THE CORONAVIRUS AND THE LIE OF LIBERTARIANISM

 

Just yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a recovery bill to help out Americans citizens and businesses hurt by the coronavirus.  This is only the second such bill to be passed in the months since the pandemic officially began.  For most people, the bill will bring them a one time check for six hundred dollars plus more for the unemployed.  The bill was passed at the last minute before millions of Americans faced evictions, and there are reports that the only reason it will pass the Senate is because Mitch McConnell thought that failing to pass such a bill would hurt the Republican candidates in the upcoming Senate election in the state of Georgia.

The fact that there was such a battle over the passage of a bill that will provide only a modicum of relief to most Americans shows how misguided our priorities are in this country.   While there are a number of reasons why America has done such a poor job of dealing with the pandemic as compared to other industrialized nations (President Trump's chaotic response and continued denials are a big a part), our government's fear of "big government handouts" has played a big part.  While other countries have paid citizens money to stay home (in Canada some workers got as much as two thousand dollars a month) poor and middle class workers who can't work from home  in America have basically been given the choice to go to work and risk catching and spreading the virus, or wind up homeless.  Putting it  bluntly, the same congress that a few years ago passed  a trillion and half dollar tax bill that mostly favored the rich, has fought tooth and nail to pass a similar bill to help people affected by what may be the worst health crisis in American history.  And even within a bill aimed at helping ordinary Americans and small businesses, there is a provision that  would let companies deduct one hundred percent of business meals with clients, up from the current fifty percent amount; which is essentially another hand out to the rich.

Our anemic response to the pandemic's affects beyond the infected seems to be based on the American myth of libertarianism, that notion that rugged individualism without government interference (and low tax rates, even on the rich) is the best way to run a country.  This belief really started to catch on in the nineteen eighties, when then president Ronald Reagan passed steep tax cuts for the rich under the wrongful belief that somehow they increased economic growth enough to pay for themselves (it didn't work then, and it still didn't work when both George W Bush and Donald Trump tried the same thing years later).

The truth of the matter is that the romantic notion of people taking care of themselves may have had an appeal in the early days of this country, when people tended to live in isolated communities, but today, as the pandemic shows, it's essentially ridiculous.  People are always going to need roads and bridges, law enforcement and firefighters, health departments and safety regulators, not to mention government workers risking their lives to help others in natural disasters.   And all of these things have to be paid for with tax dollars.  

This gets even more hypocritical when you look at the national trends of federal government spending; every year, blue states like New York and New Jersey pay more in federal taxes than they receive in federal spending, while red states like Kentucky and Mississippi get more in federal spending than they pay in taxes.  Really, the economies of some red states are basically kept afloat by the money paid to the government by blue states.  So much for rugged individualism!  Oh sure, the Republican leaders of those states rail against big government, but try taking Social Security and Medicare payments to their states and see how much they hate big government then.

Really, the pandemic has laid bare the problems of the American system of capitalism: even as the coronavirus has raged through the country, and  shutdowns have caused unemployment rates to skyrocket,  the wealthiest Americans have actually seen their wealth increase in the past nine months.  And because we have a crazy, free market system of healthcare in which most people receive it through an employer, many of the millions of people that have lost their jobs have also lost their healthcare.  During a pandemic.  So, even for the millions of Americans lucky enough not to be directly affected by the virus, many of them will be poorer and less healthy.

If there is a silver lining to this, it that's America may finally get over the notion that the rich paying their fair share of taxes is "Socialism"and that when the effects of the pandemic wind up hitting the poor and middle class far more than the rich, perhaps there will be  support for a wealth tax, or some kind of increase in the upper income tax rate to somewhat even the huge gap between the rich and the poor in this country.  At the very least, the millions of Americans who will be without healthcare may finally drive this country into adapting the same kind of national healthcare programs that every other industrialized nation has.   But, given that the Republican party has not been given the kind of stinging rebuke they deserved for supporting Trump for the past five years, it may not happen soon.  

