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11/24/24

11/24/2024

THE SEASON OF STUPID

THIS IS THE TIME IN AN ELECTION YEAR when people, myself included, say stupid things.
     Summer is history, and if Donald Trump has his way, it won't be back.
     This is a time of skeletal tree branches, rotting leafs and four-o’clock sundowns, hinting at what's to come on Jan. 20, when Trump takes over.
     There are about two months of official democracy remaining before the avalanche of Trump’s authoritarian winter sweeps across the continent, suffocating whatever is good about the United States.
     One of the agonies of this waiting period is listening to lectures about what went wrong – not from the winners, who are still planning their MAGA re-education centers – but from the losers, our own comrades.
     How could we have been so witless, the Democratic ask.
     How could we have been so deaf, so arrogant, so elitist that we lost our connection to the hard-working working-families, the economic innocents cheated out of a carton of inflated eggs, while their small towns were overrun by pet-devouring immigrants?
     Why have we Democrats become so alienated from those authentic Americans, leaving them little choice but to seek guidance from the king of common sense, Donald John Trump?

SETH MOULTON

ONE EXAMPLE OF STUPID came from Seth Moulton, a Democratic Massachusetts congressman, whose star-studded resume includes degrees from Harvard and medals from his service as a Marine during four tours in Iraq.
The day after the election, The New York Times sought out Democratic heavies for some quickie insights as to the party’s devastating loss. Here’s what Moulton said:

Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face. I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.

     Captain Moulton had scouted out the enemy and reported the chilling results to the American people:
     Oversized transgender freaks have been roaming America’s athletic fields alongside authentically gendered daughters, whom we’ve left undefended and endangered, because adult enablers from the Democratic left have censored sensible, kitchen-table conversations on this and other hot-potatoes.
     If only the Democrats hadn’t been burdened by those gender changelings, to say nothing weighted down by those other pesky issues, like police brutality and climate change, that have absolutely nothing to do with what authentic Americans really care about, like the price of eggs.
      In the days following his Times statement, Moulton had a chance to acknowledge the absurdity of laying the blame for Trump’s victory at the feet of transgender children, a fragile fraction of the U.S. population that Trump’s goons traumatized in millions-of-dollars worth of campaign ads.
     Instead, Moulton positioned himself as a champion of intraparty free-speech and as a savant-emissary to practical, hard-working-America. In a clarifying statement the next day, he said:

      I stand firmly in my belief for the need for competitive women’s sports to put limits on the participation of those with the unfair physical advantages that come with being born male. I am also a strong supporter of the civil rights of all Americans, including transgender rights. I will fight, as I always have, for the rights and safety of all citizens.
     These two ideas are not mutually exclusive, and we can even disagree on them. Yet there are many who, shouting from the extreme left corners of social media, believe I have failed the unspoken Democratic Party purity test. We did not lose the 2024 election because of any trans person or issue.
     We lost, in part, because we shame and belittle too many opinions held by too many voters and that needs to stop. Let’s have these debates now, determine a new strategy for our party since our existing one failed, and then unite to oppose the Trump agenda wherever it imperils American values.

     Notice that Moulton dropped in that line repudiating the thrust his Times' statement: “We did not lose the 2024 election because of any trans person or issue.” But that was overshadowed by his overall charge that lefty purists had squashed honest discussion and therefore distanced the party from mainstream America.
     What should he have said? First, he owed transgender individuals – especially youngsters – an apology.
     'My stupid. I fell into the Republican trap of picking on a vulnerable group of children, whose desperate search for gender identity can literally cost their lives.'
     Secondly, he should have followed that by saying the only thing we all know for certain about why Trump won is that none of us actually knows the answer.

EVIL FORCES WERE AFOOT on Nov. 5, and my best guess now is that nothing could have stopped them. Like Seth Moulton and everyone else distraught by the election results, I have no proof as to why that happened, just sorrow.
     Personally, I don’t buy the economic excuse – that, battered by inflation, voters turned on the incumbent party. Nearly as many voters supported Kamala Harris, but I guess they were immune from inflation – maybe coastal elites know where to shop for cheap eggs.
     What I don’t understand is why Democrats seem angrier at each other than at the people who voted Donald Trump into the White House and who handed Republicans control of the Senate and House.
     The result will be a storm of terror and hate unlike the worst fire and brimstone descriptions in the Bible, and it’s entirely the fault of the Trump voters.

