Yes. This is a presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
Yes. This is an election about health care, education, the economy, climate change, criminal justice, and so many other important issues.
More importantly, however, this is an election about whether or not we retain American democracy. This is an election we must not lose.
Today, virtually every national poll and most battleground state polls have Biden ahead. Yet, Trump continues to repeat a message he tweeted several weeks ago: "The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election."
Friday night, when the news of the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg hit, I was struck by the same wave of hopeless despair that anyone who cares about the future of this country felt. It's not an exaggeration to say that the weight of the world rested on the shoulders of this diminutive 87-year-old woman who had been battling cancer for many years. With her death, Donald Trump and the Senate Republicans, led by the depraved liar and hypocrite Mitch McConnell, have the power to fill her seat on the Supreme Court with another right wing extremist. With a comfortable 6-3 conservative majority on the court, the Republican mission to dismantle the already battered remains of our democracy will be protected from the occasional bout of conscience from Chief Justice John Roberts.
More than any other single individual, Daryl Johnson can speak to the failure of the Republican Party to keep America safe from right-wing and white supremacist terrorism over the past few years. Most recently, he has spoken out to condemn the Trump administration’s stubborn rejection of facts and data on the danger that type of extremism poses. The impeached president has been out there spewing hate and fear while lying about which candidate will make Americans safer, while Johnson, along with former members of Trump’s own counter-terrorism team, have been telling the truth. Trump is right that one candidate for president will have a far more positive impact on our safety. But he’s dead wrong about which one that is.
Mom died on this day eleven years ago. To say that I miss her would be a truly epic understatement. Right next to my wife, Karen, mom was my most devoted reader. I have no doubt that were she still alive, mom would take some comfort from my ongoing efforts to express contempt for Trump and the Republicans. I don't think mom particularly cared for my inclinations toward swearing at people like George W. Bush, or Newt Gingrich, or Bill O'Reilly, but she never chastised me for it and, if anything, her contempt for those Republicans was even greater than my own. She knew right wing depredations in ways more personal than I ever quite did. She knew the ways Republicans made things more difficult for people like her and her parents back when she was a girl during the Great Depression. She had seen how they fought against a host of much-needed efforts to reduce the suffering of working or indigent people during those years, standing in the way of all the New Deal programs the right wingers opposed. And, when dad came back from serving in the Navy during World War II, she saw how the right wingers fought the unions at every step, from wages to safety regulations to benefits. She was old enough to have seen their resistance to the 40-hour work week, too, and though being pregnant with me made it impossible for her to finish high school, mom had "a good head on her shoulders," as they sometimes used to say about women in that well-intended but patronizing phrase.
It’s a uniquely Trumpian problem: the president of the United States, locked in a bitter campaign with Democratic rival former Vice President Joe Biden, is trying to flip Minnesota, a state he narrowly lost in 2016. But Donald Trump, at a campaign rally in the North Star State on Friday, appeared to forget his Civil War history lessons (or never absorbed them in the first place) when he heaped praise on Confederate General Robert E. Lee — despite the state playing a decisive role for the Union at Gettysburg.
As the Star Tribune reports, Trump on Friday extolled the virtues of Robert E. Lee’s leadership:
“It was supposed to end immediately because the North was too powerful for the South. But it just shows when you have leaders, when you have a great general. And Robert E. Lee, he would have won, except for Gettysburg.”
When and how does the appalling masquerade end?
Historians will enjoy a ludicrous superfluity of catch-phrases to best summarize one-term Trumpism. Is this deviancy of scandals not captured by the following: Deception and Dissension? Racism and Rancor? Malice and Malfeasance? How about Braggadocio and Blundering? Narcissism and Nepotism? Denial and Derangement? How can we ignore Ignorance and Ignominy?
Or even the ultimate summation, in a triplet alliteration: Grievance, Grudges and Graft. So many choices, so little space for this mother load of compact exposés, nearly as infinite and expansive as the universe. Anything but law and order.
The passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is devastating, and represents the loss of an extraordinary human being and woman who was an icon of gender equality and the intellectual and moral center of the Supreme Court's diminishing core of true liberal democrats.
Her loss is a blow to human decency and constitutional democracy at a time when these things are profoundly in jeopardy.
And it sets in motion a real political contest, within the broader electoral contest, in which the results could be terrifying—a Mitch McConnell-led rush-job to affirm a Donald Trump nominee who would surely be young, ideological, and committed to rolling back a range of constitutional liberties, including reproductive freedom and voting rights. Even more terrifying, such a person could represent a pivotal court vote in throwing a contested election to Trump, and such a move could even be a quid pro quo of nomination. I might once have described such a result as unimaginable. But nothing is now unimaginable.
Two memories: in February, I attended a public conversation my friend and colleague Bill Moyers conducted with Ruth Bader Ginsburg at Union Theological Seminary on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She was there for the Judith Davidson Moyers Women of Spirit Award Lecture, and had postponed attending the year before because of health concerns. She was recuperating from the latest of her bouts with cancer.
On this February afternoon, she was tiny and so frail, accompanied on and offstage by an aide who made sure she was safely in her chair. But her mind was sharp and strong. She talked about her background, education, and some of her notable dissents from the Supreme Court's majority—in Shelby County v. Holder, the 2013 decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the 2014 case claiming that for religious reasons, family-owned businesses did not have to pay Obamacare costs for their employees' use of contraception.
"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. ...The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?"
— George Orwell, 1984
Justice Ginsberg is dead, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has stated his intent to replace her. Perhaps you've heard someone say or even made the comment yourself: "Just four years ago McConnell cited the so-called "Biden rule" to not make justice appointments in an election year. Now he is going to replace RBG as soon as possible? What a hypocrite!"
As the U.S. West Coast struggled to contain unprecedented wildfires, Donald Trump maintained that science really doesn't know the root cause of this devastation. Before we dismiss this as another off-the-cuff Trumpian comment, the pandemic has shown that a president's beliefs—however illogical and unscientific—can translate into official U.S. government position. When it comes to climate and the future of this planet, there is every reason to be concerned.
The president has routinely used the power of his office to force our premier science agencies to do his bidding. After Trump showed a doctored hurricane chart last year, the leadership at the nation's flagship atmospheric research organization—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—actually issued a statement declaring that the National Weather Service was wrong to dispute the president's made-up warning.
"Self-interest speaks all sorts of tongues, and plays all sorts of roles, even that of disinterestedness."
— François Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections
It was a disappointing headline, but it didn't come as much of a surprise. It appeared in the Wall Street Journal on September 1, 2020. It was short and to the point. "Nations With Wealth Tie Up Vaccine Doses." That which could be considered a harbinger of the headline, insofar as the United States is concerned, had occurred almost four months earlier.
On May 18, 2020, Trump told the World Health Organization Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, that if the WHO didn't make "major substantive improvements" within 30 days the United States would permanently withhold future funding and withdraw from the organization. Always eager to follow through on threats, and by nature, impatient, Trump concluded he could not wait the full 30 days. On May 29 he announced that he was terminating the relationship with the WHO immediately and was withholding all future funding. He did not address what arrangements he planned to make for the United States to pay the $203 million it owed for 2020 and previous years.
COVID-19 has been a doubly-deadly disaster for millions of Americans, destroying both life and livelihoods. But one of the most heartening responses to the crisis has come from the least-expected place: corporate executive suites.
This spring, numerous CEOs made headlines by showing some class solidarity. If we’re having to wallop our workers because of a pandemic, these bosses told media interviewers, the least we can do is cut our own salaries.
Yes — all in this together! Only… not really.
