The Art of Making Things Worse

 

As usual, Politico’s editorial cartoonist, Matt Wuerker, says more in his drawings than mere words can, so I begin with his conception of the present political chaos.

Little did I know.  I was just one of many pawns being used to carry out The Disrupter-in-Chief’s “plan” of destroying our democracy from within.  As his bizarre behavior and the ensuing bedlam began to overwhelm everyone after the election, I was reacting with every outrage by emailing or texting articles and thoughts to friends and family.  I’ve been duped, helping to make “awful into worse,” adding my anxiety to what they too were already feeling.  I’m resolving to choose my future messaging more carefully.  So forgive me my friends for these past indiscretions and just adding to what you were already feeling, dreading, suffering, while watching this all play out.

We’ve already gone to the point of no return in Trump’s second Presidency. If this was a story set to music (as dissonant as it would be), the tempo is now approaching “prestissimo” and if not resolved in some satisfactory way, it just collapses upon itself.

The numerous opportunities we had in our traditional political system to prevent the obscenity of this 47th Presidency have come and gone, two impeachments, not being able to bring him to trial for his culpability in the Jan 6 insurrection and his attempt to interfere with GA votes, his stacking SCOTUS with sycophants (Mitch McConnell deserves a special place in hell for that), and now we are left with the utter chaos of cartoon character Cabinet members, revenge plans, tariffs, deportations, and the final straw, DOGE and the anointed Elon Musk.

I write as if Trump is in charge.  He’s been called Putin’s useful fool.  But I also think he is a useful tool for a band of grafters, nihilists, right-wing zealots to whom the dim-witted American Public handed the keys to the kingdom.  Democracy is now dying by a thousand cuts daily, much faster than anyone could have anticipated, and being handed over to kleptocrats and kakistocrats.  (“Like all good illusionists, the kleptocrats know how to distract us from looking at their misdeeds and the kakistocrats know how to distract us from their ineptitude. They do it by talking to us about ideology and attacking those of their rivals. While we watch and play our part in these ideological circuses, they steal. Or tinker with government policies they don’t really understand.”….As quoted by https://carnegieendowment.org and originally published by El País, June 18, 2018)

What’s to be done with sycophants such as AG Pam Bondi who has decreed that someone who throws a tomato at a Tesla is a domestic terrorist while backing her mobster boss’s exoneration of the J6 insurrectionists?  What hypocrisy, but as long as the American public is entertained, job well done!

The lonely anti-Trumpism voices are some journalists and a fragmented Democratic leadership.  The Republican majority in Congress is complicit with its silence, ceding power to the executive branch.  The Judiciary now seems to be useless, and he has cowed the nation’s largest law firms into submission.  Lots of luck getting legal representation!

I’m almost resigned to the fact that if we as a nation survive the next 4 years it will be purely by accident.  To think that we’ve already alienated alliances forged after WWII in these few short weeks.  I’d be embarrassed to show my face in Canada and Europe, and almost any place in the world.

During the weeks since the inauguration, I’ve been frantically forwarding articles from the New York Times, even the Wall Street Journal, from the historian, Heather Cox Richardson, and authors I follow on Substack, many serious journalists and others best described as “acerbic humorists” who plant F-bombs galore in their writing and therefore effectively channel the absolute fury and helplessness we feel.  I was an uninvited curator of such news for friends, but really was intended to make ME feel good that I was doing something.

But what to do with the gut-retching information I normally send in some form? Perhaps I’ll let my frustrations play out in this space from time to time, collecting them and posting when I reach a particular, yet undefined nadir.  I certainly don’t want to set a schedule, like “the weekly list of shock and rage” although there is guaranteed to be plenty of content.  

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal thankfully remain excellent newspapers with both seemingly drawn more towards the middle from their traditional political extremes.  This is good as other papers such as the LA Times and the Washington Post seem to be selling out, kissing the dystopian ring to avoid the wrath of the “President.”

