Fear

I read both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal most mornings.   I usually rise from the couch feeling some combination of incredulity, anger, and despair.   This morning, for the first time, I felt a sharp stab of fear. 

A shrinking gaggle of mostly Honduran refugees is slowly making its way north, still weeks away from the border.  In response, Trump has launched the largest quick deployment of active-duty U.S. military since 2010 by ordering over 5000 troops to counter what the President called “an invasion of our country.”  He calls it “Operation Faithful Patriot.”  “[Democrats],” he says, “want to open America’s borders and turn our country into a friendly sanctuary for murderous thugs from other countries who will kill us all.”   And are the American people buying it?  On the front page, the Times quotes a graphic designer from Illinois:  “I feel like we’re fighting for our freedom when it comes to our borders.  [The caravan will] destroy America, and . . . bring us to our knees.  I’m not going to take it – not going to go down without a fight.”

For tens of millions of our fellow citizens, this is the reality they will bring with them to the voting booth next Tuesday, not the actual reality that individuals steeped in the rhetoric of the Trump base sent pipe bombs to most of the leadership of the opposition party, and did murder 11 worshiping Jews for no reason other than their religion.   I fear that democracy cannot function in a society without the grounding reference point of a common reality, no less a shared culture or shared narrative of nationhood and history.   Who wins in what Chris Hedges calls “the empire of illusion”?    I fear the answer is the party that is comfortable peddling a manipulative narrative untethered from the truth and highly skilled at manipulating the levers of social and other media; the party that is willing to open Pandora’s box and unleash the powerful passions of hate, resentment, nativism, and prejudice.  

Reading on, I find that Brazil, by far the largest country in Latin America, elected as its president a far-right politician who said “Let’s go straight to the dictatorship,” as the only way to fix a broken country.   He told a magazine that he’d “rather his son die in a car accident” than be gay, and told a female politician on camera that she was not good enough to be raped.  Sound familiar?   So Brazil joins Italy, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Austria.   I fear that we still view these elections as aberrant and fail to recognize that we are in the midst of a global epidemic.   Why are the champions of liberal democracy not fighting these outbreaks with the same vigor we brought to Ebola, SARS and other threatening pathogens?

When Trump was elected, I wrote that “cancellation of trade deals will send the global economy into a tailspin and devastate American business and workers.”  Instead, the long tail of our recovery from the 2008 recession drove the economy forward, and the stock market, artificially buoyed by a large corporate tax cut, floated ever upward.  This morning something changed.  The Wall Street Journal has previously opposed Trump’s multi-front trade war, but only in a pro forma way.  This morning, the paper chose to run an opinion piece with a stark verdict:  “That crashing sound you heard in the world markets last week wasn’t just a correction.  It was the sound of the end of an age.”  The end of an age when Washington emphasized “opening of markets and reducing barriers to investment and trade” and “the positive-sum logic of economics trumped zero-sum international politics.”   In its place, a far-right rage that seeks to destroy globalism and the Trumpist world view that international relations is a zero-sum contest between winners and losers.   As an investor, I have learned over a long period to ignore the ups and downs of the market.  But reading this, I felt an emotion toxic to markets:  fear.

And finally, finished with both papers, I was struck by what was missing.  Where were the voices of the opposition?   Consider this:  Both papers reported the deployment of Federal troops to the border together with the President’s explanation that we were being “invaded.”   And who provided the counterpoint?  Who called Trump out for this abuse of Federal power for transparently partisan purposes?  Speaker Pelosi?  Leader Schumer?  Neither the Times nor the Journal quoted a single Democratic politician in opposition.  (Ex-military leaders, however, were quick to react, and succinct:  “This is using the troops as props,” said an ex-Army infantry officer.)    I fear that no resistance can succeed without effective leaders.  I fear that the political establishment (or what remains of it) is not going to come to our rescue.  I fear that it really is up to each of us as individuals and the decisions we make next Tuesday.

Fear can be either enervating or energizing.  We can be paralyzed by fear or it can spur action that saves our lives.  I can only hope that I’m not the only one who has felt an escalation of fear in recent days.  If enough of those millennials, minorities, suburban women, centrists, moderates, and independents feel the same way, we might finally get some good news on Tuesday night.   

