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.

Beating a Dead Horse...Again

On this blog I rode this pony into the ground so long ago it may seem to some that the poor beast needs to be interred.  I can’t. It can’t.

Donald Trump is a sick man, mentally. He has a Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). It is not particularly common, it is not particularly difficult to diagnose, and it explains nearly everything about this President of the United States.

Aside from egoistic behavior, it causes a distortion of reality (i.e. truth) and it creates disabling paranoia.  Further, it is almost impossible to treat since an individual with NPD will not submit to treatment because they cannot accept that the disorder exists. Psychologists usually end up treating the people who live with a NPD individual, for this disorder can be crushing for those forced to do so.

For our Country to have bumbled into placing a NPD individual into the White House it would be far less devastating if normal checks and balances were in place. Sadly, the Republican Party has chosen to closed ranks with the singular goal of supporting Trump. They have pushed their pendulum of support far askew from common sense in order to offset his bizarre behavior. 

They collectively believe this policy is necessary to avoid losing support from Trump’s “base”. What they’re really doing is contributing to an irrevocable schism of the American people that makes something as absurd as a “Trump base” possible. 

To someone with a NPD there is no objective truth. Trump has publically stated untruths literally thousands of times in his short term as President. He is likely the only person in the Nation who doesn’t know that fact. Yet he has not been called out on it by Republican lawmakers…at all. It is no wonder why Conservatives and Conservative media (Fox News e.g.) have embraced ambiguity as the new foundation of communication.

In the steam room at our gym I ran into a retired attorney I know casually. We were alone and got onto a friendly political conversation which found us with opposing judgments regarding Trump. I shared my opinion about Trump’s Narcissistic Personality Disorder as an explanation for his behavior.

I had not shared at that point the research I had done on NPDs going back years before Trump ran for President and why. His response to me was to totally discount what I suggested because I was not a “medical doctor”.  Presumably, had I been a pediatrician it would have made all the difference. The conversation went no further.

He did not inquire why I believe as I did, nor was he interested in the condition or how I came to be aware of it. His focus was simply to shoot the messenger. This is the Trump legacy.

During the Cohen hearing of the House Oversight Committee I was more overwhelmed by the Republican questioning than the testimony and evidence of Michael Cohen (which was overwhelming on its own). They uniformly attacked Cohen’s testimony by simply attacking his credibility, never once (during the hours I watched) did they question the substance of his testimony.

For example, they repeatedly pointed out that his lying to Congress regarding the Trump-Moscow project was (apparently) proof of Trump’s innocence, conveniently omitting that Trump knew Cohen had lied but never revealed that fact. Truth, moreover reality is no longer an element in the Republitrump Party. 

Political pragmatism, fake news, convenient emergencies, love affairs with dictators, big beautiful brains, the largest crowds, and all the best words are but a few examples of what bounces around in a NPD head. In your obnoxious uncle it only makes for an unpleasant Thanksgiving dinner. In a President it devastates social norms, impedes anything we can proudly call progress, and creates great international risk.

There are 250 Congressional Republicans (House & Senate). They are currently lemmings blindly following their deranged leader directly toward the edge of a precipice. They live in a world of fear and I’m pessimistic that they will change course.

Perhaps if the rest of us spoke up regarding the underlying cause for Trump’s unorthodox, anti-social, and often peculiar behavior, then the confused majority of Americans might recover, and I could finally bury this pony.

Ism It True

Upon overhearing in our gym locker room rather tame observations regarding an inept comment or tweet by Donald Trump, an unassuming member stormed off to the showers muttering angrily “I don’t want to live in a socialistic country”. The segue-way of his thinking matters.  How does he get from inane comments by our National leader to the fear of being disenfranchised from his national identity?

We are now already vividly experiencing the Republican campaign we never got to see in 2016. What started slowly at the end of last year is virtually an everyday warning expressed in comments, interviews, and (of course) Tweets. If Bernie Sanders had won the Democratic nomination this recent onslaught is exactly what we would have experienced.

I have not kept record, but it is my impression that not an audience in recent months has passed before Trump without hearing about the specter of Socialism.  Conservative radio and television talk show personalities have always defined anyone not a blue-blooded Conservative as a Socialist, but now like sharks smelling blood they are circling in a frenzy.  It is why a minor, freshman Congresswoman (Alexandra Ocasio-cortez) has become such a gigantic hunk of floating red meat.

With such an inept party leader in Trump, Republicans generally are jumping on this term to define a fear they feel their constituents can sink their teeth into. “Vote Republican” they might say, “you may get Trump but at least you won’t get Socialism”. They will ramp up this rhetoric hoping that enough Americans will view anything out of the mouth of a Democrat as a sirens’ song luring patriots to their demise. It might work.

Once again the Republicans define the language and thus the debate. Democrats just don’t get it. If they are unsuccessful in defining the terms used to show where they want this country to go, they end up spending their philosophical capital just defending themselves.  Trump just walks away from blatant and repulsive anti-social behavior (Access Hollywood e.g.) while Elizabeth Warren wallows in self-incrimination for extraordinarily minor assertions.

Conservatives generally and Republicans specifically have defined such terms as welfare, healthcare, taxation, freedom, faith, and patriot (to name a few) and assigns to each an interpretation to exploit.  The phrase “the base” now has a meaning of stalwart conservatism while everyone else is essentially wishy-washy. Democrats use this definition as freely as Republicans.