Unfortunately, the Palm Beach Post used to be a real newspaper, but it has become a shell of itself with mostly syndicated articles.  Its original editorial decisions are now subject to local or political pressures. The Gannett Group, now the owner of the PBP, recently dismissed Tony Doris, the PBP opinion editor of some 20 years, because of such pressure.  The NYT asked Doris to comment and he said: “They’re afraid of their shadow. I think it speaks to a misunderstanding or failure to engage with the mission of an editorial page.”

It is symbolic of what is happening all over the country but his dismissal was a particular blow to me as he published my letters and editorial opinions without much change; he seemed to welcome future ones.  Now the venue of local newspapers is disappearing as well; they are really controlled circulation advertising flyers.  Any weakening of 4^th estate has dire consequences.

One feels as if one MUST do something though.  I made an attempt to engage my Congressman Brian Mast.  He is an obedient MAGA disciple. Yet I hoped a reasonable letter might make the difference.  I appealed to his patriotism as a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom.  As a congressman, surely his allegiance to the Constitution would give him pause I thought and as the Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee he might have something of meaning to say about the administration denigrating Ukraine for merely defending itself.  Instead I got what might have been an AI response, but nonetheless I sent a follow up, pointing out the deficiencies of the response, not expecting a reply, and there has been none.

The latest outrage which FOX and Friends and the administration are whitewashing is the Signal messaging app security breach detailing plans for the attack on Yemen. (True to the MAGA gospel of deflection, AG Bondi declared that the incident will not be criminally investigated as “it was a very successful mission.”)  Talk about hypocrisy, the Sturm und Drang over Hillary and her server, while rationalizing the greatest breach of national security I can remember by the amateurs we call our Cabinet, even inviting in a reporter and then saying he’s corrupt!  The content of that discussion is chilling.  It’s like they were playing a video game, replete with emojis of the American flag, a fist, fire, whatever. The real damage (aside from the danger it might have caused our military) is further alienating those European allies who will now remember an American promise is only as valid as the administration that made them as well as the covert hostility by this administration towards them.  (Vance referred to the action as "bailing Europe out again," while Hegseth accused Europe's reliance on U.S. military might as "freeloading" and "pathetic.") 

We need an opposition dream team to come forth, one that can organize and coordinate meaningful protests, a team representing both sides of the aisle: perhaps Beto O’Rourke, Tim Walz, Adam Kinzinger, and Liz Cheney?  Each has spoken out for the truth and each is currently out of politics.  Some have suggested Maryland Governor Wes More as a potential leader.  His is a story of exceptionalism.  Credible leadership is needed now before it is really too late.   

As I was concluding this piece I saw Heather Cox Richardson’s most recent “Letters from an American,” with a particular passage I would normally forward to many.  So instead, I quote it here.  I’ve turned over a new leaf!

The craziness going on around us in the first two months of the second Trump administration makes a lot more sense if you remember that the goal of those currently in power was never simply to change the policies or the personnel of the U.S. government. Their goal is to dismantle the central pillars of the United States of America—government, law, business, education, culture, and so on—because they believe the very shape of those institutions serves what they call ‘the Left.’

Their definition of ‘the Left’ includes all Americans, Republicans and Independents as well as Democrats, who believe the government has a role to play in regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, promoting infrastructure, and protecting civil rights and who support the institutional structures Americans have built since World War II.

In place of those structures, today’s MAGA leaders intend to create their own new institutions, shaped by their own people, whose ideological purity trumps their abilities.

 

A High-Stakes Dilemma; the 2024 Election

 

It’s come to this: choose between an “only I can save you” candidate and an “only I can beat him” incumbent president.  It is a choice between two self-serving candidates, one who Christian evangelicals think was sent by God and one who says “only the Lord Almighty himself” can stop him from running.  Score: God 2, America 0.

 

Don’t we, the electorate, deserve better than this?