Trump voters put the planet on a death watch, because Trump will accelerate climate change; Trump voters upended the lives of millions of immigrants, their families and their children, who live in fear they’ll be deported – and thousands will be.
Trump voters dispatched a recovering economy to the tariff poor house; Trump voters abolished the concept of fairness, as a criminalized Department of Injustice will use the law as a club to attack Trump’s enemies.
Trump voters reactivated the GOP’s enduring dream of taking money from the poor – food stamps and Medicaid – and pass it to the rich as lower taxes; Trump voters set back women’s rights to medical care and equal status.
Trump voters cleared the way for U.S. soldiers to confront protesters - be they their neighbors, cousins and friends - with deadly force, having left dissenters few options beyond taking to the streets.

A LITTLE MORE ABOUT TRANSGENDER MATTERS.
     I don’t know a lot about the subject. What I’ve read is that a slice of the population is betrayed by a confounding quirk of nature. At some point in their lives, some girls realize their bodies have lied to them, and that they are boys; the same with some males, who identify as females. The journey to balance the scales is fraught and perilous, but can be successful and life-affirming.
     Do female athletes face unfair competition from some transitioned males? Maybe, but hormone treatments that they may take, and which some sports associations require, can narrow the differences.
     Because the numbers of transgender persons are relatively small, and their athletic cohort is even smaller, the chances that Seth Moulton’s daughters will be run down by such a contestant are small.
      But transgender players do show up on female teams – and there is hell to pay when the culture warriors sink their teeth into the actual human beings involved.

THE SAN JOSE SPARTANS volleyball team, including the transgender player, whom the Washington Post isn't naming. CREDIT: San Jose State University website

The Washington Post has a distressing and complicated story this week about the women’s volleyball team at San Jose State University, where one player has been identified as transgender, and the resulting controversy has seen five other teams refuse to play against the squad.
The issue turned so ugly that a San Jose co-captain is part of a lawsuit seeking to have her transgender teammate banned, the filings saying the player had unfairly displaced other players; the captain even claimed the teammate conspired unsuccessfully to injure her.
There are differing views as to the potential danger and competitive disadvantage posed by that player, whom the Post didn't identified because the player hasn’t talked about her background. An official of one volleyball team wrote this about competing against San Jose:

I do think it is important to note, we have played against this athlete for the past two seasons and our student-athletes felt safe in the previous matches. She is not the best or most dominant hitter on the Spartans team.

SARAH MC BRIDE

     The San Jose website lists the player as 6-feet, 1-inches tall, which at first seems male-advantaged; but of the 19 players, seven women are 6-feet or more, including one who is 6-feet, 3-inches.

THE MISCHIEF THAT COMES from exploiting transgender issues has sprung up in the Capitol, where the country’s first elected transgender Congresswoman, Sarah McBride, a Delaware Democrat, has been cornered in one of the GOP’s favorite battlespaces, the bathroom.
      GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina has demanded McBride be barred from women’s bathrooms; Speaker Mike Johnson is delighted by the idea of restricting bathrooms, a move that will affect trans Capitol staffers and visitors.
      McBride says she’ll follow the House rules. But that’s made her a target of transgender advocates, who say that she has let down the cause, betraying less powerful and more vulnerable people whom McBride should be championing.

ADMITTING THAT I’M AT A LOSS as to why Trump won and what to do about it, here is what I hope, at a minimum, will happen:
     I want Democrats to defend vulnerable groups, always, and to reject scapegoating or abandoning individuals as tactic to win the hearts and minds of voters.
     Lots of people, like Congressman Moulton, have taken to blaming Democrats for losing the election because they’ve lost touch with voters’ prejudices, which I find to be both unkind and unlikely.
     I wish the critics would save a little of their fury for the real villains, the Trump voters.
     It’s the Trump voters who have condemned themselves and the rest of us to years of treachery and cruelty that represent America at her very worst.
     The Season of Stupid can’t end soon enough.

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11/7/24

11/7/2024

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CATASTROPHE!
The election wasn’t our fault.
What we do about it will be

I WISH I HAD THE ANSWERS.
     Just a couple would do.
     One insight or two into why Trump won and won so big.
     A few profound ideas about what we, the losers, can do.
     But like Trump himself, the election is a hideous mystery.
     That our friends, neighbors could willingly, purposefully, thoughtfully, soberly and deliberately push the country over the cliff into autocracy and chaos is, and always will be, baffling.
     As I write this, I’m still in shock. When I woke up the day after the election, I was amazed that I could still breathe in and out, that my heart continued to beat and my eyes blinked.
     So, still dazed, these are my thoughts after talking with my wife and hearing from faraway friends, their dear voices so welcome and comforting just to hear.
     I outline a few ideas in the first person, because I feel unworthy and unequipped to write a prescription for anyone else. Maybe you’ll find these useful, if only to advance your thinking.

