In search of our lost humanity

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire


Illegal immigration in America exists primarily because millions are forced to seek relief from physical and economic abuses in their homelands.  Climate change is now interactive also with these abuses as a warming earth deprives people of basic comforts and a means to provide for the essentials of life.

It’s absurd to think then of these people as criminals in the same vein as rapists and murderers.  They’ve risked everything to protect their families from those abuses and now find themselves treated by insensitive and sometimes brutal people here the U.S.; behavior not totally dissimilar to those who drove them from their native countries initially.  This is a notion however, that is apparently too complex for some people to grasp.

In an essay  entitled “On Hostile Coexistence with China” in May of 2019, during Donald Trump’s first presidential term, Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.), noted a view of immigrants that Trump held then remains unchanged today.

“Trump’s presidency has been built on lower middle-class fears of displacement by immigrants and outsourcing of jobs to foreigners.  His campaign found a footing in the anger of ordinary Americans – especially religious Americans – at the apparent contempt for them and indifference to their welfare of the country’s managerial and political elites.”

This strained narrative seems to have altered the thinking of many “ordinary Americans” to see freedom as something not meant for those who don’t look and think like them. They’ve become, it seems, what Isaac Asimov referred to as “a cult of ignorance”  who’ve been “nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that [their] ignorance is just as good as your knowledge”

In a conversation with C.J. Polychroniou, a political scientist/political economist, author and journalist, culture critic Henry A. Giroux noted that “Life is now a war zone and as such the number of people considered disposable has grown exponentially and this includes low income whites, poor minorities, immigrants, the unemployed, the homeless and a range of people who are viewed as a liability to capital and its endless predatory quest for power and profits.”   

Trump has ignored the rule of law and the due process that it guaranties all who stand before it.  He has found willing accomplices in Congress and right wing organizations to diminish the American character we have come to believe in - honorable, hard-working and champions of justice.  We have innocent people here legally, on student visas and green cards, who believed in our 1st amendment right to speak freely, without recourse from government.  They have now become victims of the merging authoritarianism prevalent in most every word and deed Trump falls back  on to appease those who seem to have “put no importance to the way they are governed” and have gambled, as Albert Camus noted, “with a whole part of their life and their so called 'vital interests’. ”

America’s destiny has once again come face to face with the grim reality that power and greed are attempting to delude the virtues we have embodied in leaders like Washington, Lincoln and FDR who put public service before personal gain.  Without it, we become unwary  victims of “free market" capitalists, influencing how we think and behave through captivating ads that project happiness and economic success in material ownership of mostly nonessential products.  Thus, an image that affects personal gains for them and their investors.

“Freedom belongs only to people, Timothy Snyder asserts in his WaPo op-ed. “It does not belong to institutions or abstractions -- and least of all to non-existent institutions or abstractions. The moment that we yield the word "free" to something besides a person, we are yielding our freedom.”    

Trump attempts to run this country much like he did as an evocative entertainer on his TV show, The Apprentice.  Acting tough in a vulgar way and demeaning people openly may get you higher TV ratings, but it becomes a divisive force when applied in our multi-cultural society.  And nothing generates hate more in the MAGAsphere than believing you’re being displaced by “those people who aren’t real Americans”.

On the precipice

 

 

 

"Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." - John Donne

In a recent essay by Bill Kristol, he shares his fears that many of us have as we watch the formation of a fascist autocracy in the nation’s capital.  He hopes that we’re not on the precipice of “going … the way of Germany in the last century.  The slope toward lawlessness is a slippery one, and we have an administration that is eagerly leading us down it.”

In just a matter of a few days, Trump has demonstrated that the rule of law will not apply to him or his coterie of devotees who have willingly acquiesced to the cult of one man.  An American citizen of Palestinian origins was arrested “[for helping} lead Columbia’s student protest movement demanding a ceasefire in Gaza.”  He was then cuffed and deported to a detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, without any sign of due process.

Last Friday, March 14th, Trump gathered a crowd of Justice Department staff who were favorable to him and let them know, in no uncertain terms, that he is “the chief law enforcement officer in our country” – a title traditionally used to refer to the attorney general.  In his ramblings he threatened retribution not only against his political enemies but all the networks that didn’t emulate FOX’s presentation of him.

These two instances reflect on how dictators begin their process that removes constitutional restraints and limitations and gives control of the narrative to deceive the voters, always portraying themselves as righteous and his political enemies as evil. He demeaned members of the Biden-era Justice Department as  “scum,” judges “corrupt” and the prosecutors who investigated him “deranged.”  His unfounded claims that the “radical liberal press” is corrupt and illegal sets the stage for suppression of our free press’s 1st amendment rights.

In 1926, Joseph Goebbels, after being elected to the Reichstag as one of the first 12 National Socialist delegates, said that “The big joke on democracy is that it gives its mortal enemies the means to its own destruction.”  Goebbels would go on to become Hitler’s Minister of propaganda.  

At his 1946 trial in Nuremberg, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring cynically observed that “The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy.  All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

These observations by two of Hitler’s top lieutenants are at play today with the Trump administration.  Those who still deny this are either beyond seeing Trump as anything other than second coming or those who lack the spine to denounce behavior that is leading us down that lawless slippery slope Bill Kristol alluded to.

Many are being transformed by what Anne Applebaym referred to in her book, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism:  “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.”

