CONSERVATIVE EVOLUTION?

 

Ever since Ronald Reagan joined the Republican party with the Christian fundamentalists, many Republicans have tried to pass legislation that allowed creationism to be taught in public schools, or at least they tried to undermine the theory of evolution.  When courts rejected the teaching of creationism, given that things like carbon dating and fossil evidence revealed that the earth is billions of years old and not around 12 thousand as the creationists said, they eventually came up with a new idea sometime in the 1990's: intelligent design.  This belief accepted that evolution did indeed happen, but it was guided by a divine being all the way.  (And while they never explicitly said who that divine being might be, I'm guessing they weren't thinking of Vishnu.)  It was a sneaky way to bring a modified (and yes, evolved) form of creationism into public schools.  Thankfully, this theory was rejected as the religious indoctrination it was  in 2005 when a George W Bush appointed judge made a strong ruling against it.

But conservatives learned the lesson of evolving their beliefs to fit with the times more, and they have continued in other ways.  For example, for years the Republican party openly attacked homosexuals as "unnatural", and President Bush's claim that he wanted to put a ban on gay marriage into the US constitution is probably what won him a second term in 2004.  But now that gay marriage has been legal for years and polls show around 70% of Americans support it, conservatives have pivoted to attack trans people far more than gay, lesbian or bisexual people.  Sadly, this makes sense, given that according to a recent NPR poll, only about 0.6% of American adults call themselves trans, which means that large numbers of Americans have never met a trans person before, making them easy to demonize.  And the right can pounce on any number of issues, from which bathrooms trans people can use to pronoun preferences, inflating something that affects less than 1% of the population into a polarizing issue.  Hopefully, this kind of hate will eventually wear out as an issue as more Americans come to realize that trans people are just people who want to feel comfortable in their own bodies.  But don't expect the Republicans to stop attacking the rights of trans people anytime soon.

The last version of modern conservative evolution can be found in their feelings about climate change: for years the Republican party has dismissed the idea as a hoax (Donald Trump once tweeted out: "Let's continue to destroy the competitiveness of our factories & manufacturing so we can fight mythical global warming. China is so happy!").  On this issue they put themselves to the right not only in this country, but really, the whole globe as well, with the Republican party being the only major political party in the entire world to deny the science of climate change. For decades, this was easy for the party to do, with proof of the effects of climate change hard to show to the average American.  But now that each summer seems to bring more global record heat temperatures, along with drought and wildfires, continuing to say that climate change doesn't exist is getting harder and harder.  So once again they have evolved, saying that moving too fast on the issue would harm the economy (as if putting out record wildfires every year is cheap!).  Or, as Republican Senator Mike Capo of Idaho put it, “I’m not in a position to tell you what the solution is, but for the president to shut down the production of oil and gas in the United States is not going to help." (This is a mischaracterization of what Joe Biden wants to do, instead of shutting down oil and gas, he wants to incentivize using renewable energy sources and electric vehicles).  So, instead of denying climate change, Republicans are now  just saying that we should continue to burn fossil fuels and not worry about it, or propose "solutions" that are currently not viable, like carbon capture and clean coal. They also add that giving financial government incentives to renewable energy companies makes the federal government pick winners in the free market (of course, they don't mention the 20 billion dollars a year oil companies get in tax breaks and incentives).   In a way, this downplaying of the worst crisis the world is facing is even worse than the denial of that crisis they've pushed for years.  Now some Republicans have offered up conservative blueprints for dealing with the issue, but none of them want to stop or slow our country's continued mining and usage of fossil fuels. Even the common sense idea that American kitchens should transition from gas burning to electric stovetops, which would be both better for the environment and safer, has become a political issue, with Republicans condemning the idea.

While the Republican stance of climate change is depressing, there was good news out of congress recently, with Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Senator who has killed so many climate change deals, said that he has agreed to support a new bill.  Even with out any Republican votes, the bill looks likely to pass in the Senate.  While this bill may not be perfect (it has some carve outs for oil and coal interests in Manchin's state), it still would be the largest bill dealing with the climate change issue in our nation's history; it's effect would be, according to the New York Times, transformational.  So, there is some hope that our nation will do something about this pressing issue.  No thanks to the Republican party, though.

SO NOW WHAT?

 

The January 6th committee hearings have been great TV.  There's been surprising testimony, even more surprising new videos and an amazing look at just how childish, and obstinate  Donald Trump was in the last few months of his presidency after his defeat.  One of the effective things that the committee has done is to have former members of Trump's own staff (and even members of his own family) testify as to how corrupt he was: from his refusal to accept his loss in 2020 to the fact that he seemed to openly enjoy watching the riot of January 6th. on TV and was reluctant to stop it.  As the committee showed, he  even added fuel to the fire at one point when he tweeted out attacks against his own Vice President, Mike Pence, while the riot was going on.  (New footage of the rioters showed them responding to the texts and getting even angrier because of them).