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Joe Biden scores big points for appearing to be empathetic with victims of tragedy. Considering all the tragic wars to which he contributed, perhaps he should go on an empathy tour of the over 1 million survivors of the people he helped kill in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That hair is the star of the Trump show. Other than the ubiquitous billowing blue suit, Trump's hair is the most consistent thing about him. I mean, look at that snowdrift atop Mount Trump: It looks like someone dumped a tequila sunrise on his head and then swooped and sprayed and blow-dried the resulting glop into a kind of double-reverse cantilever combover. You have to wonder how long it takes to construct the thing in the morning, how the hell it's actually done, how many times a day it has to be re-sprayed and tediously teased into shape, with its gleaming duck-tails and prideful collar-brushing flip in the back. An elaborate confection of ego and insecurity and hormonal loss and want and need — you almost have to conclude it's the thing he really cares about.
Certainly he pays more attention to his hair than he does to his family. His wife Melania? He hauls her out for photo-ops, but have you ever seen him look happy about it? Like he loves her, or even cares about her a little? Please.
This continues the series, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump Revisited: Mental Health Experts on the Devastating Mishandling of a Pandemic.” Whereas we could not have predicted a pandemic three-and-a-half years ago, the authors of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President anticipated how the president would respond, should there be a crisis. We tried to warn the public of the very consequences that are unfolding today: abuse of power, incompetence, and loss of lives and livelihoods of many Americans.
Dr. Judith L. Herman opened the conversation in many ways, by sending a letter to then-President Barack Obama, asking for a full neuropsychiatric examination of the then-President-Elect Donald Trump. She is professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, a renowned expert on the traumas of interpersonal violence, and author of the now-classic Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror.
The passing of Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg has left a deep hole in the hearts of millions across the country. She was a giant of jurisprudence, one of the most consequential Americans to have ever lived, and an inspiration to so many for her intellect, her moral center, her trailblazing biography, her resilience and even her physical toughness.
But her passing also leaves a bleeding wound in American democracy, one that reinforces the crisis of legitimacy of conservative minority rule in America. It is a legitimacy crisis that Democrats must heal and rectify should they win power in November–especially if Republicans are shameless enough to force through a conservative to replace Bader-Ginsburg before the inauguration of the next president, against her dying wish. Democrats must, if they win, alter the composition of the Senate and the Court so that both reflect the will of the majority rather than the tyranny of a minority.
And so ends another week in hell. The guilty and the guiltless moan and wail. The nameless dead are mourned in private ceremonies, tears of loss are shed on thousands of pillows. Meanwhile, the nation's leader is cheered by unmasked people at crowded rallies, ensuring there will be many more dead yet to come.
So let us pray, shall we?
Let us pray for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a secular saint if there ever was one.
Let us pray for triumph of the things she fought to achieve, for women's rights, for human rights, for the rule of law.
Tonight, flowers are strewn on the steps of the Supreme Court, where “Equal Justice Under Law” is carved in stone. More than a thousand people gathered there tonight to mourn the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died today from cancer at age 87.
Justice Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 15, 1933, in an era when laws, as well as the customs they protected, treated women differently than men. Ginsburg would grow up to challenge the laws that barred women from jobs and denied them rights, eventually setting the country on a path to extend equal justice under law to women and LGBTQ Americans.
“If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump’s term, and the primary process is started, we’ll wait to the next election.”
— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), on filling a Supreme Court vacancy right before an election, October 2018
Right. Ol’ Lindsey nearly broke both legs walking that one back upon the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. If Senate Republicans can seat a new Justice before the election, they will do it. If they can seat a new Justice before the end of January (in the event of a Trump loss), they will do it.
Of course they will do it. Three right-wing Justices in one single presidential term? Plenty of presidents have gotten two or three over two terms. FDR got eight in six years… and gosh, d’ya think it had an effect on history?
In 2015, my life fell apart.
The first signs of trouble came from my son Jaylon. He was five years old and, although he struggled with ADHD, perfectly healthy. But then he started acting out in ways he never had before. His school didn’t know how to handle it, so they started suspending him. By the time he was six, they had suspended him 70 times.
Jaylon wasn’t the only child struggling. Many other children in Flint were acting out too, and no one knew why.
