A Rolling Holocaust

This week I visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for the first time. That’s a humbling admission considering it was completed nearly 26 years ago. Although my visits to DC are rare, I remember in the early years I was thwarted by its popularity, which didn’t allow for walk-in visits. I’m glad I went, belated though it was, and for reasons I wasn’t expecting.

It is a daunting exhibit with much more to see (and especially read) than can be accomplished during the length of a normal museum visit. For someone with limited historical perspective I would think it would be shocking to absorb the enormity of the inhumanity that occurred during the 1940s. However, I consider myself reasonably versed in the history of that period and there was not much I encountered that I would consider new.

That is not to say that deeper emotions, regardless of intellect, wouldn’t surface. For example, the display of victim’s actual shoes given to the museum, thousands of shoes, was certainly a moment that took me to a place of profound discomfort and reflection.

Considering that most all of what I read and observed was already part of my knowledge base including the social cruelty and political brutality which ran as an undercurrent beneath the military events of the period, I was personally curious what my takeaway would be. Would I have an insight I didn’t have before I entered the museum?  I believe I did.

What I hadn’t appreciated before was the enormous complexity of it all. Most abbreviated histories that a majority of Americans are exposed to center around the rise of Hitler and a relatively small cadre of men that surrounded him and how they manipulated individuals, both learned and simple, to support them in their quest for power and military conquest.

They are the ones credited with spearheading the mostly crude but sometimes mechanical ethnic cleansing of millions of innocent, mostly Jews, as a means to an end (power), not as part of some depraved philosophical ethic.

Leaving the museum I gained an intuitive understanding that it wasn’t that simple.

Hitler and his close followers were like an autoimmune disease. They were created in an environment which made it possible for them to make ordinary people turn on accepted social values like a body’s immune system turning on itself. That environment was of fiscal deprivation, fear associated with uncertainty, and a clinging to exclusivity for moral support, all of which were prevalent in the 1930s.

Hitler may have set a tone and initiated policy, but the 1940s Holocaust was just as equally caused by millions of small decisions and actions made all over Europe, including the intentional failure of actions not taken around the world.

The real shocker for me was the obvious realization that the ingredients which made the Holocaust possible are just as real today and never more prevalent as they have been over the past 3 years.

Politics and social behavior in this America is no longer about policy. It’s not even about money, since the concept of national debt has become irrelevant. It has become tribal and socially segregating.

If you’ve watched a Trump “rally” (and you should) you can see that it is an endless attack on the personal characteristics of his perceive opponents, peppered with aggrandizing his mythical successes. He is unlocking inhibited behavior and satisfying his supporters need for inclusion and safety, no different than eugenics gave solace to wanton discrimination.

What is a nation that says “America first” and proceeds to define that America as a place that “valiantly stops invasions” of ethnic diversity. What is a nation that says “America first” then calls out any source of information that doesn’t actively support the President as “fake”. What is a nation that says “America first” and creates an entire party of leaders that defend corruption and bizarre conspiracies to maintain power.  To use endless fear as the engine for making “America first” is the same secret sauce that made the Holocaust possible.

In a way I wish colloquial use of the term “Holocaust” had not become a noun. Although it communicates inhumanity to a scale that in the modern world has no equal, I would have preferred that it was a verb. The abhorrent behavior of leaders made acceptable and adoptable over time is a rolling form of holocaust, so complex in nature that, undeterred, may rival history for its depravity and number of victims.

All things being equal, we may be only one financial catastrophe away from something even worse.   

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

Up before 6am on a Saturday morning, I turned on the kitchen TV during the waning period of infomercials that fill after midnight broadcast programming.

On the screen was a familiar face.  It was Mike Murdock (he refers to himself as “Dr” Mike Murdock although he dropped out in his second year at Southwestern Assemblies of God University – daunting academia for sure). He has been a long time televangelist and general purveyor in the God business.

He spent the majority of his air time that morning, as usual, preaching (but sounded more like demanding)  that his faithful listeners send him a measly $1000 “seed” donation, which will be returned to them a hundred fold (or more) in some financial or quasi-financial form. Not a bad deal…for Mike.

He shamelessly warns that if they keep the $1000 which they may have saved up for a vacation, medical care, or debt repayment...that’s all they’ll ever have. He points out that he doesn’t keep a debt balance on his credit card, but other people have told him they have paid their $1000 “seed” with credit card debt to ample reward. “I didn’t say that,” he discloses, “they did”.  

His tax supported flimflam is part of the substantial (and wretchedly ugly) tip of a colossal iceberg that is (to use an old but currently in vogue Latin phrase) a quid pro quo. Believe in me, have faith in me (send me your “seed”) and you will receive eternal life (no fear of death), and maybe even riches in this life.

The fact that the majority of funds sent to Murdock and an army of similar vendors goes to support their lavish lifestyles, unconstrained behavior, and fund their ego laden projects has never dissuaded the faithful. That is because the faithful simply don’t think of it as a quid pro quo, they only feel it.  

Now in our politically divided Nation this same dynamic is being played out, not just for the accumulation of wealth but also for the securing of power. Watching the progression of efforts to impeach and remove Donald Trump from office has become a contest of reality vs. belief, of reason vs. emotion.

The real trial is not being played out in Congress. The real hearing can be found with Fox News and Talk Radio on one side and the rest of the news media (CNN, MSNBC, BBC, PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC etc) on the other.

