One Day on the Front Page of The Washington Post…..

I have spent much of the last four years marveling at the incessant torrent of news–way too much of it bad–that I wake up to every day. Maybe it was always like that and I didn’t notice. Or maybe the increased number of mass communication channels has made this news all too accessible to each of us. I have always prided myself on staying on top of the news–all kinds of it, from sports to political to international to cultural to…… and I still do pride myself on it and stay on top of it.

Increasingly, I find in the news a window into who we are as an American people, and that window is showing me something that is so very unattractive. Not only have the Trump Administration, the US Senate, over half of the US Supreme Court, and assorted other Republican “leaders” at the state level degraded what was the de facto leading nation of the world into what everyone too easily refers to as a “banana republic” but 74 million of my fellow citizens think that’s just fine–for one reason or another. None of those reasons are good enough to justify their respective voting decisions. Frankly, at the root of almost all of our problems is money and the desire to possess as much of it as possible, even after the amounts possessed are beyond anything required to lead a good life. The values we hold as a people have become debased beyond recognition–I, for one, can hardly make sense of how we have gotten to this place, at scale.

As an experiment, I looked at the front page of the A section of The Washington Post on Sunday, December 27, 2020, just to see what view of the world I would get that morning. Here is what I found:

During the pandemic, an investment firm, Portopiccolo Grop, bought 20 nursing homes during the pandemic, which disrupted operations at the facilities at the worst imaginable times and weakened the care available to vulnerable residents. Regulators basically paid no attention to these purchases despite Portopiccolo’s poor safety record at dozens of other nursing homes. What is the problem I see? How about the notion of leaving health care of anyone, let alone the elderly and frail, to people whose sole interest is in making money–how do we think that will turn out? Well, there’s the fact that they encouraged workers who tested positive for COVID to keep working, for a starter. If we are not going to adopt a health care system that provides service to all for free, then the least we can do is attempt to regulate the system in a way that protects our citizens rather than the monied interests who would profit off of human health or the lack thereof. In this arena as in others that impact the financial and other forms of well-being of our citizens, we need to call out for punishment or at least vilification, by name, those who act against the public interest. They are, sadly, not hard to find if someone bothers to look.

A black cadet at the Virginia Military Institute was subjected to a lynching threat and drummed out of the school for refusing to chant the names of VMI students who died fighting for the Southern government that enslaved black people. This story goes back to 2018 but we know it could just as easily have happened today. One doesn’t have to believe that every bad incident affecting a black person in this country is driven by racism of the perpetrator to recognize in this story the fact that the deck almost everywhere in this country is heavily stacked against blacks, that whites can come up with all kinds of justifications for said stacking and actions that result from it, and that, at bottom, until whites are prepared to confront the truth of their privilege, there is going to be minimal forward progress on creating a more just society. Part of the challenge is that so many Americans really don’t want a just society, or are certainly not willing to sacrifice anything for one.

Then Trump undercut his Treasury Secretary Mnuchin who attempted to negotiate with Congress a package that would have served, however inadequately, to address some of the fallout from the pandemic. Mnuchin, who is far from a great guy, need not receive any sympathy from anyone–I couldn’t care less if he felt bad about being abandoned like he was. What we can feel bad about is that the narcissistic, purely evil Trump was willing to sabotage the limited effort to prevent the government from shutting down and provide a bit of salve monetarily to so many of our fellow citizens in the name of…what? Revenge on who, the people who elected him, as well as those who voted against him to make sure he couldn’t continue to perpetrate treasonous actions against the US? The exercise of power for its own sake? Who knows? It doesn’t matter–no one will convince me that Trump isn’t, either under direct direction or just because he thinks it will win him favor somewhere down the road, doing everything he can to serve the interests of Russia.

And what about migrants being held in detention in this country being faced with the choice of potentially dying from Covid in captivity here, or returning via deportation to the countries from which they escaped to probably face the terrors they ran from? This is what the “shining light” of the US has come to–zero tolerance towards people looking for refuge here, as they should be able to, leaving them with zero good options for a passable life, let alone a free one where they might contribute to our economy among other things. Enough bad things cannot be said about or done to those in the Trump administration who foisted our miserable policies on the world and, at the very least, reduced the stature of this nation immeasurably in the eyes of a previously largely admiring world. Come January 20, if I were the AG of the US, I would be looking for any possible path to prosecuting the hell out of Steven Miller, as a starting point to rectifying wrongs.

