Social planning

No nation operates without social planning. Why? Because there are powerful people in every nation, and their first priority is to retain power — or better yet, enhance it. They succeed by doing social planning. Sometimes these powerful people are autocrats. They plan to make citizens more tractable, control speech and the news media, make scapegoats of minorities, and enrich themselves by force and fraud.¹

Sometimes powerful people are democratically elected to public office. They presumably plan to improve the comfort, health, and life choices of the citizens they represent. In return, the citizens keep returning them to power.²

Sometimes powerful people take advantage of a frail democracy and see profit in transitioning to an autocracy. They form a “hybrid” government, one that has the ornaments of democracy — a legislature, judiciary, and active media — while planning to undermine it and retain political power indefinitely.³

I’ll focus on established democracies. They are the only societies in which social planning can be both well executed and admirably motivated. No person who is sane, reasonably informed, and able to travel would wish to live elsewhere. However, notice my qualification earlier: “they presumably plan….” As you will see, their plans can be deceptive.

A democracy fails if its governing bodies fall under the control of a rival power center. For example, the military might stage a coup and bring an autocrat to power. Fortunately, most democracies have developed a tradition of military subservience to civilian authority, and the threat to them is quite remote.

Failure is more likely to come from a more insidious power center, the superrich. They are insatiable; they dream of limitless wealth, regardless of the cost to their fellow citizens. If they aren’t constrained by the law, they will bend it until democratic society frays and breaks.⁴

Of course, the wealth of a nation is not limitless. To get a super-sized share of it, the superrich aim their budgetary plans at an economic sweet spot, a place where ordinary citizens struggle to keep hunger and illness at bay with just enough left to consume the products, services, and distractions the wealthy offer. It’s a difficult target to hit. Trying is risky, but the rewards are enormous.

When the superrich make budgets that aim too low, they can usually insulate themselves from public unrest, even though they cast no votes, make no executive orders, and hand down no verdicts. They are an oligarchy, a shadow government. They send lobbyists to the seats of power. They contribute billions to reelection committees. They offer the use of their jets, yachts, and vacation properties to legislators and judges. They own media outlets that distort facts and give legs to lies. They create propaganda that reinforces economic mythology. For instance, the idea of a “free market” is a fiction. Governments routinely subsidize businesses and rescue them from failure. Socialism is not a national poison and, in fact, big business depends on it for its viability. And the founders of business empires are not “captains of industry,” public benefactors who deserve wealth and adulation. Many of them are indeed people of vision, but none could have actualized their visions without laborers, investors, a receptive society, and a good deal of luck.⁵

More than anything, the superrich are looking for a magic bullet. They ask, “How can we get the needy to feel good about their lives when, by any objective measure, they should feel miserable?” If the superrich could find the answer, they could lay claim to the sweetest of sweet spots. It would amount to no less than a license to steal. Amazingly, they’re making headway. They use a trick known as deflection.

Deflection means selling people a pathway to happiness without improving their standard of living. It’s done at their workplaces. It begins with counseling that acknowledges grievances — low pay, a dead-end job, disrespectful treatment, harassment by superiors. It offers skills training and promises a future of equitable treatment, personal growth, accomplishment, inclusion, and respect. The promises are supposedly kept through a series of team building sessions, an interminable kind of group therapy. Yes, it’s a deception, but sometimes deceptions work.⁶

I marvel that the superrich have convinced anyone that adding 1,000 dollars or euros or yuans to a mountain of billions is morally more justifiable than putting it in the pockets of people who struggle for a living. How damnable it is to even put that argument. How damnable it is to believe it! I’d go so far as to say that the appalling number of twisted governments in the world owe their existence to this moral blindness.

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¹There are 195 countries in the world. Each year, the Economist Democracy Index labels the type of political regime in 167 of them. (It classifies 28 countries as “microstates” and omits them from its surveys.) 59 of the 167 are labeled as autocratic.

²74 of the world’s countries are democracies. Of these, 24 are “full democracies” and 50 are “flawed democracies.” See the Economist Democracy Index for definitions of these terms.

³34 of the world’s countries are hybrid governments. That means 93 governments are either autocracies or moving toward autocracy. The total will be 94 if Donald Trump is elected this fall.

⁴236 billionaires have signed with The Giving Pledge, promising to give at least half their wealth to charity. Do I think better of them for making this pledge? No, they aren’t trustworthy. Many of them will not keep the pledge, and surely only a fraction will keep it while alive. Only consider that half of, say, 50 billion is 25 billion. Half an obscene sum is still an obscene sum. What’s needed is a yearly wealth tax that’s more than a token amount.

⁵Perhaps the worst consequence of oligarchic propaganda is that its veneer of bullshit hides a country’s real story from its citizens. Thus the need for reform and the oligarchy itself are seldom acknowledged.

⁶I almost laughed as I wrote this sentence. In America, deceptions work quite well. People will actually line up to buy bibles with Satan’s signature.

Shades of immorality

     

I regard both Donald Trump and Joe Biden as immoral men. As such, I visualize them in shades of green, the color I associate with corruption. Trump’s immorality is of necessity a dark, saturated green because of its depth, intensity, and variety. The color represents needless death (from Covid), sexual intimidation (pussy grabbing) , monstrous lies (election theft), incessant threats (do X for me or suffer), xenophobia (immigrants are poisoning American blood) , and a host of narcissistic cruelties. It’s the color of moral depravity.

    

Biden’s immorality is a lighter, brighter, and much less saturated green. It has nothing to do with bogus charges made by impeachment-crazed Republicans. Rather, it’s an evil that exists side by side with virtue, and in fact, often passes for a virtue. I’ll examine it presently, but first it’s necessary to introduce the idea of the duality of virtue and evil. Take, for example, the presumed evil of “just following orders,” a rationale for the heinous acts committed by Hitler’s lieutenants. We might call it “loyalty” or “teamwork” instead. These are noble qualities until, to our horror, they go disastrously wrong. That can happen when they’re deployed in the context of a superseding evil.

In Biden’s case, the moral duality is “serving my constituents,” which is presumably what every politician does. It’s laudable, is it not? — the very engine of participatory democracy at work. Fine, but what of the Nietzschean concept of the will to power, the basic need of the psyche to control one’s life and the environment that encloses it. Which side of this duality is driving Biden’s reelection bid?¹ Let’s examine the facts as they currently present themselves.