 

On the one hand we have the twice impeached Trump (both times acquitted by his Senate acolytes).  He is also subject to a ruling that he committed fraud (by NY State, Trump appealing the case), a hush money felony conviction (by the Manhattan D.A., sentencing delayed courtesy of SCOTUS) and a conviction as a defamer and a sexual abuser of E. Jean Carroll (cases now out on appeal).  Then there is the Department of Justice’s charge that he committed felonies removing White House documents to Mar-a-Lago (the Trump appointed Judge Aileen Cannon is indefinitely postponing the trial).  Add to this the indictment by Fulton County, GA of his participation in a conspiracy to commit Election Subversion (naturally, the case is not expected to begin before the November election).  And, finally, perhaps the most serious of all, the Department of Justice’s grand jury indictment of Trump for Election Subversion, his actions culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot (?), insurrection (?) peaceful tourist exploration of the U.S. Capitol building (?) (please fill in one of the choices depending on your political persuasion).  This case is now knee-capped by the recent conservative leaning Supreme Court, three of whom were Trump appointed.  Those are the challenger’s credentials.

 

On the other hand, we have President Biden, whose old man shuffle looks very bad but, worse, shows signs of cognitive decline during his presidency culminating in his own suggestion of an early debate (“make my day, man”).  Sad. The President essentially is a good man, having moral values that we, who have lived long enough, have seen erode over our lifetimes.  Although politics has always been a rough and tumble arena, the old guardrails of acceptable social mores and civility are failing in an iPhone-social-media-consumed world where 240 characters and the Internet equivalent of chain letters pass as thinking.

 

He has, as his family and handlers insist, done many good things.  Bringing us back into the world of nations with some shred of respect might be among the most significant.  But Dr. Jill, his wife, is both right and wrong that a poor 90 minute performance should not erase the accomplishments of 3-1/2 years.  The legitimate concern is the next 4-1/2 years.  And beating the cult of Trump is not an easy task even for a younger, more vigorous candidate as the Electoral College, not the popular vote, decides such elections.  The next five months must be filled with intensive campaigning in those swing states.  This is going to be an election season which will be ground out, yard by yard. And as the Presidency goes, the makeup of the House and Senate could follow: high stakes, indeed.

 

That 90 minute debate presented so many opportunities for a more-in-the-moment candidate to simply respond to Trump’s avalanche of invectives, lies, non sequiturs, and his vision of an apocalyptic America. Just a “will you listen to what this man just said?” would have been sufficient.  It is a well known rhetorical device to overwhelm the opponent with so much garbage in a short period of time that it is impossible to respond to all.  But Biden failed to capitalize on those opportunities and robotically went onto his own bullet points, poorly presented, trailing off into mumbling, painfully allowing Trump, an expert in reality TV to use his logorrhea and body language to eviscerate Biden.

 

The point is, we all saw the so called “debate” and once seen it can’t be unseen.  The same point should be made about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.  We all saw Trump urging the crowd on, and, once seen, it can’t be explained away.

 

To make matters worse, on Friday July 5, Biden agreed to an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC.  Presumably this was supposed to show us the new and improved Joe.  It only brought out more issues.  Early on he was asked the pointed question: “Did you watch the debate afterwards?”  First he had that deer in the headlights look, until finally responding “I don’t think I did, no.” Oh, Joe, is the answer really “no” or you already don’t remember?  Most chilling though was his insistence that only God could make him drop out of the race, and then to the question of how he would react to losing to Trump he said: “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest [sic] job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.” In other words, if we give it the ‘ole college try, that’s good enough?  In an election which may decide if the American experiment is over?

 

He frequently turns to his wife for advice but publicly she is proving not to be objective.  Given the high, high stakes, perhaps we need a much more forceful intervention by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

 

To the repeated question of whether he would take a cognitive or neurological test, Biden implied every day was such a test (given his responsibilities), dodging the answer.  Both candidates should take two tests, a cognitive test and one to determine an Antisocial Personality Disorder.  Publish the results so, as Mitch McConnell infamously exclaimed blocking Merrick Garland’s SCOTUS nomination, “the American people can decide.”

 

Peggy Noonan accurately framed the Democratic Party’s dilemma in the July, 6/7 Wall Street Journal: “It makes no sense to say, ‘Joe Biden is likely going to lose so we should do nothing because doing something is unpredictable.’ Unpredictable is better than doomed.”

