Bill Clinton

In light of recent news about prominent men being accused of sexual assault and abuse, I think back to the Bill Clinton days. Then, as now, Republicans were dishonest and hypocritical. Now, they criticize any man on the left outed as being an abuser and remain silent on the same behavior from the right. When forced to comment on one of their own, they typically choose to withhold judgement until all the facts are in, secure in knowing that there could never be enough facts presented to force them give an honest assessment.

Back then, it was the same. I remember the day I heard the name Monica Lewinski,White House intern, and what Bill was accused of. Even though I was a committed Democrat and a Clinton admirer, my first thought was that he should resign the presidency. And I believe many others who voted for him thought the same.

But over succeeding months, that changed as Republicans used a special prosecutor and an investigation into a real estate deal in Arkansas to move toward impeaching him for lying about his encounters with Ms. Lewinski. If they had been honest, and made the case that his actions with her, and the other women that came forward, disqualified him to lead the nation, I, and a lot of other Democrats would have agreed with them and he might have been forced to leave office. But they weren't honest of course, and they tried to convince the country that they were moral champions of decency and to impeach him for lying about his affair was the righteous thing to do. Only Republicans bought that charade and he remained in office for a full second term.

Whether his behavior with Ms. Lewinski or any of the other women could be classified as assault or abuse I don't know, since there wasn't much of an honest investigation by legal authorities or legitimate media into the incidents. But from what I know, Trump's activities with women were a lot more heinous than Bill's. Republicans did then what they're doing now: covering up their own misdeeds and trying to criminalize the same actions by their opponents. I'm not sure if not having the capacity to recognize your own hypocrisy is a prerequisite of becoming a Republican, or if that ability is lost over time, but it is a constant with them.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.

Tipping Point

I believe in the concept of tipping points: those points on a continuum of change where conditions cease to change gradually and suddenly change dramatically and irrevocably. Like will happen in the not-so-distant future to the climate of the earth when all the ice has melted and the plants and the oceans have ameliorated warming to the maximum extent they can, and the earth's ecosystem gives up and warming ceases to be gradual and the temperature skyrockets and most animal life, including humanity, is baked, drowned, starved, and suffocated into extinction. At least once the tipping point is reached, it will be over quickly. Quick, unfortunately, being relative on this scale. The end will seem agonizingly slow to those unfortunate enough to be alive and forced to suffer the consequences of the incredible stupidity of conservatives.

I've lived among conservatives all my life. They've been my relatives and my friends, both high school and college-educated, white and blue collar. My friendship with them has been the kind borne of participating in shared activities: being on a softball team; part of a regular golf foursome; going on rafting trips. During these times it was relatively easy to deflect their unconscious, unthinking conservatism. I would often say things in response to them like: No, I don't think school was harder when we were kids; or, I don't believe in giving money to lazy people, either, but I do believe in helping people that need it; or, Government isn't a business and can't be run like one; and the old standard, Just because it's cool here doesn't mean it's that way everywhere in the world.

Through the years I watched my conservative friends and relatives grow more extreme in their views to the point they were obviously voting against not only their own self-interest, but against the best interests of their own children. I couldn't comprehend their votes for Bush Junior, but at least he was on the continuum of people who were at least conceivable as president, albeit way over on the extreme end of incompetency. And I could never understand why anyone would want an incompetent president, even one you could enjoy having a beer with.

It was during the Obama years that they began to be intolerable. They somewhat tempered their comments when I was around, but, inevitably, after a few beers, the racist comments and the smart phone apps that transformed Michelle into a monkey came out. It was during this time that I stopped going on golf trips with them, and to the fourth of July party that had been a tradition among us for more than twenty years.

But it was their support and votes for Trump that was the tipping point for me.  Voting for someone for president who was not even on the continuum of eligibility for the office was such an insult to this country that it was unforgivable. To vote for a man who was the opposite of everything that was necessary for a president to be revealed them as not valuing anything that decent people must value.

It's indescribably sad to realize that 63 million Americans voted for Trump. Even sadder to realize that all of them are lost to the fight to make America a more just, equitable, progressive, healthier, sustainable society. It's tempting to believe that some of them can be made to see how wrong they were, but it's wasted effort. Some actions can't be taken back, and some decisions can't be forgiven. Sixty-three million Americans willingly left this country and crossed the border into a land of darkness and ignorance. They will never come back from there, and we can't bring them back.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.

A Liberal's Wishes for James Comey

James Comey. What is there to say about the man that hasn’t already been said. I hated him with a white-hot passion after his attention-seeking, self-promoting criticism of Hillary helped Trump become president. I don’t claim that he alone is responsible for her loss, but like in civil trials when percentages of fault are assigned to various parties, he bears, beyond a reasonable doubt, some percentage of the responsibility for Trump. And while there is no way to quantify that number, even if it is small, a small percentage of a tragedy the magnitude of the Trump presidency means Comey is responsible for causing enormous, perhaps fatal, damage to the country that could have led the world out of the journey to destruction that it has now been set upon.

Comey should have been fired for what he did to Hillary and to all of us. But to hear Trump use it, initially at least, as justification for firing him when he appeared to be getting serious about exposing Trump’s indebtedness  to Russia, was doubly galling.

My wish is that Comey loves his country and his family and realizes the enormity of the harm he has caused, and at three in the morning he awakens feeling more than “mildly nauseous” at what he has done, but rather with the same moaning, sweating, despair that so many of us feel at the realization that the hope that our children might have the same quality of life that we had has been swept away.

I remember late on election night saying goodbye to my son who had recently graduated college and who was heading off to the city to his start his adult life, and the panicked look on his face as he said, “She’s going to win isn’t she?” When he was a child, I would have reassured him that everything was going to be all right.  But that night, there was no comfort I could offer. I wish that Comey is haunted by the faces of the billions of children whose lives he has helped destroy. I wish that he has a soul and that it is in torment. It’s not cruelty in my opinion, just justice.