To me the most chilling part of the presentation was when former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Trump, wanting to make sure that his January 6th rally, that took place just before the riot ,had as many people as possible attending.  So he wanted the metal detectors around the rally removed, because he saw the people at the rally as no threat to him.  In other words, the president was fine with armed people coming to his rally, even as he told them to march onto the capital building afterwards.

But the committee hearings, as gripping as they were, upset me more than shocked me.  It was clear from the moment that riot began that Trump's months of lies about the election incited it.  He was a criminal once the first capitol officer was beaten.  

But it's easy to say that, and a whole other thing to prove it.  Now that the committee is over (although there will be more findings released in the upcoming months), the big question is, will Attorney General  Merrick Garland formally bring charges against Donald Trump?  Over 60% of the American people in recent polls believe he should.  While it may seem obvious that Trump is guilty of at least one crime in relation to the riots, getting an actual conviction against him may prove harder than it would seem.

First of all, there seems to be no question that Trump is going to declare that he's running again in 2024 any day now, which would allow him to dismiss any criminal charges against him as a partisan witch hunt. (Some people around him have said that he sees running again as a "get out of jail free card".)  And the fact that no Attorney General has ever brought up criminal charges against a former president, shows how difficult a process this could be. One complication is trying to find an impartial jury; I mean, how can you find 12 adults in America who have no strong opinions about Trump either way?  Remember,  it would only take one Trump loyalist on the jury to wreck the whole process. And if Trump were to beat the charges, it could embolden his allegations that it was all a partisan issue even more, and help him politically.

Despite these difficulties, I personally still think that Donald Trump should be formally charged with crimes by Merrick Garland, because one of the fundamental truths of our country should always be that even the President of the United States is not above the law.  Clearly, Trump committed criminal acts before and on January 6th., and if the country lets him off the hook, it opens the way for another president, perhaps one smarter and more competent than Trump, to get away with similar crimes.  The issues here are too big to ignore; Trump can reasonably face any number of charges, from inciting a riot to illegal obstruction of congress.  He is even open to separate charges due to his attempt to overturn the election outcome in the state of Georgia, which should be easy to prove given that there is a recording of him openly asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" him votes.  (And as a side note here, I would point out that Trump has had 2 secret recordings of him released in the past few years.  The first was the infamous Access Hollywood tape, in which he bragged about sexually assaulting women, and this one in which he tried to get a state official to steal an election for him.  So, one in which he bragged about getting away with a crime, and one in which he committed one!).

Even if he never reaches the White House again, the stain of the Trump presidency is one that will hang over the country for years.  Holding him accountable for the terrible crimes that he committed on January 6th is one step in removing that stain.  For once in his life  he should be punished.

A DOUBLE BLOW TO THE FIGHT AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE

 When Joe Biden was elected president two years ago, I never thought that I'd be writing three separate posts cursing West Virginia  Senator Joe Manchin for blocking Biden's agenda, but here we are.  Yes, once again the congressman who seems to relish his position as  the Democratic senator who can hardly stand the Democratic agenda has killed a movement to do something about climate change when he backed out of a senate spending package deal yesterday.  Is it any surprise that the man who has taken more money from oil and coal companies than any other person in congress wants to do nothing in the fight against climate change?  It is a sign of just how ridiculous the American version of democracy is that a senator from a state with less than two million people can hold so much power over the rest of the country.

The timing of this couldn't be worse: just a few days ago our extremist Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (and by extension, the Biden administration) cannot regulate the carbon emissions that greatly contribute to climate change.  Given the court's ruling, congressional action seemed to be the only way for the country to do anything about what is the greatest problem facing the world today, and now that looks doomed too. (Manchin, has, as he always does, said that he may still be willing to make a deal, but don't count on it!). While it's easy to get angry at Manchin over this, it should be remembered that the Republican party, which is still the only major party in the entire world to deny the science of climate change, is even more to blame.  From the George W Bush administration removing all references to climate change from their own EPA reports to Trump ripping up the Paris climate accord, the Republican party's denial of science has been disastrous for both the country and the world.