If you consider reason and reality in this drama you can become painfully bewildered as to why anyone would condone the behavior of Donald Trump. This episode with Ukraine is the only the one in which he got caught red handed. There are obviously numerous others, some even out in the open. Like the way he maneuvers public assets and influence to benefit himself financially or with his un-American (if not treasonous) relationship with Putin (a pariah in the global community). They will all come to light…someday.

Jonathan Turley (expert witness for the Republicans during the Judicial Committee hearing) only argued that the Democrats had not “proven” their case. He was never asked “if a Congressman believes what Trump is accused of beyond a reasonable doubt should he not vote for impeachment”? He would have had no choice but to answer “yes”. He would have undoubtedly followed with the question of what is reasonable doubt.

Republican Congressmen, the producers at Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and the rest know the truth, but to them it is meaningless in the infomercial of the politics they sell. It is all about the quid pro quo they're transacting with 30% of the American population. It’s “listen to me, vote for me, believe in me and I will keep you safe from those others who want to take away everything you hold dear…don’t think about it, just feel it”.

They know they can sell a “reasonable doubt” as any doubt at all, no matter how ridiculous. Broadly applied no one could be convicted of any crime in this country. However this "reasonable doubt" is narrowly targeted.

Rush Limbaugh was a college drop-out and a failed disc jockey without a buck to spare. Since then he has only been a hard right-wing radio talk show personality. Yet now his current net worth is estimated at about $600 million and his current annual income at $84 million. Mike Murdock…eat your heart out! You're in the minor leagues. 

Where Have You Gone, Walter Cronkite?

In 1987 President Reagan ordered his FCC chairman to cancel the Fairness Doctrine, a 38 year old doctrine that required news related mass media to broadcast both sides of any issue of controversy in order to be licensed. This was created in 1949 (and later validated by the Supreme Court) from a post-WWII understanding how truth and knowledge became manipulated and twisted in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. A Democratic Congress passed a law to make the Fairness Doctrine permanent, but Reagan vetoed it.

            Less than a year later in 1988, Rush Limbaugh, a college drop-out and failed radio deejay (now one of the richest men in the world), began his Conservative political radio program, as did others. They had free reign to say or present whatever they wanted, fact or fiction-no matter. It was all about getting listeners and selling advertising.

            Since then there has been a relentless 30 year attack and demonizing of Liberalism and Liberals (Mark Levin prefers to call them “statists”) and then turning around and placing anyone or any organization that questions post-Reagan Conservative policy as being entrenched in that demonic category. It has become the mythical "Deep State" that hangs like a dark cloud in minds of their listeners.

            “Liberals hate America, Liberals hate Christianity, Liberals hate their neighbors, Liberals want to take away all your money and give it to people who refuse to work, Liberals have no morals, and they have no values. Liberals will take away your guns (and cut off your index fingers), and Liberals kill babies. Liberals love Government, as close to Communism as it can get. Everything a Liberal says is a lie”.

            Picked up by Rupert Murdoch (the Emperor of Sensationalism) and Fox News, there is now possibly a 35% segment of our Nation that watches and listens to nothing but fear mongering tirades, then listens to Republican politicians (who secretly love Government) echo back the same rhetoric to keep their support. Now they have a President who personifies the opposite of knowledge and decency and they can see nothing wrong in it.

            What happened to the strong counter-balance the Republican Party and Conservatism brought to this Nation? Where is the call for fiscal responsibility? They mock dollars for social planning while running trillion dollar deficits. Where is the call for strength in foreign affairs? They yawn while foreign adversaries attack our institutions and we tragically abandon our allies. Where is the call for family values and decency? They cheer their leaders who traffic in foul language and personal denigration.

            Now it’s all about who you’re not. Rush Limbaugh makes nearly a hundred million dollars a year selling hate and fear and President Trump wants every one of his listeners to ignore the “fake” news that says otherwise. That fake news which just happens to be all the news there was before 1987. Where have you gone, Walter Cronkite? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

Hiding Underneath the Sheets

Fox News and Conservative Talk Radio have spent some focus on a recent filmed podcast which included an interview with Susan Rice. The segment they broadcast (Fox & Friends repeated it five times in secession) showed Susan Rice calling Lindsey Graham “A piece of S**T” (they beeped out the word). She was actually repeating back what the interviewer said, but clearly she embraced the analogy.

As a matter of literary merit, I like to avoid writing profanity (or what used to be considered profanity) in my blog. So let’s just call Lindsey Graham a “piece of sheet”.

Following Lindsey Graham over the past 3 years has become as convoluted as following Trump, and following Trump is like watching a Roomba vacuum cleaner at work. Only in Trump’s case the Roomba deposits grime on the floor instead of picking it up.

Lindsey Graham is a piece of sheet and as such has become the darling of Conservative media (which is pretty much just the Fox Network and Conservative Talk Radio). His media outlets are in contrast with all other media which both Graham and Trump categorically label as “fake”. The question is: has he always been a sheet and, if not, why has he become one now?

Given his stand on social issues, typically and stalwartly Conservative, he is an odd duck. His apparent and virtual lack of family and social life has long fueled speculation that he is a closeted gay, which either conflicts with or explains his outspoken “defense of marriage” position. At the very least he is a monk by Washington standards. However, his career path has complimented his Conservative credentials with a long record in the military JAG corps (SC National Guard), three terms in the House, and on this third term in the Senate.

He is comfortable being outspoken in Congress, enjoys (and seeks) media coverage of himself, and looks for occasions to be bombastic. Contrast his input in the last Kavanaugh hearing to everyone else, Democrat or Republican. Still, he was noted for following the lead of someone he claimed to befriend, John McCain. In doing so he held to his favorite positions on hawkish foreign affairs while still working compromises with those more liberal. He had enjoyed a reasonable reputation of integrity, even with those who adamantly disagreed with him.

