J.D. Vance’s lack of true courage

 

 

 

“A coward's courage is in his tongue.”  Edmund Burke

In political campaigns, I’ve observed, when one Party has no real platform or tangible strengths to rally voters, their go-to approach is to disparage and undermine the character of their opponents in ways that suggest they are superior.  These often baseless assaults are small-minded, petty and insulting to people who want more than the hollow leadership that spreads fear and ignorance.

In J.D. Vance’s attempt to marginalize Tim Walz’s service to his country as a member of the National Guard, he has demeaned not only himself, but other service members, past and present, who’ve served faithfully in U.S. military. Vance has falsely accused Walz “of ducking service in Iraq when he left the Army National Guard and ran for Congress in 2005.” 

Not only does the factual record show the despicable fallacy of Vance’s maligned accusation it shines a light on his own own mediocre record as a war corespondent in Afghanistan for six months of his 4-year enlistment in the Marine Corps.  An accomplishment that deserves some respect for his enlistment, but is less distinguishable than Walz's 24-year tour of duty that included a deployment with “the Minnesota National Guard in August 2003 to Vicenza, Italy, as part of support for the US war in Afghanistan.”

As I’ve recently discovered, Vance served in the same aviation unit that I was trained by, the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing (2ndMAW), in Cherry Point, N.C., making me just a little ashamed at this time that we share this distinction.  In 1967, I was deployed to Vietnam, where I served as a member of the 1st MAWs Light Anti-aircraft battalion, seeing combat action when the Tet offensive occurred, January of 1968

For Vance or any other veteran to demean another’s services to their country is callous and dishonorable.  Vance himself saw no combat action and is supporting a candidate for President who cowardly avoided military service during the Vietnam war where his wealthy status aided him in getting him a deferment based on an alleged bone spur condition in one of his feet, of which when asked later by a reporter which one, he said he couldn’t remember.

Vance’s Trump-like glorification of himself at the expense of others is further evidence of someone with low moral character.  Trump disparaged John McCain as a “loser” in June of 2015 as Trump considered running for President.  McCain, as most will recall, was shot down flying a combat mission over North Vietnam during that war and was held prisoner for 5 and 1/2 years where he was tortured, starved, and beaten to the brink of suicidal yearnings.  This “loser” was offered a chance to go home early because of his famous name, but refused to before those who had been held captive longer.

During his administration, Trump allowed himself to get caught up in the trial of Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher whose own team members turned him in for his ruthless and deadly behavior towards Iraqi civilians where he was deployed in 2017.  FOX news pundit Pete Hegseth encouraged Trump to weigh in on this, where some members of the military warned against such Executive intervention, fearing it undermine military justice.

While Walz has enriched many of his constituents in Minnesota with his political service since leaving the National Guard, Vance has enriched himself in the field of investment capital.  Declaring himself as a ‘never Trumper” in 2016 and calling the former President "reprehensible" and "America's Hitler”, Vance flipped this view to accommodate his desire to align himself with Trump’s ambitions to ban all abortions and alter our constitutional institutions to establish a Trump autocracy, via the 2025 Project.

Vance’s attempt to portray himself more of a patriot than his Democratic counterpart is itself a cowardly act to promote his own power interests along with Trump’s.  It insults the intelligence of voters and plays on less informed voter fears.  This is not leadership.  It most certainly does not make America great.

Keep Biden on 2024 ticket

Like many of those who want to see Biden defeat Trump in November but are now seriously concerned that his last debate performance will be an obstacle to that goal, let me suggest a few points that should negate such a notion.

In defense of a Biden candidacy is the fact that he has presided over one of the most successful administrations since FDR in terms of bringing the nation back to a stable state, economically and constitutionally sound, following the nightmare of the Trump administration.  Facts don’t dispute this.  Despite being hamstrung by the pandemic and it’s latent causations, Biden’s overall performance in the critical areas that include immigration, health, jobs and wages, household wealth and serious crimes have risen to and exceeded pre-pandemic levels.

But one could ask, will Biden be able to prevail in these and other areas like foreign policy in his next 4-year term.  A legitimate concern but when looking at all factors related to another term, there are reasons to believe that his poor showing in a single 90-minutes debate is not demonstrative that calamity and chaos will ensue.