Which side are you on?

When you vote on November 6, don’t be fooled into thinking that this election is about the candidates whose names are printed on the ballot.  There will be only one headline on November 7.  The nation will either embrace or repudiate Trumpism.  You are being asked only a single question: “Which side are you on?”

The choices are no longer Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal.   The GOP we once knew, defined by ideology and policy, no longer exists.   Now there is only Trump and anti-Trump. 

The choice is between an ethnic nationalism hunkered down behind a wall, and an open society that values pluralism and diversity.  It is the choice between a moral vacuum in which the ends justify the means, and a political culture in which we demand honesty and decency from our leaders.  It is the choice between ignorance and learning, bombastic bullying and respectful dialog, all-consuming ego and empathetic compassion, a narrative of hate and a narrative of hope.

Republican primary voters already have made their choice.  All but a handful of Republicans in Congress already have made their choice.   So now it’s up to you.

If you stayed home in 2016, disaffected by politics in general or Hillary in particular, you in effect voted for Trump.   Now is the chance to atone.  This time there are no excuses.

Max Boot, life-long GOP partisan and former editor of the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, argues in his new book that Americans must “vote against all Republicans.”   For many of us, this requires realigning our very sense of self.   I have always defined myself as a non-partisan rationalist, voting for person and policy, not party.  Not this time.  There will not be a single vote on my ballot under the GOP column.  

Which side are you on?

Fascism

Trigger warning:  Reading this blog might ruin your day.

In my September 2016 blog, What is fascism?, I examined each of the core markers of fascism (nationalism, resentment of “others,” fetishization of strength and power, contempt for the rule of law, aggression, disdain for the truth, and rejection of political convention).  I concluded, “As hard as it is to swallow, there can be no denying that by these six measures, Trumpism is a proto-fascist movement ('proto' in this case meaning rising, or precursor to).”   Even those who accepted my analysis believed, as I did, that – in the unlikely event of his victory – the strength of America’s political culture and institutions would prevent Trump from implementing his proto-fascist agenda.

Most turning points in history are visible only in retrospect.  All too often we lack the perspective to see what is happening until it's too late.   I have tried to adopt the perspective of a future historian asking the question whether by 2018 the Trumpist political movement had crossed the line from proto-fascist rhetoric to actual fascism.  I believe our future historian would conclude that it had.  Here’s why:

The GOP Is Now a Cult of Personality.  Our governing political party is no longer defined by an ideological or policy agenda, but primarily by loyalty to Trump.  Almost 60% of registered Republicans now tell pollsters they consider themselves "more a supporter of Trump than of the Republican Party."   This is why virtually all of the GOP has stood silently as the President has reversed its long-standing commitments to, among other things, reduction of federal deficits, free trade, and our NATO alliance.  Those Republicans not unswervingly loyal to Trump are retiring from political life, and those who don’t will be defeated by well-funded Trumpists in GOP primaries.  Wall Street Journal and Fox News commentator Daniel Henninger now refers to “the Trump Party, formerly known as the GOP.”  And Mr. Trump himself dismisses any remaining GOP critics, including most notably the Koch brothers, as not being “real Republicans.”  Most disturbingly, 91% of strong Trump supporters say they trust Trump – more than any other source – for “accurate information,” notwithstanding his astonishing record of mendacity and his own express admission that he uses the “fake news” label to discredit anything critical or inconvenient to himself.   

“O'Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended. 'How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?  And if the party says that it is not four but five -- then how many?'”  (George Orwell, 1984, Part 3, Chapter 2.)

When nearly a third of Americans are now in a mind-set where they routinely answer “five fingers,” we have to admit that we are in the grip of a fascist movement.

