Category: Trump effect

January 21, 2021

      Yesterday, we all felt the way you do when you emerge from a horror movie matinee in the middle of an afternoon.  We found ourselves blinking at the bright sunlight, disoriented by the contrast between where we were and where we are.  The Presidential Inauguration Committee confronted a daunting set of challenges — the threat of white supremacist terrorism and a deadly pandemic — and produced an Inauguration that was, at  appropriate turns somber and joyful.  Yet, from regal young poet Amanda Gorman to a shivering Tom Hanks on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the Inaugural festivities radiated hope. The entire day was a testament to the brilliance that Americans have to offer when our brilliance isn’t blocked based on color or gender.

     Our hearts exploded with joy as we watched the first Black and South Asian woman take the oath of office as Vice President from the first Latina Supreme Court Justice.  We grinned with pride at the fist bump between President Obama and Vice President Harris and gasped with admiration at the forever flawless Michelle Obama, hair laid, stunning in head to toe cranberry. Continue reading “Exhale”

January 16, 2021

    With only 4 days remaining in Trump’s horrific reign, we are all holding our breath, hoping to run out the clock before he precipitates another assault on our democracy that gets people killed.  It has been truly chilling to see the mounting evidence that 30% of our fellow citizens fully support white supremacy and increasingly believe that violence is an acceptable way to achieve their desired political goals,

     The Capitol Hill insurrection that drew a toxic mix of violent white supremacists, Nazis and Trump cultists attracted a cross section of white Americans from an array of professions.  There were lawyers, realtors and CEOs ; and a disturbingly high number of police officers from cities ranging from Houston to Philadelphia.  There was a firefighter and an Olympic medalist.  These were not mythical poor white people reacting out of “economic anxiety,” but rather solidly middle and upper middle class white people who were eager to use violence to maintain their unearned positions at the top of the social hierarchy.  Their demographics, desires and even their costumes harken back to the earliest days of the KKK, (Source:  “What the history of the Ku Klux Klan can teach us about the Capitol riot,” by Anna North, Vox.com, 1/14/21, h/t Patrick Wilcox). Continue reading “Four More Days”

January 8, 2021

       On Wednesday, January 6th, our country arguably reached its nadir.  For the first time since 1814, the U.S. Capitol was attacked.  Unlike the first attack, waged by foreign combatants in a declared war, this assault was led by a mob of white supremacist terrorists incited by a sitting President.  They came with the express purpose of preventing Congress from its Constitutionally mandated certification of the Electoral College vote, paving the way for the inauguration of Joseph R. Biden as President in less than two weeks.  This was no “protest” and it was more than a “riot.”  It was a violent insurrection by a mob of known white supremacists, including members of The Proud Boys, the National Socialist Club, and the Three Percenters, (Source:  “These Are The Rioters Who Stormed The Nation’s Capitol,” by Sabrina Tavernise and Matthew Rosenberg, The New York Times, 1/7/21).  They brandished Confederate flags, ripped art from the walls and vandalized Congressional offices.  Several of those arrested had Molotov cocktails and zip tie handcuffs.  Active pipe bombs were found near the headquarters of the DNC and the RNC. Continue reading “Canaries in the coal mine”

January 1, 2021

     Now that the Biblically disastrous year 2020 is in the rear view mirror, and with it, less than three weeks remaining in the disastrous Trump administration, the temptation for all of us will be to return to “normal” as quickly as possible.  After a year of death, isolation and massive economic disruption, we crave the ability to return to the rituals and pastimes of our recent past, to bury any recollection of this traumatic year.

     As understandable as that urge is, we must resist it.  If we fail to examine the underlying reasons that our country was brought low by a racist, amoral sociopath and the out of control spread of a pathogen, we risk prolonging our current crisis or precipitating another one.  We may want to believe that once Joe Biden is sworn in as President in less than three weeks that we can go back to paying cursory attention to politics, confident in the knowledge that our federal government is once again helmed by competent people who believe in the Rule of Law and who don’t wake up every day looking for ways to use their power to persecute the marginalized.

     Yet, as exhausting as this last year (and the last four years) has been, we cannot succumb to that temptation.  We ignore the 74 million people who voted for a continuation of the chaos and cruelty at our peril.  Not only is Trump fanning the flames of division in defeat, but several sitting Senators are eagerly auditioning for the role of the next Trump. 