ABOVE ALL, I MUST BE KIND. If a driver is trying to pull out of a side street, I must stop to let him in. If there’s somebody struggling for exact change at the checkout, I need to be patient. If I pass someone on a sidewalk, smile. Hold the door. Pick up the stray candy wrapper.
     If I want the Next America to be more humane, I have to act that way. Instead of being a scowling, grumpy, self-centered creature, I’m pledged to at least try to do the kind thing.
     It will be important to remember the beauty and wonder of America – its astonishing landscapes, and its inspired creative and cultural energy.
     I want especially to be kind to Kamala Harris and the Democrats.
     The virulent post-election Blame-A-Thon now underway is unseemly and unfair. Harris ran a robust, brilliant campaign that culminated in her devastating trouncing Trump in their one TV debate.
     Her mastery of the mechanics, decision-making and rhetoric of the campaign in the short, crisis-driven campaign showed that she was absolutely qualified for the presidency.
     Her loss was far more than a lost chance to banish the evil of Donald Trump. It squandered a rare opportunity for a the nation to enlist a capable, even great president.
     To beat up on Joe Biden, or find fault with Harris’s failure to “understand” the economic pain purportedly felt by the Trump voters, is unnecessarily wasteful and cruel.
     The scope and depth of the voters’ embrace of Donald Trump is as bewildering as it is grotesque.

I’M ANGRY AND MUST STAY ANGRY.
     The Trump voters – every single one of them – are betrayers not just of democracy, but decency.
     They have a lot to answer for.
   They endorsed racism, nativism, corruption, criminality, cruelty and sexism.
     The big Trump policies will include massive deportation of immigrants, which will ruin lives, imperil the economy and set the stage for attacks on many other groups and lead to an eventual turnback of civil rights.
     One half the population – women – will be recommitted to second-class citizenship, not just in terms of healthcare, but in every sector of society.
     Climate change will continue to imperil the planet and all of us who live here.
     The economy – the supposed excuse for voting for Trump – will weaken and become more unfair, with all of us “little people” imperiled on a bipartisan basis.
     Every aspect of American life will be worse under President Trump than it would have been under President Harris.
     What Trump voters have done to us, in other words, is unforgivable and must never be excused or rationalized.

EVERY DAY WILL PRESENT CHOICES. I must make the right one every time.
     Do I speak out?
     Join this group?
     Donate money?
     Let this car in line?
     Subscribe to this newspaper?
     Follow this podcast?
     Buy from this company?
     Pick up that stray candy wrapper?

ACKNOWLEDGE THE CATASTROPHE
     I know enough about myself that I will want it all to go away, that I’ll wear out, become exhausted, frightened, and weary of what it will take to get the country back on course.
     The only certainty of the next four years is that every aspect of American life will be worse – far worse – than we expect, mirroring the astonishingly breadth the election itself.
     The first attack will be on free speech and free assembly. Trump will wage war on all media; he will criminalize demonstrations; he will turn the national security apparatus against all citizens.
     I must pay attention, and respond individually, and participate collectively, to counter every assault on the First Amendment. A big part of what otherwise should be “charitable” donations will go to individual media and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union.
     The ultimate agenda is breathtaking, because the election was so sweeping, and because Trump’s appetite for malice is so vast.
     I don’t know whether I’ll be up to the challenge, only that I want to be.

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11/5/24

11/5/2024

3 Comments

DAY OF DREAD & HOPE: THE ELECTION FINALLY ENDS

ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: Frank Gerardi

THIS IS THE DAY.
     I’ve dreaded it for years, and yet I’m glad the final day of voting is here. The campaign had to be finished at some point, and there is much to rejoice in looking back at what has been accomplished.
     America is threatened as at no time since the Second World War, and I think the nation has battled back with energy, ingenuity and courage.
     Millions upon millions of people recognize that Donald Trump is out to destroy democracy and corrupt our culture.
     It is amazing to me that one man could hate the country so thoroughly as he does, turning liberals like me into zealous flag-wavers, the kind of super patriots we used to scorn in the Cold war days.
     Some of the most startling counter-Trumpsters have been Republicans like Liz and Dick Cheney and even Mike Pence, who did the right thing at the right time on Jan. 6, 2021.
     Some of the sharpest and most insightful commentary has come from conservatives.
     Millions of "ordinary" Americans, as if there are such creatures, have donated a billion-plus dollars to Harris, visited battleground states to knock on doors, dispatched post cards, joined Democratic phone banks, argued with relatives, attended rallies, phoned talk shows, listened to podcasts, scoured newspapers and hollered at TV screens.
     I have said this before, turning 82 personally has had plenty of downsides, but among the benefits has been the privilege of being around to witness this crusade to defend American democracy.