The Foreign Policy of the USA Is One of Extreme Nationalism and Nativism.  Nationalist and nativist policies can no longer be dismissed as populist rhetoric.  The cowardly Congress of the United States has stood by as the State Department and other institutional stewards of America’s diplomatic values and traditions have been gutted or ignored, allowing the foreign policy of the United States to be defined by the angry whims of one man and conducted mano a mano with the thugs and tyrants that our President finds most congenial.  The President has attacked our core alliances, celebrated and embraced fellow-authoritarians, launched trade wars against our allies, and unilaterally implemented immigration policies that have demolished our country’s reputation and standing in the world.   Travel anywhere outside of the US and you'll be reminded of an incontestable truth:  these are not Tump's positions and actions anymore, they are ours.  America now has a fascist foreign policy.

The Executive Branch Attacks the Rule of Law and Press Freedom.   The President launches personal attacks against judges whose decisions he does not like.  At his behest, millions of Americans no longer trust the integrity of law enforcement or the courts.  He illegally instructed his recused attorney general to terminate the Russia probe following months of relentless attacks on his own Justice Department.  The President has doubled-down on his “enemy of the people” attacks on the free press, which are now escalating and will climax this fall.   In September 2016 these things were the ravings of a populist candidate who few took seriously.  But for the past year and a half they have been the acts and words of the President.  Instead of a virus attacking the system from the outside, the virus now sits within – at the very core of our body politic – and has already started to cripple the institutions at the core of our democracy.

The Rise of Violence.   Most disturbingly, the final line  – the toleration and use of violent means – has been crossed.  Trump the candidate encouraged his supporters to beat-up protesters at his rallies, and now as President he countenances the threat of violence against the news media.  Mainstream media companies now need to engage security guards for their reporters covering Trump rallies.   The White House approvingly tweets videos of crowds threatening the press and declines to criticize their menacing behavior.  In response, left-wing extremists also have menaced Trumpies.  The depth and bitterness of our political divide, engineered and celebrated by Trump and Bannon, is having exactly the effect they intended: the morphing of our politics in the direction of violent conflict.   I predict that the 2018 mid-term campaign will be characterized by steadily escalating political violence.

*    *    *

Trump’s approval ratings stand at 40%, including 84% of Republicans.  34% of all voters strongly approve.  History teaches that in Trump’s unshakable 34% of Americans we have a political base sufficient to support and sustain a fascist populist regime.   Unless, that is, the rest of us turn out to vote and are unified in our opposition.  History might well show that the 2018 midterms were the last moment when Trumpist fascism could have been derailed.

Fascism is a heavy charge, which many will dismiss as alarmist.  But for those uncomfortable with drawing parallels to the 20th century, please consider what our future historian will see, looking back at 2018:  fascist or near-fascist regimes in countries as diverse as North Korea, Venezuela, Russia, Turkey, Hungary, the Philippines, Turkmenistan and elsewhere.  America is not alone in its struggle with this scourge.  And remember that political science and history teach that fascism comes in many flavors, but all are ultra-nationalist, all are designed to restore lost national “greatness,” all admire the strong-man in politics and are based on loyalty to a strong-man ruler, and all are fundamentally hostile to the rights of minorities, rule of law and pluralist democracy.   In addition to their fundamental political character, historians recognize fascist regimes by a certain style and rhetoric:  large theatrical rallies, repetitive chants, extreme and provocative speech, and the toleration or promotion of violence in political life.   We have been warned.   We’ll find out on November 6, 2018, how many of us listened.

Profile in Courage

A large number of Republicans know that it is their patriotic duty to put the interests of country before the interests of party, but sadly have lacked the courage to do so.   Two days ago John McCain reminded them what political courage looks like.   I believe that everyone should read the full text of what Senator McCain wrote.  Here it is, complete and unedited:

“Today’s press conference in Helsinki was one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory. The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate. But it is clear that the summit in Helsinki was a tragic mistake.

“President Trump proved not only unable, but unwilling to stand up to Putin. He and Putin seemed to be speaking from the same script as the president made a conscious choice to defend a tyrant against the fair questions of a free press, and to grant Putin an uncontested platform to spew propaganda and lies to the world.

“It is tempting to describe the press conference as a pathetic rout – as an illustration of the perils of under-preparation and inexperience. But these were not the errant tweets of a novice politician. These were the deliberate choices of a president who seems determined to realize his delusions of a warm relationship with Putin’s regime without any regard for the true nature of his rule, his violent disregard for the sovereignty of his neighbors, his complicity in the slaughter of the Syrian people, his violation of international treaties, and his assault on democratic institutions throughout the world.