 

Exactly 248 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence a new British Prime Minister was elected, Keir Starmer, who told Britons the following day “Country first, party second.”  Might it be time for both the Democratic and Republican parties to adopt the same priorities? 

 

54th Anniversary Thoughts

54th Wedding Anniversary

 

It was ten years ago that I wrote about our 44^th wedding anniversary pictured at the conclusion of this entry, not the first time I’ve written something about our special occasion (click on “Wedding Anniversary” at the bottom of this entry for all).

 

Why single out this one anniversary entry?  It was merely a postscript to “weekend thoughts,” which featured the subject of our nation’s gun lunacy, and then some light hearted observations about being left handed.  In retrospect it was still a time of some innocence, thinking that by making good arguments about gun control somehow progress would be made, that our legislators will see the light, that the slaughtering of schoolchildren and the fear parents must have about sending their kids to school nowadays would be a thing of the past by this time in the future.

 

And that was in the pre MAGA world; we only had to contend with the Tea Party crazies.  Now it’s full bore madness, in all-pervasive Trumplandia.

 

So the point of commenting on our wedding anniversary of ten years ago is poof, just like that, it is our 54^th.   And to think of the tectonic changes during those years, Trumpism being front and center, with Covid in the backseat, makes me wonder what this country will be like ten years hence.  Small chance I’ll be around.  Didn’t think that thought, at least out loud, back then. 

 

Over the years I’ve written about gun control and politics in this blog and in the press, particularly our local paper Palm Beach Post and sometimes the New York Times.  Here’s the editorial I wrote in the March 2 Palm Beach Post about SCOTUS agreeing to hear arguments concerning Presidential Immunity and therefore delaying the Jan. 6 trial until after the election.  To me it was the final nail:

 

 

We celebrated our 54^th with a wonderful quiet dinner pictured at the onset of this entry. The world may be falling apart, but grateful we have each other

44th Wedding Anniversary

 

 

 

“Ghost of the Future, I fear you more than any spectre I have seen”

 

I borrow from Dickens to express a foreboding, in particular one that will culminate with this year’s Presidential election.

 

The December 5, 2023 New York Times carried a front-page article, “Second Term Could Unleash Darker Trump.”  I fired off a brief letter to the Editor to add my opinion and was surprised it was immediately published online and then in print under the rubric “Trump Unbound: An Autocrat in Waiting?”

 

To the Editor:

 

A second Trump presidency not only would be more radical, but also seems inevitable. Donald Trump and his handlers have learned to exploit every weakness in our democratic system of government.

 

Our founders must have assumed that those who gravitate to government service would essentially be people of good faith, and the rotten apples would be winnowed by our system of checks and balances. But here we are less than a year away from the election, and while Mr. Trump’s transgressions have drawn 91 criminal charges, there has been no justice yet.

 

He has proved to have a serpentine instinct to capitalize on weak links ranging from the Electoral College to our justice system, gathering strength every time he flouts the rule of law.

 

Perhaps the Times published my laconic letter as it encapsulates a sad truth: our form of government was never designed for the unthinkable. The greatest existential threat to us is, well, us. 

 

It’s simplistic to blame Trump for all of this, but he taps into popular discontent like none other before.  His brand of anti-intellectualism and affinity for reality TV and social media are in perfect sync with his minions.  Those "attributes," and his ability to exploit the weakness of our justice system, are a perfect storm for 2024.

 

Since I wrote that letter there have been further key developments, with certain States trying to keep him off the primary ballots, citing the 14^th amendment (lots of luck with that) and SCOTUS rebuffing special counsel Jack Smith’s request for an expedited ruling on whether Trump can claim presidential immunity from prosecution for crimes “allegedly” committed on January 6.

 

We all saw it -- suggested, aided and abetted by him --  and here it is three years later!  It should not be a presidential immunity issue but one of special presidential culpability.

