Category: Trump effect

May 12, 2019

     Mother’s Day was originally conceived in the early 20th Century by Anna Jarvis, as a way of honoring the hard work and activism of her own mother, Anna Reeves Jarvis.  Reeves Jarvis founded “Mother’s Day Work Clubs to combat poor health and sanitation in her community,” (Source: “Trending: The Mother of Mother’s Day,” by Erin Allen, Library of Congress Blog, blogs.loc.gov, 5/8/16).  When Reeves Jarvis died in 1905, her daughter began a campaign for a national holiday to recognize the selfless sacrifice of mothers everywhere.  President Woodrow Wilson signed a declaration establishing Mother’s Day as a national holiday in 1914. By the time of her death, Jarvis had come to loathe the crass commercialism of the holiday and was actively protesting how far the day strayed from her original intent.  One wonders what Jarvis would make of the way mothers, and the children they love, are treated in our country today.

     Consider the events of this past week alone.  On Tuesday, Governor Brian Kemp signed a bill making Georgia the fourth state this year to enact the so-called “heartbeat bill,” which bans abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detectable.  This law effectively prohibits abortions at six weeks, before many women even know that they are pregnant, rather than twenty weeks. The only exceptions in the law are for rape or incest, if a police report has been filed, (Source:  “Georgia Governor Signs ‘Fetal Heartbeat’ Abortion Ban,” by Patricia Mazzei and Alan Blinder, The New York Times, 5/7/19). Continue reading “Mother’s Day”

May 8, 2019

 

Even by the standard set by last two years, the last forty-eight hours have tested the strength of our commitment to our democracy or even our sense of shared humanity.  The events of the last two days should shake even the most complacent of us out of our torpor.  Yesterday, mere days after the shooting at UNC Charlotte that left two students dead, we learned of another shooting at a Denver, Colorado high school that left one student dead and eight others injured, (Source:  “1 student dead after shooting at Denver school,” by Susan Svrluga, Perry Stein and Nick Anderson, The Washington Post, 5/7/19).

The muted reaction to this latest incident shows how inured we have become to murderous violence in our schools.  Since the Parkland mass shooting 15 months ago, a school shooting has occurred once every twelve days, on average.  There have been 115 mass shootings in 2019 alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive.  The frequency of mass shootings is such that we treat them like annoying background noise, part and parcel of the cycle of man-made destruction that we are too obtuse and too violent to stop.  Not satisfied with merely condemning one million plant and animal species to extinction, we seem hellbent on destroying ourselves. Continue reading “At risk of extinction”

May 5, 2019

    May is a season of commencements. In May, we mark the rite of passage known as Decision Day, when thousands of high school seniors proclaim which college or university they have chosen as the place to embark on the first leg of their fledgling journey into adulthood.  It is also the season of college commencements, when thousands of hopeful young people don identical polyester robes and mortar boards to mark the successful completion of a degree, eager to embark on their next chapter; young adults launched into jobs or graduate programs.
       Graduation speakers exhort them to dream big, to change the world, to pursue passion rather than wealth, blithely oblivious to the nature of the world that we are bequeathing them. Many students enter adulthood burdened by crushing debt loads at 22.  Forty four million people owe a collective $1.5 trillion in student loan debt. The average graduate of the class of 2016 has an average of $37,000 in student loan debt, (Source: “Student Loan Debt Statistics in 2018: A $1.5 Trillion Dollar Crisis,” by Zack Friedman, Forbes.com, 6/13/18), and we foolishly wonder why they aren’t settling down, or even making time for sex.  In addition, nearly half of undergraduates at public colleges and universities are grappling with food insecurity, (Source:  “Tuition or Dinner? Nearly Half of College Students Surveyed in a New Report Are Going Hungry,” by Kaya Laterman, The New York Times, 5/2/19). Continue reading “Commencement Season”

April 27, 2019

     After weeks of vacillating, Joe Biden finally entered the presidential race early Thursday morning.  No doubt he was tempted by the spate of polls consistently showing him to be the front runner among twenty Democratic candidates.  Biden’s announcement video was a gauzy montage of American exceptionalism’s greatest hits, featuring footage of the Statue of Liberty,  Martin Luther King giving his “I Have A Dream” speech, and women marching for the right to vote. The video then cut to footage of the torch wielding Nazis in Charlottesville, before Biden solemnly intoned that we were in a battle for the soul of this nation.  Biden’s emotionally manipulative and oversimplified pitch cast the election as a Manichean struggle between good and evil.  