Then came Donald.

When Trump entered the Republican camp as a truly possible contender to lead the Party there was no mistake in how Graham viewed that possibility. With Trump leading the Presidential race and Graham essentially out of the running, Graham stated on camera that Trump was “…a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot, he doesn’t represent my (Republican) party. I don’t think he has a clue about anything…he is empowering radical Islam. You know how to make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell. I’d rather lose (the Presidency) without Donald Trump than try to win with him.”

No ambiguity there.

Since Trump was inaugurated, however, Lindsey easily managed to climb Pennsylvania Avenue and prostrate himself at the feet of the Buddha. His defense of Trump has become shocking in it veracity, even as most of his Republican colleagues grit their teeth and numb their tongues with the daily Trump SNAFUs . Forest Gump’s famous line “stupid is as stupid does” appears to have no meaning for Graham who seems more than willing to back Trump up with bellicose enthusiasm regardless of underlying idiocy.

Please don’t get me wrong. Lindsey Graham is not alone. There is a cadre of Republican sheets on Capitol Hill who are more than willing to vocally support Trump with the clear goal of protecting their Party over the Nation’s interests. The proof is in their ever increasing suspension of reality. They are like the parents of a wayward criminal (adult) child, who they feel with each crime or assault just needs more love and support. The virtual absence of any critical assessment of this ignorant, out of control, narcissistic President is prima facie evidence.

But Lindsey is special. Given his 180 degree about face from reality to reality TV, he is neither a full size nor queen size. Rather he has become the king size sheet in trying to cover the corrupt and corroded body we know as the Trump Administration. Why? Frankly, I don’t know. Party? Ego? To echo Trump’s oft used rejoinder: “Who knows?” Maybe the better question is whether next year the people of South Carolina will care or not.

I think there is one thing we can feel comfortable in knowing. Lindsey Graham would rather be a sheet than emulate the likes of John McCain, who would not have served Party, himself, and Country…in that order.

Corruption In Plain Sight?

The equity markets, better known as the stock markets, have been touted by Trump and his minions as evidence of his impact on the American Economy. Just looking at what has happened tells a very different story.

If you follow the time after the G.W. Bush Administration, using the S&P 500 as the index, you’ll see that during the Obama years the equity markets increased just under 300%. During the first year of the Trump Administration, before Trump had attempted any influence on…well…just about anything (but especially the economy) the equity markets advanced another 26%. Then the big Republican brainstorm, the tax cut for large corporations and the wealthy, kicked in. What’s happened since then?

(Note: The following calculations are all my own; I did not pick them up from any site - left, right, or center. They’re in plain view for anyone with a grasp of arithmetic to see.)

If you had $100,000 invested in an indexed stock fund on January 26, 2018 and held it, it would be worth $99,233 today. That would be the result of Trump and his Republican Congress performing 20 months of their “economic magic”. It would likely be the case for an ordinary worker with a 401K who contributes to his account to accomplish long term goals, like retirement.

The fact is that whatever they had left in equity investments in 2009 was (after the devastation that took place during the Bush Administration) salvaged and recovered by an economy overseen by the Obama Administration (which really includes the first year of Trump’s Presidency). Since that time, beginning with 2018, the American equity markets (as shown above) have been essentially flat - no growth for the long term investor. However, the equity markets themselves over that period look like a patient going in and out of cardiac arrest.

Maybe somebody can, but I can’t find a year and a half period with the same degree of volatility. It’s hard to see how anyone benefits from this instability…or is it?

The dramatic swings in the equity markets have all been either directly or indirectly the result of pronouncements or actions made by Donald Trump. It would be ridiculous to suggest that Trump and his confidants are not aware of this. Given his ego, he surely revels in the impact a couple of his tweets can have on the American economy or even the world economy. His psychological abnormality is a clear and present danger to us all.

Yet, is Trump’s overfed ego the only winner in these displays of erratic behavior…quite possibly not.

Wealthy individuals with the cash, the investment tools, and (most importantly) some sense or knowledge about Trump’s queer pronouncements might see their investments during this last 20 month period look considerably different than the average American who hasn’t earned a penny (or even lost money) over the same period.

If an investor had $1,000,000 on that same January 26, 2018 in a indexed S&P 500 exchange traded fund, sold out and bought short positions at the top of the market (meaning they’re betting the fund would drop in value), then “sold” short at the bottom and bought back into the same fund, and did that over and over each time Trump snorted or passed wind, their investment would be worth $4,503,500 today.

That estimate is just on an indexed fund. Targeted investments in the even more volatile Dow or NASDAQ stocks could increase that return exponentially.

Normally investors don’t know the top and bottom of stock markets, and timing purchases and sales to correspond to the market’s highs and lows has been considered a gambler’s folly. However, when these investments react predictably to the uttering of an empowered fool, then it becomes reasonable to consider that knowing what this fool is going to utter next has real value.

 The reality is that the only thing predictable about Donald Trump is his unpredictability. He has literally said that and takes pride in that fact.  To think that savvy people (including Trump himself) see that the most advantageous route between two points is a crooked road is not hard to consider.  When it comes to money and sex, what is right out in plain sight is usually correct.

Let's Spell It Out...Again

I believe this is the fourth or fifth time I have written on this topic since 2016, at least so often I don’t even care to go back to find out.

