is real.  That is what is so inconceivable about the position taken by so many Republicans.  One could almost forgive the blind lemming-like acceptance of the Big Lie by so many people who simply choose to only listen to the sources of news and information that are feeding them

this mendacity constantly.  But the country's legislators?  Even after the horrific attack on the Capitol by Trump's legions; even after the deaths of 6 people and the emerging evidence that this insurrection was planned and fomented by Donald Trump, the Republican legislators continue to tell their constituents the Big Lie--even after all that!--they still stand for the insurrection, the overturning of an election, the denial of their solemn oath.  Of course they know better!

 

And so, as we all listen to the unfolding news accounts and see the buildup of security around the Capitol in advance of projected further insurrection by the domestic terrorists unleashed by the President and the Republican sycophants, it is actually easy to see how Hitler manipulated his followers to roundup Jews, overthrow governments, incite his followers to ignore truth and believe the lies he told them over and over again.  Only this time I am not just listening

to a story from history.  I am living it.  I am seeing these frenzied lie-believers on Facebook...some of them are even related to me! I look at their posts that want us to say a prayer for their beloved President Trump whose election was stolen from him and them....and I am at a loss.  Now I see what the Jews in Germany must have felt as they watched their world crumble into an increasingly fraught horror show.

 

Our legislators in Congress are fearing for their lives.  Many of them were almost assassinated last week.  Our streets in Washington and in our state capitols are lined with National Guard troops and people are fearful.  Our democracy is at risk and our Constitution has been rejected by a significant portion of our countrymen.  They all think of themselves as patriots who are saving the election for their aggrieved President...only they are not patriots.  They are insurrectionists, seditionists supporting the overturning of a free and fair election.  They are following a mob who only want to kill people and overthrow our government and replace it with.....what?  With Trump?  With autocracy, dictatorship?  These people don't believe in democracy anymore.

 

I am afraid. 

A Step Towards Sanity and Hopefully Safety

It is Wednesday and I am listening on and off to the speeches in the House of Representatives for and against the impeachment of Donald Trump.  I listen to the Republicans and I am struck by how easy it is for them to disregard the truth.  And that, of course, is the root cause and issue of all of this.  Truth. 

The Republicans rise to speak and obfuscate the issue at hand with accusations that the Democrats perpetrated fraud and violence last summer when the protesters in the streets were imploring the country to make Black Lives Matter.  They make all sorts of accusations about incidents that they believe show how Democrats sow disunity and how they lie about Trump's election shenanigans with the Russians.  There are echoes of Trump's claim that it's all a hoax.  It seems like anything they can imagine to make it seem like Democrats reject truth and they are responsible for the insurrection is what their game is.  They do not honor Truth.

 

The Truth about what has happened that has led to this moment is that our President has sown the seeds of disinformation about our 2020 election for the past year!  He has broadcast his disdain for mail-in voting, claiming it is all fraudulent.  Where is the proof of that?  And BTW, where is the proof of his claim that the election of 2016 was fraudulent?  He even created a 'commission' to investigate his claimed fraud.  No evidence was ever presented.  The commission was disbanded because it never produced one iota of proof.  

 

He told his followers that unless he was elected, the election would be rigged.  How is that statement

even possible?  What proof did he have?   None.  And yet the current Republican house members bought into this Big Lie.  Even now as the impeachment vote is going forward, 197 members of the House still, --STILL-- are defending the Big Lie.  Now all of a sudden it is the Republicans who are claiming we need to unify.  Unification has NEVER been on Trump's agenda.  His agenda was dis-union.  His agenda was to turn all of us against one another.  The Republicans rise to honor the Big Lie.  All of those 197 Republican legislators have chosen to be on the side of disenfranchising millions of voters.  They want us to disregard the results of a free and fair election to install the person THEY want even though that person lost.  These are not patriots because they reject democratic principles.

 

Since the election, Trump has harangued that the election was 'stolen' from him.  It was a lie.  No one stole his election.  They simply voted against him.   All his lawyers presented whatever cases they could assemble to demonstrate that there was fraud.  They took those claims to court and every court--over 60 court cases in multiple states where there were claims presented----all rejected those claims because of lack of evidence or proof.  It was all a lie.  And yet Trump kept trumpeting the Big Lie.  He used it to stoke his racist followers, promising them if they would stand strong and reject the electorate's will and the free and fair election, then he would remain in power.  He was right.  If his followers could rise up and stop the electoral process, then in fact he could remain in power.

 

He had a plan.  As the process inexorably continued and the courts rejected his lie time after time, he used each step in the process to scream foul and that the election was stolen from him.  His followers blindly believed him.  And he called them to come to Washington to stop the final tabulation of the electoral process.  He told them to come and stop the thieves from stealing the election.  "Be strong, do battle, take no prisoners!"  Then he lit the flame last Wednesday and his mob attacked the Capitol trying to stop the counting of the electoral votes; hang Mike Pence ( who refused to abrogate his Constitutional role); kill Nancy Pelosi and take over the Capitol.  6 people died at his hands while he watched, bemused, from the White House as call after call came in begging for his help to stop the carnage.  He was unmoved.