“Coming close on the heels of President Trump’s bombastic and erratic conduct towards our closest friends and allies in Brussels and Britain, today’s press conference marks a recent low point in the history of the American Presidency. That the president was attended in Helsinki by a team of competent and patriotic advisors makes his blunders and capitulations all the more painful and inexplicable.

“No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant. Not only did President Trump fail to speak the truth about an adversary; but speaking for America to the world, our president failed to defend all that makes us who we are—a republic of free people dedicated to the cause of liberty at home and abroad. American presidents must be the champions of that cause if it is to succeed. Americans are waiting and hoping for President Trump to embrace that sacred responsibility. One can only hope they are not waiting totally in vain.  

U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.”

It's Worse Than You Can Imagine

I have just finished reading Fire and Fury.  I confess to opening the Amazon package with a certain salacious eagerness.   In the upside-down world of the Trump Presidency, many of us have become almost addicted to the daily fix of bizarreness that reinforces our conviction that he is uniquely unfit for the job.  Fire and Fury will cure you of this tendency.   It will give you no pleasure. 

For those who haven’t yet read the book, let me share a few of the things that caught my eye:

1.      “Dope.” (General McMaster) “Dumb as shit.” (Gary Cohn) “A moron.” (Tillerson) “Idiot.” (Reince Priebus and Steve Mnuchin)  “A fucking idiot.”  “Irrational.”  “A child.”  (Various staff).  And those who created the monster: “A moron” (Rupert Murdoch) “An idiot obviously.” (conservative Fox news correspondent Liz Trotta).  And his “friends” when speaking privately to their own friends: “He’s not only crazy, he’s stupid.” (Investor Tom Barrack) I could go on.  So, we now know what those whose careers and reputations are tied to his success, really think.  If you are one of those people who think the Trump phenomenon still falls within the range of some kind of normalcy, consider whether words like this ever have been uttered about any other President by those closest to him.

2.     Most of us imagined Trump buffered by people who, although perhaps ideologically extreme, were at least rational, informed, normally functioning humans.  Instead, those in the West Wing closest to the man, those doing the manipulating and enabling, are themselves revealed in the book to be a terrifying bunch of squabbling misfits.  Moreover, the crew that walked into the West Wing after the inauguration had almost no relevant experience in the business of government and no inclination to consult those who did.  Bannon told Miller to go the Internet to look up how to draft an executive order.   Katie Walsh, when she finally left her job as Deputy Chief of Staff, called it bitter rivalries joined to vast incompetence and an uncertain mission.

3.     And what did Trump think about those around him?  Bannon: disloyal and looks like shit.  Priebus: weak and short, a midget.  Spicer: stupid and looks terrible.  Conway: a crybaby.  Jared and Ivanka:  a suck-up, never should have some to Washington.  Ever and only the reality-TV man, looks mean everything to Trump.   On the hiring for a senior national security position, Trump instructed: “That’s the guy I want, he’s got the look.”

4.     What does Trump believe?  The picture that emerges from those close to him is pretty clear: a man of many obsessions but no fixed views, and certainly nothing that can be characterized as conventionally ideological or political.  Katie Walsh called them a set of vague beliefs and impulses, some of them contradictory.  Converting these impulses into policy was, Walsh said, “like trying to figure out what a child wants.”

5.     It is scary how completely journalists failed to understand what was happening during the first year.  They diagnosed the problem as a White House that was “disorganized” or “dysfunctional.”  That is like calling an airplane crew disorganized when the real problem is that no one in the cockpit knows how to fly and all are busy fighting with each other as the plane rumbles down the runway toward disaster.   Apologies for mixing transportation metaphors, but the media missed the boat on how bad things were in the West Wing.

6.     It is particularly painful to read how those closest to him before and during the campaign mislead the public.  His business “friends” argued publicly that he was a brilliant businessman while observing to friends in private that he couldn’t read a balance sheet, had no appetite for details of any kind and was a terrible negotiator. 