Let’s just start out with a definition. This one is from Psychology Today, but if you research multiple sources you will find little variation:

Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD):  Hallmark characteristics are grandiosity, a lack of empathy for other people, and a need for admiration. People with this condition are frequently described as arrogant, self-centered, manipulative, and demanding. They may also have grandiose fantasies and may be convinced that they deserve special treatment. People with NPD often try to associate with other people they believe are unique or gifted in some way, which can enhance their own self-esteem. They tend to seek excessive admiration and attention and have difficulty tolerating criticism or defeat.

I find constant frustration that the medical community in the United States and the news media are so reluctant to publicly address that the President of the United States suffers from this malady. I am frustrated because this disorder of an individual in his position literally puts the entire World at risk.

To say that Donald Trump puts the World at risk would be ignored by many and discounted as hyperbole by many others. But what if it’s not hyperbole? Then it becomes a guessing game as to what level of risk we face, and that uncertainty deserves acknowledgement.

Narcissism is a human trait, everyone falls on the spectrum. Subjectivity is not an option in the human condition. However, NPD is something else, and it is not particularly common. It is a label for those who fall so high on that spectrum that it involuntarily governs their behavior, i.e. it becomes a disorder. In observing Donald Trump it explains just about everything.

His bazaar pronouncements (which his opponents categorize as lies, already in the tens of thousands), his delusions (think crowd or brain size), his total lack of empathy (especially notable when criticizing an individual’s personal or physical characteristics), his virtual inability to admit error, and his endless self-aggrandizing make diagnosing Trump as a sufferer of this disorder a no brainer.

Yet, this discussion cannot seem to rise above whispers.

I say sufferer, because the anxieties caused by this disorder are real and profound. The primary anxiety is fear, which can often manifest itself as anger and/or paranoia. I know this because my mother had a NPD, and in the later stages she found herself blaming both specific and mythical individuals for actions she could not accept as her own. Her pain was palpable. Not only is this disorder disabling, it is nearly impossible to treat since the sufferer will refuse to submit to treatment because to do so would be antithetical to their understanding of themselves.

A psychologist friend of mine pointed out that the only people they got to treat were those affected by a person who had the disorder. I would love to know how many of Trump’s family are currently under the care of a psychiatric physician. You can be assured that Donald Trump is not.

Moscow Mitch and the Republican Party generally are at least intuitively aware of Trump’s disorder and have manipulated him to their ends enough to justify ignoring his behavior. However, that does not explain why Democrats choose to embrace an explanation of Trump’s NPD as simply bad conduct. They too, I assume, are just politicizing away the risk in calculating their own self-interest.

This disorder of the President is not just a byline, to provide chuckles as he drives his golf cart over the greens. He is setting precedent by making his behavior appear as an aggressive choice, a choice other Americans can choose to emulate, as it’s obvious many do.

His systematic gutting of the Executive Branch of government by replacing disenchanted competency with incompetency, or just not filling jobs at all, has a ripple affect over the entire Nation. His obsession with Obama, as a foil for his own greatness, has made him arbitrarily dismantle good and popular public policy. He is fouling international relationships, both political and economic, so profoundly that it may take decades to repair, and his Constitutional ability to engage this Country in cataclysmic international confrontation should rob sleep across the planet.

His apparent need to enhance his self-esteem by gravitating toward authoritarian leaders may be a catalyst for negatively impacting international freedom.

Donald Trump is a clear and present danger, but that can only be seen if we understand and expose that he has no choice over his behavior. In my mother it made for times that were uncomfortable and often sad. In the President of the United States it impacts and can unravel the very fabric of this Nation.

It can’t be dealt with if everyone considers that tomorrow he may be different or that he will suddenly see the light.

Understanding that Trump has this disorder goes beyond discussions of his removal from office, which would be difficult. However, not removing him as President is no reason not to publicly identify the problem. I feel it is critically important for the people of the Nation to know (in Trump’s own words) “what the hell is going on”. Perhaps healing could start before January of 2021.

What I Want to Hear on Gun Violence

I don’t believe any of the Democratic candidates for President get it. Trump, who views virtually everything from a position of self-interest, couldn’t understand the issues related to gun violence in American under any circumstance. As far as I’m concerned even the progressive pundits can’t articulate an understanding, and the sooo “compassionate” Christian Conservatives don’t really give a damn.

If what happened at Sandy Hook wasn’t enough to bring this large, highly diverse nation together it should be no surprise that over two thousand mass shootings have occurred since that horrendous event. (https://www.vox.com/a/mass-shootings-america-sandy-hook-gun-violence)

Personally, I am tired of Trump Republicans and Conservatives as a whole sympathetically embracing the NRA’s view that gun violence has everything to do with the shooter and nothing to do with the weapon. However, I’m equally frustrated with Progressive Liberals who react to each mass killing with the call for political changes so “this will never happen again”.

Given that this issue will certainly come up in the next Democrat Debate, here is the two minute response I want to hear from at least one of the candidates:

America, the rhetoric being fed to you does not address the reality of gun violence in America nor does it provide even the semblance of a solution.

Our Country is unique in the world regarding guns. We have created a normalcy that certain individuals look to gun violence as a means to solve their anxieties, fears, and delusions. They may represent only the tip of an anti-social iceberg, built by the kind of hatred articulated by someone like Donald Trump, but in a nation of 330 million that puts hundreds or perhaps thousands on unstable paths to arbitrarily murder and maim.

Here’s the reality America: these mass shooting are going to happen again, and again, and again, and again, and again…and again. They are going to keep happening until the people of this Nation collectively begin to communicate to their children and grandchildren that solving their individual problems with a gun (which includes suicide) is unthinkable.