 

What we still have yet to discover is who all the Trump followers were who helped plan this insurrection; helped survey the planning;  helped ease the way for the mob to enter the Capitol.  We will discover who they are and they will be punished.

 

As far as those 197 seditionists who still remain in the Congress?...well, we will see about them.  They

claim to be patriots.  They are not patriots.  They want to cancel an election and impose their leader in place of a duly elected President.  That is sedition.  We know that their legacy will be the seditious support of an insurrection.  Their legacy will be forever tarnished by their treason.  Their families and progeny will refer to them in the future as the traitors who tried to overthrow the government in support of a twice impeached President who endeavored to overthrow the results of an election and disregard the will of millions of citizens.  They have rejected democracy and we will call them out for it.

 

Today, the United States of America took a step toward the salvation of democracy by forcefully rejecting the most clear and present danger to our republic, Donald J. Trump.  Letting him remain in power is terribly dangerous.  Until Joe Biden puts his hand on the bible, we are vulnerable.

 

And what is really concerning is that we may not be done with this violence yet.  Trump's followers still want to try to overthrow our democracy.  There are chilling predictions of further armed insurrection.  Let's hope our defenses are ready for the crazies!

 

 

God Save America and God Bless America!

The Big Lie

I am so angry.  My problem is that I have no single target to focus that anger upon.  Everything that has been visited upon us by the Trump administration over the past 5 years is probably cause enough for this anger, but certainly what has transpired over the past 72 hours has amplified that anger 1000 fold!  And what is the cause of all that anger?  The single biggest cause for all of this is The Big Lie.

 

The Big Lie is the lie that our 2020 election was fraudulent and that Donald Trump had that election stolen from him.  We have been hearing that lie for the last year from the mouth of the President!  He has unceasingly been telling us that it's all rigged, and if he loses, it's rigged.  He has unceasingly pushed that lie through his media surrogates, Fox News, OAN, Newsmax and many social media channels.  The Big Lie has been repeated over and over again, so much so, that 45% of the Republican populace STILL believes that lie.  What is so sinister is that more than half of the Republican members of Congress know fully well that it is a lie, but they don't care.  There are several of these sycophants that are trying to ride that lie for personal gain:  Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, 10 other senators (including Rick Scott from Florida--my senator!)  There are 132 Republican members of the House of Representatives who know it's a lie, and still support it.  All of them were, and still are, ready to reject and overturn an election that was fair and free in support of The Big Lie.  These legislators, even after the Trump supporting mob attacked our Capitol and attempted to overthrow our government by committing overt insurrection STILL are on the record as supporting The Big Lie!  Hawley and Cruz grabbed that flag and waved it in the Senate, even though they both knew what they were doing.  How cynical!  How treasonous! How seditious!...all of them.  They all are attempting to overthrow the government of the United States and install a fascist government led by a fascist dictator.

 

They all support their commitment to The Big Lie with no evidence.  Over 60 lawsuits brought by Trump supporters have been thrown out of court for zero evidence.  So, what is the foundation for The Big Lie?  There is none!  Only specious allegations with zero concrete evidence in support of fantastic conspiracy theories--all vomited forth by Trump unceasingly.

 

So, to all my blog critics who have supported this big lie...Have you had enough?  Is 5 deaths enough for you, or do you want more?  Because this is not over yet.  Your guy, the President that you follow and adore, fomented insurrection and incited a riot on our most sacred of buildings.  His armed minions, egged on by Trump, the President of the United States, Guiliani and Trump Jr. marched up Pennsylvania Avenue and desecrated the most revered center of American Democracy at the behest of Trump-a fascist autocrat in support of The Big Lie.  And from all indications Trump will continue to incite going forward.

 

It might have even been an 'inside job'.  The gathering of all our legislators, including the sitting Vice President and the Vice President elect were attending what is clearly a major security event and the administration purposely did not prepare the necessary security backup.  Emergency calls by people under siege in the Capitol were not answered.  The Pentagon did not reply or send security reinforcements.  Were Trump's recent Pentagon appointees told to not respond?  There will be investigations that bring these things to light.

 

This tragedy should be no surprise.  Trump invited these insurrectionists to come to DC for weeks after the election.  He told the armed factions that support him to come to Washington, "It will be wild".  He encouraged thousands of them to "march down to the Capitol and stop the Congress from doing their Constitutional duty".  He fomented insurrection and sedition.  The people who attacked the Capitol were armed, outfitted in combat gear, they waved Trump flags, they are part of armed militia groups encouraged by Trump over the past 5 years.  And the worst part of all of this was Trump's messages to them AFTER they had attacked the Capitol.  When implored by Biden and many of Trump's own aides to quell the madness, what did he do?  He told them all, "Even though we all know the election was stolen you need to go home...we love you!"....he continued to perpetuate The Big Lie....still!!....and 5 people died.....and his lackeys in the Congress are still supporting The Big Lie.  Those legislator traitors will be marked for their lives by their anti-democratic, seditious support of The Big Lie.

