Tag Archives: Democrats

Torn and Then Resolved

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As someone said to me recently, it’s obvious that Trump is an asshole and a thug. It should be obvious to everyone.

With 53 days until the election, therefore, I’m torn between:

(1) Keeping in mind that millions of Americans are comfortable with the idea that a person as horrific as Trump should or will be President and continuing to take note of that fact;

or

(2) Keeping in mind that millions of Americans are comfortable with the idea that a person as horrific as Trump should or will be President and simply accepting that fact.

Option (1) sounds more painful for me personally and for anyone who reads this blog. And unlike Trump, I’ve got a conscience, so causing less pain may be the better choice. But if I pick option (2), I’ll probably be ashamed of myself. Unlike Trump, I’ve got a conscience.

While I decide what to do, here are two recent developments worth considering [Preview: I’m dumping (1) and (2) and going for option (3)!]:

The journalist Kurt Eichenwald wrote a long article for Newsweek about the Trump Organization. He points out that Trump hasn’t done any real estate development in years. Instead, he trades on his celebrity by licensing his name all over the world. The Trump Organization isn’t a real estate development company at all. Trump does own property, but much of the property with Trump’s name on it belongs to someone else.

The Trump Organization prospers by allowing actual real estate developers and other business people to put Trump’s name on their products, often in countries we don’t get along with. In addition, the details of these continuing transactions aren’t part of the public record, since the Trump Organization is privately held.

Through his company, Trump has important financial connections to businessmen, often politically connected and often shady, even criminal, in countries all over the world, including Russia, China, India, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Dubai. In Newsweek‘s words:

If Trump moves into the White House and his family continues to receive any benefit from the company, during or even after his presidency, almost every foreign policy decision he makes will raise serious conflicts of interest and ethical quagmires.

Every time President Trump makes a decision affecting any country in which his company does business, the questions will be: How does that decision affect his business interests? Did Trump receive a payoff in order to make that decision? Are America’s foreign policy and national security for sale on the international market?

In theory, Trump could sever all ties to the Trump Organization and never again derive any income from it. But he doesn’t intend to do that. He’s said his family will run the business while he’s publicizing his name from his perch in the White House. He may even operate a reality TV show from the Oval Office (he’s actually talked about this). Then, when he leaves office, his name will be bigger than ever. Eichenwald concludes:

If the company sold its brand in Russia while Trump was in the White House, the world could be faced with the astonishing sight of hotels and office complexes going up in downtown Moscow with the name of the American president emblazoned in gold atop the buildings….

Never before has an American candidate for president had so many financial ties with American allies and enemies, and never before has a business posed such a threat to the United States. If Donald Trump wins this election and his company is not immediately shut down or forever severed from the Trump family, the foreign policy of the United States of America could well be for sale.

In other news, the entertainer Jimmy Fallon had Trump on his late-night talk show yesterday. Fallon mussed Trump’s hair and the news media went wild. Helping to make a monster seem like a human being will get Fallon a mention in the history books if Trump loses and get him a night in the Lincoln Bedroom if Trump wins. Fallon should be ashamed of himself, but he’s a child who has a TV program. He wants to be popular. Let’s hope he never lives this down, but more importantly, that he never gets anywhere near the Lincoln Bedroom. 

But seriously, Trump can’t win, can he? Even though millions of Americans are comfortable with the idea that a person as terrible as Trump should or will be our next President? I still believe there are enough decent, un-brainwashed Americans to elect Hillary Clinton. She’s got a superior organization, popular politicians campaigning for her, more money, the debates are still coming up and not a single newspaper has endorsed Trump, not even one in New Hampshire that’s endorsed every Republican for the past 100 years. Believe it or not, there are even millions of voters who are still undecided.

__________________________________________________________________________

I wrote almost all of that last night and then went to bed. On waking this morning, another option occurred to me that’s much better than (1) or (2):

(3) Keep in mind that millions of Americans are comfortable with the idea that a person as terrible as Trump should or will be President, but focus on Hillary Clinton’s admirable words, deeds and ideas instead, of which there are many.

For example, The Guardian‘s daily running coverage of the campaign quotes her speaking this morning before a black women’s group in Washington:

The good news is, my pneumonia finally got some Republicans interested in women’s health! … My instinct was, to push through it. That’s what women do every day… I think it is fair to say that black women have an even tougher road.

While your stories may not appear in the history books, you are changemakers, the pathbreakers and the ground shakers….

It goes to show that black women deserve more than a seat at the table. It’s past time that you had a chance to run the meeting….

I’m going to close my campaign the way I began my career all those years ago at the Children’s Defense Fund… I will be focused on opportunities for kids and families. The American people deserve something to vote for, not just against. 