*"No sensible person can dispute that Covid-19 is a great tragedy for humanity — a tragedy even in the ancient Greek sense, as defined by Aristotle, with the disastrous ending contingent on some prideful flaw in the protagonist. This time it’s not Oedipus or Agamemnon. This time it’s we who are that cocky protagonist, having brought disaster on ourselves. The scope and the devastation of the pandemic reflect bad luck, yes, and a dangerous world, yes, but also catastrophic failures of human foresight, communal will and leadership. But look past that record of human failures for a moment and consider this whole event from the point of view of the virus. Measure it by the cold logic of evolution: The career of Covid-19 so far is, in Darwinian terms, a great success story”* (DLC) and the president through his inaction, failures of leadership, his cowardice and flight from meaningful engagement with the marauding virus, and his deadly maladroitness and denial of its dangers particularly when it first appeared in America is in Darwinian terms, a great failure that should by now have become extinct. It has also earned Donald Trump, in the minds of many Americans, the sobriquet Covid-19’s "BFF" which has more than one dictionary definition including: “Best Friend Forever,” “Best Fuckin’ Friend,” “Big Fat Friend,” “Buffoonish Flip-Flopper,” “Best Friend Farted,” Biggest Fucking Fantasm,” and Bonsoir François Feldman (band named after a popular French vocalist). Any of those definitions could fit Trump and Covid-19 except “Bonsoir François Feldman” which would surely be overly outré for popular taste. *(David Quammen “The Pandemic, From the Virus’s Point of View, NYT 9/20/20”)*
You likely recall Georgia's Rep. Doug Collins, the ranking Republican troll on the Judiciary Committee during Trump's impeachment hearings. He gesticulated rather emotionally and cracked bad jokes and tried his best, along with the committee's minority überführer, Jim Jordan, to make the indictment and (quite improbable) conviction of our lawlessly feckless president seem like nothing but a Democratic scam. A distraction. A circus.
Because that's what the redneck rabble wanted. Oh, he also had one other motivation. This year he's running for the U.S. Senate against the "elitist" Republican incumbent, stock-wizard Kelly Loeffler.
“I’m Back!” To quote the rustic, addled Randy Quaid rube/character in the movie Independence Day, channeling his Cousin Eddie shtick in Lampoon’s Vacation movies.
Aping Trump, and with a handful of topics I wish to touch upon, I meander and juggle. We should be getting used to it by now. The right wing eschews political and grammatical correctness. Coarseness and crudity combat elitism. I swipe a play from their book.
I am an eager reader and once contributed to my favorite website, the SC, starting in 2006, though I have been mostly absent lately, because…
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on Friday, the Supreme Court announced.
Chief Justice John Roberts said in a statement that “Our nation has lost a jurist of historic stature.”
Even before her appointment, she had reshaped American law. When he nominated Ginsburg to the Supreme Court, President Bill Clinton compared her legal work on behalf of women to the epochal work of Thurgood Marshall on behalf of African-Americans.
[Note: Ruth Bader Ginsburg died as I was finishing up this piece. To those who are adamantly unwilling to vote for Biden/Harris, I would just point out that we have Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court because lots of people couldn't bring themselves to vote for Clinton/Kaine, could not lower themselves to oppose Trump no matter the consequences. Trump has talked about nominating Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, or Rudy Giuliani to the Supreme Court to fill this or other future vacancies. She was not a "boomer," but she was old, and she's now gone. She was surely among the very best of her generation. Bless her heart, her mind, her spirit, and her memory.]
Somewhere along the way, I must have picked up some very incorrect ideas about what it means to be a progressive. One way or another, I've spent my entire adult life among people who thought of themselves as progressives and people who were born in that span of years sometimes given the label of "baby boomers," people born during the post-war years who grew up seeing an explosive birth in babies as the servicemen returned from the war, married, and began to have families. In the U.S., those years saw a growth in the economy that led to greater prosperity, a swelling of the ranks of the middle class, a growth in labor unions, and a huge expansion of people going to college on the new G.I. Bill drawn from the working class, people who had never had such opportunities before.
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