This is not done by endlessly displaying the misery caused by each killing. It is by the Nation rising up and embracing legislation which says to these children that we as a nation do not accept behavior that uses guns as a means to an end.  It is done by creating a moral imperative.

 In a democracy laws are nothing more than socially acceptable ethics. It’s what laws do…it’s what they’ve always done. We do it with automobiles, we should be able to do it with guns.

What can be done? Identity checks, size of magazines, elimination of assault weapons, strong regulation of handguns,  gun buybacks, increased regulation of non-military weapon manufacturers, defense of gun-free zones, gun registration and large financial penalties for violations, and large financial penalties for unregulated sales, to name a few…none of which would keep any ordinary citizen from owning a gun. 

With 300 million guns already loose in America, it isn’t the elimination of these weapons that will create change, it’s how our children view them.

If we started today then maybe in one or two generations we might start to see a turnaround in the rate of mass shootings and overall gun related deaths and injuries. The later we start then the greater the despair we inflict on those children and grandchildren we claim to love so much.

The Obama Syndrome

There is no need today for an untainted small boy to point out that the Emperor has no clothes.

For a majority of Americans, Donald Trump has strutted about bare-ass naked since before he was elected.  In fact, his irrational, crude, and narcissistic nakedness has become so pervasive that each additional time he flashes himself before important policies and people, foreign or domestic; there is no shock value left to be had.

We have become numb to this Administration’s deficiencies. Should Trump bungle us into a military conflict, apathy may very well be the first reaction…at least until body bags start being flown home or we see pictures of innocents stacked like cord wood.

Despite the Donald’s obvious display of exposed incompetence and degenerate behavior, the more perplexing question is not why his gross nudity doesn’t undermine his Presidency? Yes, the real conundrum is why so many people, the loyal 30 percent, still see him fully clothed, no matter how many small boys shout that he isn’t.

It has been a question I have been grappling with for two and a half years.

After a number of conversations with Trump supporters and Christian Conservative Republicans generally (albeit short conversations, as those individuals tend to abruptly turn and walk away), and after intensely pondering why they so adamantly support Trump in the face of his eviscerating truth (e.g. Jerry Falwell, Jr., who essentially lays prostate at Trump’s feet) I have finally arrived at a conclusion:

Other than the Jerry Falwells of the nation, most of these people in the famed “30% base” don’t like Trump…they just simply hate Obama. They suffer from a self-inflicted Obama Syndrome. The famed “lock her up” chant was always meant for Barack.

Trump knows this intuitively if not intellectually.  Never in my lifetime have I heard any US President before Trump (that would be 11) make anything other than rare and casual references to their predecessor. Trump evokes Obama’s name like it was a Buddhist mantra, blaming him for every screw up that Trump’s campaign and administration has initiated or overseen.  

Trump’s overwhelmingly transparent Presidential policy goal is to trash or dismantle anything that was accomplished during the Obama Administration.  He has no other coordinated agenda (c’mon folks, this is way too obvious).  It is why he can so easily hate and defame a deceased American champion, John McCain, who kept him from completely destroying “Obamacare” (the one law that colloquially bears Obama’s name).

Over that past 10 years I have heard on multiple occasions the same statement (more or less) from Conservative individuals who I believe to be generally very good people: “Obama is/was the worst President this Country has ever had.” The worst??  What do the not-so-good Conservatives think?

Obama took office with an Economy in crisis; the equity (stock) markets were in virtual free fall and massive unemployment prevailed. Under Obama the Economy stabilized, equity markets increased by about 260%, the unemployment rate dropped by nearly 7%. The worst President??

During Trump’s tenure the equity markets have increased by 35% (all of it in Trump’s first year before he enacted a single measure. Since his “panacea” tax cut took affect the equity markets have been volatile and flat – i.e. that 35% is more attributable to Obama than Trump).  Under Trump the unemployment rate has dropped a whopping 1% (which is about as far as it could drop, and would have no matter who was President).

I’m not going to go to efforts the Obama’s administration made to improve healthcare, eliminated Osama Bin Laden, reversed torture policy, saved the US auto industry, eliminate LGBT discrimination in the Military, advance foreign respect, and so many more.

I’m not even going into the fact of Obama’s intelligence, his family values, or his decency. He met individually with every parent who lost a child at Sandy Hook (20 sets of parents) without press. No one even knew it happened until much later.

The worst President? Martin Van Buren? Herbert Hoover? Warren Harding? Richard Nixon? George W. Bush? The worst President?? That is irrational.

Donald Trump’s beloved 30% see him fully clothed because they have been fed with fear and hatred of “liberals”, “socialists”, “welfare recipients”, “pacifists”,  “feminists”, and “sexual degenerates” (to name a few) since the second term of the Reagan Administration, with roots dating back 150 years.

They have been given this steady diet by Fox News, Talk Radio, their churches, and the Republican Party.  Obama, a black Liberal Democrat, represented everything wrong in their lives and everything they were told was wrong in their lives. To them Obama was the worst President ever the day he took office. Donald Trump and his hate of Obama was and is their drug of choice for that fear, even as they force themselves to ignore Trump's behavior.  

The Obama Syndrome was a critical component of why Hillary Clinton did not win the 2016 election in a landslide.  However, The Obama Syndrome is all the reason why an ignorant, con man continues to stand stark naked before packed coliseums…wearing only a grin.

Marriage on Four Legs

One of my favorite movies is the film Spanglish. It has always befuddled me why it was received lukewarm by the critics and bombed at the box office. I have a sense that people just didn’t like the way it ended. Here Adam Sandler (in his best performance ever) essentially chooses his crazy wife (Tia Lioni) over the gorgeous and wholesomely exotic Latino governess (Paz Vega)…what?