We are indeed standing at the precipice of a significant cultural change where billionaires will have sway over government policies and citizens will no longer be able to choose who should lead us. Nor will we be able to be critical of those who align themselves with Trump, without fear of being swept by what will become Trump’s Schutzstaffel, better known  as Hitler’s SS

A Fool and His Money

 

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.” - Mahatma Gandhi


The duel presidency of Trump/Musk is making alarmingly unfounded claims that there is waste and fraud within the Social Security system.  They claim millions of people older than 100 (some as old as 200 or 300) are collecting Social Security benefits.  The fact is there are just 89,106 people aged 99 or over who are collecting benefits as of December, 2024.  This scare tactic is being used to set the stage for wealthy people like Trump and Musk to get their greedy hands on this money for their own self-interest.

The idea of privatizing Social Security (SS) has been around for years by conservatives in our financial markets, but these efforts have always been met with failure.  Mainly because Democrats have put up roadblocks to prevent this and also because most Social Security recipients do not want the government to alter what it’s been doing for nearly 90 years unless it’s to insure that benefits keep pace with inflation and that the fund doesn’t dry up.  


Musk has called it a great Ponzi scheme which only shows he knows not what a Ponzi scheme is.  What is a scheme on Trump and Musk’s part is to see this money flow into unstable markets leaving recipients uncertain of their financial future

Large random cuts to personnel or SS funds by Musk will inevitably “make it harder for people to access Social Security services, apply for benefits and resolve issues. If these cuts continue, long wait times and service disruptions are expected to grow.”  Depending on which report you use, anywhere between 20% and 40%  of Americans 65 and over received at least 90% of their total incomes from Social Security.  What percentage of their income is a combination of SS and other sources such as savings, with their SS benefit being the larger of all other sources, could have a significant economic impact that would likely lead to a recession

The image seen by millions of Elon Musk gleefully swinging a chainsaw in the air to represent his out-of-control federal employee cuts demonstrates that Trump has put a thoughtless incompetent in charge of his reform plans for the federal government.  But that really doesn’t worry the wanna be dictator because as he previously stated “I'm not a schmuck. Even if the world goes to hell in a handbasket, I won't lose a penny.”

Strongman or Bully: Will our fear be what leads to a fate that almost everyone doesn’t want.

We’re all familiar with the schoolyard bully.  We either grew up knowing one, willingly or not, or we’ve seen their characters played out in films like Back to the Future I, II & III, Carrie, Bad Reputation, Accepted and hundreds more with bullying themes.  Many of them terrifying.

If, after watching Trump’s meltdown in the Oval office scolding the democratically-elected leader of Ukraine and his follow up State of Union name-shaming everyone he’s ever disliked in his political career, you find yourself convinced that he was the “political colossus of our time and our nation” as Trump’s Rapid Response videos cast him as, then stop and take a closer look.  

Trump has all the earmarks of the school yard bully-type and has been for most of his life.  It’s no coincidence either that all authoritarian leaders are bullies and Trump has a special relationship with one of the worst in Vladimir Putin. The State of the Union Speech was very short on fact or serious policy initiatives and more of a cavalcade of Trump’s wildest codswallop ideas of which Joe Biden more mercifully referred to them as, “malarkey".  

What leads me to view Trump is farthest thing from a serious leader that has the best interest of the voters at heart?  If one cannot seriously see the forest for the trees, let’s just cite one recent example to give legs to this claim.  Great leaders (which trump wants so desperately for us to see him as) are level headed and don’t allow critics to rattle them in public.  They don’t engage in petty slurs that are meant to demean and dehumanize people.  They unite people under common causes as opposed to divisive tactics meant to find commonality with only those who  also may suffer from low self-esteem.  

Trump is the antitheses of great leadership.  He constantly demonstrates publicly four of the five most common personality traits of bullies, as noted by the staff expertise  at Neurolaunach, the website that provides “high-quality information about all things related to psychology, human brain function, and behavior.”  The one that isn’t so obvious but records show likely exist, is his low self-esteem.  A condition rendered out of his father’s assessment of “losers”, that drove Donald to act out in every way to show he was no loser.

In her Book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,”  Mary Trump, Donald’s niece, who grew up around the man that essentially ignored his youngest son most of his early life.  “When he [did] receive his father’s attention, his father constantly yelled at, criticized or punished him.”

Dictators thrive when there is chaos, which often they deliberately effect and claim “Only I can fix it”.  To claim that the Biden Economic policies were “an economic nightmare” at his SOTU speech, was not only ludicrous but an excellent example of how dictators lie to create doubt among those earnestly looking for a father figure/strongman to ease their own fears that they have cultivated over the years.

The threat of fear and chaos are tools of fascists authoritarians that lead poorly informed people to make choices, that when fulfilled, are hard to come back from.  If we could go back in time to 1945 and ask those people in Germany and Italy if their choices for leadership were a tragic mistake, odds are that most of them would  shamefully concede   

Voters remorse can be partially resolved by ensuring that when we go to the ballot box, future candidates for public office will not be fans of Trump’s Big Lie, which helped display him as a victim, a card he plays frequently.  There was time when Uncle Sam fit the image of a strong leader who would protect us, for better or worse.  It is the “worse” aspect of this image that now confronts us.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.” -  Mark Twain

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.”