Biden has always put this country and the constitution above his own self-interests, unlike the self-serving game show host that preceded him.  Right now, Biden and those closest to him feel that he is up to the challenge.  I’ve yet to see enough that would prevent him from achieving this.  The seemingly knee-jerk reaction by many to his poor debate performance last week has, I believe, been in part due to the low expectations tHat right-wing media pundits have wasted time on, declaring “BREAKING NEWS” every time Biden stuttered or stumbled, often ignoring Trump’s own miscalculations and incoherency and his ambulatory issues


Unlike Trump who inserts himself in all matters, foreign and domestic, often overriding more competent and experienced people, Biden relies on such support from his staff, Cabinet members and agency heads to perform at a level that ensures sound policies will be carried out to prevent any imagined calamities that Right-wing alarmists have wrongly presumed would happen under a Biden administration.

However, in the event Biden’s mental and/or physical health diminishes to a level that poses a threat to the governance of this nation, I am convinced that with the help of his wife Jill, he would acknowledge such a deficiency and step down, allowing his capable VP, Kamala Harris, to step in and keep our ship of state afloat trough 2028.

Then there is the reality that a Trump presidency will outshine his previous one with greater insanity and autocratic tendencies.  His hyperbolic claims and blatant lies he exposed on that debate awoke many to the threat his presidency would present to our democracy.  He has vowed to prosecute his political enemies without due process, will undermine our freedom of the press and now, through the complicity of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court and the guidance of the Heritage Foundation’s radical 2025 Plan that eviscerates constitutional safeguards, a Trump victory this November will reduce this country to a unhinged and despotic monarchy.

The disbelief by many who remain poorly informed of what a Trump presidency will look like and those who seem gleeful of such an autocratic regime, threatens to reduce the one last hope this nation has to defend itself against fascist totalitarianism  - our vote.

Without a Supreme Court who seems inclined to support Trump’s spurious claims to total immunity from all crimes committed as President and a feckless Republican Party that pays obeisance to a cult figure rather  than to the U.S. Constitution, our choices at the polls this November are all that separates us from the traditional core values the Founders fought and died for and those vicious attempts to wrest control from the electorate to satisfy the whims of a few who stand to gain financially, standing in judgement of all who don’t share their small-minded, self-serving convictions.

Don’t let  a single 90-minutes debate overrule the better judgement of our angels that has so fundamentally served as our guide to a life where freedom and equality are the cornerstones by which each and everyone of us are allowed to prosper and grow.

VOTE IN 2024 FOR DEMOCRACY.  NOT AUTOCRACY

Their mindless audacity and spineless mendacity

 

“Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man. Any man who is afraid to have his doctrine investigated is not only a coward but a hypocrite.” ― Robert G. Ingersoll

Though it’s easy for me to chortle at conservative critics now tripping all over themselves to blame Trump for the utter failure of the Republican Party to produce what they were sure was going to be a  red wave of victories for them in this mid-term election, I find it disturbing that these same people in the right-wing media and uber-conservative politics are still not willing to recognize that it was their mindless audacity and spineless mendacity that backed this egotistical blowhard that brought them to this reckoning. 

A reckoning long overdue that could have kept us from the brink of an autocratic rule, of which we have historically championed our opposition to around the world and led the way for others to aspire to our American-style of a constitutional democracy.

The lazy, often absent defiance of GOP leaders to call out Trump as the toxic element that would bring down the once respectable Grand Old Party, feared more the angry hatred of white supremacist and many faux evangelical Christians, thinking some how this degenerate element within our society would achieve for them what they apparently wanted more than respect and loyalty to the rule of law - political power.

And for many of us watching from the other side, it seemed like this MAGA movement was going to succeed in dragging our great experiment of a democratic republic to the ash pile of history where other despotic regimes ultimately lay, mired with the blood of innocent people caught up in the madness that such misguided insanity sweeps them into.

So, lest those who found themselves caught up in Trump’s assault on the guard rails of our constitutional democracy realize that they are as guilty, if not greater so, than the once popular media charlatan, this reckoning that’s confronted their own failure to prevent its creation and allowed it to metastasize to a point where chaos could have spun out of control, some other version of Trump-ism will rear its ugly head again. 

And when it does it will once again be the result of fear and ignorance by those preyed upon by one  person or a small handful of people seeking power and their enablers positioned to influence individuals who too quickly ignore their first instincts, or who are either unable or unwilling to challenge ideas that are devoid of human decency.