      Kelly Loeffler, the appointed Georgia senator locked in a tight election battle with Reverend Raphael Warnock, attracts former Klansmen to her rallies and co-hosted a New Year’s Eve concert featuring country singer, Riley Green whose song “Bury Me in Dixie” features the lyric, “I wish Robert E. Lee could come and take a bow.”  Texas Senator Ted Cruz offered to litigate the baseless Texas challenge to the election results and has been raising money for his own campaign committee off of the Georgia runoffs, (Source:  “Ted Cruz’s Runoff Fundraising Is Actually Going to His Campaign. He’s Not Alone,” by Lachlan Markay, The Daily Beast, 12/30/20).  

     The most dangerous aspirant is Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, who began last week by echoing Trump’s populist call for $2000 stimulus checks and ended this one by announcing that he would object to certification of the Electoral College vote.  Unlike Trump, a short-fingered vulgarian who has never read The Constitution, Cruz and Hawley are products of Harvard and Yale Law schools, respectively, who understand precisely what they are doing— making a naked bid to be the leader of an authoritarian, white supremacist movement.

     Around the country, the horrifying persistence of police brutality shows that there are plenty of adherents for such a movement.  On December 22nd, a Columbus, Ohio police officer responding to a call about an idling car (!), shot and killed Andre Hill in cold blood.  Hill was in the midst of delivering Christmas money when he was gunned down in a neighbor’s garage.  Two Columbus police officers watched Hill “struggling for his life for 5 minutes and 11 seconds” without rendering aid, (Source:  “Andre Hill’s friend told police he was just dropping off ‘Christmas money’ when he was shot, new body camera footage shows,” by Kristina Sgueglia, Taylor Romaine, Sonia Moghe, and Amir Vera, CNN.com, 12/31/20).

      In Minneapolis, residents are protesting another police killing of a Black man, Dolal Idd, on December 30th.  Police have deemed it a “probable cause weapons investigation,” and have reacted to peaceful, if hostile, protests by repeatedly asking for authorization to use 40mm launchers and pepper spray against nonviolent protestors,  (Source:  “Fatal shooting by police sets off protest in Minneapolis, the city’s first police-involved death since George Floyd,” by Holly Bailey, The Washington Post, 12/31/20).

Contrast these police responses to the treatment that the Nashville suicide bomber received when his girlfriend reported that he was making bombs in his RV, (Source: “Nashville Police Were Warned Last Year That Suicide Bomber Was Building Explosives in His R.V., But Didn’t Search It,” by Ishena Robinson, TheRoot.com, 12/31/20). By now it should be clear that undue deference to those who consider Black votes fraudulent per se is killing democracy and undue deference to white lives at the expense of Black lives will kill us all. So don’t sleep, because it may be a New Year, but it’s the same country.

December 23, 2020

      With a mere 28 days remaining in Trump’s miserable reign, we can expect the next four weeks to be a concentrated version of the last four years, marked by criminality, cruelty and chaos.  Since November 3, Trump has focused all of his attention on maintaining the presidency, and none on the actual job of President.   After multiple federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, suffered a massive Russian cyberattack that was the worst security breach in history, Trump downplayed it and did nothing, (Source:  “What we know-and still don’t- about the worst-ever US government cyberattack,” by Kari Paul and Lois Beckett, theguardian.com, 12/19/20).  

     On Friday, Trump convened an Oval Office meeting to plot to prevent the inauguration of the duly elected President and Vice President.  Criminal former NSA head Mike Flynn and Sidney Powell, the Trump lawyer who has trafficked in bizarre conspiracy theories featuring long dead Venezuelan dictator, Hugo Chavez, were in attendance.  Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Guiliani, attended by phone, as did White House Counsel, Pat Cipollone and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.  This convocation of kooks and fabulists discussed Guiliani’s recommendation that DHS impound voting machines in battleground states to look for “irregularities,”  as well as Flynn’s recommendation that Trump impose martial law and “rerun the election.”  Lastly, Trump floated appointing Powell as Special Counsel to investigate alleged election fraud, (Source:  “Trump Weighed Naming Election Conspiracy Theorist As Special Counsel,” by Maggie Hoberman and Zoltan Kenno-Youngs, The New York Times, 12/19/20).

     It fell to Pat Cipollone and Ken Cuccinelli, hardened ideologues who have supported Trump’s noxious agenda at every turn, to push back on these dangerous schemes.  If all that stands between us and the imposition of martial law are a corrupt lawyer who led an impassioned defense of Trump in his impeachment and an immigration hardliner determined to end DACA, we are in deep trouble.