All the respectable polls show Biden in trouble in these so-called “swing states”: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He won all of them in 2020. He is now behind in all of them, and in Michigan and Georgia, substantially behind. Worse, he’s demographically lagging in his popularity among Blacks, Latinos, and young voters. He’s judged to be too supportive of Israel. He’s unaccountably found worrisome on national security and economic policy. Visually, he comes across as doddering and confused.

The optics may be unjustifiable, but they are facts nevertheless. Biden knows this. His private pollsters and trusted advisors know this. It would be no great matter if a Republican of yesteryear, say, Mitt Romney, were to win the election. The Union would survive. The Great Democratic Experiment would persist. But we can’t say the same with Trump as president. The ways in which he’d doom America (and with it the West?) have been laid out in detail.²

The 2024 Presidential Election poses an existential risk just as frightful as the Civil War. Biden has the power to make that risk evaporate. All he has to do is drop out of the race and give the younger and more vigorous a chance. So far, he’s given no sign whatsoever that he understands the risk. I therefore conclude that he is not running as a public servant. On the contrary, his candidacy is a public menace! He is driven only by his will to power.

As 2024 opens, we enter a dark cave. Time dilates and and the ties that bind events become more tenuous. How long will the Washington D.C. Appeals Court take to decide on Trump’s claim of presidential immunity? How long will the Supreme Court take to hear a subsequent appeal? Will the case against Trump for alleged 2020 election crimes ever be heard and, if so, when? Will a delay cause his other felony trials to cascade down the calendar and overlap the Republican Nominating Convention? Will any verdict be rendered before election day, and if so, what effect will a conviction have on voter perceptions? Will the courts actually allow a convicted criminal to take office? Now consider that these convoluted matters exist on a separate legal track from the one that asks whether the 14th Amendment bars Trump’s name from appearing on a presidential ballot!

Of course, all the presidential primary elections will occur concurrently with the court fiascos. Because of a peevish grudge, Biden isn’t on the New Hampshire primary ballot, so he won’t be tested until South Carolina’s Democratic Primary on February 3. This is the same primary that launched a string of primary successes in 2020 and led to his nomination. No doubt he’ll win again, but that’s not where the media will be focused. They’ll be interested only in turnout, as a measure of voter enthusiasm. And the turnout will be dismal.

Biden’s reelection team will then assess. They may declare, “My God, the polls were right all along!” But probably not. More likely they’ll shrug and say, “He was practically unopposed. You were really surprised?” And so a door will close. The Democratic brass will write off the balance of the primary season, and Biden will deliver the fate of the Republic into the hands of the courts and the morally blind electorate.

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¹The idea of moral dualities fascinates me. How many might we identify, and what transient social factors cause one side of a duality to predominate? I couldn’t avoid drawing an analogy to the concept of superposition in quantum physics, the idea that a system is simultaneously in all possible states until it is measured. Perhaps a society is in moral flux until a discrete event sets its moral direction.

²Get hold of the January/February 2024 issue of The Atlantic and read the lead article, “If Trump Wins.” Whatever level of shock you expect, it will be exceeded.

A needed sacrifice

I like Joe Biden. He’s cordial, good-humored, and genuine in his concern for the common good. He reminds me of Robert Young in the old TV show “Father Knows Best.” That was the personality of Ronald Reagan too, but his concern for the common good was a fraud. Biden is authentic.

He’s in the early stages of senility. It’s obvious. Sometimes he’s spatially disoriented. He’ll finish a speech or a handshake and not know where to turn next. Sometimes he’s syntactically disoriented. He’ll get to the end of a phrase and not know what’s on the other side of the comma. Should early senility disqualify someone from running for president? No, not if that person sees the president as the leader of a collaborative group known as an administration.

The Biden Administration has run the executive branch for almost three years. In that time, it’s done a great deal of good, from Covid control to recharging the economy to rebuilding our infrastructure to making prescription medicine more affordable. Despite the strain of a pandemic and the war in Ukraine, the U.S. has the most vigorous economy in the industrialized world, and the NATO alliance has never been more united. What’s more, the U.S. is now serious about its leadership role in the struggle to stabilize the climate. If Joe Biden is on the ballot 13 months from now, I’ll vote for him without hesitation, regardless of who opposes him.

His opponent will likely be Donald Trump, unless the courts decide the 14th Amendment disqualifies him. A Trump victory would be the death knell of American democracy. If any other MAGA candidate were elected, the result would be essentially the same. That’s how thoroughly Trump has reamed out the Republican Party. To quote Mitt Romney, “A very large portion of my party really doesn’t believe in the Constitution. “¹

But back to Trump. Unlike Biden, he collaborates on nothing. He’s an autocrat. Like Biden, he’s senile, but when he loses track of what he’s saying, he simply changes the subject. He’s a master of the malicious non sequitur. The members of his cult are, for the most part, uninformed, paranoid, and frustrated. Malice energizes them. They’re insensible to his senility because their anger blinds them to it, and to much else. So Trump fares better in a senility comparison.²

We’re roughly 13 months away from the next presidential election. The national polls say Biden and Trump are virtually tied. Let’s pause and ponder that astonishing claim. A twice-impeached, four-times-indicted scoundrel is just as appealing (or unappealing) as a man whose record of public service has scarcely a blemish?! Let’s all say “WTF!” in unison. Then let’s take a breath and acknowledge that the polls are probably accurate. They show us what we’ve become. Breathing into a paper bag won’t help.

I try to derive some consolation from recalling that Trump will be on trial for much of those 13 months, with a bright light on his autocratic ambitions. But I’m not consoled. I’ve already seen the preview of coming attractions wherein Trump becomes Christ. “I am suffering for your sake. I’ll take their punishment because I’m your shield.” We’ll see many performances of Trump the Martyr. It’s a strategy that could well give staying power to his poll numbers.

The most powerful weapon in Biden’s arsenal is the warning that Trump’s success will doom democracy in America. But does Biden really believe it? Does the hierarchy in the Democratic Party really believe it? There’s a simple way to tell. In the shadow of this doomsday prophecy, Biden and the Democratic leadership would take, and should take, any extreme measure within the law to reduce Trump’s chances of winning. They do not want to experience the morning-after horror that struck Hillary Clinton and the Democrats in November of 2016. And a morning-after horror in November of 2024 would be even more horrific!

If Chuck Schumer were reading this, he’d be chuckling. “Ken, what ‘extreme measure’ do you have in mind?” he’d ask. “He’s already walking the picket line in the UAW strike.” Well, Chuck, I’ll give you a hint. In a poll of Democratic voters taken last July by The New York Times and Siena College, only 26% said they want to see Biden on the ballot again. Will that percentage rise when the primaries are underway? All I know for sure is the sentiment of the other 74% will turn into resignation. Is that what we want — 74% of Democrats voting for Biden in resignation when the fate of the nation is at stake?