There is such a tendency for art to accent either the miserable or the sublime. When it fails to do that we often walk away with our expectations unfulfilled. Yet that isn’t how real life works. When it comes to marriage the real life question isn’t what makes it wonderful or miserable, the real question is what makes it last?

The reality is that all marriages (with I’m sure rare exceptions) are fundamentally a mixed bag.  We are all individuals by definition and admittedly complex. We struggle just to understand ourselves. To join two such creatures together magnifies that complexity exponentially.  It is an honest observation to wonder how the legal and emotional bonding of a relationship lasts in the modern era, where marriage no longer equates with survival.

Over the last century or so continuing a marriage has evolved into a choice. Perhaps we shouldn’t be asking why there are so many divorces (currently 1 out of 2 in the US), rather we should ask why aren’t there more? I believe there are perfectly good reasons why so many marriages navigate the whitewater rapids they are continuously subjected to, and it has little to do with bliss.

I see the relationship of marriage as a stool with four sturdy legs. On top of that stool a married couple gently places warm, tender, and enriching experiences, and also dumps endless piles of garbage…such as poor communication, defensiveness, selfishness...and a whole lot of stupid. Needless to say, the pile gets taller and heavier with every year that passes, making it increasingly difficult to support let alone sort through the good stuff and the trash. Yet for half the couples it holds together, stays upright…doesn’t tip over. How so?

I think the four legs holding it stable are: 1) shared family, 2) shared history, 3) shared physical intimacy, and 4) shared future expectations.  Lose one leg and the stool dangerously teeters. Lose two and it’s Humpty Dumpty time.

Family comprises the relationships that surround each individual. Children and grandchildren are the most obvious, but it can include parents, siblings, or others in an extended family. It could also included adopted “family” like special friends. The key is that each individual shares the other individual’s family as their own. They don’t have to like them, just consider themselves as part of the entire tribe.

Shared history is the unique memories created together as a couple. It also includes those experiences in which our memories fail us but we still know exist. Building a family can be a big part of marriage history even if we struggle to remember the specifics. That leg can sometimes be the strongest early in a marriage, but it is also a continuous process. To the extent our life experiences stop being shared, running indefinitely parallel, it’s like introducing termites to gnaw until that leg fails.

It is reasonably arguable that human beings are not naturally monogamous. It is a choice we make that the need we all have for physical intimacy be inextricably linked with a single union. It is also often a choice not kept. Every ordinary person needs the physical contact of other human beings. To the extent it is missing their lives are challenged. Even if sex is no longer possible, shared physical contact is essential and restricting that within a marriage keeps that leg strong. It is the nucleus of love.

Shared future expectations are tricky. It is more than simply planning out the next cruise or beach vacation. It is more than going over budgets and job choices. It is sharing hope, personal philosophies, and aspirations. Try to imagine living with someone who knows nothing and wants to know nothing about how you see your life in the future. Maybe you don’t have to imagine.

These four legs hold up a marriage that at any given time doesn’t even have to be a happy marriage. In fact, there is no such thing as a happy marriage.  However, there is such a thing as a lasting marriage in which (to name a few) joy, pain, love, sorrow, passion, fear, and hope each take their turn on top of the pile, and almost magically none seem to be the last straw to overturn the stool.

Maybe Adam Sandler’s choice to stay with his neurotic wife, his loopy mother-in-law, and his often despondent daughter isn’t the one audiences wanted to see. However, perhaps it was the choice that better reflects the real world…a reality even better than the world presented on reality TV.

Pete Buttigieg, The Actual Front Runner

At the 2016 Democratic Convention, with Hillary Clinton’s introduction as the Party’s new nominee, there was a creative video production of historical time passing, culminating in the breaking of a glass ceiling. What happened over the following four months has been and will be a subject of controversy, university classes, and endless publications stretching past the lifetimes of all Clinton’s contemporaries.

There was another glass ceiling just above the one that broke. Donald Trump, a buffoon of historical proportions, should have lost in a landslide. Was it the wrong time for a woman to win the US Presidency or was she simply the wrong woman? In the vernacular of stable genius Donald Trump, maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t…who knows?

Even though this Country (and the World for that matter) is long overdue for a woman to lead the “Free World”, an early review of the six female candidates for the Democratic nomination can’t keep me from speculating that five of them have not risen to a level necessary for a woman to break that ceiling of National leadership.

The possible exception is Elizabeth Warren who has demonstrated decades of clarity regarding social issues. However, in her zeal to point out and counter the excesses of money based minority power structures she has allowed herself to be marginalized as an extreme left wing kook. Of the six women, Warren would make the best President, but even with a devoted following, her intellectual arguments would make her (after Kristen Gillibrand) the most likely to lose the election.

Many view Kamala Harris as the go-to female candidate. I’d like to, but I can’t. Her rising star has been the result of demonstrating her prosecutorial talents, which have been impressive. In that arena she demonstrates the necessary strength that Clinton lacked. Yet when it comes to policy she lacks the confidence and conviction that we see in Warren. Instead, she grabs a hold of various positions and sound bites taken by others, notably Bernie Sanders, like she’s forever reading a teleprompter with copy that someone else wrote.

So what are we left with…just another white dude? Joe Biden is just another white dude, the epitome of white dude. Worse than that, he’s an old white dude. The same could be assigned to Bernie. Both good and, I believe, honest men who carry plenty of baggage. The stampede of remaining white dudes, save one, will never make it to the corral.