Finally, on the front page, there is the story of Rhode Island having to set up field hospitals to service the Covid patients who could no longer fit in actual hospitals. The mere fact that it has come to this is such an indictment of the Trump administration, its Republican enablers, and, quite frankly, our people that this period of time should live in infamy as much as Pearl Harbor does except that we needed no kamikaze pilots to do this to us. We did this to ourselves–by voting for the wrong people, by not voting, by not having a modicum of civic responsibility, by not recognizing the responsibilities that go with rights as free people. We somehow continue to do this to ourselves, even as new hospitalization and infection records are set every day all over the place. It still seems more important to go to New Years Eve parties and get blasted so we can forget 2020…but continue our same behaviors in 2021.

These were the stories of one front page. Sadly, I could have probably picked almost any day’s front page from recent years and had the same count of negative, very negative, news stories. From this one page, there is so much we could learn and then begin taking actions that would prevent these same or similar stories appearing on a front page ten years from now. But do we care, as a nation? Are we willing to face the bad political, moral, legal, and other kinds of decisions we have made, or let others make in our name? As I confront a New Year’s Eve right on my doorstep, I do not see a lot of reason for optimism yet along with so many others, I hold to the possibility that the Biden election was at least one important step in the right direction. Can that step be the beginning of running the marathon that is necessary to accomplish all that must change, whether in my lifetime or beyond, in order to make this country approximate the optimal version of itself that so many have imagined over the last 200+ years? I will continue to read the newspaper hungrily looking for signs that this is so.

The Curse of False Equivalence…and One Other Problem

In an interview with Judy Woodruff at some conference, George Will opined on the state of the nation as of the time of the conversation, which I believe was June 25, 2020. over the course of my life, I have found myself occasionally agreeing with Mr. Will and also occasionally finding his writing to be a concerted effort at being clever…too clever, quite frequently, to the point where I find it hard to believe too many people could follow his thinking. That could just be me not understanding his point on these occasions but, regardless, I have never viewed him as someone who oversimplifies.

To my amazement, then, I heard him in this interview make the facile comparison between FOX viewers and MSNBC viewers that has become a shorthand way for too many commentators to easily “bucket” people for purposes of their rhetorical flourishes. In essence, he argued that most American are embarrassed by and sad about the Trumo administration and the havoc they have wreaked in our Republic, and that the viewers of the two aforementioned networks are outliers who  are politically agitated and eager to advance their respective causes.

I actually think most Americans, to the shame of us all, are only slightly more than apathetic and if anything, just wish all of the shouting would die down so they could get back to their normal recreational activities.  Their sadness is about not being able to watch as much sports as they would like, and I don’t think there i much embarrassment. So I think Will has it very wrong when he characterizes the people who are not MSNBC or Fox viewers in that manner. If he is correct, though, I think its sad and more than embarrassing that those are the extent of the emotions of most of my fellow Americans. Anything short of outrage is a national disgrace in itself.

But this blog is not about most people, but about the TV viewers Will seems to dismiss with the back of his hand. The false equivalence the would have us believe in is perhaps wishful thinking on his part. The ignorant, know-nothing viewers of Fox are in a class–a lower one–by themselves, regardless of their socio-economic status, race, ethnicity, gender, etc.  The national embarrassment is that we have a large segment of the population that is civically illiterate because they have chosen to get their civic education from a non-news source. Essentially, they have come to a world-view that they seek to have reinforced in the echo chamber of Fox.

MSNBC viewers also tend to have a world-view but this is where Will’s comparison loses any potency.  That worldview is typically shaped by multiple news sources each day, and I emphasize the “news.” I don’t know the statistics regarding completed education of the two groups but I am hazarding a guess that MSNBC’s audience is far better educated before they ever turn on that network than their Fox peers. There is no doubt that to some extent those of us who watch MSNBC are looking for confirmation of what we think we know and what we believe–so we can be better informed. That is as opposed to simply watching TV to get our emotions stoked on the basis of falsehoods and untruths. I have little doubt that MSNBC has gotten the facts in its reporting wrong on numerous occasions, though I don’t recall much that hasn’t been triangulated through other sources. Compare that to Fox, which spews out garbage every day of the week.