Biden should drop out. He’s on the same shameful path that Dianne Feinstein and Mitch McConnell have been on. They’ve put his will to run into an unflattering context. It’s a “power before service” context, and the electorate rightly despises it. He should exit soon, while there’s still time to launch a spirited campaign for a younger, more energetic candidate. Think how that would light up the coming year!

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¹Romney has the right idea about his party, but he misstates its apostasy. His party actually believes in much of the Constitution, particularly the Second Amendment, the Tenth Amendment, the Electoral College, and the allotment of senators. What they don’t believe in is democracy.

²It’s a national disgrace that two geezers are vying for the top office in the land while the Senate turns into an old age home. We must impose age caps on all federal offices!

Death spirals

Each year, I try to pick the most important story of that year, the one most likely to affect our immediate future. This year, however, I’ve picked two stories. They seem to have little in common but are strangely inseparable, at least to me. Perhaps it’s because they share the same theme — the death spiral of a monster.

The first story involves the war in Ukraine, which started late last February. It was supposed to be a quick mauling of any Ukrainian forces that resisted the Russian invasion. It was anything but. To understand why, we have to imagine a dictator who is among the greatest fuckups in history, and also one of the cruelest, most impulsive, and most vengeful — Vladimir Putin. If you’re wondering what he could have done to earn these distinctions, here’s a record of ineptitude that may challenge your credulity:

• Putin’s first responsibility was to gather intelligence, and in this he failed utterly. The estimate of Ukraine’s readiness and will to resist missed the mark completely. The estimate of the West’s commitment to Ukraine also erred badly. The West quickly agreed on crushing sanctions that all but crippled Russia’s economy. Then it followed through by providing Ukraine with advanced weapon systems, technical assistance, military intelligence, food, clothing, medical supplies, and infrastructure support. Putin failed to realize there was no way to intercept supply lines without invading NATO nations and triggering a doomsday scenario. In effect, Putin found himself fighting against the entire industrialized world, minus China, India, and Iran.
  
  
• He never bothered to understand the logistics of fighting a war. He had no access to Ukraine’s rail system, so he sent countless military and supply vehicles down Ukraine’s roads, where they stalled and became targets. The glut of traffic was so immense that fuel, munitions, spare parts, and other materiel couldn’t be efficiently moved to troops in forward positions.
  
  
• He put quickly trained — and therefore poorly trained — soldiers in the field. Moreover, he sent far too few of them. Approximately 150,000 to 190,000 Russian soldiers, regulars and irregulars, were in the initial invasion force, facing a country of 44 million people. That’s a ratio of 4 Russian soldiers for every 1,000 Ukrainian inhabitants. Data from modern warfare shows that roughly 20 soldiers for every 1,000 inhabitants are needed to conquer and pacify a hostile population. This explains why Putin has been desperate to find more soldiers. He has hired mercenaries and offered convicts freedom if they agree to fight. He has gone so far as to institute a draft, but this caused such an uproar that he had to give it up.
  
  
• Last April, Russian troops halted their advance on Kyiv. It was the perfect moment for Putin to cut his losses and pretend he had delivered a harsh warning to Ukrainians who dared to collude with NATO. Sadly, he was too proud to accept the rebuke he was dealt. He redeployed Russian forces to the East and South, where many Ukrainians identify with Russian culture. The Russians were brutal in asserting their claims to these regions. Rockets destroyed urban centers and residences. People on the street were indiscriminately executed and consigned to mass graves. Many of the survivors were tortured; women were raped. The new strategy was to demoralize Ukrainians by subjecting them to a barrage of war crimes. The memory of this savagery will evoke Ukrainian hatred for centuries. Even if Russian reverses its record of screwups and losses, it will never pacify a single acre of Ukrainian territory. Russia hoped to avoid sharing a border with a NATO country. Now they will share a border with something far worse, a blood enemy. And if Ukraine is ever in a position to dictate the terms that will end the war, Putin and his surviving generals will certainly face war crimes trials, imprisonment, and execution.
  
  
• He is oblivious to the enormity of his crimes. This winter he has doubled down. He’s sent missile barrages against Ukraine’s infrastructure, depriving Ukrainians of light, warmth, water, and food supplies. He has actually weaponized winter. This strategy will never drive his foe toward capitulation; it will have exactly the opposite effect.
  
  
• He has never had a contingency plan for a long war. After 10 months of fighting, he’s using charity drives to supply soldiers with medicine, sleeping bags, felt boots, woolen socks, mittens, scarves, and body armor. One charity event raised the equivalent of $45 thousand. Contrast this with the $45 billion that Congress recently passed for emergency assistance to Ukraine and NATO allies. The appropriation includes a critical infusion of Patriot anti-ballistic missiles.
  
  

The war will end in either of two ways. One, Russia loses in the traditional way — they capitulate and Ukraine dictates terms, which will undoubtedly include Putin’s removal (if he isn’t already dead), loss of the Crimea, and war reparations. Two, Russia loses in the pyrrhic way; that is, they win but pay a staggering price in lives, leadership, prosperity, and reputation. If it’s the second way, it won’t be called “pyrrhic,” because no winning military in world history will have paid such a disastrous price. It will be called a “putinic” (poo-TIN-ic, with two short i’s) victory. It’s amazing to think that the likelihood of a no-win scenario has probably never occurred to Putin.

The second story begins with a mass poisoning, an occurrence that is almost always accidental. A case in point is the poisoning of the Flint River some years ago when lead leached into the Flint, Michigan, water supply. It wasn’t a malicious crime but an instance of greed, arrogance, and gross incompetence, as we so often see in human dealings. Contrast this case with the poisonous lies and misinformation the Republican party and Trump Administration have for years spewed into the American body politic via mass media outlets — newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and an array of Internet social platforms. The climax, of course, was the Big Lie, the outrageous claim that the 2020 Presidential Election was stolen by the Democrats. That lie has been served up daily at every level of government. Invariably, it is garnished with supporting lies. Election observers were let go! Election workers stuffed ballot boxes! Voting machines were reprogrammed! Venezualan software was used to flip Trump votes! Fake ballots were flown in from China! Record numbers of dead people voted! The sum of the votes exceeded the number of voters!