7.     Some of the most frightening details concern his inability to process information.  He doesn’t read.  He doesn’t skim.  “If it was print, it might as well not exist.” An email attributed to Gary Cohn (and summarizing the views of staff) reported “Trump won’t read anything – not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing.  He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored.”  Some staff members concluded he was only semi-literate or dyslexic.  He mistrusts expertise and has faith only in his own intuition.  He doesn’t listen, except to television, and then only selectively.  And, if you don’t process information in the normal way, then you make it up.  As Trump bragged, “I’ve made stuff up forever, and they always print it.”  Is someone unable to absorb and process information “fit to discharge the duties of the office”?

8.     The book is filled with testimony from both long time “friends” and those working with him during the campaign and first year in office, of his fundamental mental incapacity.   They found that he was incapable of what doctors and neuroscientists call “executive function,” meaning the cognitive abilities to plan, organize, pay attention, focus, switch focus, exercise self-control or tailor his behavior toward the fulfillment of goals.  “Executive function disorder” is a step beyond, and more crippling than, ADHD.  The book paints the picture of a man “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” (in the words of the 25th Amendment).  It starts with his inability to understand the Presidency as an institutional or political concept, as opposed to a media platform.  The very idea of statesmanship is beyond him.  When an important decision presents itself, such as our response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons, Kushner and McMaster both reported that he was more annoyed about having to make the effort to think about and deal with it, than he was by the attack itself.   Staff report multiple moments of irrationality, “uncontrollable, vein-popping, ugly-face, tantrum stuff . . . primal.”  He makes hugely consequential decisions (including the firing of James Comey) impulsively, without any process, consultation, or staff work.  According to Steve Bannon, the debate within the staff is not about whether the situation is bad, but whether it is 25th amendment bad. 

9.     Lacking executive function, he is easy to manipulate.  Imagine dealing with a man where nothing sticks.  Where the decision depends on the last person in the room.  Where everything is personal (amazingly, he views it as a “waste” to give a government job to someone he doesn’t know personally, which explains a great deal).  If you are rich, a celebrity, or powerful, or you are sufficiently flattering and obsequious, then you can say or do no wrong.  Until, that is, you disappoint him, in which case you are the subject of vituperative angry calumny.   

10.  If any single thing in this book should make you re-read the 25th amendment, it’s the image of him sitting alone in his locked bedroom in the early morning hours, three large screens replaying cable news, and the President of the United States making decisions by Tweet and publicly embracing whatever cock-eyed conspiracy story the provocateurs of the right are peddling that day.   You wonder how he could possibly praise beyond-the-pale white supremacists or retweet anti-Muslim videos from British hate groups?  Without knowledge, experience, and executive function there can be no judgment.  It’s not that he has bad judgement, he has no judgement.   

11.  I won’t belabor my long-standing theme that it all comes back to his narcissistic personality disorder, but some of the anecdotes in Fire and Fury will go down in the annals of psychological history.  When frantic staffers begged his “friends” to call him to get him to calm down and focus, “morning Joe” Scarborough advised him to figure out who in the West Wing he really trusted and sit down and talk things out before acting.  “Who can talk you through this stuff before you decided to act on it?” he asked the President.  “Well,” the President replied, “you won’t like the answer, but the answer is me.  I talk to myself.”  This should not be a surprise.  During the campaign, when asked from whom he plans to take advice, he answered, from “myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.”  His narcissism is so all-consuming, that he regards all publicity as a zero-sun game – Roger Ailes explained, “If someone else gets on [the cover of Time], he doesn’t”.   

12.  We’ve long seen Bannon as a Svengali-like figure.  But the book paints the picture of a man as twisted, damaged, and angry as Trump, but much brighter and thus more dangerous.  If you breathed a sigh of relief when Roger Ailes died, think again.  You think the bungled executive order on Muslim immigration, or the “two sides” comment were failures?  Think again.  Bannon’s strategy (perfectly aligned with Putin’s) is to drive the wedge between the American right and left ever deeper, until no reconciliation is possible.  He wants nothing less than civil war resulting in total defeat of the left and destruction not only of the “administrative state” but the media, academic, and non-profit organizations that support it.  As Wolf puts it, the overt racism, misogyny and daily outrages are designed to “shock the liberals so the [right-wing] base [is] doubly satisfied,” this is, both by the original outrage and by the liberal consternation it foments.  Bannon’s plan: “the way to crush the liberals: make them crazy and drag them to the left.”  Democrats, you’ve been warned. 