     While Trump was busy using the people’s house as home base for his criminal conspiracy, the number of coronavirus infections soared to dizzying heights, with no end in sight, a direct result of Trump’s genocidal combination of malevolence, depraved indifference and stupidity.  As The Washington Post details in this deeply reported story, Trump’s monomaniacal obsession with challenging the election results instead of doing his actual job has resulted in more than 300,000 American deaths and a continuing daily death toll that has risen to 3000 deaths per day!  At every turn, Trump, Pence and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows failed to do the simple things that would have saved lives- advocating for mask wearing and implementing a robust testing program.  After a spring spent politicizing normal public health measures and promoting quack miracle cures, Trump, like the addle-brained toddler he is, has grown bored with COVID and abandoned any effort to mount a coordinated federal response, (Source:”’The general was missing in action,’” by Yasmeen Abutaleb, Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Philip Rucker, The Washington Post, 12/19/20).

     Yesterday, Trump added chaos and cruelty to the mix by threatening to veto the 900 billion COVID relief bill hammered out by Congress, and in a revealing move that exemplifies the depraved immorality of this administration, pardoned a rogues’ gallery of the corrupt and murderous, all of whom were white,(Source:  “Trump Pardons Two Russia Inquiry Figures and Blackwater Guards,” by Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt, The New York Times, 12/23/20).  This stands in stark contrast to the rush to execute thirteen federal inmates since July, 6 of whom are Black and one is Indigenous.

        Taken together, Trump’s actions toggle back and forth between the gleefully racist and the chillingly cruel.  In the face of such stunning criminality, it is cold comfort to remind ourselves that Biden will take office in four weeks.  Trump is clearly determined to show us just how much havoc he can wreak for each of the next 28 days.  We can say that Trump is an aberration, but if we want to make sure of it, starting January 21st, we’d better make him pay.

#Accountabilityforallenablers

#protectdemocracy.org

December 11, 2020

With 40 days remaining until President-elect Biden takes the oath of office, following the news can give one whiplash. On the one hand, we have the Biden team’s methodical rollout of Cabinet picks. The selections reflect the country’s diversity— from the first woman for Treasury Secretary to the first Latino immigrant for Homeland Security Secretary to the first Black person for Secretary of Defense. Biden’s picks are reassuring and almost boring, because the resumes scream competence and probity, a welcome departure from the homogeneous cast of grifters and Marvel villains that have occupied the Trump Cabinet.

      At the same time, Trump has continued his dangerous crusade to overturn the results of a free and fair election by relentlessly attacking the legitimacy of Black votes in battleground states. Despite a record of 1-55 in the courts,  Trump continues to allege unnamed fraud in his superspreader rallies. His plague spreading posse of incompetent, unethical attorneys remain undaunted, filing court papers riddled with factual errors and completely devoid of evidence, (Source:  “Trump And The GOP Have Now Lost 50 Post-Election Lawsuits,” by Alison Durkee, Forbes.com, 12/8/20).  Yet, Trump’s baseless bleating has convinced more than 60% of Republicans that the election was rigged.  Trump has so thoroughly captured the Republican Party that only 27 of 249 Republicans acknowledge that Joe Biden won the election, (Source:  “Just 27 Congressional Republicans acknowledge Biden’s win, Washington Post survey finds” by Paul Kane and Scott Clement, WashingtonPost.com, 12/5/20).

     There is a twisted logic to the refusal of Republicans to acknowledge Biden’s win, given what has happened to Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger.  Raffensberger is hardly some RINO.  He has enthusiastically continued his predecessor Brian Kemp’s vote suppressing tactics, improperly purging 200,000 voters from the rolls on the mistaken impression that they had moved.  Yet, because Raffensperger presided over an election where an accurate vote count resulted in Biden’s victory, he has been subjected to pressure and criticism from Trump and his toady, Lindsey Graham and a torrent of death threats, (Source:  “Georgia Secretary of State says fellow Republicans are pressuring him to find ways to exclude ballots,” by Amy Gardner, WashingtonPost.com, 11/16/20).

By now we have all seen the viral clip of Georgia’s bespectacled Republican functionary, Gabriel Sterling, expressing shock and anger that the vitriol normally reserved for Black people and Democrats was now being directed at Trump-voting civil servants, (Source: “‘It Has To Stop’: Georgia Election Official Lashes Trump,” by Richard Fausset, The New York Times, 12/1/20). Although Sterling’s righteous rant was hailed as a Joseph Welch moment, the Republican fever did not break. By Monday, Raffensperger was desperately trying to get Trump to back off by engaging in false equivalence- equating Stacey Abrams’ fight against voter suppression to Trump’s full frontal assault on democracy, (Source: “Trump Runs The Stacey Abrams Playbook,” by Brad Raffensperger, The Wall Street Journal, 12/6/20).