Have no doubt that a repeated cocktail of lies can be just as destructive to a body politic as chemical poisons are to flesh and blood. Add to this another fact, that most Americans glory in jingoistic horseshit: America is exceptional, a shining city on a hill, God’s chosen nation, the savior of democracies, the last best hope of earth. We are disposed to love anyone who tells us repeatedly how special we are, which leaves us open to the manipulations of political flimflam artists. How hurtful it was to be told our star had dimmed. How restorative to hear our greatness could be made complete again. How thrilling to know a person is among us who could accomplish this mission. How infuriating to learn he had been cheated out of that opportunity! Thus the vile poison saturated our discourse.

All through 2021, the Trump-induced delirium rolled on. Denial of Biden’s election swept the South and Midwest, while the swing states were incubating sworn enemies of free and fair elections. Hundreds of candidates were ready to file for the 2022 midterms and usher in one-party rule. Meanwhile, the Democrats wallowed in helplessness. Because two of their number were closet Republicans, Democratic control of the Senate was an illusion. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act was on the Senate floor in January, 2022. If it had become federal law, it would have superseded any state law that sought to thwart minority access to the ballot. Sadly, it lacked Republican support. The Democrats didn’t even have enough votes to block a Republican filibuster.

The outlook for the 2022 midterms was further dimmed by a disengaged Department of Justice. By the first anniversary of the January 6ᵗʰ riot, the department had arrested 700 rioters and was pursuing hundreds more, but it had done virtually no investigating of the role Trump and his colleagues played in organizing or inciting the riot. If DoJ priorities had been prudent, if the big fish had been its primary target, it would have known in just months that Trump had been assured the election was fair; it would have had all the information needed to lay bare the conspiracy of liars and cynical cowards at the heart of America’s poisoning.

In the face of DoJ inaction, Nancy Pelosi called for a national commission to investigate the origins of the January 6ᵗʰ riot. The idea passed the House but failed in the Senate, where the Republicans threatened to filibuster. Pelosi, undaunted, proposed that a House Select Committee, a so-called “January 6ᵗʰ Committee,” do the investigation. Kevin McCarthy, her counterpart, insisted that five representatives of his choosing be seated on the committee. Three of these were laughably biased, so Pelosi picked two even-handed Republicans to replaced them. The committee was approved by all the House Democrats and 38 Republicans. It held its first meeting on July 27, 2021, with the testimony of four Capitol police officers. By the end of the year, it had interviewed more than 300 witnesses, obtained more than 35,000 documents, and gone far toward exposing the subversion that lay behind the riot. Unfortunately, their findings hadn’t been woven into a coherent narrative and presented in full public view.

When 2022 began, Democrats were in white-knuckled dread of the changes the year would bring. They wondered, is this the year the Trumpists strangle democracy? In their despair, they failed to notice a sea change. Immediately after Russia invaded Ukraine, Trump labeled Putin a genius, adding, “He’s taking over a country for $2 worth [!] of sanctions. I’d say that’s pretty smart.” In referring to the loss of life, he couldn’t avoid trotting out his Big Lie. “If our election wasn’t rigged, you would’ve had nobody dead.” Stunning. He delivered a trifecta of stupidity, mendacity, and conceit in just a few sentences, showing the world once again how loathsome he was.

Then came May, a month of reckoning for Trump. The preceding December, he had phoned Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, who was busy looking into charges of voter fraud. Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” the 11,780 votes he needed to top Biden’s Georgia vote count, plainly an attempt to tamper with the election. As May arrived, Fani Willis, the Fulton County District Attorney, struck back at Trump. She requested that the county’s chief judge create a grand jury to determine if Trump’s behavior was criminal. The grand jury’s findings will be reported soon.

Later in the month, the first critical Republican primaries of 2022 were held. In Idaho, the governor beat a Trump-favored challenger. In North Carolina, Trump tried to save a congressman hip-deep in scandals but to no avail. In Pennsylvania, Trump went all out for Mehmet Oz, the charlatan doctor. Oz survived but with a dubious road ahead. The Georgia primary was the most bitter pill of all. Trump had a score to settle with Brian Kemp, the governor, who was up for reelection. Months before, Kemp had ignored Trump’s plea to replace Biden’s slate of electors with his own. Even more galling, Brad Raffensperger was trying to be reelected as Secretary of State. To Trump’s great chagrin, both men won easily.

In June, the January 6ᵗʰ Committee began broadcasting its hearings on live television. For the first time, the post-election misdeeds of ex-President Trump sank deeply into the public consciousness. Here is what the committee revealed about him over the course of ten televised sessions:

• Despite the loss of dozens of election-related lawsuits and the assurance of government officials that the election was fair, he refused to concede. He thus failed his Constitutional obligation to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
  
  
• He asked DoJ officials to tell lies that would help his attempt to overturn the election.
  
  
• He pressured state officials and legislators to change the results of their state elections.
  
  
• He oversaw a plan to obtain false electoral certificates and send them to Congress and the National Archives.
  
  
• He asked members of Congress to object to valid slates of electors from several states.
  
  
• In federal court, he stated that false information was valid.
  
  
• He brought supporters to Washington, DC on January 6ᵗʰ, instructing them to “take back” their country. In speaking to them at the Ellipse, he further provoked them, knowing that some of them were armed.
  
  
• He sent a tweet that publicly condemned Vice President Pence while the rioting was underway.
  
  
• While watching the rioting on television over a period of hours, he refused repeated requests to tell the rioters to disperse and leave the Capitol.
  
  
• He had the authority and responsibility to call the National Guard into the District of Columbia but failed to do so.

As Trump was marinating in the televised testimony, August rolled around. On the 8ᵗʰ, a team of FBI agents entered Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida home, with a search warrant. They were looking for documents, many of them classified, that Trump had taken when he left the presidency and not turned over to the National Archives, as required by the Presidential Records Act. The FBI came away with over 100 classified documents, some of which reportedly contained secrets about nuclear weapons. This disclosure raised the question of whether Trump had violated the Espionage Act.

Later that month, Letitia James, the New York District Attorney, filed a civil fraud lawsuit against Trump and his three oldest children. In a news conference, she accused them of an “astounding” pattern of financial fraud. She claimed Trump had egregiously inflated his worth on financial statements to deceive lenders and insurers into offering beneficial terms. She wants the Trump Organization to give back $250 million of the benefits and be banned from buying commercial real estate in the state for 5 years.

On November 8ᵗʰ, Election Day, three questions hung in the air: how much would high inflation hurt Democrats? how much would the end of the Roe v. Wade era hurt Republicans? how much value would a Trump endorsement carry? Exit polls showed that worries about inflation hurt Democrats somewhat more than pro-abortion sentiment helped them. One issue pretty much offset the other. What gave Democrats the edge was concern about Trump’s political clout, especially among independent voters. They favored Democrats by a small margin, a considerable departure from their voting in the last four midterms. Generally, they favor the party not in power by double digits.