    The truth is decidedly more complex, as Biden proved within 24 hours of his entry into the race.  We learned that he had telephoned Anita Hill to seek absolution for his role during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.  Biden called Hill a few weeks before his announcement to express “regret for what she had endured,” a curiously passive construction considering that Biden was the Chair of the Senate Judiciary at the time, (Source:  “Joe Biden Expresses Regret to Anita Hill, but She Says ‘I’m Sorry’ Is Not Enough,” by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Carl Hulse, The New York Times, 4/25/19).  The next day on “The View,” Biden was no better,despite Joy Behar’s prompting that he needed to offer her “a straightforward apology.” Continue reading “Back to “normal?””

April 24, 2019

 

In the six days since the public release of the Mueller Report, the Democrats have been furiously calculating how best to respond to its revelations.  Among the Presidential candidates, only Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro and Kamala Harris have expressly called for impeachment, while Bernie Sanders has urged caution.  House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said that “going forward on impeachment is not worthwhile at this point,” preferring to rely on an election some 18 months hence, (Source: “Senior Democrat Steny Hoyer:  Impeachment of Donald Trump ‘not worthwhile’ at this point,” by Maureen Groppe, Eliza Collins and Christal Hayes, USAToday.com, 4/18/19).  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been trying to tamp down her Caucus’ push for impeachment, “arguing…that Democrats can hold Trump accountable through aggressive investigations,” (Source:  “‘We’re not there yet:’  Pelosi pushes back on impeachment as more Democrats call for proceedings,” by Rachael Bade, The Washington Post, 4/23/19). Continue reading “Asymmetrical warfare”

April 20, 2019

     On Thursday, 23 months after the appointment of the Special Counsel and nearly a month after he submitted the report to the Attorney General, the Mueller Report was finally released to the public.   Even though the section on evidence of coordination between Trump’s campaign and Russia was heavily redacted, the 448 page report painted a damning picture of a campaign eager to profit from a massive Russian effort to interfere with our elections and a President determined to thwart any investigation of that fact, (Source:  “Trump’s aides were eager to take Russian dirt on Clinton. But it wasn’t a conspiracy, Mueller report said,” by Kristina Phillip, USAToday.com, 4/18/19).

     Volume I of the Report details the extent of Russian efforts to subvert our democracy.  It describes an effort that began in earnest in 2014 and involved the manipulation of Americans through sophisticated use of social media, as well as a hacking operation that obtained e-mails from the Clinton campaign, DCCC and the DNC, which were strategically released to inflict maximum damage on Clinton’s campaign, (Source: “Executive Summary to Volume I,  Report on The Investigation Into Russian Interference into the 2016 Election, Volume I, by Special Counsel Robert Mueller).  Much of the information in Volume I tracks what we already know, thanks to the indictments, plea deals or convictions of Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Michael Cohen and the Russian Internet Research Agency. Continue reading “High crimes and misdemeanors”

April 17, 2019

 

Our Monday afternoons were jolted by images of the iconic Notre Dame de Paris engulfed in flames.  Horrified, we watched video footage of the roof of the cathedral obscured by billows of smoke, as 500 firefighters battled the blaze.  Many of us posted our own pictures posing in front of the venerable landmark, since no trip to Paris was complete without a visit to Ile de la Cite to see the flying buttresses and rose windows firsthand.