 

A handful of States will again determine the 2024 Presidential election and Democrats are still making arguments about what has been accomplished, as if that reality will decide the forthcoming election.  President Biden, who has done what he intended, deserves our gratitude, should now be thinking of the greater good, and recognize his age and undeserved lack of popularity should be major factors in deciding whether he should run.  He could be the first incumbent president to substantially win the popular vote but lose the election by a few Electoral College votes (yet another seriously flawed factor in our Democratic system). 

 

Can democracy survive while Justice is further postponed?  Or will Justice be foregone by fiat in 2024?

 

This is not my first New Year’s message of cheer.  It is remarkable to read the New Years’ entries from 2021 and 2022 while we were all mostly COVID bound. It’s like mirrors in mirrors in mirrors: 

 

Saturday, January 9, 2021

The Revoltingly Horrid Year Continues….

 

Wednesday, January 5, 2022

A Ground Hog Day New Year

 

And so, with a little editing, as Tiny Tim observed, “God HELP Us, Every One!”

 

More Terminal Velocity

 

Tim Kreider’s, “Terminal Lucidity” taps into the relief many people first felt when Biden was elected but goes on to analyze the converging forces that could (probably?) result in the complete despoliation our democracy.  Trumpism acted as an accelerator, and since Kreider’s essay was written, let’s add increased tensions with China, Polio being added to the mix of Covid and Monkeypox, the FBI “Gestapo raid” on enchanted Mar-a-Lago, Liz Cheney being punished by WY, as well as the rise of “Foxy” deep-thinking media ladies Sarah Palin and Kari Lake.  Oh, let’s not forget recession or inflation (the Market cannot decide which), raging forest fires or floods or a water crisis here and in Europe, or to quote directly from Kreider: “It rained on the ice cap of Greenland for the first time in recorded history, and a chunk of Antarctica the size of Manhattan fell into the sea.  I’m probably forgetting something. Any one of these crises would take fortitude to contemplate; together, they amount to a demoralizing apocalyptic combo: impossible to ignore, impossible to face.”

 

Kreider notes that Democracy is the exception rather than the rule in human history, and its fragility must be guarded.  However, Trump’s influence on the American Zeitgeist did not end with his term as President. Conservative judges were appointed to the Supreme Court as well as at local levels, and state legislatures continue to Gerrymander and appoint obedient Electors to participate in the outmoded Electoral College. His toxicity will be felt long after he is gone.

 

We feel helpless in the face of the multiplicity of these crises.  As Kreider amusingly says: “writing your elected representative feels as effective as writing to Santa, and protest as potent a ritual as sacrificing a goat.”  And to think our threat comes from within, not from a foreign adversary, makes it more terrifying.

 

Liz Cheney’s defeat is highly symbolic as she stood for principle over Party.  Of course she was taken to the proverbial woodshed in a highly partisan State, but it shows the glaring weakness of our political system which the Trumpublicans (and let’s face it, there is no longer a Republican Party) are successfully exploiting.  To think that a State like WY which has a population not much more than Borough of Staten Island can have two senators and such disproportionate representation (along with many other States like ND, SD) is part of the weak link, not to mention the Electoral College and now the Supreme Court as well. (Perhaps States in which the buffalo roam should be demoted to territories?)

 

The Trumpublicans have already vowed swift retribution “when” they take control of both the House and Senate, punishing the opposition, having Hearings to look into the J6 Hearings, Hunter Biden’s laptop, Hillary’s Emails, the FBI (which the Republicans used to love), and who knows, human trafficking out of Washington pizza parlors, UFO’s, etc.

 

Anecdotally, someone I know has a young adult granddaughter who does not seem to be concerned about what is happening.  (She feels that she will be taken care of like she has all her life.)  And perhaps that is my greatest concern: those who will inherit the earth complacently think the “bad guys” will be negated by “goodness” as in some nice neat morality play (the macro version of a “good guy with a gun” protecting us from an active shooter in a school or mall). Kreider prophetically concludes his essay with “Once all the grownups are gone, it forces you to realize that you’re the grownups now.  You’re the ones in charge. And what happens next is up to you.”

Sidewalk of our Times