In mid-November, Attorney General Merrick Garland made a long overdue announcement, the appointment of a Justice Department prosecutor, Jack Smith, to oversee two criminal investigations. The first was to determine whether “any person or entity unlawfully interfered with the transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election or the certification of the Electoral College vote held on or about January 6, 2021.” The second was to continue the investigation of the documents found at Mar-a-Lago and “the possible obstruction of that investigation.” Garland’s announcement led me to a couple of conclusions. The work of the January 6ᵗʰ Committee had embarrassed Garland and forced his hand. I have no idea where we’d be today if the committee had never been created. What’s more significant, Smith’s work will inevitably end in criminal indictments. Anything less, and the uproar will be volcanic.

Recently, the January 6ᵗʰ Committee issued its final report. It asks the DoJ to look into at least four of its charges against Trump and to bar him from holding office again. The committee is in the process of turning all its evidence over to Jack Smith.

I expect Trump’s fortunes to decline even more rapidly in 2023. I see no path for him to win the presidential nomination in 2024, nor do I see him as a third party candidate. Either prison or political banishment will bar the way.

Takeaways

Recounts, runoffs, and litigation remain, but it’s not too soon to start sorting things out. First and foremost, a grave cancer has been excised from the body politic. Now, when you get out of bed each morning, you can exclaim, “Biden will be our next president — Hallelujah!” until the good humor you lost in 2016 is restored. Sigh contentedly as you realize the Executive Branch will be resuscitated and resurrected. Smile broadly as you imagine the Great Orange Swine passing into the damnation of history and, hopefully, into a prison cell or self-exile. Giggle as the reprobates that head the Cabinet departments scurry down their rat holes and into oblivion.

You may even want to delight in the story of how Trump engineered his own defeat. True to his trademark, he blended arrogance and incompetence with stupidity and made the Covid crisis far worse than it needed to be … which made the opportunity to vote by mail imperative … which meant the Democrats weren’t required to drag their lazy butts to the polls … which meant their vote was the largest in modern memory … which meant that Biden was elected. If the Democrats have any sense, they will press for laws that make voting by mail a permanent option in all state and federal elections.

That’s pretty much where our celebration ends. I’m annoyed whenever I hear a mindless newsperson say, “Joe Biden has won the Presidency with more votes than any presidential candidate in history!” How inane is that? Donald Trump lost the Presidency with more votes than any other presidential loser. Shall we applaud him too? As of this writing, he got 70,803,881 votes. That’s 47.7% of the electorate and 1.8% better than he did in 2016. Turn that over in your heads for a minute. Nearly half of voting America said, “Yep, we want four more years of the monster who wants to end us.” (If your spaceship just landed and you’re unaware of Trump’s credentials as a monster, take a look at this. It should make any sentient creature want to escort Trump out of the White House at the end of a pitchfork.)

Biden wants to embrace Red America and lead them back into the fold, as if they were ever a part of it. His appeal to them is both biblical and Lincolnesque. He wants to be everyone’s president, the father who forgives his prodigal children, a leader who intends to “heal the nation,” whatever that means. It’s an absurd notion. Red America is too badly addled to be “healed” in any constructive sense. They supported a man who wanted to deny them affordable health care, reject abortion no matter the consequences, keep higher education unaffordable, watch the world flood and burn, widen the breach been rich and poor, tolerate the unregulated ownership of firearms, and fan racial and ethnic enmity. They will look on approvingly when he pardons the jailbirds who played on his “team.” Plainly, Red America is unable to discriminate between positive and negative action. Their politics create hurt, want, despair, division, and hate. They are a danger to our social well-being, and as such, they have much in common with the people who occupy our prisons. (I’ll concede, though, that they are less violent, generally.)

No, I don’t advocate locking them up, shutting them up, or disenfranchising them. In fact, I’d like to give them a country of their own, on the same soil they occupy now. I wrote about this idea in a post titled “Thinking the unthinkable.”

Many people who read this post think, “Whoa! — that’s too desperate, too extreme. Red America will come along in time.” These dissenters have a poor idea of how long belief systems persist. Take a look at this graphic, courtesy of my friend Virginia Hinkle:

You see two political maps of the USA, one showing our country 170 years ago, the other showing it today. Both record almost the same political divisions. It would be nice to think that Blue America has made some progress, but it isn’t so. Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are all “purple” states. If only in-person voting had been allowed, they might have been painted red.

It boils down to three choices: move to another country, split from Red America, or play the cards you were dealt. No matter which you choose, you’ll want to lose the party hat, put down the kazoo, and recork the champagne. The future is a bitch.

An odor most foul

It’s been several days since the Democratic candidates’ debate in Las Vegas, but the stench of it lingers still. The worst of it was at the end, when Chuck Todd posed the Todd Test to each of the candidates: If none of you has enough delegates at the Democratic National Convention to clinch the nomination, should the person with the most delegates at the end of this primary season be the nominee even if they are short of a majority?

It should have been a softball question. After all, the candidates had been preaching party unity and the dire need to unseat Trump since the beginning of the campaign. Bernie Sanders, the candidate with the most momentum, said yes. No surprise there. The other five “unifiers” said no! Now, we always hope that the President of the United States will be a person of clear vision and sound judgment, but here we had five aspirants advocating the ruination of their party and four more years of Trump, for that’s exactly what a “Take it away from Bernie” convention would do.

Save for the evisceration of Bloomberg, it was an evening of disappointments. I had long admired Elizabeth Warren. Until last week, this was her pledge: Let’s be clear: I won’t take a dime of PAC money in this campaign. I won’t take a single check from a federal lobbyist, or billionaires who want to run a Super PAC on my behalf. She staked out a moral position, but lately her coffers have been running low. That’s what happens when a campaign wanes and donors turn away. Now, desperate to survive, she’s taking super PAC money because everyone does it. This on top of her willingness to throw the most popular candidate under a bus! She’s like a wax figurine on a hot griddle.

Then there’s Buttigieg, with a memorized stock of idiotic one-liners to use against his rivals … er, I mean “colleagues.” He laid into Klobuchar for a forgivable memory lapse and, much worse, labeled Sanders a “socialist.” No, not a democratic socialist of the kind common in Europe. He was pandering to ignorant Americans who think either “communist” or “ivory-tower fool” when they hear the word. It’s taken decades of patient explaining to give “socialism” the dignity it deservers, yet there was Buttigieg defiling it again.