It’s a flawed condition as old as humanity itself and has been memorialized in the tale of naive young woman who picks up a snake pleading to be aided from freezing to death, ignoring her better judgment about the deadly threat a snake can pose, only to realize too late, that her initial instincts were true. 

History is replete with such snakes that societies fail to recognize in time to the detriment of millions.  To those cowards who now want to scapegoat Trump for the failures of their Party, I say, “you knew he was a snake when you nominated him and supported him for four long years.”

It's Halloween and the Fright Monsters are out in force

 

“Fear can have a voice, but it doesn’t get a vote” - Elizabeth Gilbert

Of the top nine issues concerning voters in 2022, found in a recent Pew Research poll, the issue of crime never made a showing.  The top issue is the economy and how inflation is impacting our purchasing power with higher prices for food, energy and housing expenses.  

But explaining the causes of inflation are complex and not easy to pin down on any single factor, though Republicans would have you believe that it’s totally connected to the Party currently in power.  A normal tactic during election cycles for both parties, but one that leaves Republicans egg-faced who use it this year against their Democratic rivals.  Inflation is less governmental action than it is market responses to national and global situations often outside the control of a single player.

While one Party tries to allay the fears of consumers and voters, the other is stoking them, because it is no secret that the use of fear has a strong influence on our political and social choices.  Which brings us back to the issue of crime and how it is being used by today’s MAGA Republicans.  Beware of “politicians and candidates [who make statements] for strategic reasons that extend beyond changing your vote to demobilizing the electorate,” says Leonie Huddy, PhD, professor of political science at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

When searching on line for results of crime and how it plays into this year’s election, the sources are mainly right-wing media links that exploit one’s fear of this issue. These sources of cromulent editorializations know how conservatives react to notions of a liberal justice system and their claims of alleged lax enforcement standards they say allows many crimes to go unpunished and unresolved.  And though research data doesn’t support this fear-mongering misinformation, it still feeds into the MAGA conservative’s narrative that finds abundant support in campaign rallies in states where crime is the highest.  Like Texas.

I’m sure that last factual tidbit surprises many, especially those “law and order” candidates, who tout unfettered gun purchases and ownership. However, “a report released by the Violence Policy Center shows that states with weaker gun laws and higher rates of gun ownership have more deaths from gun violence than other states.”

The state of Texas is far from being immune to high crime rates under the Republican leadership of Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton.  It is in the 33rd percentile for safety, meaning 67% of states are safer and 33% of states are more dangerous.

I’ve often found myself bumfuzzled by this ominous threat of criminal violence.  Not that it doesn’t exist in our city and state, but apparently does so far less than the purveyors of fear would have you believe.  In fact, I‘ve recently discovered that my own neighborhood in Denton off Old North Road gets an A+ rating in safety from violent and property crimes, as does much of Denton, in comparison to other regions around us.  You will also find that most districts in Texas that are represented by conservative legislators have equal or higher crime rates than their more liberal districts

As great as the threat of autocrats is to democratic-republics, even greater is the threat of uninformed voters whose choices are made on groundless fears they’ve been conditioned to since childhood.  The countervailing force that helps protect our constitutional guard rails is the informed citizens that is fearless when faced with the virulent voices of disinformation.

Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years of a life sentence in prison for his passionate activism against South African apartheid, taught us “that courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.  The brave man” he said, “is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”  Words to bear in mind as early voting begins October 24th in Texas.  Be fearless against those who would weaponize fear to hold onto power.

Anti-republic Republicans?

“Herein lies the deadly peril of republics: The very institutions that they so painstakingly maintain to maximize the liberty of their citizens and the stability of their body politic are susceptible to perversion into the most efficient and sustainable instruments of tyranny.”  -  author Charles Scaliger

Many Republicans who have voted against sending aid to Ukraine to defend their democracy are the same ones who recently voted against a bill to create an Office of Food Security at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which “aims to establish a department to assist veterans facing food insecurity and lack of nutrition, such as providing them with information about food stamps and other programs.”

Similarly, these MAGA Republicans, many who adhere to ludicrous QAnon conspiracies, voted against sane gun control measures following the massacre of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde and supported the decision by their male-dominated state legislatures to end a woman’s right to an abortion of an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy, especially in cases of rape or incest.  Let’s not forget either how these GOP-controlled state legislatures have made it much more difficult to vote for those who tend not to vote for their Party, through gerrymandering and restrictive voting measures on mail-in ballots and fewer voting places.