      We may laugh at the loopy antics of  Mellisa Carone, Guilani’s star witness in Michigan, but State Rep. Cynthia Johnson, who was threatened with lynching after sharply questioning Giuliani at the hearing,and then disciplined for her response (!) isn’t laughing, (Source:  “Michigan GOP Sidelines Democrat For Her ‘Unacceptable’ Response To Lynching Threats,” by Rick Pluta, NPR.org, 12/9/20).  Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson wasn’t laughing when armed Trump supporters showed up outside of her home as she was decorating her Christmas tree with her 4 year old son.

       We may mock the slapdash, bad faith lawyering that has resulted in a 1-55 record in court, but on Wednesday, corrupt Texas State Attorney General, joined by Republican Attorneys General in seventeen states, sued to invalidate the votes in the four battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.  100 of 196 Congressional Republicans signed an amicus brief in support of the suit, (Source:  “More than half of House Republicans support Texas lawsuit challenging election results,” by Felicia Sonmez, The Washington Post, 12/10/20).  These efforts to attack democracy by deeming Black votes illegitimate per se, are supported not only by state and federal elected Republicans, but by the 74 million people who voted for Trump and have contributed more than $207 million dollars to him since the election.  We may be eager to turn the page, but we’re still in the same book.

#Gasenate.com

November 28, 2020

      If the past four years have taught us anything, it is that clinging to the myths we were raised on can be deadly.  In four years we have learned just how stubbornly resilient the myth of white supremacy is, and just how much it permeates every facet of our society, from the consequential to the quotidian.  To our credit, a thunderingly large number of us repudiated white supremacy at the ballot box, delivering a resounding defeat to Trump, which has been repeatedly validated in the courts.  For this, we should be truly thankful.

     We must resist the temptation, though, to see the election of Biden/Harris as the end of our work, rather than the beginning.  Doing so glosses over the Herculean effort it took to overcome the barriers embedded in a system that enshrines minority rule.  It is time we took a long hard look at the structure of the American “democracy” that we have long lionized as proof of our “exceptionalism.”

     Too many of us treat the Constitution like scripture and the Founding Fathers like deities.  That deification ignores the contradiction inherent in declaring that “all men are created equal,” while simultaneously designing a system to allow human beings to own and profit from the unpaid labor of other human beings.  It ignores the abhorrent dehumanization of Black people required to sustain such a system and how it required the doctrine of white supremacy to be threaded through all of our foundational systems, from the Electoral College to the anti-majoritarian design of the U.S. Senate.  Lastly, and most significantly, treating our founding documents and their authors this way induces paralysis, robbing us of the agency required to build a democracy fit for a 21st century multicultural reality, in which women are full citizens, and civil rights are not dependent on property ownership.

     Despite knowing this, many of us are eager to simply “turn the page,” and return to “normal.”  Such selfish desires ignore the fact that our “normal” was untenable for a wide swath of Americans. Accepting a “normal” that erased the history and very existence of Indigenous Americans and treated the state sponsored murder and suffering of Black and Brown people as acceptable collateral damage is how we elected Trump.

      Trump was far from a singular danger. This is evident in the response by those in authority to the surging pandemic, which ignores the disproportionate effect of the pandemic on communities of color.  It is evident in the actions of Trump acolyte governors like South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, who is heedless of the devastating impact of the coronavirus on her state’s Indigenous population and is actively fighting the efforts of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe to protect itself, (Source:  “As South Dakota takes hands-off approach to coronavirus, Native Americans feel vulnerable,” by Erik Ortiz, NBCnews.com, 11/25/20).

     It is evident in the 5-4 decision issued by the Supreme Court in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, which overturned the narrowly tailored restriction on in person religious services as violative of the First Amendment’s free exercise clause.  In his concurring opinion, Justice Gorsuch glibly contrasts the ability of bike shops and liquor stores to remain open, ignoring the fact unlike bike shops and liquor stores, in person religious services present the precise conditions known by medical experts to facilitate the spread of the virus—“large groups of people, gathering, speaking and singing in close proximity indoors for extended periods of time,” (Source:  Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, 592 U.S. ___ (2020) dissenting opinion of Sotomayor, J.).