The rest of the field doesn’t excite me. Biden is pathetic, with his insistence that he’s been a tower of progressive enlightenment for decades. I think of him only as Tonto to Obama’s Lone Ranger. And Klobuchar is almost as sad. I wince every time she reminds us that she’s “in the arena” and brags of her invincibility in Minnesota elections. I’ve yet to hear a compelling reason to vote for her. I leave Bloomberg for last, and for criticism I defer to the others on the stage.

If Bernie goes into the nominating convention with less than a majority of the delegates, I suggest a pre-emptive strike — stern warnings and demonstrations that the Sanders plurality is not to be trifled with.

Detonators

It’s useful to deploy the word “detonator” in a political context. In that realm, a detonator is an issue that can blow to smithereens a candidate’s efforts to win public office. Often a Democratic candidate has one or two in his back pocket that he’s counting on to destroy his rival. Likewise, the Republican candidate has one or two bombs he’s planning to drop on the Democrat. The 2020 presidential election, however, will depart from the norm. Strange to say, the Democrats will have no detonators whatsoever, and the Republicans will have at least three.

Inconceivable, you say? Not at all. Here’s how it happens …. Thanks to Nancy Pelosi and the moral rot in the Republican Party, Trump is again nominated for president. The Democratic nominee, on the stump and in the presidential debates, fires these charges at Trump:

None of them detonate! They’re all true, but they’re all duds. The electorate long ago absorbed this litany of atrocities and processed it to the point of numbness. Trump simply smiles and replies, “Blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda.” Laughter and applause break out all over the South, the Midwest, the Rustbelt, and wherever Trumpkins breed. This is the moment when we know how badly we’ve been bludgeoned and how intractable our stupidity is.

Of course, Trump will have his chance to level charges. Some of them, like “Socialism!”  and “Dangerously Naive,” will draw a little blood, but a skillful debater can parry these easily. Some others, though, will leave craters.

Late-Term Abortions

I dealt with this a bit in my last post. It’s a blind spot that almost all progressive Democrats share. They literally don’t see late-term abortions as an issue and seem unaware that Roe v. Wade allows them only under exceptional circumstances. Kirsten Gillibrand is their spokesperson. She says it’s a non-issue because “they make up only 1% of all abortions.” In other words, “pff, meaningless.”

If you don’t think that abortion is a form of homicide, then you’re with Kirsten. But if you do think it is, and a great many do, you have to ask, “In what other cases of homicide do we write off 1% as not worth our attention?”

If Trump cross-examines Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders on this issue, they are screwed. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will answer appropriately.

Abolishing Private Health Insurance

Most of the Democratic front-runners want Medicare for All. Fine, they should let it go at that. If asked, “Would you then abolish private health insurance,” there’s only one correct answer: “No.”

Most employed Americas under 65 get private health insurance from their employers and share a small part of the cost. They may prefer this arrangement to Medicare for All, which will not be totally free by any means. However, even though they may want to stick with their employers, their employers won’t want to stick with them! The burden on the employers is just too great. Sooner or later, they’ll hand the employees a Medicare for All pamphlet and wish them good luck.

In other words, private health insurance will pretty much abolish itself, so insisting on its abolition is absurd. But Sanders and Warren seem prepared to go to the mat on this issue. If either is nominated, Trump will put the question, and tens of millions will hear, “Like it or not, it’s going away.” Coercion makes enemies.

Reparations for Black Americans

Oppression is as natural to humans as hydrant-peeing is to dogs. If you crave superiority, justify yourself with some agreeable nonsense, find a like-minded group, merge your resources, and before you know it, you’re oppressing people! It’s a way to vent, grow more powerful, and feel superior all at the same time!

Try making a list of peoples known to have been oppressed. Begin with all the conquered ethnicities of the ancient world. Make sure the Jews are near the top. They share their prominent place with women, who, with some rare cultural exceptions, have been oppressed for all of recorded history. In feudal times, noble houses oppressed the serfs and peasants. Religious zealots fought and tortured each other. Along the Barbary Coast, for more than two centuries, Muslims captured and enslaved white Europeans traveling on the Mediterranean. Tack on the English oppression of the Irish and Scottish, the genocides perpetrated by the Turks, and the oppression by dictators of their own people.

In the New World, there’s much to add. Of course, there’s the enslavement of Africans and the oppression of Native Americans, atrocities that are comparable in cruelty and duration. When waves of European immigrants began arriving at America’s eastern shores in the 19th century, their assimilation was stiffly resisted. In the West, Hawaiians and Asians were treated cruelly well into the 20th century.

The point of this exercise is to show that no ethnicity, race, or religion can reasonably step forward and say, “We are the most aggrieved people in this country. Our historical wounds should have the greatest claim on your attention and your charity.” Just try to devise the criteria supporting such a claim, and you’ll quickly find yourself in a web of arbitrary judgments. You’ll also see that “historical wounds” means nothing, because reparations for suffering have nothing to do with the dead. You can’t put money in a dead man’s hand and say, “There, now we’re square!”

Reparations are only for people who have suffered and are living still. Fittingly, the German government has paid reparations to concentration camp survivors, and our government has done the same to living Japanese Americans who were once in internment camps. But there are no living black slaves, so reparations for black slavery makes no sense. Yet black people are still oppressed today. Might there still be a case for reparations?

Yes, but to say that present-day American oppression is race-based trivializes the subject. The oppression in our country is class-based! People who are poor or living from paycheck to paycheck are being oppressed by a majority of American oligarchs, who own the Republican Party. Several of the Democrats running for the presidency have made proposals — a wealth tax, universal health care, a Green New Deal, free preschool, free in-school meals, free state colleges, full or partial forgiveness of college loans — that are, in fact, class reparations. This is how they should frame their programs.

With the possible exception of Bernie Sanders, they have not put their case this way. Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and even Sanders have endorsed bills in the House and Senate that would establish a commission to study reparations for Black Americans. Not oppressed Americans or struggling Americans, but Black Americans. This is a call to give money and care to a single American demographic in a hate-filled climate. It’s difficult to imagine a proposal that would be more divisive.

If Trump raises this issue in the 2020 election campaign, only Joe Biden would be able to defuse it. That does not give me much comfort.