13.  So, here’s the question for the Vice President and the Cabinet:  you all know about his disabilities and flaws and have observed that they have, on multiple occasions, rendered him unable to discharge his duties responsibly and effectively.  Do you wait until one of those occasions involves war or other fundamental interests of the country, or do you do your duty now?  And it is getting worse.  His staffers worry that his speech has become even more rambling and repetitious and his ability to focus, even momentarily, has “notably declined.”

The people working in the West Wing are desperate, “I am in a constant state of shock and horror,” said one.   Fire and Fury just cracks the lid on the pot, giving us an early glimpse.  It will all come out in due time, because a man who cannot be loyal has no one loyal to him outside his own family.  They all will spill their guts in return for six and seven figure advances, and, if we survive his tenure, future historians will have all they need to paint a vivid picture of American democracy’s most terrible failure.

Repeal of the Johnson Amendment

Repeal of the Johnson Amendment, if included in the final tax legislation, may prove to be its single most consequential provision.   This repeal, which its proponents formerly referred to as the “Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act,” has been one of the top priorities of the theocratic right for almost two decades.

My 2013 dystopian political novel Christian Nation posited that only a few key pieces of Federal legislation would be necessary to move the country toward the theocracy so ardently desired by at least a quarter of our fellow citizens.  Here is what I wrote in that story:

“Worst was the ‘Houses of Worship Freedom of Speech Restoration Act,’  which drove a stake through the principle that partisan political activity was not to be subsidized with a Federal tax deduction, but did so in a way that gave the benefit of the deduction to a single party.  The evangelical and Pentecostal churches of America were, of course, overwhelmingly Republican, and the largest single part of the charitable sector.   Although the Christian right had long been politically active, pastors were not allowed to endorse specific candidates or invest their charitable revenues in political advertising.  Although there were many egregious violations of these rules, most clergymen obeyed because loss of the Federal tax deduction would have been devastating to the tithing and other contributions on which the movement relied.  This would now change, with the $100 billion given to religious causes each year (about one-third of all annual charitable giving in America) suddenly available to support partisan politics.  And ‘speech’ included paid advertising.”

Repeal of the Johnson Amendment is all about money and not at all about free speech.   In a presidential election year total campaign (federal and state) spending is estimated to exceed $5 billion.  And now, another hundred billion potentially entering the game, overwhelmingly available to one side only. 

Consider who supports repeal.  If it really does benefit non-profits generally by removing limits on free speech, then you would expect them to support it.   They don’t.   Charities and foundations overwhelmingly oppose it.  The non-partisan National Council of Nonprofits explained, we “have worked for years, decades and centuries to build the public’s trust, and we don’t want to be dragged down by toxic partisanship.”  The repeal’s sole proponents are politically active evangelicals.   Doesn’t this alone tell you what you need to know?

In Christian Nation, the fictional memoirist, looking back from the theocratic future, speculates about the pivotal 2016 election, when a fictional demagogic theocratic populist defeated Hillary Clinton:

“[T]he ‘Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act’ [repeal of the Johnson Amendment] had changed fundamentally the dynamics of American politics.   The churches became the top sources – over PACs, corporations and individuals – of political advertising.   Partisan endorsements from evangelical pulpits virtually guaranteed the votes of those congregations; there was little that any candidate could do to change the mind of a voter whose trusted pastor had informed him or her that one of the candidates was backed by God.”

There was a time when U.S. Senators dreamed that a moment of courageous principled integrity would earn them a place in history, like the eight senators who were the subjects of Kennedy and Sorensen’s Profiles in Courage.   That moment is here.   Fifty-one of you have the chance to change the course of American history and join the pantheon.