IT’S NOT BEEN PERFECT, of course, the campaign to rescue a country.
     The major news organizations have done a fine job letting us know the ups and downs of campaign events.
     You and I could not know the terrible threat of a Trump second term without the remarkable journalism of the New York Times and the Washington Post.
     Yet, both of these great surviving newspapers betrayed their readers and the country.
     The Times has failed to treat the danger Trump represents as an unqualified, unquestionable threat to the country, of the sort you might expect as if an asteroid were headed our way. Instead, it has portrayed a largely normal campaign, airbrushing Trump’s betrayal and downplaying Harris’s emergent leadership.
     The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, let down his readers and reporters by withdrawing, at the last minute, an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris, an obvious move to curry favor with Trump, should he win.
      (My wife notes Bezos's disregard for his reporters' safety, in light of Trump's constant attack on reporters, saying recently he wouldn't mind if would-be assassins turned their guns on the journalists covering his rallies).
      My personal nomination for cowardice goes to present-day folk signer-songwriters, offspring of a noble earlier generation that gave voice to the civil rights and anti-war crusades of the 1960s and 1970s. But today’s singer-poets have had nothing to sing about when it comes to Donald Trump.
     I’m guessing why: they feared losing half or more of their audiences if they trained their satire and psychic insights toward Donald Trump, and maybe they were scared of Trump's legal attacks and being blacklisted by radio and web-hosting monoliths. Sing a song of shame.
      And what to make of the Republican Party “leadership,” and most of all, the Trump faithful, who have been blind and deaf to Trump’s vulgarity, authoritarianism, violence, cruelty and brutality.

UNTIL TODAY, it has been comforting to know that the election was somewhere down the road, with enough time to work and strategize our roles in the campaign, and, frankly, to bask safely in Joe Biden’s democracy.
     So, I hated the relentless turning of the calendar, and then to come to the end of October and now the beginning of November.
     In our family, November is usually a special month: my wife’s birthday is at the end of election week, my grand daughter’s birthday arrives shortly after that; and capping it all is the best of all American holidays, Thanksgiving.
     What are those celebrations going to be like if . . . ?

I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA how this will end.
     I have avoided anything about the polls, because early in the campaign they took the focus off the critical issues – democracy versus dictatorship – and also, because common sense says that accurate polling seems impossible.
     Who in their right mind answers a phone call from a pollster? And those who do, it seems to me, have an agenda – either to hide their true intentions, or to poison the survey with corrupt answers.
     So, maybe the race IS tied. My guess is that the outcome will be anything but close, and victory will be quickly apparent and well-defined. I just don’t know if that imagined big margin will belong to Trump or to Harris.
     In my hometown, Newport, R.I., I have yet to see ONE Trump sign, although I'm told there are some, and I've seen only a smattering of Harris posters.
     There are plenty of local city council and school committee campaign signs, so it’s not like Newport residents have lost the skill of planting a poster or two or seven on their front lawns, hedges and fences.

    But I take no comfort in the famine of Trump and Harris signs. My guess is that residents simply don’t want their fellow citizens to know their thinking when it comes Harris vs. Trump, and a lack of lawn decorations avoids conflicts, arguments and grudges erupting before and after the election.

LIKE EVERYONE ELSE, I have been amazed at the dynamics of the election.
     Who could have predicted that two disasters, the Supreme Court’s abortion decision and Joe Biden’s debate debacle, have given Democrats a fighting chance, with abortion becoming a defining issue and Kamala Harris emerging as an instant maestro of the political orchestra.
     I’m disappointed that some of the country’s most challenging issues – climate change, economic inequality, racism and the conflicts in Ukraine and Middle East – have not been central to the campaign.
     Still, I think the voters need all they need to know: Trump will ruin America; Harris will advance it.
     My expectation is a definitive Harris win.
     But that’s just me. I have no insight, special antennae or any way of measuring the pulse of America, scientifically or otherwise.
     Like many, I have daily panic attacks about the human catastrophe that would follow a Trump victory.
     I am not a brave man. I don’t know what kind of a resistance fighter I would be if Trump wins. Not as fierce and relentless as I would wish. Especially knowing that however awful his regime can be imagined now, the reality will be far worse.
     Every day, I allow myself to imagine the relief, joy and celebration of a New America that a Harris victory will unleash.
     Especially today, I’m filled with hope.

3 Comments

11/24/24

THE SEASON OF STUPID

11/7/24

CATASTROPHE!The election wasn’t our fault.What we do about it will be

11/5/24

DAY OF DREAD & HOPE: THE ELECTION FINALLY ENDS

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CATASTROPHE!
The election wasn’t our fault.
What we do about it will be