Those damn Dems

We’ve got two major parties in America — the Shameless and the Spineless. Can you guess which is which? Many will say the Republicans are spineless: they won’t stand up to Trump. I disagree. Aside from a paltry minority of them, they like what Trump is doing and want him to keep it up. Less access to health care! Lower taxes for the rich! More sucking up to the gun lobby! Keep education unaffordable! Less consumer protection! Drill, baby, drill! They are the shameless ones. The Democrats, on the other hand, are easily shamed. Report a Dem’s sexual indiscretion or racially insensitive gaffe, and you can drive him from office. A Republican will defy opinion and fight to the end. Strangely enough, it’s a behavior they learned from Bill Clinton.

Being capable of shame is to one’s credit. Being incapable of risk is not. That is the downfall of the Democrats. Their mascot, a donkey, isn’t a bad choice. The donkey has a strong sense of self-preservation. But I think a jellyfish would be much more on target. As for a motto, I like “Tread on me!”

Exhibit A for my accusation is the Mueller Report. “Don’t rush to judgment,” the Dems said. “Wait for the report,” they said, even though a child could see that Trump was obstructing justice on a weekly basis. OK, Mueller’s investigation was in progress, so I understood their patience. Now the investigation has ended, and our earlier conclusions have been confirmed: Trump will go down in American history as the Great Obstructor.

What do the Speaker of the House and her committee chairmen have to say? “We’ve got a long way to go before we can seriously raise the ‘I’ word,” they say. “We’ve got to subpoena the hell out of Washington and go over hundreds of documents with a fine-toothed comb. Then, perhaps-maybe, we’ll want to consider impeachment.” Pathetic. They have to get Mueller to testify, and they have to go over Trump’s taxes — and that’s it! Those two things should be done now, within the context of impeachment hearings.

Their inaction is particularly galling given that Trump is throwing obstruction of justice in their faces. He’s declared that Mueller must not testify before a Congressional committee. Nor may anyone in his administration, past or present, honor a subpoena and testify before a Congressional committee. Nor may a document relevant to his or his administration’s record be given to a Congressional committee. All of this falls under the umbrella of Executive Privilege, he says. This isn’t garden-variety obstruction; it’s public, flagrant, spit-in-your-eye obstruction. Nancy Pelosi says Trump is “committing self-impeachment.” In your dreams, Nancy. It can’t be done without your House.

Don’t believe a Democrat who says, “We have a responsibility to America to make a solid case for impeachment. We don’t want to go off half-cocked and divide the country even more.” Let me translate that for you: “We would only fail in the Senate, and the public would see that as a repudiation of our case. Support for Trump could actually increase. His supporters are a politically active, flammable bunch. We could end up losing the 2020 election.” The truth is, what’s going on now has nothing to do with making a solid case; what they’ve already got is bullet proof. They simply don’t want to take the political risk, even though it’s their Constitutional duty to call villains to account. Missing from their calculations is the weak-kneed signal they’re sending to future presidential aspirants with despotic tendencies.

Furthermore, losing in the Senate isn’t an unqualified disaster. If the Democrats make their case well and Trump is nevertheless acquitted, the Republicans are likely doomed as a party, and Trump will still lose in 2020. As I see it, impeachment is not only honorable but an excellent risk to take!

A common misperception about Democrats is that they’re a progressive party, which is a way of saying that they’re comfortable with a socialist agenda. This is untrue. Yes, there is a progressive wing of the party, and it’s ably represented by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. They are New Idea people, but New Idea people frighten most of the American electorate. What Americans want is a congenial person who advocates few, if any, new ideas. The past century saw a parade of these people, led, improbably, by FDR. Few could resist his mellow, patrician voice, his beaming smile, and the cigarette holder happily tucked between his teeth. But, to our great good fortune, he also experimented with ideas. He was a pragmatist. The masses, in their acute distress, forgave him for it. He stands above the rest because he’s the only modern president who was both congenial and original.

Later there were Eisenhower, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama — each lovable in his own way, but disappointingly unoriginal. (I’ll give Obama the Affordable Care Act, but really, it was a tepid step forward.)

Is it any surprise, then, that Joe Biden has a large early lead for the 2020 Democratic nomination? He’s got a lovable old mug, a golly-gee presence, and an “I bleed empathy” demeanor. Does he offer any new ideas? Who the hell cares? That’s enough for most Democrats — and enough to make me gag.

Rank-and-file Dems, like those who represent them, are dubious about anyone who’s bold and original. Give them someone from the dustbin. Brush him off and see if he’ll give you an obliging wink and a smile. If he does, he knows the drill. He’s your … um … new leader.

 

Joy diminished

I was elated the night of the midterm elections. The Democrats got a combative foot in the door! My tongue reached for appropriate cheers, something to express my joy and relief, and I knew at once that I was poorly equipped for the task.

At such moments, one pulls up nothing but lame stuff — “Thank God!” or “Praise the Lord!“ or “Bless you, Jesus!” or other variations of religious programming. In my frustration, I wanted to cry out, “Yes, by Zeus!” But that’s the same thing, no?

There are neo-religionists who, like me, would like to avoid invoking the conventional gods. So what do they say? Flaky stuff like “Bless the Universe!” or “Thank you, Cosmic Spirit!” The universe is gas and dust and a limitless quantum vacuum. It has no affections or affinities. We are on our own, with our values and our commitment or indifference to them.

Therefore, I appeal to you: Let’s now invoke human beings! Let’s remember the best of us in our exclamations of joy. My favorite way of doing this is to pair the shout “Hail” with the name of a historic hero or heroine. I’m partial to names that begin with H — they lend alliterative appeal — and names that are dactylic feet (three syllables, with an emphasis on the first). Last Tuesday, I wish I’d thought of “Hail Hamilton!” or “Hail Madison!” “Washington,” “Benjamin,” and “Jefferson” would have also served well. (I’ll be the first to agree that my aesthetics don’t always produce the best results. For instance, I like “Hail Tubman!” much more than “Hail Harriet!”)

If a medical breakthrough makes news, I’d recommend “Hail Hippocrates!” or “Hail Hygieia!” (Yeah, she’s a goddess, but dammit, her name’s aesthetically perfect.) If a scientific breakthrough fires our imagination, I’d go with “Hail Heisenberg!” “Hail Hubble!”, “Hail Higgs!”, and “Hale Bopp!” get honorable mentions. When sports feats dazzle us, I’d try “Hail Tiger!”, “Hail Federer!”, or “Hail Montana!” (No, not “Hail Mary!”)

Another solution — almost as good — is to call out the name of a literary or cultural icon, even if it’s a pop cultural icon. For example, both “By Beowulf!” and “By Batman!” are excellent. I’m also drawn to “By Gilgamesh!” and “By Hercules!”, both dactyls.