So if MSNBC viewers are not in that saddened, embarrassed group Will identifies, and are active eon line, on the streets, and elsewhere in articulating their concerns, perhaps Will’s real discomfort is that they are pushing for actions and laws and policies that run counter to what Will and his conservative friends have pushed for for decades.  And that pushing by the latter has led to this.  Will, and other no-Trumpers, are the ones who should be embarrassed for what they have wrought, though I see little humility among them.  They don’t seem to see the through-line that starts with Goldwater in 1964, runs through Atwater, Reagan, and Gingrich, involves many other less than honorable individuals, and ends up with Trump being elected and the Republican party they supported being nothing more than a Hollywood facade covering people with voids where souls and hearts should be.

Let’s stop the false equivalence between right and left, between Fox viewers and those who watch MSNBC, and between Ds and Rs. Will should know better by now. There i snow equivalence now and, really, there never has been, though I can let bygones be bygones in this regard. We must look squarely at faces us now, and what lies just over the horizon. Call out Fox and its followers for what they are.  If the worst you can do when it comes to MSNBC viewers is complain about the high pitch of their complaints, then it is clear you have nothing real to complain about…and you should be screeching right along with them.

“That’s Not Who I Am”-No?

One of my favorite proclamations in modern America is the utterance of the phrase “That’s not who I am,” most commonly uttered by public figures after it has been found out that they uttered some racist, homophobic, sexist, etc. comment out loud, or wrote it on paper or online.  Frequently proclaimed by people in the sports world, it is meant to explain that somehow, something that is completely at odds with the way the speaker thinks has made an appearance in the world. A variation on that is when someone else speaks up for the sinner, informing us that that is “not who he/she is.” This week, it was Cincinnati Red long-time broadcaster Thom Brennaman who took his turn, saying something when the mic was “hot,” but when he thought he was off air, that was undeniably homophobic.

When someone makes this claim, that exactly does it mean? Let’s parse this.  It could mean, “I’m not someone who says these things out loud.” While we don’t persecute people, and shouldn’t, for what they think, it is hardly cause for support if the uttered words reflect how the person thinks. It might not mean that they should lose their job–if their ideas kept in their head don’t actually impact other people–but it could make someone feel like they don’t want to associate with such a person or have them associated with their business. Knowing someone thinks like this at least suggests there is a risk of anti-social situations down the road.

It could mean that “I’m not someone who even thinks these things.” That suggests that some unexplainable natural phenomenon occurred that placed in my mouth words that have no place in my vocabulary or way of thinking. A real leap of faith has to occur to buy this;I know that the term Brennaman used is in my vocabulary–I have read it and heard it many times–but it has never occurred to me to use it because I know it is derogatory.  Same goes for numerous other words. Most, if not all,.  conscious adults know this term (“f….t”) is derogatory so even if not directed at someone who is gay directly, why would you use it is if you know it is derogatory–whether you know a mic is hot or cold?  I have to think its because you think it is perfectly acceptable to use it.  That could be because the people you hang with would find it acceptable, maybe even funny; it could be because you hold gay people in contempt so letting people you know this is how you think of them just feels natural, being true to oneself–although that would mean, of course, that the utterance represents exactly who you are.

Let’s just say that I rarely, if ever, believe that these denials are true. I have certainly said hurtful things I regret but not, as far as I can recall, utilizing words that everyone recognizes as slurs.  I would draw a distinction, for example, between calling someone an “a….hole” and a “f…..t” The former is based on personal characteristics, the latter attempts to tar someone based on group identity.  Neither, perhaps, is commendable but the latter has far greater implications for a society.

When people get suspended, or fired, or roundly condemned in media, for things that are “not them,” if we doubt that is the case, then I feel that in most cases the actions taken against them are justifiable.  Of course, it is reasonable to view the comments in context and if someone has led a pretty pure public life before then, such actions may be too harsh. As a society, we need to make clear that we do not tolerate people treating others as lesser, which is what “f…t” is meant to convey. We really don’t want people even thinking others are “lesser,” I would argue, but I don’t favor moving into a mind-police mode–I am sure that will happen soon enough through artificial intelligence, somehow but let’s not rush it.