In 2016 the world teetered on a razor-edged tipping point. In one direction was a long uphill slog toward slowing the rate of manmade global warming, reducing income inequality, promoting social justice, and preventing corporations from making debt slaves of our children. In the other direction was a downhill slide into the abyss of moral, social, and, ultimately, physical destruction. Pushing us in this direction were Republicans, and their corporate and media allies with their virtually unlimited wealth. Trying their best to overcome the strength of these powerful forces were people of good will, but limited resources.

Even with such a disadvantage, the battle was, for a time, a stalemate, and it looked as if the forces of greed, ignorance, and bigotry might be overcome, but at the most crucial point, Comey added his weight to the side of the deplorables and the battle was lost. Was he the deciding factor? Impossible to say. But what decent human being would have chosen that side?

Now we hear self-recrimination from the left that the Trumpsters should have been listened to, that their concerns should have been acknowledged, and that they must be brought over to our side before the next election. As someone who lives in Trump country, I’m here to tell you it’s not happening. Not unless we do like Trump and Fox News do, and lie to them continuously, telling them that all their problems are brought on by liberals, minorities, and immigrants; global warming is a hoax; tax cuts for the rich benefit the poor; and when elected we will immediately make all their problems disappear. Of course we can’t do that, and that is the only way to win them over.  

I’m not sure that people living outside Trump country really understand the extent to which the Trumpsters have become citizens of the alternate country of the right, a country that abides by a different set of moral values than we do. Like the Civil War confederates they adore so much, they regard a Federal government controlled by anyone but themselves as illegitimate and to overthrow it by any means as the patriotic thing to do.

Just as the confederates tried to enlist England and France as allies, today’s Trumpsters view accepting Russian assistance to defeat Democrats as a perfectly acceptable strategy. Liberals, minorities, immigrants, these are the real threats to America, and any individual or country willing to fight them is a friend.  The majority of Trumpsters would vote for Putin over a Democrat.  Just as has occurred in many elections around the world, they would vote for someone who would end all elections and replace democracy with dictatorship if convinced the candidate was one of them.

Trumpsters are lost to reason, to rationality. Like cult members, they will willingly sacrifice themselves and their children if told to do so by the cult leader. So the next election will be as close as the last one. We will have to marshal all our forces to defeat them and fight Republican efforts at voter suppression. And still it may not be enough. Again, the winner will be decided by a margin as thin as a razor’s edge.  All we can do is be prepared, tell the truth, expose Republican lies, encourage minorities and young people turn out, and hope no turncoats like Comey defect to the other side.

Trumpsters

I’ve been putting off writing this entry because it makes me sick to think of Donald Trump as President of the United States.  The image of him sitting in the oval office conducting America’s business is more suited to a miserable, fever-induced dream than reality. Then to wake up and have to face that it isn’t a dream after all and the day ahead will be another day of living during the Trump administration is living in a nightmare that refuses to go away with waking.  Another day of knowing that they actually did it.  They voted for Donald Trump for President. 

I was hoping they wouldn’t do it.  I was afraid they would, even halfway expected they would, but deep inside, I held out some small hope they wouldn’t. I should have known better.  You see, I know them: the Trumpsters.  I’ve socialized with them, worked with them, I’m related to many of them. So, knowing them as well as I do, I’m not surprised that sixty-three million of them would vote to destroy the country they so loudly and constantly profess to love by voting for a man so unqualified and so unworthy, so venal and loathsome, so corrupt, ignorant and immoral, that he will sell this country to the highest bidder, pocket the proceeds, and watch his supporters sicken and die without one pang of guilt.

Why would they do that?  Why would so many people who rely on government spending and government programs for jobs, healthcare, childcare and education, vote against their own self-interest, but what’s even worse, vote against what’s best for their own children, to elect a self-centered, self-serving representative of whomever will pay him the most? That is the big question, isn’t it, and I don’t pretend to have the answer. To try to provide some context, if not to actually understand it, I look at the behavior of cult members. 

A cult is governed by a leader who allows no dissenting opinion.  A leader who creates the reality in which the members live.  He (it’s always a he) identifies the powerful and evil external forces that threaten the lives and the souls of the cult members, and he offers the only path to salvation, which always involves complete and unquestioning allegiance to him.

Those of us born without the cult gene can’t understand how cult members would willingly hand over their identities, their freedoms, their fortunes, their lives, even their children, in order to be accepted as members in good standing.  But it’s vital for the rest of us to understand the reality of the phenomenon. Trump didn’t create his cult members; they’ve always been here, waiting in limbo for a cult leader to come along and claim them. They waited until Trump came along to tell them what they wanted to hear: that nothing wrong in their lives is their fault, that everything that is wrong is the fault of immigrants, and minorities, and gays, and liberals.  And he told them that if they trusted him, if they were loyal to him, he would fix it all, never mind the details of how.  And that was what they had been waiting for. 

It’s vital to understand the relationship between Trump and his supporters, for once it’s understood, we can stop the useless exercises of analyzing the election loss and figuring out how to win them back next time.  The only way to win them is to offer them a leader more Trump-like than Trump. That is, more right wing, more simplistic, more dishonest, even more willing than Trump to tell them what they want to hear, knowing that it’s all a lie.  

But we can’t do that, can we, because we’re decent people.  So we have to accept that Trump supporters are lost to us.  There will be another Trump eager to take his place once his indulgent lifestyle claims him. So we have to go on without them. We have to go on trying to save our country and the planet in the face of their active opposition. Not an easy task, probably an impossible one, but what else is there but to try, and to mourn what has been lost.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.