Our friend from the locker room actually thinks Socialism is a thing, like a light switch. He probably also believes Capitalism is the same switch which, thanks to God, has kept his world lit throughout his life. Switch off Capitalism and what do you get…you guessed it.

Those who want to profit from his fears obviously don’t want him to understand the truth; Socialism and Capitalism are inherently components of a whole, not the whole itself.  Red blood cells and white blood cells are quite different, but they are hardly independent of the fluid that keeps us alive.

Yet Conservatives have defined Socialism as bad and Capitalism good…black and white. Liberals who think they can simply push the pendulum the other way by displaying equal exclusivity are missing the boat. Bernie Sanders or Alexandra Ocasio-cortez labeling themselves as Socialists doesn’t help.

A model called Social-Capitalism (Google it) would probably work better as a definition of where most Americans land.  Democrats could embrace that; however Democrats need to get off defense and start calling the plays.

Liberals need to label Conservatives as anti-social and anti-capitalist, things that they are clearly not although they unwittingly contribute to those ends. If Republicans want to demonize Socialism, so let them demonize Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, disease control, disaster relief, universal healthcare, a clean & sustainable environment, education (K-12), air traffic control, roads & bridges, crime prevention, recycling, affordable housing, agricultural subsidies, and on and on. That understanding might mitigate Conservative fears.

Republicans successfully attack all these social efforts and more by undermining Capitalism and allowing for huge unproductive accumulations of Capital that are not churned back into the economy. Instead they rely on accumulated debt to keep the lights on.  Democrats have barely done better.

When Trumps states (as he recently did) “show me a country where Socialism has ever worked”, the answer to that is “show me an authoritarian country that has ever worked for its general population, regardless whether it is labeled Socialist or Capitalist”. There is no point in choosing an “ism”. They’re both in your garden, my locker room friend.  Either they both grow, or the weeds take over.

Getting Drunk on Kavanaugh Beer

In the infamous hearing of Brett Kavanaugh regarding his encounter with C.B Ford, the most important question asked of him was the very last one. Asked by (now) Presidential candidate Kamala Harris, she entertained no follow up.

Harris: “Judge Kavanaugh, did you watch the testimony of Dr. Ford earlier today?”

Kavanaugh: “No”.

Perhaps if that had been the first question Democrats directed at Kavanaugh the line of inquiry might have veered away from FBI investigations, and he said-she said-they said. It seems in today’s public analysis of morality there is a sink hole of attempting to reconstruct history and a black hole of awareness about what is happening before our very eyes.

Kavanaugh did not watch Ford’s testimony because he didn’t need to. He had a sense of his life as a youth and it didn’t include attempted rape.  For Kavanaugh he obviously felt his time was better spent preparing to attack his “accusers” and play himself as the victim.  Regardless of the absolutely convincing testimony by Ford, his strategy prevailed.

Should Dr. Ford’s account of what happened disqualified Kavanaugh from confirmation?  I don’t think so. What should have certainly disqualified Kavanaugh was his irrational, self-centered, injudiciously emotional, and politically bias testimony.  I think it’s safe to say we hired an egotistical nut-case to the Supreme Court. What he turns into over the next 40 years is anybody’s guess.

I believe that Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Ford were both telling the truth, as best they could recall it. The giveaway was Ford’s testimony that Kavanaugh left the scene laughing and bouncing off the walls.  In my opinion, the reality was that the event in question had as casual a meaning to the 17 year old Kavanaugh as it had a traumatic meaning to the 15 year old Ford. That certainly says something about who those individuals were at that time.

However, does that define who we are looking at standing before us? It certainly defines what we socially had considered less than criminal behavior in times past and perhaps shamefully so.

Today in Virginia, Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax’s possible rise to becoming Governor has uncovered behavior on his part that has put his current position, and career generally, in jeopardy.  Those who are, for either ethical or political reasons, calling for his immediate resignation or impeachment are feeding into a new narrative that, like Kavanaugh’s, is more divisive than healing.

Fairfax’s response to his behavior has been as poor as his accusers have been lacking in explanation, just as Kavanaugh’s had been. Fairfax has definitively claimed each encounter was purely consensual when that was clearly not the case. However, it’s entirely possible that from his perspective it was.

It may be that his actions were criminal. If so, there will be others coming forward who demonstrate encounters with him that contains the threats we associate with criminal assault. If that is the case, let him face his crimes.

I am troubled, however, with this new recounting of history that applies current ethics to the past without the understanding of where we came from.  The French in 1789 so hated their monarchical society that they sought to change its obvious abuses. Their moral conviction however did not justify the Reign of Terror that ensued or predict the reactionary result of that terror.

I thought Al Franken had the potential to being one of the great Senators of our time. He is brilliant, a humanist, and a consummate communicator.  His humor both simultaneously satirical and self-deprecating showed him to be less egotistical than your average politician. Yet a picture of him holding his hands above the breasts of a sleeping woman years earlier during his life as a comedian was enough to lead him to the political guillotine. This is not moving us forward.

We need to recognize the importance of how our liberal values evolve, not devolve into moral camps of opposition.