So we can’t and don’t want to prosecute people for their thoughts but if we can send a message that is undesirable to be associated with people who think certain ways that are harmful to others–because of the behavior it may lead to by the thinker or others; that we do not view it as okay to make statements that denigrate others, whether intentionally or not; that if you say things that are ostensibly foreign to your way of thinking that we don’t believe you; and that if the utterance might just represent who you are, we want you out of our life–maybe, over time, we can actually change the way people think and act.

Only two words are worth uttering tonight–Adam Schiff

Anyone who did not have the opportunity to listen to Adam Schiff do a summation of the day’s proceedings at the impeachment trial of Trump should feel sorry for themselves.  Hopefully, this clip, no matter the results of this seeming sham of a trial, will have the same prominence as some of the other great speeches in US history. Over the past months, Schiff has already distinguished himself in my mind–and I hope the minds of many others–as an exemplar of a public servant, a Congressman, a statesman, a patriot.  I knew little of him before the past year or so but now, there is no public official I hold in higher regard.  And that’s even without knowing what he has ever done in Congress before the past year. Tonight’s presentation, done essentially without reading notes, was simply brilliant. Frankly, it deserved to be heard by a more august body of people than the Republican-dominated Senate. Through their comments ever since the prospect of the trial arose, the Republican senators have shown themselves to be beneath contempt–and that includes those so-called four or so “moderates” who have hemmed and hawed about what they might do but who have shown no balls/guts/patriotism before and almost definitely won’t here either. Schiff stands so far above puny figures like Cruz, Rand Paul…there’s really no point in specifying because he stands above all of them.  One in particular is the wonderful Marsha Blackburn of TN, who has made it her business to attack Alexander Vindman, a man who many of us would argue exemplifies what this country should be about. Patriotism, sacrifice, honesty, dignity….these are terms that are so far outside the reach of a hack like Blackburn that she ought to just crawl down the hole from which she came.  I hope the people of TN are really proud of who they elected, being represented by her should be a real source of civic pride for them. Let’s just say it tells us a lot about the people of TN.

Anyway, come hell or high water–both of which this country is well on its way to reaching–Schiff deserves to be acclaimed as a true American hero.

Relying on the law and courts

Today there are a plethora of topics that I would like to right about–for example, the absolute brilliance of the editorial and op-ed pages of the Times yesterday–but watching TV tonight reminded me of a topic I have sorely wanted to comment on for some time. That is, the continued emphasis by Democratic politicians and other commentators on the fact that “the law” supports their position on a particular issue, or that what the Trump administration does is counter to the law, and that therefore the end result of a particular controversy will ultimately turn out just fine. Related to this is the reason that they will turn out fine is that any court will readily acknowledge the clarity of the law and easily decide the controversy in favor of those on the side of “the law.”

It seems to me that one of the things  that our current national nightmare caused by the President and the Republicans has made abundantly clear is that any law is only as good as the ability and will to enforce it.  I am a lawyer and am committed as anyone to the rule of law…but I see that too many of our fellow citizens either don’t understand its core relevance to our American democracy or are willing to dispense with it if it means they have their way on issues that raise their blood pressure.

To pick one example, the ridiculous claim that Trump administration officials shouldn’t have to testify about anything before Congress or any venue because of executive privilege has so far allowed these officials to skate. Who is going to do anything about it? If we are counting on the courts, the process is so elongated that by the time there is a decision, it may be nothing more than symbolic..assuming it even comes out the right way at the end of the judicial process.

Tonight I saw an interview with the head of the NRDC about the tragic actions the Trump administration plans to take to gut more environmental regulation. She pointed out that all of these actions will be brought to court through litigation initiated by organizations such as hers and that the law is clear that at least much of what Trump intends flies in the face of precedent and statute. I have no doubt she is correct. In thinking, though, that the federal courts will as a matter of course see things “the right way,” I think she (and others like her who have commented on this and other issues) are naively ignoring the fact of how many judges have been appointed by Trump, to supplement those appointed by previous Republican presidents who are of similar persuasion.  I don’t think we can assume a non-political bench and that is true all the way up the food chain–even if an impartial district judge rules appropriately, their decision could be reviewed by an appellate court dominated by Trump appointees and even the right decision is issued by them, the US Supreme Court is sitting there and we do not have evidence yet that the majority will manage to overcome their political preferences.