They have called the January 6th insurrectionists patriots while remaining essentially silent on the death of several Capital police and the physical abuse of hundreds of others who defended the Capitol.  Many of these “patriots”, who Samuel Johnson referred to as scoundrels, were willing to hang Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence without due process of the law and actually came armed as a lawless crowd of vigilantes.

It’s bad enough that these extremists officials in Congress threaten our institutions and traditions that established the rule of law.  However, considering how they have opposed and curtailed many of our basic freedoms and creating restrictive measures to pass bills in Congress, their aim now, if they regain control off Congress, is to “sunset” all federal legislation in five years, claiming, as GOP Senator Rick Scott does “that if a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again."  This scheme threatens to eliminate our vital Social Security, Medicare and Veterans programs.   It’s simply just another typical sleight of hand tactic of the GOP that “would leave the fate of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to the whims of a Congress that rarely passes anything so expansive.”   They simply cannot be trusted to have anyone’s best interest at heart other than their wealthy, corporate donors and Christian nationalists groups.

Governor Greg Abbott and his counterpart in Florida, Ron DeSantis, profess to be Christians whose gospels teach us the humane virtues of treating others as we would treat ourselves, recently showed us how that only applies under their rigid guidelines for what qualifies as being human.  Their callous disregard for how vulnerable people are robbed of their dignity, be they an immigrant fleeing for their lives from harsh, repressive governments or those where gang violence prevents any chance of living a productive and secure life, to those whose gender identity doesn’t meet one’s strict religious codes, is all too common of the extremists within the GOP.

Numerous polls show that most Americans don’t side with these kinds of extreme views.    A May, 2021 Quinnipiac poll showed that most Americans think the GOP is working against Democracy.

Yet the real test to how we choose to display ourselves as the “shining city on a hill” for the rest of world, resides in our will to make our voices heard with our votes in the coming elections.  2022 and 2024 will be a turning point for this nation where we will either sustain our founding principals or, as many before us have, fall victim to the demagoguery of autocrats.

In her insightful book, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism, Anne Applebaum shared her view on how “authoritarianism appeals, simply, to people who cannot tolerate complexity.  There is nothing intrinsically 'left wing' or 'right wing' about this instinct at all.  It is allergic to fierce debates.  Whether those who have it ultimately derive their politics from Marxism or nationalism is irrelevant.  It is a frame of mind.”   A frame of mind that is anathema to democratic-republics.

You might be a fascist if ....

“When you’re attacking FBI agents because your under criminal investigation, you’re losing”  - Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Hillary Clinton in 2016

If you consider yourself a Republican and find yourself irate from being unfairly labeled by President Biden’s recent statements that impugned your association to fascism - maybe you should chill out.

My sister-in-law recently expressed her anger about this in a recent Facebook posting.  Were we still talking to each other over this medium I would have inquired why the ire about something that isn’t true, unless of course the shoe fits, as they say.  To be a self-acknowledged fascist your behavior and speech have to reflect its outward signs and manifestations.

A combination of interpretations defines fascism as: a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.

Of the Republicans who adhere to some or all of these distinctions, it is probably safe to say they are those who Joe Biden referred to as MAGA Republicans.  Those people who have unflinchingly bought into Trump’s Big Lie about voter fraud, think the January 6th assault on the Capitol was a “normal tourist visit” or largely a “peaceful protest”,  see violence as viable means to an end and who align themselves with QAnon Conspiracies.

It’s hard for me to fathom that my sister-in-law would be part of any Hitler/Mussolini/Franco appreciation society but it can be said that her loyalty to a former president who has violated all the norms of civil behavior to hold onto power by inciting violence, is susceptible to fascism’s lure.

Her husband, my brother, once opined with me as high school students, how an entire nation like Germany could be won over by the hate and fear-mongering of a delusional autocrat, trading their representative, republican form of government for a totalitarian model.  It was hard to imagine then that the war our father fought in to preserve liberal democracies would ever gain a foothold on American shores.  And yet, here we stand today faced with that very real possibility.  One so unequivocal that academic historians confronted the President recently and warned him about totalitarianism's rise and parallels between now and pre-World War II fascism in Europe.