Cory Booker isn’t white, but despite his polished delivery he is almost invisible beneath the shadow of Barack Obama. At this point there is only one Democratic candidate who can transcend the stereotype that is so repulsively represented by Trump and the bulk of the Republican Congressional caucus and help make the possibility of a female President in 2028 a reality.

At this point, when you strip away the negatives from all the candidates, the true front runner for the Democratic Presidential nomination is Pete Buttigieg.  That accepts the reality that he has not been publically vetted, as have others, with disclosures from honest and dishonest sources in which he must weather.

Mayor Pete is virtually the antithesis of Donald Trump. That cannot be emphasized enough. I could run through the adjectives that describe his personal accomplishments, decency, and intelligence, but for brevity sake let me just say that he would be the ultimate antacid for the stomach churning policies, personality, and behavior of our President.

I had to grapple with the one factor that made me initially question his electability, his homosexuality.  The more I considered it, the more I began to view it not as a liability, but as an asset to his candidacy.

The fact that Buttigieg is gay allows him to bring to the office the same social issue that Obama did, and would be brought by a female President; that being the necessary evolution of anti-discrimination in America.

Prejudice is an entirely human aspect of social behavior. All of us gravitate toward those who are like ourselves, physically, mentally, or both. The true evil occurs when we apply that prejudice to discriminate against certain human beings and treat that discrimination as being ethically correct or acceptable. In the Black experience this existed from the origins of slavery, for women it began centuries earlier, and it is all the LBGT community has ever known.

We know that discrimination still extensively exists in America; the election of Donald Trump is in no small measure a testimony to that fact. There will still be plenty of good people who would vote against Buttigieg simply because he is gay. However, in the past 50 years we have turned a monumental corner. No longer can Americans exercise discrimination and not know it is wrong. That Rubicon has been crossed and we’re not going back. It is the reason why the rants of white supremacists ring so absurdly hollow, or why so many wince with bowed heads as they try to defend Trump’s Presidency.

Pete Buttigieg already leads this Democratic contest even if a majority of Americans don’t know him yet, let alone pronounce his name.  His potential to be not only an inclusive leader for the United States, but also to be the international leader the Free World is desperate for since Trump entered the stage. It is simply an added bonus that his sexuality will turn more people away from discrimination than the bigotry Donald Trump and Republicans could ever convince people to embrace.

Donald Trump not only needs to lose the 2020 Presidential election, he needs to lose in the landslide that never happened in 2016. This would be the healing the US and the World needs after Trump, and, at this point, I feel Pete Buttigieg is the only one who can make it happen.

Too Much Shame to Absorb?

In February 2016, eight months before the Presidential election of Donald Trump, Ezra Klein, co-founder, editor-at-large, and columnist for Vox wrote this article entitled The Rise of Donald Trump is a Terrifying Moment in American Politics. In it he states:

Trump is the most dangerous major candidate for president in memory. He pairs terrible ideas with an alarming temperament; he’s a racist, a sexist, and a demagogue, but he’s also a narcissist, a bully, and a dilettante. He lies so constantly and so fluently that it’s hard to know if he even realizes he’s lying. He delights in schoolyard taunts and luxuriates in backlash.

It was almost as if Klein was peering into a crystal ball. More importantly he reflected on something even more insightful. He wrote:

Trump’s other gift – the one that gets less attention but is perhaps more important – is his complete lack of shame. It’s easy to underestimate how important shame is in American politics. But shame is our most powerful restraint on politicians who would find success through demagoguery. Most people feel shame when they’re exposed as liars, when they’re seen as uninformed, when their behavior is thought cruel, when respected figures in their party condemn their actions, when experts dismiss their proposals, when they are mocked booed and protested.

Trump doesn’t. He has the reality television star’s ability to operate entirely without shame, and that permits him to operate entirely without restraint.  It is the single scariest facet of his personality. It is the one that allows him to go where others won’t, to say what others can’t, to do what others wouldn’t.

Now that we’re more than two years into this American version of Brexit, known otherwise as the Trump Presidency, we are experiencing distinct changes that are impacting the very conscience of the Nation. The crass ethics and behavior of Donald Trump that are embraced or ignored by perhaps 70 million Americans have been so pervasive as to affect Americans well beyond this so-called “base”.

De-humanizing other human beings because of their nationality, ethnicity, or race, separating young children from their mothers as an act of policy, elevating hate to be used as functional morality, arbitrarily denying justice, fighting to deny health care, giving national assets to cronies, cuddling with foreign antagonists, exploding wealth inequality, and simply eroding truth (to name a few) have numbed us. Not just those who support Trump or have via Fox News allowed themselves to be manipulated by ludicrous fears, but also by the rest of us.

Sometimes it takes years or even decades for shame to be understood and felt. It can be complicated; think slavery, Native Americans, colonization, Jim Crow, Vietnam, Iraq. However, now it seems too many of us can avoid shame with aplomb, just like our leader. Accepting atrocious policy is becoming just another day-in-the-life. The easiest example to describe this can be summed up in two words: Puerto Rico.

The visual of Donald Trump in Puerto Rico standing in a crowded room and throwing rolls of paper towels out to the audience is a virtual metaphor on how our nation has lowered the bar for shame avoidance.

What is wrong with us?

Hurricane Maria in September 2017 was devastating to the 3.4 million American citizens on that island, a greater population than 24 states.  Months after the storm Donald Trump stated what the Americans on Puerto Rico experienced wasn’t a “real catastrophe”. Further, his tweets consistently inferred that Puerto Ricans weren’t real Americans, by his constant references to “them” and “us”. His administration treated these Americans in a like fashion.