African American women turned out to vote more than any other group of Americans in 2012. This year once again you have your hands on the wheel of history and you can write the next chapter of the American story. To rise up, but most importantly, to show up at the polls this November. With our power and strength. I know. I believe this or I would not be standing here before you… that together we can build a future, where yes, love trumps hate.

According to The Guardian, she was continuously applauded.

Lifting people up instead of tearing them down. What a concept for the politicians of America! And also for this humble blog.

Trump the Projectionist

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Seeing that Trump often refers to Clinton as “Crooked Hillary” got me thinking about projection. Not the kind of projection that used to happen in movie theaters, but the psychological kind. It’s theorized that people sometimes defend themselves against their own unconscious impulses or qualities by denying their existence in themselves and attributing them to others. It’s an old idea that was later developed in detail by Sigmund Freud:

Freud considered that in projection thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings that cannot be accepted as one’s own are dealt with by being placed in the outside world and attributed to someone else. What the ego repudiates is split off and placed in another. [Wikipedia]

So let’s consider the principal criticisms, i.e. insults, Trump throws at Clinton.

(1) Hillary is crooked.

Of course, Trump might be the most crooked, corrupt person ever to win the presidential nomination of a major party. It’s been documented that, as a New York City real estate developer, he had links to organized crime. He’s accused by the attorney generals of various states of committing fraud. He’s bragged about paying politicians to do his bidding and the evidence indicates his contributions or bribes have paid off. He’s been sued thousands of times. He’s been fined by the IRS. He has a habit of not paying people who work for him, such as subcontractors who worked on his buildings. His bankruptcies have made it impossible to borrow money from American banks, so he’s borrowed large sums from Russian lenders who have connections to Putin and his brand of criminal capitalism. Trump says he’s contributed millions to charity, and probably taken tax deductions for those contributions, but in many cases he didn’t make those contributions at all or he made them with other people’s money. Plus he won’t release his tax returns. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has been investigated over and over for years and years and nobody has found real evidence of any corruption at all.

(2) Hillary is a liar.

Every respectable commentator and fact-checker has pointed out that Trump lies more often than any other presidential candidate ever. He lies about being against the Iraq War, for example, when he wasn’t. He lies about contributions he’s made. He lies about statistics. He lies about who he knows and what he’s done. He has built his whole campaign on lies and bullshit. Clinton is a politician who says self-serving or misleading things sometimes, but less than most politicians do. You can look it up.

(3) Hillary can’t be trusted.

When people say this, it’s never clear what she supposedly can’t be trusted to do. Given her long public record, it’s undeniable that she would govern as a center-left Democrat, more liberal on social issues than some, and less liberal on military or foreign policy issues than others. Trump, on the other hand, has a history of not paying his debts. That’s why he’s sued so often. Certainly, his ex-wives and business partners shouldn’t have trusted him. Furthermore, he regularly flip-flops between policy proposals. Aside from a general animus toward certain groups and a vague promise to make America great, it isn’t clear what he thinks about anything, aside from how wonderful he is and how much he loves money. As many have said, there’s no telling what he would do as President, because he doesn’t know himself.

(4) Hillary is trigger happy.

Trump criticizes Clinton for voting for the Iraq invasion and for supporting our intervention in Libya. Yet he was in favor of both those actions until he was against them. Trump himself, however, has advocated war crimes, such as killing the families of terrorists and seizing Iraq’s oil. He also advocated bringing about regime change in Iran after their disputed 2009 election. Most recently, in response to provocations from Iranian vessels in the Persian Gulf: “When [the Iranians] circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats, and they make gestures at our people that they shouldn’t be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water.” Quoting Chas Danner of New York Magazine:

So in one day, Donald Trump said that he both supported regime change and didn’t support regime change (even though he has always supported regime change), and then later suggested he’d go to war with one of the countries he is still willing to publicly support regime change in, just as soon as they … give us the finger from a little boat?

(5) Hillary is running a disgusting, issue-free campaign.

Every sentient being with any interest in American politics knows by now that Trump’s campaign has been in the gutter since he announced his candidacy. Aside from his amazing ability to lie in the face of all evidence, he’s insulted entire classes of people, as well as specific individuals, on a daily basis. Hillary Clinton has said she regrets saying that half of Trump’s supporters are deplorable (although many observers have pointed out that 50% or more of his supporters do indeed hold deplorable views). 

Regarding the issues, nobody has ever accused Hillary Clinton of being short on issue statements or policy proposals. She’s been criticized instead for being too caught up in the details of policy. Trump, on the other hand, has rarely said anything concrete about anything, including his signature proposals to build a very big wall, deport lots of people and keep out Muslims. Not surprisingly, one of his more specific policy proposals was to enact a tax cut that would theoretically save him and his children millions of dollars (assuming we know roughly how well he’s doing). Anyone doubting that Clinton has been more issues-oriented can visit their respective websites. Clinton’s features a wide-ranging discussion of lots of issues. Trump’s doesn’t.