THE CULT LEADER

 

Towards the end of his life, L Ron Hubbard, the creator of the cult Church of Scientology, was seen hooking himself up to a so called e-meter, a bogus device used by followers of his church to check their mental health.  While it's obvious to anyone not in the Scientology cult that Hubbard was a charlatan who founded the religion as a money making scheme, it appears that he eventually started believing his own lies.   There is a certain perfect symmetry to this; if you're a charismatic con artist who gets a large group of people to believe in what your saying, eventually you're going to start believing it too.  Like Hubbard, if you surround yourself only with people who repeat the things you say back to you, the brainwasher can find himself joining the brainwashed.

Which brings us to the most prominent cult leader in American today, soon to be former President Donald Trump.  Despite the Electoral College vote yesterday that confirmed Joe Biden's win, not to mention the dismissal by the Supreme Court, of a Texan lead attempt to overturn the vote counts in four states, Trump  maintains that somehow he will still find a way to turn the election.  This leads to an interesting question: is Trump just using his attempt to overturn his loss as a way to fire up his followers, or does he really think that somehow millions of votes were fraudulently counted?

On the one hand, Trump has been using his legal challenges to the election as a fundraising cash cow.  Emails begging his supporters for money have raised tens of millions of dollars so far.  And, as many members of  the media have pointed out, while the top of the email says that the money will go to his legal team, in the fine print at the bottom is the announcement that most of the money is going to his new political action committee.  In other words, his legal fund is just another con from a man whose life has been filled with them.  Also, his point man on the legal charges against the election has been Rudy Giuliani, who's fee has been estimated to be around twenty thousand dollars a day.  On top of that, it's been reported that he may want a presidential pardon from Trump.  So of course Giuliani is going to push every legal case that he can, he wants to make money and impress the president.  Most people are willing to tell lies for twenty grand a day! And all the other Trump people publicly defending his attempts to overturn the election are just doing it to impress him, or perhaps land a lucrative job in right wing media.  It would appear to be a cynical cash in all around.

On the other hand, people around the president are saying that he often really seems to  believe that this election was somehow stolen, and that someday soon the truth will appear and he will remain in the White House.  In other words, he may not be a cynical con man, he may be straight up delusional.  The fact that he surrounds himself with sycophants and immerses himself in right wing media that continually (and absurdly) claims that he actually won, combined with his narcissistic nature and constant need to be seen as winner, may skew is entire sense of reality itself.  He may be a cult leader drinking his own kool aid.

This dichotomy between cynical con man and true believer is echoed in his devoted followers, who say in polls that they believe that the election was stolen, but then admit in interviews that they aren't sure.  It would appear that the rallies being held by his supporters recently are as much about anger at the outcome of the election than they are a genuine belief that it was stolen.  (Either way, they are becoming violent, and Trump is irresponsibly doing nothing to quell that violence).  

The sad thing about cults is that it's very hard to get someone out of one once they've joined.  A cult can bring a sense of order and unity to someone's life, and provides like minded friends that you can bond with.  The problem is their sincere beliefs are combined with a hostility towards outsiders.  And people who try to leave the cult are often hated the most of all.  For an example of this, just look at the death threats being aimed by Trumpists at Republican leaders who haven't supported Trump's legal efforts.  And there is no easy way for the country to get over Trumpism, which is sure to follow him even as he reluctantly leaves power.  The beliefs of his followers are just too strong to disappear even when he is no longer president.  The effects of Trump's degradation of both the office of the presidency and the Republican party will be felt for years to come, even if he himself fades away.

DEMOCRACY IS HOLDING, FOR NOW

Another day, another humiliating loss for Donald Trump and his quixotic (some might say insane) desire to hold onto the White House.  Today, Georgia just finished their third (!) recount of the presidential votes, and it once again affirms that Joe Biden won the state by about twelve thousand votes.  This comes after one loss after another in the courts (the Associate Press reports that fifty court filings so far have led to only one minor victory for the president's legal team).  In perhaps one of the more stinging rebukes against the Trump legal team, Federal  judge Stephanos Bibas ruled against them, saying "Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so.  Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”   Bibas, it should be pointed out, was appointed by Trump, proving both the importance of an independent judicial system, and that partisanship does not always overrule the truth.  And it's not just the courts that are rebuking him, recently the state of Wisconsin did a recount of votes (paid for by Trump's campaign), that actually added to Biden's vote total.