       This decision, which directly contradicts two decisions from earlier this year, reflects the replacement of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, with religious ideologue, Amy Coney Barrett.  This new majority is signaling that, in the name of protecting the ”free exercise of religion,”  it will elevate the parochial concerns of religious groups over the rights of the broader public, paving the way for the erosion of  legal protections afforded to LGBTQ people, women and people of color.  Justice Alito and Justice Thomas have already explicitly asked that marriage equality be reconsidered, a point that Justice Alito reiterated in his speech to The Federalist Society earlier this month.

We must reject our uniquely American mythology, or we will find ourselves four years from now fighting off a smoother, smarter, Trump. Hard as it may be, we must reject a return to “normal.” Tell Justices Alito, Coney Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Thomas that it was Jesus Christ who said, “You shall know the truth and it shall set you free.” It’s time to live in the truth.

November 23, 2020

      Although nearly three weeks have passed since Election Day, the malignant narcissist squatter in The White House shows no sign of relinquishing his death grip on presidential power or the national spotlight that accompanies it.  In the immediate aftermath of the election being called for Biden, Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper by tweet, which was followed by the departure of four senior Defense Department officials in charge of policy and intelligence.  Trump replaced them with a disgraced conspiracy theorist who had called President Obama a terrorist, and loyalist flunkies like Kash Patel, a former aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, and Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who provided sensitive information about the Russia investigation, (Source:  “Trump administration removes senior defense officials and installs loyalists, triggering alarm at Pentagon,” by Barbara Starr, Zachary Cohen and Ryan Browne, CNN.com, 11/13/20).

    The coronavirus pandemic continues to rage, with cases and deaths growing at a truly alarming rate, pushing our healthcare system to the verge of collapse and increasing suffering for untold numbers of Americans.  Yet neither Trump, nor the Republican-led Senate are lifting a pinky to help, preferring to use their time to ram through unqualified federal judges or to mount an unprecedented attack on the bedrock of our democracy, free and fair elections.  Trump’s initial salvo was to fire Chris Krebs, the federal official who dared to debunk his dangerous lies about election fraud, (Source:  “Trump Fires Christopher Krebs, Official Who Disputed Election Fraud Claims,” by David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth, The New York Times, 11/17/20). Continue reading “Black voters matter”

November 15, 2020

     It has now been more than a week since the major networks called the presidential election for Joe Biden.  Eight days since we danced in the streets, heaving a collective sigh of relief that the burden of waking up every day knowing that your own government was actively working to harm you was going to be lifted.  In the eight days since, Arizona and Georgia have been called by all of the networks, Georgia’s hand recount notwithstanding.  Although Trump has steadfastly refused to concede and has blocked Biden from access to information necessary for an orderly transition, the victory feels definitive and decisive enough that Democrats have already begun infighting.  Democrats are busy scolding one another for losses in the House, blaming everything from activists’ calls to defund the police to insufficient digital strategy for the losses.  The circular firing squad from the one remaining political party that actually believes in democracy misses the forest for the trees.

     Anyone looking to understand how we managed to lose the Senate majority and seats in the House, while winning the presidency needs to look beyond headline-grabbing glib answers and examine the structural rot at the heart of our republic.  As Ezra Klein details here, America’s problem is not “too much polarization,” but “too little democracy.  The combination of the Electoral College and gerrymandered districts create incentives for Republicans to cater to an extreme base, because they can win elections and maintain power without winning over a majority of voters,(Source:  “The crisis isn’t too much polarization.  It’s too little democracy,” by Ezra Klein, Vox.com, 11/12/20). Continue reading “It’s not over”

November 9, 2020

      What a week!  In the past seven days, we have cycled through fear, enervation and elation.  On Tuesday night, when we once again lost Texas and Florida, we experienced PTSD from 2016.  Many of us took to our beds, dreading what news the morning would bring.  Even though we knew that the artificially engineered delay in counting absentee ballots would create a “red mirage,” we failed to anticipate just how awful it would feel.

      As the week wore on and the vote count for Biden inched up, closing the gap in Pennsylvania and widening it in Nevada, networks’ failure to call certain states created a space for Trump’s baseless conspiracy theories.  Their caution began to seem more like coddling, as Trump and his toadies trafficked in lies and armies of polo-shirted vigilantes descended on Detroit’s Cobo Hall and Philadelphia’s Convention Center in an effort to intimidate election workers counting ballots.  They chanted “stop the count,” where Trump was leading and “count that vote,” in states where Trump was behind.  Trump’s followers were unbothered by the complete lack of evidence for their accusations or by their embarrassing 0-10 record in their sanction-worthy lawsuits alleging voting irregularities. Continue reading “We Won!!”