In his Atlantic article, Fear of Fascism, Tom Nichols conveys his reluctance to
use “the word fascism to describe Donald Trump and his Republican followers, but”, he continues, “we have to overcome our reluctance to use strong language and admit that America is now beset by a dangerous antidemocratic movement masquerading as a party.”

In the vernacular of Jeff Foxworthy’s “You might be a redneck if ...”,  I would pose the suggestion to lifelong Republicans unsure about the direction which Trump and his acolytes have taken that Party - You might be a fascist if you are willing to defend Trump’s break from reality that attacks our institutions we depend on to ensure that no one is above the law and that we the people are in control of America’s destiny, not a cult of personality or a Party that has no policy platform and whose leader has high praise for authoritarian strongmen.

Cruz-ing for a bruising

“A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends”. - Henry A. Wallace

Texas Senator Ted Cruz is somewhat a classic oxymoron.  He’s a Harvard-educated twit, an astute buffoon, a circus clown ringmaster.  That makes him an embarrassment to many Texans and a national security threat as a political leader in this country, though the term “leader” is a stretch for Mr. Cruz.  The megaphone his political position allows him to spew conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric can and probably will contribute to deadly consequences for some.  

 

A passage from James Parker's article in The Atlantic, titled Heavenly Hackwork draws a close resemblance between gentlemen in Elizabethan London and GOP pretentious-types like Cruz:

 

 “a gentleman in Elizabethan London, a gentleman of more or less regular means and habits, ...had a passion for virtue and a genius for cruelty. ”They had wonderful manners and barbaric inclinations, lovely clothes and terrible diseases. ”They oscillated madly between the abstract and the corporeal. "

 

Cruz has been a fawning loyalist to the Big Liar who instigated the insurrection on our Capitol last year.  And in the recent CPAC Convention held in Dallas, he was encouraging violence again against Democrats, calling them “barbarians” and “nitwits”.  It was this type of irresponsible rhetoric that stoked right-wing extremists to attack the Capitol and is a harbinger of fascism.

And now he and the GOP leadership are taking Donald Trump’s lead again with hyperbolic and malicious lies about a civil search and seizure by the FBI on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Florida residence.  An act that was only made public by the former President himself, serving purely to roil his devoted followers in the hopes they will once again enact violence to defend his criminal behavior.  Their feigned outrage sounds similar to the language they criticized the BLM movement of following George Floyd’s death by Minneapolis cops.

In his pathetic attempt to portray Maximus, the lead role in the movie, The Gladiator, Cruz, speciously claiming to represent 30 million Texans, crowed to the crowd, “It’s like the old Roman Colosseum where you slam on a breastplate and you grab a battle axe and you go fight the barbarians.  As they say in the military world, it is a target-rich environment.”

It’s remarkable that this man (again, “man” is a stretch) who self-emasculated when he kissed the ring of Trump at the 2016 GOP convention, months after Trump made derogatory remarks about Cruz’s wife and father, and constantly referred to him as “Lyin Ted”, now tries to convince his audience he is Trump’s BFF.

The pretense that Cruz represents the best interest of his constituents was exposed as a fraud when he fled Winter Storm Uri to the warm and cozy climate of Cancun while thousands of Texans suffered from the Texas grid power outages.  And what supporter of our military troops, who’ve suffered serious health conditions and even death from the burn pits in Iran and Afghanistan, would fist-bump a fellow Republican congressman after they blocked a bill to fund the health care these vets require.  

The stunt, a slap in the face of military victims of those burn pits, was merely a temporary power play by our two Texas senators, angered because the Democrats who had successfully moved a package of tax, climate and health care provisions through the budget reconciliation process that allowed them to bypass Republicans.  Not an uncommon practice by the GOP Party under Mitch McConnell’s leadership.

Cruz was also part of the GOP effort to block part of a bill that allows Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices and put a $35 cap on the life-saving Insulin prescriptions.   And let’s not forget Cruz’s backing of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority who flipped a 50 year old court precedent that gave women control of their bodies in deciding whether or not to end unwanted pregnancies.     Geez, with representation like this, why worry about what Democrats do?

Ted Cruz may not be up for re-election this fall, nor will his BFF.  But Texas voters who have supported them in the past can rethink their decision, by either voting Democratic November 8th or staying home this election cycle and send a message to the GOP that would take away the power you’ve given them and which they have in turn abused.

Act now while your choices still count, unlike what exists in fascist, autocratic states