And while the Supreme Court and Manchin are fiddling, the world is burning: 50 million Americans are currently threatened by overwhelming heat, the west coast is suffering through the now yearly ritual of terrible forest fires, and Europe is also in the middle of a crippling heat wave.  This is hardly the time for inaction.  Thankfully, the court ruling left  some things Biden can do around the edges, like regulating some air pollution, and cars and trucks.  But most of the work now must be done at the state level and local level; the good news is that states like California, Colorado and Ohio are passing laws to deal with the growing problem.  One encouraging sign is that on last April 30th. the state of California drew almost a 100% of its energy from renewable sources, and where California goes, other states will follow.  Meanwhile,  with electric vehicles are finally becoming popular in the US and more and more auto manufacturers are planning to abandon gas engines in the future.

Will action against climate change on the state and local level be enough to make the difference?  Sadly, it doesn't look like it will, but with the Republican party poised to retake the house and maybe the senate in November, it looks like laws passed in some states is all the country is going  to do in the near future.  Given that the Paris climate accord's goal was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2030, something that now looks almost impossible in the US (which is the second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world), science deniers like Manchin and the Republican party seem to have won again, with the world the loser.

MORE BAD NEWS FOR BIDEN

 It's one of the oddest stories in presidential history: on October 2nd., 1919, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke so devastating that it left him in bed for weeks.  During his incapacitation, his wife Edith had so much influence over his communications that some called her the first female president.  Amazingly, Wilson continued as president for over a year without completely recovering.

Decades later, when former President Ronald Reagan was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1994, there were many whispers about how he had started showing signs of that affliction as early as the mid 1980's.  Years later, former President Donald Trump spent the first two years of his presidency watching hours of TV and tweeting everyday, along with many rounds of golf or holding rallies in which he made random remarks entirely off the cuff.

I'm telling these stories to make a point; although we use lofty terms to describe the president in this country (the leader of the free world, the most powerful man in the world, the commander in chief), there is a certain automatic pilot quality to the president.  That is, the president has so many cabinet members and advisors, not to mention people planning out his schedule, that he can just cruise from one document signing or meeting to another without ever really doing a whole heck of a lot of work himself.  Even if the president blurts out the wrong thing at the wrong time in front of a camera, there are press agents and media types who will massage his words to fit the actual policy.  

Now, am I saying that this job is easy?  Of course not, just look at how much Barack Obama seemed to age between 2008 and 2012!  But this really depends on the president himself; Obama showed the wear and tear of the job because he truly wanted to make changes, which took numerous amounts of policy meetings and negotiations.  Trump didn't show the strain of the office because  he was mostly in it for himself, and he quickly realized shortly after taking office that he could just let everyone around him do the hard work, while he watched TV.  (This system  actually seemed to work for him until the coronavirus revealed his utterly incompetent nature).  In other words, it's the president's choice as to just how hands on he will be.

But then there's another factor: luck.  Much of the perceived success or failure of a presidency lies on the hands they're dealt when they're in office.  Bill Clinton, for example, came into office in 1992 when the cold war was over and rise of the internet caused huge economic growth, leading to a time of peace and prosperity.  The fact he didn't do anything to create the conditions necessary for that peace and prosperity didn't matter. He still reaped the benefit, easily winning a second term in office.  He was, like I said, lucky.

I used to think that Barack Obama, inheriting the disastrous Iraq war and the worst economy since the depression had the worst luck as a first term president.  But poor Joe Biden has him beat.  Just look at yet another devastating recent poll in the New York Times, showing a majority of registered Democrats not wanting him to run for a second term, partly because of his age, but also because of his job performance.  There is a perception that Biden is out of touch with the needs of the average voter and a desire that he is not doing enough about runaway inflation and high gas prices.  But the sad fact of the matter is that there is very little that he can do about those things.

I don't think the American public gets the idea of  just what the world has gone through in the past few years: the first global pandemic in over a 100 years, and the first war in Europe in over 80.  The pandemic drove up demand for physical goods as people stayed home and bought things online, driving up the prices.  The fractured supply lines both here and in other countries also lead to product shortages, another source of inflation.  And Russia's invasion of Ukraine has deeply effected the global economy; Ukraine is one the world's biggest exporters of wheat, and the war has inevitably greatly reduced the country's ability to make those exports, driving up food prices.  Meanwhile, attempts to reduce oil exports from Russia has lead to increased oil prices globally.  

If Joe Biden were lucky, he could be an autopilot president and take credit for good times, like Trump did for his first two years in office.  But because he took office at a historically bad time for the world, Biden has been beset with low approval ratings within months of taking office (February of 2022, when Vladamir Putin started the invasion of Ukraine, was when things got bad for him).

None of this is to say that I think Biden should be left off the hook, not at all.  He (and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen) should have seen the inflation problem coming.  And his inability to get his economic agenda passed through congress has made him look weak.  But the public's anger and desire to take out high prices on him is mostly just plain bad luck.  And it looks like it will make him a one term president.