The sight of Notre Dame on fire was jarring.  We believed that this edifice, which has been a Paris landmark since 1345, was indestructible.  After all, it withstood the French Revolution and the Nazis.  While we were relieved that there was no sign of terrorism or arson, Notre Dame’s narrow escape from total destruction was a troubling reminder that nothing is permanent.  A magnificent cathedral that took 200 years to build was nearly wiped out in a matter of hours by a conflagration with accidental causes. Continue reading “Notre Dame”

April 12, 2019

 

Even by the degraded standards of the Trump era, the chaos, contempt for the rule of law and naked racism displayed by the motley band of miscreants in this administration over the past several days stands out.  We began the week with the purge at the Department of Homeland Security, followed by numerous articles featuring efforts to rehabilitate Kirstjen Nielsen’s shredded reputation.  With the ascendancy of aspiring Nazi, Stephen Miller, some journalists bought the absurd spin that Jared Kushner, was Miller’s polar opposite and was trying to make a grand immigration deal, (Source:  “Miller and Kushner on a potential collision course in Trump’s border crisis,” by Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Robert Costa, The Washington Post, 4/10/19).  The idea that the shallow dilettante with the cozy relationship with the murderous MBS and Miller are anything other than two sides of the same coin is a sick joke.

Many of these same journalists were hoodwinked by Bill Barr’s avuncular mien and establishment credentials into believing him to be an honest broker, rather than the corrupt partisan hack appointed for the express purpose of burying the Mueller Report and helping Trump evade accountability.  Given that Barr auditioned for the position by writing an Op-Ed attacking the investigation, the decision by some journalists to contort themselves to spin Barr’s accusation that the FBI was “spying” on the Trump campaign as a mere synonym for surveillance was bizarre, (Source:  “The Bigs Can’t Handle Bill Barr’s Cons,” by Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo,  4/11/19).  With that one sentence, Barr revived Trump’s widely discredited “Deep State” conspiracy, red meat that fed the disordered fever dreams of Trump’s fetid base. It was a deeply cynical move by someone who would rather weaponize his pedigree to destroy democracy, than share power with women and people of color. Continue reading “Privilege over justice”

April 9, 2019

 

Sunday night, we learned that distaff Goebbels, Kirstjen Nielsen was forced to resign by Trump for the crime of being “insufficiently brutal,” (“Kirstjen Nielsen Enforced Cruelty at the Border.  Her Replacement Could Be Worse,” by The Editorial Board, The New York Times, 4/8/19).  Consider for a moment what it means that the person responsible for the family separation policy that ripped 3000 children from their parents and placed them in cages; the person responsible for detaining migrants in facilities so frigid that the migrants call  them “hieleras,” (iceboxes); the person apparently undisturbed by the deaths of 22 immigrants in CPB custody over the past two years , was not cruel enough.

As the day unfolded, it became clear that the source of Trump’s rage was Nielsen’s apparent unwillingness to flagrantly break the law, rather than merely skirt it.  Nielsen may have been a callous, gaslighting racist functionary, but her ouster was merely the first of many dominoes to fall in what is clearly a purge designed to leave a hollowed out Department of Homeland Security with only powerless Trump toadies at the helm.  By Monday’s end, Trump had fired Secret Service Director Randolph Alles, in the process being sure to leak the derisive nickname he gave Alles because of his physical appearance.  The leak was strategically designed to obscure the revelation that  not only did Yujing Zhang attempt to bring four cellphones and a “thumb drive infected with malware” into Mar-a-lago, but that she also had nine USB drives, 5 sim cards and a device to detect hidden cameras in her room (Source:  “Chinese Woman Arrested at Mar-a-Lago Had a Hidden Camera Detector, Prosecutors Say,” by Frances Robles, The New York Times, 4/8/19). Continue reading “Incipient genocide”

    All week the press has been gleefully covering the growing list of accusations that former Vice President Joe Biden has a habit of being inappropriately physical and affectionate in a way that makes women uncomfortable.  Lucy Flores opened the floodgates with her piece one week ago, describing how Biden grabbed her shoulders and kissed her hair in a manner she called, “blatantly inappropriate and unnerving,” (Source: “An Awkward Kiss Changed How I Saw Joe Biden,” by Lucy Flores, TheCut.com, 3/29/19).

    Flores’ story unleashed a flood of similar anecdotes, accompanied by photo montages showing Biden nuzzling noses and giving impromptu shoulder massages to an array of women (and some men).  Despite all of the hand wringing, this isn’t complicated — don’t touch people who don’t want to be touched. The truth is, this is just Biden being Biden— an exuberant and often inappropriate, if fundamentally decent man.   Continue reading “All politics is local”