On the issue whether Trump is projecting his serious inadequacies onto Clinton, it can hardly be said that the jury is still out.

We Should Let Garrison Keillor Pick the Next President

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Mr. Keillor shared his thoughts on Hillary Clinton and her presidential campaign yesterday on Facebook. I don’t think he’d mind me reprinting what he wrote. Or you can click on this link to read it.

[Quote:]

I saw Hillary once working a rope line for more than an hour, a Secret Service man holding her firmly by the hips as she leaned over the rope and reached into the mass of arms and hands reaching out to her. She had learned the art of encountering the crowd and making it look personal. It was not glamorous work, more like picking fruit, and it took the sort of discipline your mother instills in you: those people waited to see you so by gosh you can treat them right.

So it’s no surprise she pushed herself to the point of collapse the other day. What’s odd is the perspective, expressed in several stories, that her determination to keep going reveals a “lack of transparency” —- that she should’ve announced she had pneumonia and gone home and crawled into bed.

I’ve never gone fishing with her, which is how you really get to know someone, but I did sit next to her at dinner once, one of those stiff dinners that is nobody’s idea of a wild good time, the conversation tends to be stilted, everybody’s beat, you worry about spilling soup down your shirtfront. She being First Lady led the way and she being a Wellesley girl, the way led upward. We talked about my infant daughter and schools and about Justice Blackmun, and I said how inspiring it was to sit and watch the Court in session, and she laughed and said, “I don’t think it’d be a good idea for me to show up in a courtroom where a member of my family might be a defendant.” A succinct and witty retort. And she turned and bestowed her attention on Speaker Dennis Hastert, who was sitting to her right. She focused on him and even made him chuckle a few times. I was impressed by her smarts, even more by her discipline.

I don’t have that discipline. Most people don’t. Politics didn’t appeal to me back in my youth, the rhetoric (“Ask not what your country can do for you”) was so wooden compared to “so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,” so I walked dark rainy streets imagining the great novel I wouldn’t write and was still trying to be cool and indifferent well into my thirties, when other people were making a difference in the world.

Hillary didn’t have a prolonged adolescence and fiction was not her ambition. She doesn’t do dreaminess. What some people see as a relentless quest for power strikes me as the good habits of a serious Methodist. Be steady. Don’t give up. It’s not about you. Work for the night is coming.

The woman who does not conceal her own intelligence is a fine American tradition, going back to Anne Bradstreet and Harriet Beecher Stowe and my ancestor Prudence Crandall, but none has been subjected to the steady hectoring that Mrs. Clinton has. She is the first major-party nominee to be pictured in prison stripes by the opposition. She is the first cabinet officer ever to be held personally responsible for her own email server, something ordinarily delegated to anonymous nerds in I.T. The fact that terrorists attacked an American compound in Libya under cover of darkness when Secretary Clinton presumably got some sleep has been held against her, as if she personally was in command of the defense of the compound, a walkie-talkie in her hand, calling in air strikes.

Extremism has poked its head into the mainstream, aided by the Internet. Back in the day, you occasionally saw cranks on a street corner handing out mimeographed handbills arguing that FDR was responsible for Pearl Harbor, but you saw their bad haircuts, the bitterness in their eyes, and you turned away. Now they’re in your computer, whispering that the economy is on the verge of collapse and for a few bucks they’ll tell you how to protect your savings. But lacking clear evidence, we proceed forward. We don’t operate on the basis of lurid conjecture.

Someday historians will get this right and look back at the steady pitter-pat of scandals that turned out to be nothing, nada, zero and ixnay and will conclude that, almost a century after women’s suffrage, almost 50 years after Richard Nixon signed Title IX into law, a woman was required to run for office wearing concrete shoes. Check back fifty years from now and if I’m wrong, go ahead and dance on my grave.

[Unquote]

Hillary Does a Press Conference

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Hillary Clinton has been criticized for not doing a press conference this year. She’s pointed out that she’s done 300 or so interviews with members of the press since January, and of course there were those “debates” during which she responded to questions from the moderators, but she hasn’t stood in front of a crowd of reporters throwing random questions at her one after the other.

So  it must have been a relief to Trump and her other critics when she stood in front of a crowd of reporters throwing random questions at her this week. It happened after she gave a brief address to the joint convention of the National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists yesterday.

But one might say it was really a question and answer session. And it didn’t involve the entire White House press corps. But it sure looked and sounded like a press conference. 