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Another day, the 392nd since November 9, 2016.   A morning like so many others.  The news is grim.  The US will recognize Jerusalem and throw the Middle East into violent turmoil.   Trump has endorsed Roy Moore, a crackpot theocrat twice expelled from the Alabama Supreme Court for ignoring Federal courts (and an alleged pedophile to boot).  In an act without precedent, Trump disposes of 2 million acres of permanently protected public lands.  It takes an effort to make my way through the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.   To my limbic brain it is like I am holding my hand over a flame; the neurons are begging me to pull back and walk away.

We are exhausted and discouraged.  It’s an over-used word, but apt in this case:  traumatized.  And lethargy is one of the many perilous symptoms of trauma.  It’s far too easy to allow moral indignation and anger to fade into a soothing malaise that excuses action.

With this in mind, I have forced myself back to my desk.   We must not surrender to despair.  We all must do what we can.  

Trump First, American Last

Unless it threatens to drag us into war, the great American public tends to be uninterested in foreign affairs.   It’s time to get interested.   Domestic policy can be reversed.  But Trump is well on the way to squandering the prestige, power, and moral authority built by this country over the course of the past century. 

Trump has sought to personalize American foreign policy.  He disdains the analysis of our intelligence and foreign policy professionals, refuses to consult or use our diplomats, and has replaced the entire apparatus of foreign relations with his personal impulses and illusions about his relationships with other leaders.  And the result to date?

·      Our European allies now treat us as a pariah state.   Secretary of State Tillerson received a barely civil reception last week in Brussels.  Even our “special relationship” with the UK is on the verge of collapse, thanks to the U.S. President's unthinkable endorsement of a pariah UK ultranationalistic hate group.

·      The world chuckled in derision as Trump announced that the Middle East was “not so difficult as people thought” and dispatched Jared to make a deal.  They’re not laughing any more.   Every world leader, both parties, and every one of his predecessors understood why the US could not move its embassy to Jerusalem.   So of course doing it was irresistible to Trump.   Thousands will loose their lives in the ensuing violence, the cause of peace will be set back, perhaps by decades, and our friends in Europe will bear the brunt of invigorated terrorism.   And for what?  One man’s ego. 

·      By canceling the TransPacific trade deal (long championed by Republicans), pulling out of the Paris Agreement, risking millions of Asian lives by threatening North Korea with “fire and fury,” and kowtowing to China’s strongman (among many other sins of commission and omission), Trump has handed economic and political leadership of Asia to China.  The first battle in China’s plan for global leadership, conceded by a blathering reality TV star without a shot fired.

·      Republicans like to boast that Reagan won the cold war.  They now need to wake up to the fact that Trump is reversing that victory.   Even at the height of our enmity, the Soviet Union could not have dreamed of manipulating our democracy and installing a candidate guaranteed to weaken its enemy.  Trump’s hero Putin achieved this, whether with or without Trump’s acquiescence or participation remains to be seen.  But the result is clear enough.  Putin has gotten his way in Syria and is pushing the US aside in its relations and influence in Turkey, Egypt, and elsewhere.   

I could go on.   I beg Republicans and conservatives to follow the lead of John McCain here.  This is what he said in a speech on October 16:

“The international order we helped build from the ashes of world war, and that we defend to this day, has liberated more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history. This wondrous land has shared its treasures and ideals and shed the blood of its finest patriots to help make another, better world. And as we did so, we made our own civilization more just, freer, more accomplished and prosperous than the America that existed when I watched my father go off to war on December 7, 1941.  To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain 'the last best hope of earth' for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.”

A Request

In today's coverage of Trump’s endorsement of Moore, neither the Times nor the Journal referred to anything about his background or qualifications other than the sexual abuse.  This is also the case with most other media coverage.  This is a disaster.  A growing number of Americans have an issue with the fairness of destroying careers based on decades old sexual misconduct charges that have not been thoroughly investigated or proven.  The real issue with Moore is that he is as unfit for high office as any candidate in recent history.  Moore is a fringe fundamentalist theocrat who has twice ignored federal court orders on the basis that the Bible trumps the Constitution, and twice was expelled from his seat on the court.   Until Bannon/Trump turned the world upside down (and before the allegations of sexual misconduct), he was treated as a pariah. 