Little urgency was applied to the devastation. His administration either blocked or attempted to block bipartisan Congressional action to help, action that had already been watered down by Republicans. To date only about 15% of the funds allocated to assist these individuals has been spent.

Where is our outrage?

95% of the population had no electricity, half the population had no running water, and a majority of residential housing was either completely or significantly destroyed. After a month a full 88% still had no power and clean water was still sparse. It would take a year to bring electricity to over 90% of the island. It is still out in isolated areas. Think about that the next time you have a 12 hour blackout.

The official US death totals were conveniently understated at 64, when Trump was throwing paper towels, and ended up at 2975.  A Harvard study put the total over 4600.  The obvious conclusion is that most of the deaths were the result of inaction in the months following the immediate ending of the storm.  When Carmen Yulin Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, pleaded for help weeks after the storm saying “we are dying” she was telling the truth. Instead she was maligned by Trump and Fox News.

Where is our shame?

The treatment of the Americans who survived Hurricane Marie in Puerto Rico only to be subjected to the indifference of our Government should be an outrage that demands attention by every one of our representatives. However, we are in a different age, an age where it is morally acceptable to be callous, self-centered, unconcerned, and cold.  They say the fish rots from the head. Never has that been truer. 

Even as Americans in Puerto Rico still live under tarps by the thousands and 14% of their population (nearly 500,000) have been forced to leave, we can listen to Donald Trump and his foul, profane language and say ”well…that’s just Trump” unaware that his shamelessness is infecting us all.

You Only Die Once

Three months before the 1988 Presidential election, the Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis was leading incumbent George H.W. Bush by 17 points. Then with a blistering campaign accusing Dukakis as being “soft on crime” Bush began to gain ground. In politics, instilling fear is the number one ground game for those candidates who have little else to run on.

However, in an early October 1988 debate, it was Michael Dukakis who drove the last and fatal spike into his presidential ambition.  

Throughout his political career Dukakis had been an opponent of capital punishment. In 1984 his administration as governor struck down capital punishment in Massachusetts. His action was used as validation for the accusation his being sympathetic with criminals and unsympathetic with victims.

Sympathy and retribution for victims of crime is at the top of our politician’s playbook when it comes to the issue of crime. Dukakis, a consummate technocrat, somehow missed that fact in politics 101.

In the debate he was ask the first question of the debate: “If (your wife) Kitty was raped and murdered would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for her killer”. He calmly answered “No I wouldn’t…” then went on to outline his position on capital punishment. The debate might as well have been ended after the first two minutes. Dukakis’ poll numbers plummeted straight through to the election.

This month California governor Gavin Newsom ordered a moratorium on capital punishment, the best a Governor can do to stop the practice without legislation.  This action made National news and opened again a topic that, along with other issues regarding incarceration, had gone dark under the shadow of Donald Trump. It saw the light of day for at least a week.

Newsom received mixed reviews on this action even in a progressive state like California. It is a shame, because capital punishment is the tip of a troubled segment of our Nation’s Judiciary, namely criminal justice and the application of incarceration. Its origins have pitiful historic roots and are steeped in politics.

Governor Jay Inslee of Washington State (currently a candidate for President) took on the issue in 2014 beginning with a moratorium. However, he along with his Attorney General spearheaded an effort to pass legislation and successfully defend the abolition of Capital Punishment to the State Supreme Court. If he makes it to the Democratic nomination (which I’d like to see), I hope he learns from Dukakis.

Michael Dukakis’ answer back in 1988 should have been something like; “…if I was certain of the killer, given the chance I would possibly strangle him with my bare hands, but if I were that person, I in no way could rationally answer a question regarding Capital Punishment for the Nation”.

Had he given such an answer he would be expressing the reality that victims are the last people to act as advisors on a topic which envelops their emotions. Punishment is not dealt out by the victims in criminal court. The existence of criminal justice is to objective ethics as determined (in a democracy) by the people.

What do we know?

We know that the criminal justice system is flawed. Almost by definition it cannot be perfect. We know it has been manipulated for political ends. Such was flagrant during the Nixon Administration, but we saw it Clinton Administration as well, and at different times under every modern presidency. Manufacturing crime by targeted legislation and executive order has result in rates of incarceration in the US, notably of African-Americans and other minorities, that is nearly as appalling a stain on the US as 19^th century slavery.

Capital Punishment crystallizes this entire blot on our history. The emotional arguments about life and death pervade both sides of the issue. Religious participants contradict themselves constantly.  Capital punishment as a deterrent has never come close to supporting a position one way or another. Cruel and unusual considerations are a joke. The more antiseptic we make the process of killing a human being, the crueler it becomes. Want to do it quick and painless…shoot them in the back of the head.

No, the only compelling argument is that the system is flawed. The evidence is ample and convincing that innocent individuals have been executed, likely many. There is no crime ever done by anyone greater than “the People” of this Nation putting to death an innocent human being. Why?

The insanity and ethical depravity of crime that exists on the fringes of human behavior will always be a struggle to combat. Performing a collective crime to satisfy a bloodlust and call it justice needs no struggle to end. And you cannot selectively end it. To be absolutely sure such collective crime doesn’t occur and is free from bias we need to end it completely.

That is not to say that the incarceration of innocent people isn’t a crime as well. It surely is. However, our criminal justice system has the potential for correction, but not after death. You only die once.

I would hope that Jay Inslee includes his laudable work on our criminal justice system in his campaign. It’s risky political business in a nation where polling says the desire for executions is high. However there is so much more regarding our criminal justice system that needs to be done. I am certainly glad to see someone with a track record that might get us there.