This is all good news in that it shows that American democracy, despite the roughing up it has taken in the past four years, is still holding on.  But it is upsetting in that Trump has shown that the edges of our system can be frayed.  From our absurd Electoral College that gave Trump his victory in twenty sixteen despite his losing the popular vote by almost three million, to his (thankfully failed) attempt to get electors in certain states to vote against the will of the voters, Trump has shown that he very well could have stolen the election if it had been closer.  Really, his legal team's ineptitude is a perfect capper to his political career; chaotic, poorly planned, and built around the erratic, needy nature of Trump himself.  If he had been more organized, and started making legal charges against election laws before the election, he just might have gotten away with it, but then, without chaos he wouldn't be Trump.

So now we have reports of him sullenly stalking the oval office, repeating "I won I won" to anyone within earshot, acting much like Richard Nixon did in his final days.  But unfortunately, there is a crucial difference; Nixon's downfall came with plummeting approval in his own party, which eventually led to the elected leaders of his own party turning on him.  Sadly, for the most part, this hasn't happened to Trump.  So far, only a handful of Republican officials have publicly admitted that he lost.  In a Senatorial debate in Georgia yesterday, Senator Kelly Loeffler refused to say whether Trump had won or lost that state in the election.  And with good reason, a clear majority of registered Republicans (in some polls, as many as seventy percent) think that the election was somehow stolen by Biden.  

We've been down this road before; during the presidency of Barack Obama, the crazy  notion that he had actually been born in Kenya was seen as believable by a large number of Republicans.  In other words, "Stop the Steal" is just the new birtherism, and it is really a surprise that a party that has often rejected the truths of evolution and climate change would move latch on to another falsehood?  Fueled by the right wing media, for years now millions of Republicans would rather hear what they believe to be true rather than the actual truth.

Now, while there's no chance that the current conspiracy beliefs will change the election, it may prove to be a rallying cry in future elections, which is where my real concern lies.  What if another demagogic cult like leader like Trump arises in this country?  And what if that leader isn't  disorganized and distracted like him?  American has disposed of one president that is all too willing to discard democracy for his own personal gain, but what happens if another such leader rises?  If Trump has taught us anything, it's that American democracy is more fragile than we thought, and that in the door to outright fascism may be open to just the right kind of leader.  (If you think I'm just being paranoid, remember that Trump sometimes publicly mused about getting a third term, or even a lifetime appointment.) Hopefully America will never have another Trump, but it's not impossible. 

HOW TO STEAL AN ELECTION

 

As Donald Trump continues his flailing, borderline incoherent attempts to overturn an election he clearly lost, it might be a good time to remember a past election that was, in my opinion, stolen successfully. 

 In the year two thousand, Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W Bush were running neck and neck in the presidential election.  Gore's years as Vice President under Bill Clinton had seen the country experience enormous peace and prosperity.  But Clinton had also been impeached by the House of Representatives and had suffered withering attacks on his character (some reasonable, some not) from the Republican Party.  George W Bush, meanwhile, was seen as an amiable dimwit who was lucky enough to be born into a wealthy family with a political legacy.  And there was a viable third party candidate, Ralph Nader running on the Green Party ticket, that was siphoning votes away from Gore.  (And whom I voted for, a vote I would later deeply regret).

An election as close as that one was, was sure to come down to the wire.  In fact, it was a mess, as it all wound up in the state of Florida, which veered from one candidate to another as the election night wore on.  At one point Gore called Bush to concede, and then called back to rescind the first call!  

While there was all kinds of craziness going on in the recounts in that state, from confusing "butterfly" ballots that may have gotten voters to vote for the wrong candidate to election officials surveying ballots to try and discern the voter's intent, it was far from America's finest hour of democracy.  As we all know, the supreme court stepped in and essentially gave the presidency to Bush by halting all the recounts.  But was he really the candidate who won, or was it just close enough for him to steal it?  I certainly think that  it was stolen.