My request.  Please complain to your favorite media sources if they omit the relevant facts about Moore.  Please write on-line comments on news reports and postings that focus on the sexual allegations to the exclusion of all else. 

A Happy Thought

The obsession of every person afflicted by narcissistic personality disorder is to create a world where “it’s all about me.”  Donald Trump is the first to have succeeded, where the relevant world is not the bubble of family, workplace or community, but – literally – the world.  Since November 9, 2016, has there been a newspaper anywhere in the world without Trump on its front page? A newscast in which the man’s face did not appear?

Narcissism is an addiction.  The obsessive desire for attention and affirmation created by the addiction cannot be satisfied, because feeding those desires – as it does with all addictions – just stokes the fire and results in an unquenchable appetite for more.  

Two classic symptoms common to all types of addiction are the impairment of what psychologists call “inhibitory control over behavior” and “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder” – that is, pathological impulsiveness, inability to focus, excessive activity, and inappropriate behavior; that is, Trump as he has been since childhood and will be until his death.

Here’s the happy thought.   Giving the world’s most extreme narcissist the greatest amount of attention and power that a human being can have is like presenting the junkie with an unlimited life-time supply of heroin.   There is only one way it can end: a spiraling descent to total self-destruction.   The only question is the amount of damage he will do on the way down.

The Path Forward

Sometimes the path forward is so obvious that we miss it in the search for more complex or subtle solutions.   

We are still, however imperfectly, a democracy.  Yes, Citizens United, gerrymandering, voter suppression, fake news, and hyperpartisan media silos all have undermined the foundations of our democracy.  But it hasn’t crumbled yet, and voting remains the best means for effecting change.

So if you believe that Trump is unfit for office and/or abhor the agenda of the so-called “alt-right,” then – regardless of your ideological preference or traditional party affiliation – I suggest that your path is clear: you must vote in every election and you must tick the box for every candidate up and down the ballot, regardless of personality or party, who has the best chance of defeating the Republican.   Let me be clear.  This means that if your sister is running for dogcatcher on the GOP line, you pull the lever for her opponent.   It’s not personal.  The point is that as long as the GOP is the party of Trump and the alt-right, you should treat pulling the lever anywhere on the GOP line as a morally indefensible act.  

The game plan of the Trumpist movement is clear:  if a GOP politician fails to swear fealty to the strongman, she or he will be primaried from the alt-right and lose, and – unless things change – nearly half the time the winner of that GOP primary will continue to be the de facto winner of the general election (FairVote calculated last month this continues to be the case in 208 of 435 House seats).   This could well lead to 16 years of Trumpism and the inevitable collapse of American prestige, leadership, and prosperity. 

The only way to derail this result is to break through normal voting patterns and achieve a temporary but massive re-set of voter behavior.   First, show up (the Trumpies will, that’s for sure).  Second, the 72% of Americans who now self-identify as independent or Democrat, hopefully joined by millions of patriotic morally centered Republicans, must treat any candidate’s Republican Party affiliation as toxic for so long as the GOP is providing a home for Trump and the alt-right.  It will take decisive defeats of GOP candidates up and down the ballot to persuade the party that Trumpism is not the horse to ride into the future.  It will take multiple elections evidencing overwhelming repudiation of Trump and the alt-right in order to put the genie of populism back in the bottle.

It grieves me to have to advocate for a solution that is even superficially partisan, when excessive partisanship is part of what caused the present train wreck.   I say “superficially partisan” because in intent and in the longer-term, what I advocate is not partisan at all.   If you were a Republican before your party was high jacked by Steve Bannon, this is the only way to get your party back.  Once the GOP escapes the unholy alliance between a narcissistic moron and a fringe movement with a repugnant agenda, then my many GOP friends can begin the important work of building a competitive center-right party for the 21st century.  And they again can be free, if they wish, to vote Republican for the rest of their lives.  But not now.  

To those who choose to ignore the ugly side of Trumpism on the expectation that your profits will increase and your taxes decrease, I can only ask that you rehearse in your own minds the defense you will offer when discussing the matter with St. Peter at the gates to heaven.