No one is rooting harder for the rule of law to prevail than me, not least because if we stray too far from it, I believe all hope for the sustainability of our democracy disappears. I am also okay that others of similar beliefs to mine are rooting the same way. But I really want  our leaders and pundits to stop repeating out loud the view that something bad being done by Trump and his minions will be reversed or stopped because of “the law.” It provides more comfort than it should to those who want to see these things stopped. It may detract from the urgency they might otherwise feel to get more involved in the political process.

An Important Day

A short while ago, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump on two counts. Of course, had they chosen to, they had the grounds for bringing at least five more counts but they were probably more judicious than I would have tended to be had I been in Nancy Pelosi’s position. This is an important day because it was the first step in attempting to re-secure American democracy. The Republican Party, by its elected representatives in Congress, have chosen to subvert our democracy in their supposed political self-interest and the interests of certain sub-groups they represent (e.g. certain wealthy White business people).  This should be considered an outrage by every American who considers themselves a patriot because, after all, depending our government of laws is what patriotism consists of… not attempting to keep out immigrants, not in encouraging white supremacists and other fascist-leaning individuals and entities, not in working to grow the wealth gap between a small minority and the vast majority of Americans, not….a host of other things the Republican Party stands for and works for. Patriotism does not lie in doing the work of Putin–I have not been acting tongue inches when I tag the Republicans as the “Russian Republicans.” Is there any good reason not to think they have somewhat been bought by Putin, similar to how one of their most supportive constituents, the NRA, has been?

As I wrote above, this is a first step. The next logical steps do not look promising, which may mean we essentially need to skip right by those and focus on the next opportunity, the 2020 elections. I am reluctantly coming to the conclusion that the Ds will need to nominate someone not so easily, and wrongly,  identified as “socialist” in order to attract the vote of people like the Rs who wrote an Op-ED in the NY Times today stressing the need to stop Trump. As much as I believe that many of the policy ideas espoused by Elizabeth Warren are absolutely the way for this country to go, we may need to rout the Rs and stop the demolition of the country before earnestly attempting to get it exactly where it needs to be.  An approximation of that may be all we can go for now.  Having concluded this does not get me any closer to know ing who I should support as the candidate who can most assuredly win the Presidency–I don’t think its clear yet and I am not sure that person is even in the race right now. What I also know is that as much effort as must go on to secure the presidency must be equalled in attempting to turn the Senate and solidify the House.

How Democracies Die

I have been reading Levitsky and Siblatt’s 2018 book with the above title. I am only 22 pages into it and it is all too clear that what I have intuitively feeling for the last three years is well justified by the historical record–the US is sliding towards the death of our democracy. All of the elements that the authors point to having occurred around the world are happening right here. Perhaps most poignant, they note that political elites and parties are “democracy’s gatekeepers–they are the ones who must take action when authoritarian tendencies emerge in the executive, when the signs of erosion begin occurring. What we have is the utter abdication of the Republican Party, and its elites, to take any affirmative steps of meaning to safeguard our democratic institutions. Instead, virtually every day sees new outrages occurring. McConnell will go down in history as one of the assassins of the democracy–besides not allowing the Senate to function as intended by our Founding Fathers, he is doing whatever he can to place Federalist society adherents on the federal bench whether or not they have ever even seen an actual trial or have been judged competent by the ABA. Both parties have always tried to fill the federal bench with people of certain ideological bent but never have so many unqualified individuals been pushed through–and certainly not as the only legislative actions of the Senate.

I have over 200 more pages to go in the book and I, perversely, look forward to reading every one. The overarching question I have is how far down the slope towards death of democracy do we have to go before elected Republican officials finally step up and do their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution. Obviously, its pretty far down because we are already glimpsing the bottom of the run.