Why?  Because,  beyond the insanity, one chilling fact emerged after it was too late to do anything about it: many African American voters said that when they went to vote, they were told that their names were not on the voting list and they were turned away.  While we don't know how many voters were wrongfully turned away, considering that the final vote count for George W Bush was a miniscule five hundred and thirty seven more than Al Gore's shows how easily the election could have turned to Gore.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People eventually sued the state, and during the investigation it was discovered that, because Florida did not let felons vote, a list of felons had to be sent to election officials to remove from the voting rolls.  And the company that made that list, Database Technologies, overshot the list, putting names on that shouldn't have been for a variety of reasons.  Edward Hailes, who was then the acting general counsel of the US Civil Rights Commission, said that the number of disenfranchised African American voters was in the thousands, and added that “We did think it was outcome-determinative.” 

While these findings did lead to changes in the Florida voting process, it was, or course, too late to do anything about the outcome of the election.  Putting it simply, the election was close enough for Bush to steal it in a state in which, it should be remembered, his own brother was governor of.  And he was aided by a supreme court that had two members that had been put there by his father.   It was almost a third world dictatorship level of corruption.  

Not only would Bush prove to be a disastrous president, the legacy of the Florida debacle would live on in the Republican Party's repeated attempts to suppress the voting rights of non white voters (especially African Americans).  From wildly overblown charges of voter fraud to Gerrymandering, the GOP will use almost any means possible to disenfranchise voters unlikely to vote for them.

And the legacy of voter suppression lives on now in Trump's wild rantings; along with crazy charges of rigged voting machines and lost ballots, he and his legal team have focused on trying to get votes thrown out of cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia.  Cities that have, naturally, high African American populations.  While there is virtually no chance that Trump and his legal team will prevail, the sad reality is that another stolen election could be on the horizon.  There is simply no reason for the Republican Party to abandon their attempts at voter suppression when they have often proven successful; really, it's just the logical extension of the Southern Strategy that the party has been using to get blue collar white voters to vote for them for decades.   Although I like to think that someday there will be a reckoning for the Republican Party's extremism that will cause them to have to be more open to compromise and move towards the center politically, given their ability to game the system for power, that day may not be for a while.

UM...FINALLY

This is the second time I've used the word "finally" in the title of a blog post regarding Donald Trump.  The first time I used it was way back in September of twenty sixteen when then candidate Trump held a press conference in which he announced that he no longer believed that President Barack Obama was lying about his birthplace.  And now, four years later, I'm using that word again to describe him admitting something that the vast majority of the world knows to be true: that he lost the election to Joe Biden.

The use of the word "finally" is crucial both times, because they both indicate just how much Trump has lowered the office of the presidency since he first decided to run back in twenty fifteen.  The first time it seemed appalling to me that someone who was spreading vile conspiracies about the president could possibly win the Republican nomination for president (boy was I naive!).  And it must be remembered that even as Trump admitted that birtherism was wrong, he also said that it was started by the Hillary Clinton campaign back in two thousand and eight (it wasn't) and that Trump himself was the one who ended it (actually, he had kept it going for years).  In other words, even when he was right about something, he was still dishonest.

Which is why, even though I'm glad that Trump has conceded, the reluctance he has shows illustrates the damage he has done to our country and the world, and it in no way makes me feel better about a man like him ever being in the White House in the first place.  Remember that his concesion comes over two weeks after the election was officially called on November the seventh, and only after his legal team flooded the courts with challenges in swing states, almost all of which were swiftly and summarily thrown out.  The fact of the matter is that this election wasn't even close, with Biden getting over six million more popular votes and winning in the Electoral College by three hundred and six votes to Trump's two hundred and thirty two.  Only the most cult like follower of Trump could possibly believe that over six million votes were stolen, which would be an electoral fraud of epic proportions. 

It would appear that the straw that finally broke Trump's back was that fact that even business leaders who supported his reelection told him to step down for the good of the country.  There was also talk of Republican donors refusing to support the party as long as he kept fighting.  Sadly, like so many other things in this country, it all came down to money.

And in typical Trumpian fashion, even his concession tweets don't really sound like a real concession:  

"I want to thank Emily Murphy at GSA for her steadfast dedication and loyalty to our Country. She has been harassed, threatened, and abused – and I do not want to see this happen to her, her family, or employees of GSA. Our case STRONGLY continues, we will keep up the good.....fight, and I believe we will prevail! Nevertheless, in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same."