 

We still have a big problem.  As long as The Big Lie is continually promoted, there will be millions of Americans who will believe that this election was stolen from them.  As long as Trump is spewing his foul lies they will believe him.  He has damaged our country and attempted to drive a stake through the heart of our democracy.  It will take years to fix this and we are vulnerable as long as he keeps telling his 'troops' that "This is only the beginning!" 

 

To all of you who perpetuate The Big Lie--a pox on you.  You are seditionists, fascists and anti-democrats.  The rest of us will not forget.......

 

   

Time For Sober Thinking

Today, the state of Georgia will vote and decide who will control the 117th Senate.  Yesterday in the New York Times, 4 former senators plead for the return of 'regular order' to the processes in the Senate.  Regular order is the code for less partisanship, more collegial debate and more bi-partisan cooperation to debate and legislate with the interests of the people ahead of personal aggrandisement and acquisition of power.  What  a novel concept! 

No matter what the result, there will still be a cadre of anti-democratic members of the Senate who now worship seditious acts camouflaged as 'searching for transparency in our elections' rather than democracy and the will of the people.  They have shamelessly stepped forward to support an effort that is designed to overthrow the results of a free and fair election and the resultant will of the electorate.  

What we are witnessing is an attempted coup.  That kind of event has no place in a democracy.  The question now is how to deal with a legislative body that has been corrupted by the virus of autocracy with members sent there by portions of our country's citizens.  More than half the Republicans in the House and over a dozen Republican senators now view democracy as a roadblock to acquiring power.  And the insanity of all this is that 74 million people in our country have endorsed this view.

 

Unfortunately, there is no easy and quick solution to this problem.  The longer term solution is to vote these people out of their positions of power, however this will only result from some fundamental changes in our society .   The key to that kind of planning is to educate the citizens of our country on the premises and fundamentals of democracy and the true history of our republic, and to change the way we think about voting.  Only then can an informed electorate make intelligent choices and send people of character and integrity to represent them.

 

So how do we do that?

 

In an editorial Sunday, the New York Times gave an accounting of the wreckage left by outgoing Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, listing a whole spate of administrative actions she had engineered, including "initiatives that rolled back civil rights protections for minority children as well as actions that turned the department into a subsidiary of predatory for-profit colleges that saddle students with crushing debt while granting them useless degrees; a series of department communiqués that had the effect of letting school districts off the hook for discriminatory disciplinary practices and other potential violations of civil rights law." 

 

Obviously, those actions need to be reversed, but what we must do as a nation is to re-invigorate the Department of Education to start teaching our children about democracy.  Currently there are only 8 or 9 states that require Civics courses or Government courses in their junior and senior high schools.  That needs to change.  We need to be teaching our children about the mechanics of our nation as a democracy starting in kindergarten!  Curricula need to be developed to include lessons on honesty, integrity, and the meaning of ethics.  Those threads of instruction need to be continuous through high school so that graduates exit their secondary educational time with a clear understanding of how our government works and their responsibility as citizens to preserve it.  And perhaps most important, we need to be teaching children how to consume media and information.  Our children need to be taught how to analyze information and be able to recognize falsehood and manipulation.  Media literacy needs to be taught from the very beginning , even in daycare settings.

 

The other fundamental change needed is a reorientation of our citizens to the importance of being active in a participatory democracy--in other words how important it is for them to be engaged and to vote---in EVERY election.  It couldn't be more apparent how critical it is given the recent experience with our 2020 elections.

 

The difficulty with this kind of long-term strategy is that we will not have a crop of 're-educated' young

people for the next 10-25 years.  What do we do in the meantime?  Those of us who still believe in democracy and the American experiment must hold the line against a heretofore unrecognized mass of citizens who do not understand or believe in the will of the people and the rule of law.  They may call themselves Republicans or conservatives, but they are really radical autocrats.  They believe that election results are optional.  They believe that acquisition of power trumps an election.  Elections are fungible with brute force.

 

All one needs to do is watch the news and hear supporters of Trump speak about the issues of the day.  They don't have any understanding of the issues.  They simply parrot talking points or repeat misinformation they get from social media. They have no foundation in understanding how our system works.  That is a tragedy.  It is unlikely that any of these people will ever be convinced that they are being misled,  we can only hope to minimize their influence until the arrival of a better educated populace, by being stalwart in our defense of truth, facts, integrity, honesty and ethical behavior.