The first question is at 16:00 in the video below. Clinton’s detailed answer lasts 4 minutes and 40 seconds and shows yet again why she might be a great President. This being a press conference, of course, the next question has to do with emails.

https://youtu.be/ETilrD59yrY?t=960

From Under the Cone of Silence

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Four days ago, I lowered the Cone of Silence, thereby tuning out all the news and commentary that keeps me relatively well-informed about current events. I wanted to watch the Democratic National Convention with no help from anybody else, unfiltered and undiscussed by anyone on TV or the internet. That’s meant no New York Times, no New York Magazine, no Guardian, no Daily Kos, no VOX, no Sky News, not even any Yahoo News for four whole days.

Finding gavel-to-gavel coverage of the convention online was easy (the convention has a website). Resisting the urge to read about it has been hard. In fact, despite my best efforts, one piece of news slipped under or through the Cone.

I learned that the Republican candidate for President of the United States said the Russians should try to find a bunch of Hillary Clinton’s emails and share them with the world. (Later, he apparently said he wasn’t joking.) That made me wonder. If the emails were uninteresting, hacking them would merely be a crime and an enormous campaign dirty trick. But if they did indeed contain sensitive national secrets, that would be a crime, a dirty trick and a breach of national security. Maybe Trump should have kept his mouth shut?

Anyway, I have a couple thoughts I want to share.

Remember two weeks ago when Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she was very worried about a Trump presidency? She later apologized for speaking out, since Supreme Court Justices are expected to keep their opinions about politics to themselves (although it’s fine for them to help elect a Republican President, vacate campaign finance laws and rule that the Voting Rights Act is obsolete, all while voting along party lines). 

Then, today, I saw that a retired Marine Corp general, John Allen, who commanded our forces in Afghanistan, will speak at the convention. Presumably, he will explain why he believes Clinton would be a much better Commander-in-Chief than you know who.

In reading a little about Gen. Allen, however, I saw some criticism at the Marine Corps Times site:

One expert on civil-military relations fears that by endorsing Clinton, Allen could give the appearance that he is speaking for current senior military leaders.

“A man of his prominence and his rank can be interpreted to speak for the whole military community, retired and active duty,” said Richard Kohn, who teaches military history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Kohn said he does not believe any retired military officer should ever endorse political candidates.

“They are in effect declaring themselves partisans and leaving the non-partisanship of the military profession and that’s a different thing,” he said.

We should note that a retired Army general spoke in favor of the Republican nominee last week, but putting that aside, it strikes me that anyone criticizing Gen. Allen, and anyone who criticized Justice Ginsburg, in fact even Justice Ginsburg herself, have all missed the point.

Rules help us make our way through life in an orderly fashion. Ethical rules, professional rules, grammatical rules, rules of thumb, the rules we call “the law”, they all help us deal with the situations we confront as we go about our business. Should I take that loaf of bread without paying? If he won’t look you in the eye, he’s probably lying. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. “Couldn’t” is okay, but “can’t” isn’t.

As we all know, however, extraordinary things do happen. We sometimes face situations where the standard rules aren’t good enough. Can you think of such a situation today? Let me put it this way: Trump is so utterly unqualified to be President, he would be so dangerous if he became Commander-in-Chief, that no rules, laws, standards or common practices should stop anyone at all from saying so. 

Despite the fact that he won a major political party’s nomination, it would be entirely appropriate if the whole Supreme Court (all eight of them) and the senior officers who make up the Joint Chiefs of Staff (all seven of them) went on national television and pointed out the obvious fact: Nobody should vote for this guy! Wake up, you people!

I don’t mean to say that none of the rules apply in this situation. We should still have a presidential election on November 8th. The FBI shouldn’t put Trump in a cell. He shouldn’t be given a one-way ticket to Mars. But, seriously, we all need to do what we can to stop him from becoming President. We need to do it for ourselves as Americans but also for the rest of the world. (There are even rules in our favor: Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures and an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.)

Before I go, there was one other thing I wanted to mention. Maybe you’ve seen a movie called “Seven Days in May”. It was based on a novel about an attempted military coup in the United States. The idea was that the President wanted to sign a treaty with the Russians, but most of our military really hated it. So Burt Lancaster and a bunch of other high-ranking officers tried to take over the government. I won’t tell you how it ended, but we were lucky to have Kirk Douglas on our side.

Now consider if somebody like the general who led the conspiracy in Seven Days in May decided to leave the Army and run for President. As played by Burt Lancaster, Gen. James Mattoon Scott was a very handsome, very intelligent, very experienced, very skilled officer. If anyone was looking for a Man on a White Horse to save America in its darkest hour, he’d be a prime candidate.

So here’s my question: If millions of Americans are willing to elect an unpredictable ignoramus and reality TV con man like Trump, how would our fellow citizens react to a candidate who favored equally misguided policies, but who could speak intelligently and had a distinguished record of service to America?

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not worry about that question. We have enough trouble already.