Yeah, it's hardly a statement of contrition, but I'll take it just to get rid of him.  Now I hope that once he's out of the White House the various legal charges against him will proceed, keeping him from running again in twenty twenty four. We'll see.

EVEN FOX NEWS?

Donald Trump may be having his John Birch Society moment.  Although it's now a shadow of its former self, back in the nineteen fifties and sixties, that far right political group had an enormous influence on right wing, cold war politics.  At first, William F Buckley, conservative intellectual and founder of the right wing magazine The National Review, embraced the organization. But then it was discovered that Birch Society founder Robert W. Welch Jr. had once written a political statement accusing then President Dwight D Eisenhower of being a Communist.  The absurd notion that a Republican president and war hero could be a red was too much for Buckley, who openly denounced the extreme group.  It's hard to believe that there was ever a right wing movement to the right of Buckley, but there was.  Sadly, unlike Buckley, the Republican Party is not doing the right thing and turning on Trump, even as he distorts reality.

In the past few days, Donald Trump has been publicly turning on Fox News, the Roger Aisles founded network that somehow isn't conservative enough for him.  Although no other large news organization has more openly defended and cheered Trump, he still has lashed out against it in his tweets.  Why?  Because, despite what the right wing opinion shows on the station are saying, the more news oriented programs on the network have accepted the reality of Joe Biden defeating Trump.  To add insult to injury, during the election, Fox was the first network to call the state of Arizona for Biden.  So now Trump has started touting other even more extreme (but far less popular) right wing networks  like the  One America News Network or Newsmax, which claim that there is still a chance that Trump will win the election through his (baseless) legal actions.  

So here we have a prime example of the damage Trump has done to not only the nation but to his chosen political party as well.  It isn't enough for him that the commentary shows on Fox are still hyping his "stolen election" narrative, he still feels betrayed by Fox because their reality based news anchors won't fall in line behind him.  In his world, if he says the sky is purple, the right wing news media had better agree.

Sadly, this all just a part of how completely the Republican party has become a cult around Trump.  Just look at their party platform at the last convention, which was nothing more than a statement that Trump speaks for the party on all things. Think about how the party that once pushed Jimmy Carter into selling his peanut farm after  he was elected president because it was a conflict of interest was fine with Trump running a hotel that bore his name in Washington DC while he was president.  The party that denounced Bill Clinton for "immorality" when he was president ignored twenty six different women charging Trump with sexual assault or rape.  The party that celebrated Ronald Reagan even as he granted amnesty to millions of undocumented immigrants, later supported a man who wanted to build a wall on the border and called Mexican immigrants "rapists".  And now they're so cowed by him and his popularity in the party that only a handful of elected Republican officials are willing to admit that he lost.  There's a feeling in the party that Trump just needs some time and  space to deal with his feelings about losing, as if the president were a screaming child throwing his toys around, instead of a grown man. 

So, even though Trump is destined to leave the White House on January twentieth (perhaps kicking and screaming all the way), his influence on the party will continue.  Just how will that influence will express itself?  Perhaps he will join with Newsmax or OANN to create his own right wing mediasphere in which his every tweet will be regarded as words from the lord on high.  Or he may run again in twenty twenty four, striking fear into the hearts of other Republican candidates(and any decent American for that matter).  In any event, his stamp of xenophobia, bigotry and outright corruption will brand the party for years to come, and, hopefully, someday it will pay a steep price for every supporting a man like him in the first place.

DONALD TRUMP AND THE DANGERS OF CELEBRITY WORSHIP

As Donald Trump continues to flail vainly at the outcome of the election, and his political career looks like it will soon be in the rear view mirror, it might be a good time to consider just how America elected such a man in the first place.   While there are a number of factors that led to his election, from white resentment to the Comey memo, one factor that is rarely talked about is Trump's image as a celebrity.

Before that, let's look at the reelection of Barack Obama in two thousand and twelve.  After his victory, the Republican Party went through a lot of soul searching.  When he had won the first time in two thousand and eight, they rationalized that fall out from the disastrous Iraq war and the terrible economy meant that no Republican could win that year.  But Obama's second victory was different, as it was a straight up battle between Republican and Democratic priorities, and  Obama's win seemed to show a definite shift in attitudes in the American public.  The Republican party realized that if they didn't find a way to appeal to younger, non white voters, their days in the White House coming to an end.  And yet, four years later they would embrace a candidate who seemed to have zero to say to anyone but white older voters.  And he improbably won.