Hong Kong Protesters vs. US Citizenry

Waking up this morning to the continuing news about the Hong Kong protests, and more specifically about how much these predominantly young people have put on the line to defend their limited rights, I couldn’t help contemplating the current state of the US citizenry. How many of us would go to the streets to protest moves like China was making on their rights? Does it take imminent threat of removal of rights in order to get the vast majority of people to take note, let alone actively put their lives at stake? Our government has not officially taken steps to support the Hong Kong defenders of the very rights we purport to care about worldwide. Some of our celebrity athletes, perhaps out of ignorance but perhaps not, have managed to suggest that critics of China should stand down for fear of jeopardizing such critical things as their athletic shoe market potential. So I think its clear that we as a nation have not done enough to give some muscular support to the people of Hong Kong. With an eye towards our own country, many of us cannot muster the energy to vote or even pay attention to the news to understand how certain events are threatening various of our rights as citizens. We actually have a political party–one of only two major ones–supporting the outcomes of the Citizens United case, which effectively has curtailed the rights of American citizens–actual “people,” not corporate “people”—and we have an Attorney General who is a big fan of the unitary executive theory of government which ends up sounding much like fascism. There simply has not been a big or wide enough outcry over the various ways in which the current Administration, and its counterparts in the US Senate, and their compatriots on the US Supreme Court are putting a large dent in what it means to be an American citizen.

Why Sports are Not So Enjoyable Anymore

John Feinstein, who is one of my favorite journalists on any beat, wrote a great piece today in The Washington Post about the dismal situation of Maryland and Rutgers in Big 10 football. That situation–which boils down to total non-competitiveness in the pursuit of big bucks–was very foreseeable from the moment the two schools decided to cast their lot on the gridiron with a league full of perennial heavyweights. There were a lot of reasons not to like the decisions–one of the big ones was that the pursuit of the revenues that came with admission to the Big 10 was given precedence over other factors that many of us would think were much more important in college sports–traditional rivalries being lost, the burden placed on athletes to compete on uneven ground, etc. In the end, this sports story is just another one in which money despoils what has been great about sports.

This shows up in countless ways. The revolving rosters of teams, due to free agency and the need for teams to abide by payroll limits, which makes it hard to develop loyalty as a fan. The fact that teams willing to spend money can essentially make their leagues non-competitive. The selling out of the World Cup, the Olympics, etc. to line the pockets of organizations and non-athlete individuals at the expense of athletes who have to compete in inappropriate settings. The case studies are legions. One can recognize that some of the money-related issues do have a moral appeal–the ability of athletes to be free agents, for example–while still lamenting what even the most justifiable economic factors have done to the enjoyment of sports. At least for me.  I note that most fans do not seem to have more than passing irritation at what has substantially eliminated for me the pleasure of watching sports.

The angst from and beauty of reading The Washington Post

Although the last three years have only heightened this feeling, I have recognized for a long time that my daily reading of The Washington Post provides me, consistently, with some of my highest highs and lowest lows. As I read the paper, far more often than not, my blood exceeds the boiling point as I read of the atrocities being committed in this world–whether by average citizens in the US, average citizens elsewhere, and, of course, rich, famous and powerful people everywhere. The inequities of the world are in full display daily. There are inspiring, positive, uplifting stories too, of course, and those are often worthy of comment and highlighting. But what compels me to write this blog is the information that enrages me.

Commenting on the string of government officials who are providing the basis for the impeachment inquiry seems almost too easy. Anyone who doubts that impeachable offenses have occurred is intellectually dishonest and, in the case of political leaders who could and should be doing something to put an end to the travesty that is the Trump Administration, a scoundrel. This fact is visible every day in the articles in the paper and in the televised interviews with such insipid people like Lindsay Graham. Can there be a greater example in American history of a despicable politician? Well, maybe not greater but certainly equal and, in recent history, they are virtually all Republicans.

What did today’s news bring us? A great piece by Christopher Rowland in the Post about the wondrous Sackler family having come up with a strategy to protect as much of their wealth as they can under cover of a dubious “public interest trust” dedicated to fighting addiction. I know that in this country we seem to love giving even the worst among us second chances, and we have the collective memory of a gnat, but this is way too little way too late. The damage the Sacklers have done in their pursuit of lucre is unforgivable and can only be repaired, morally, with them having their family treasure emptied completely.  I am personally done with legal settlements with evil doers that let them off the hook way too easily, even as I know that doing battle with them and their well paid attorneys is too often likely to lead to a negative result for the “Good guys.” I think it is far more morally defensible to engage in a protracted legal battle that may end the wrong way than to allow for half-assed settlements that let the wrongdoers off with no finding of guilt and the ability to go on leading their lives a little sullied but essentially comfortably.  More on this later.