So how about it? Can we please start putting humanity into our joyous outcries?

Our national nudist camp

In the daily thicket of eye-grabbing headlines, you might have missed the most extraordinary one of all: Capitol Hill Becomes National Nudist Camp. The transition has actually been gradual, but it seems as if we all awoke one morning and realized with a shock that every member of Congress was naked! Our federal servants, like the vain emperor in the old story, had no clothes! Everything we needed to know about them was right in plain sight.

The Republicans
Our president, who’s indirectly on the midterm ballot, strikes a stunning range of poses on the domestic and world stage. He varies from rude to vulgar to arrogant to absurd to bombastic to uninformed to treasonous to shameless. At times, he wears these poses in combinations, a freak show to behold. I say that “performing freakishly in office” is an impeachable offense … but I reluctantly acknowledge there are less drastic ways to express revulsion at presidential conduct. The Republicans, who control the Congress, can join with Democrats and pass legislation to block presidential action (with a subsequent veto override, of course). They can work with Democrats to draft and pass a Sense of the House (or Senate or Congress) to lodge a formal complaint, a sort of shot across the presidential bow. They can authorize committees to investigate and report on alleged malfeasance in office. Have the Republicans used any of these milder forms of redress? Only the last, and then ineptly and with extreme bias.

Take, for, example, the antics of the House Intelligence Committee and its preposterous chairman, Devin Nunes. In early 2017, he falsely claimed that the intelligence community knew nothing about contact between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives. He declared that Michael Flynn, the National Security Advisor, should be thanked for his conversations with Russian officials, even though Flynn had lied to the FBI about their content. He later called a bogus press conference to announce receipt of information about secret recordings made of the Trump transition team. He hadn’t bothered to notify members of his committee in advance, and the recordings, it turned out, were entirely legal.

But Nunes was only building toward a grand finale. In February of 2018, he and committee Republicans released a memo alleging an FBI conspiracy to mislead judges about a surveillance warrant they were seeking. Nunes and Company further claimed the FBI had relied on “political dirt” (an incriminating dossier written by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer) to open a counter intelligence operation against the president! A month later, Nunes and his Republican colleagues topped this stunt by announcing, without notice to committee Democrats, the end to the committee’s investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. They followed up with a report, written solely by the Republicans, asserting there was neither collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government nor evidence the Russian government tried to help elect Trump. These conclusions were entirely in contradiction to well-grounded findings by the intelligence community!

At any time during the evolution of this farce, House Speaker Ryan could have taken away Nunes’s chairmanship or told him to knock it off. He did neither. He watched as Nunes began a parallel investigation into claims (his own) that the FBI and the Justice Department were abusing their powers. He sighed as Nunes incited House Republicans to call for the Assistant Attorney General’s impeachment. He was mum when Nunes and colleagues told a crowd at a fund raiser that his committee was a bastion against the president’s impeachment.

On the Senate side, the Senate Judiciary Committee also tried to defame Christopher Steele and, by extension, the FBI, who took Steele’s work seriously. (Steele retired with distinction in 2009 and and subsequently worked as a private investigator for Fusion GPS, a political research firm with an interest in Trump’s connections to the Russian government.)

In January of 2018, Chuck Grassley and Lindsay Graham, the committee’s chairman and senior Republican, respectively, formally asked the Justice Department to investigate Steele’s interactions with media outlets. The Democratic members of the committee had not been notified. Grassley and Graham said innocently that they weren’t asserting criminal behavior but merely wanted an official finding.

Glenn Simpson, a co-founder of Fusion GPS, had earlier vouched for Steele’s integrity before a closed-door session of the committee. Grassley ordered that Simpson’s testimony be kept secret. Dianne Feinstein, the committee’s ranking Democrat, defied his order and released a transcript of the testimony, much to Grassley’s chagrin.

Of course, Grassley’s committee brought much more shame upon itself in its closed-minded, ramrod sponsorship of Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Notwithstanding his record of dishonest testimony and history as an apparatchik for ultra-right causes, Kavanaugh was championed by the committee’s Republicans and continually talked up by Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader. To my mind, the confirmation process was the most outrageous example of “qualifications be damned” in more than a generation. The Senate Republicans saw it quite differently. Only one of them voted against his confirmation.

But let’s put Republican-controlled committees to one side and look at the entire Republican Congress. Collectively, they now make no effort to deny their naked subservience to wealth and power. Only a couple of years ago, there was a terrific hullabaloo about the dwindling middle class and the unconscionable enrichment of the 1%. You might have expected some kind of backlash — a more equitable tax structure, for example. But no, the Republican Congress embraced inequity as never before! The 1% got even more of the pie, as did our largest corporations. As a consequence, our budgetary shortfall and the cost of living have accelerated. Our economy is more out of balance than ever, and legislation is before the House to tip the scales further.

It’s the same story with health care. The Republican Congress wounded Obamacare and came within a hair’s breadth of killing it. Why? Because big medical and pharmaceutical interests oppose any government role in health care. The Republicans are selling one of the biggest lies in our society, that private health care can be affordable health care.

Likewise, the Republican Congress has made it clear that there is no amount of gun violence that can move them to regulate the availability of guns. Double the gun violence, triple it. No matter. Republicans want the status quo forever, or at least as long as the gun lobby exists.

The Democrats
“We the people” is at the core of the Democrats’ political sensibilities, diametrically opposite to the Republicans’ “We the greedy.” But their nudity isn’t as stark as the Republicans’. Many Democrats sport a fig leaf. This is all about the socialism bugaboo. They don’t want their constituents to know they embrace socialism. In fact, they’re not entirely sure they do. This is especially true of over-the-hill Democrats: Clinton, Biden, Kerry, and their tribe. At bottom, they are a tentative group. They would do little to nurture the young beating heart of the party.

Emphatic Note. In any one-on-one matchup with a Republican, an over-the-hill Democrat is still the far superior choice.

A looking glass into the future
Our political values and institutions have taken a beating from Republican Congresses for years, and now we stand at the unraveling edge. If pushed much further, the promise of our history, to become a nation of, by, and for the people, will be lost. There will be no “taking our country back.” The task then will be recreating it, in an unknown year and perhaps by an unknown generation.

In that context, the midterm elections, now less than two weeks away, will be prophetic. If they leave us with anything near the status quo, our future will be grim at best. But if the Democrats take just one house, the fight will be properly joined, and our country will have earned another two-year lease on life. No reason to pop a champagne cork but neither a reason to write a national obituary.