It's amazing to remember now what a joke Trump's campaign looked like back in twenty fifteen.  Most of the media dismissed him as a silly sideshow, a TV star in over his head, making racist comments in his opening speech and lying and bragging constantly.  But he kept winning, despite the fact that he broke every rule of being a successful politician (not to mention every rule of common decency).  After openly criticizing the war record of Senator John McCain, many Republican politicians thought that his political career was over.  But he just kept steamrolling.

While much of his popularity in the Republican party seemed to stem from his channeling of the angers, fears and hatreds of older, white Americans, his appeal went beyond the limits of his party.  When he won the twenty sixteen election, he was able to also get enough  independent (and even Democratic!) votes to push him over the finish line.  Surely not all of his support was based on pure racism.  After all, analysis by the UVA Center for Politics after the election found that millions of voters switched from Obama to Trump.  So race was not the only deciding factor in his twenty sixteen win.

So what else was it?  What could possibly make people who voted for Obama vote for a man who repeatedly said that Obama was not a legitimate president?  Well, I think one answer can be found in an interview I heard with one of those voters, a pro choice,  woman  who supported gay marriage, and yet  switched from Obama to Trump.  When asked why, she replied that "He's a successful businessman, he knows how the economy works."  This to me maybe the key to Trump's political success: he's never been a politician, he's a celebrity, one with a strong image burned into the minds of the American public.

Remember, Trump is truly a unique figure in presidential politics; never before had someone moved so quickly from celebrity to president.  Yes, Ronald Reagan had been a movie star, but by the time he ran in nineteen eighty, he hadn't been in a movie in many years.  Trump, on the other hand, was still a television star the day he declared.  So Trump is still to this day a celebrity first and a politician second, and that has played well for him because the public holds celebrities to a different standard than politicians.  For example, way back in nineteen eighty eight, then Senator Joe Biden had to drop out of the presidential race, just because he plagiarized a speech.  Trump obviously did far worse than that in his campaign, but it didn't matter, because, as he himself put it on the infamous Access Hollywood tape:  "When you're a star they just let you do it, you can do anything."  People have always forgiven, and even encouraged, bad behavior in our celebrities.  From The Rolling Stones openly using drugs to Hugh Grant getting busted for soliciting a prostitute, famous people are almost never punished for the things they do.  This helps explain why Trump's offensive statements and lies have rarely hurt him politically.    

Also, another important thing to think about is the persona that celebrities build around themselves.  Look at John Wayne, a star who for years personified the swaggering, manly man in movie after movie.  Did it hurt his image that he chose not to serve in the military during World War Two?  (He was too old to be drafted, but was young enough to have served voluntarily if he had wanted to).  No.  He had branded his image as a tough guy in so many movies that it didn't matter.  He was still the ultimate cowboy.  And so it is with Trump, who has spent most of his life promoting himself as the ultimate successful tycoon.  Just look at the opening credits of his television show The Apprentice, which depicts him as almost godlike, as he goes from flying in a private helicopter, to riding in a limo to entering a skyscraper that bears his name.  To million of viewers, there was no question that he was a great businessman and dealer.  The fact that he inherited his father's already very profitable business, or that he declared bankruptcy five times, didn't matter.  His image of a wealthy, self made man was more powerful than the truth.  Given this, even his terrible treatment of women can be excused; that's just how powerful men are.  They take what they want because they can.

Twice now, Trump has beaten the polls, which pegged him to lose to Hillary Clinton in twenty sixteen and to lose by a bigger margin to Biden than he eventually did.  But there is still some  good news for the future here.  I think that the Trump presidency will be seen as a once in a lifetime phenomenon.  Currently,  there are no other right wing media figures out there who could bring his combination of celebrityhood, extreme self confidence and image of success into the political arena the way he did.  What that means is that the Republican party got very lucky in twenty sixteen, and that they are still going to have to find a way to appeal beyond their old, white base if they want any more national success in the future.  But then again, Trump could run in twenty twenty four...