Insurrection and the 14th Amendment

Posted on March 5, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 5, 2024

On March 4th, the United States Supreme Court demonstrated that it is almost as dysfunctional as our Congress. Two unanimous rulings would normally signal unity and agreement, but the only point on which the Justices were agreed was being unwilling to be seen as the instrument that undid Donald Trump’s MAGA movement. Its decisions were accompanied by three supporting opinions that sharply contradicted and attacked each other.

The Court unanimously decided that states cannot remove a candidate from a presidential ballot based on the Insurrectionist Clause (Section 3) of the 14th Amendment because the Constitution assigns the power to enforce the Amendment to Congress. The problem with that conclusion is that nowhere in the Amendment or elsewhere in the Constitution is that delegation to Congress explicitly stated.

The Court denied Trump’s arguments that he was not an officer of the government at the time of the January 6th insurrection and that he did not engage in the insurrection. Rather, their second unanimous decision was to accept without comment the Colorado Supreme Court’s finding that Trump is guilty of leading the insurrection.

The Court had no trouble agreeing on its decision. Its problem was finding a legal justification for it. If Congress is the only entity empowered to disqualify a candidate under the Amendment, disqualification can never occur in real time while the question is relevant. Unlike the Court, which can act expeditiously in emergencies, Congress could only rule a candidate ineligible by passing legislation to correct what it considers a violation of the Amendment after the fact. If said candidate had already won the election and been inaugurated, Congress’ only recourse would be impeachment, which is a political process bearing little resemblance to a legal proceeding. The Founders considered impeachment an emergency measure to save the country from a corrupt president, but Congress turned it into a political weapon.

In an Op-ed, today, respected University of Connecticut historian Manisha Sinha wrote: “Section 3 does not call for Congress to enforce disqualification for participating or aiding in an insurrection. It only gives Congress the power to remove that disqualification by a two-thirds majority of each house.” Conservative attorney George Conway told CNN that none of the three opinions defending the decision “make any sense whatsoever.” The Court implicitly agreed that Trump committed insurrection, but ruled that his guilt doesn’t disqualify him. In Conway’s words, Trump “remains an adjudicated insurrectionist” because the Court accepted Colorado’s conclusion that he was guilty.

Americans have always naively seen the Supreme Court as the last line of defense in enforcing laws that translate our Constitution into rules of order. Every attempt to stack the Court toward any extreme ideology has been met with huge outcries from  legal scholars on all sides. But Trump and then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in one of the few areas in which their interests were aligned, created a politicized Court that found itself unable to reach a rational conclusion on an issue that has potentially catastrophic implications for our democracy. It effectively refused to engage in arguments over the long-term interests of the United States, and in doing so reneged on its role as a Branch of Government co-equal to the Executive.

When I step back from the politics and the vitriolic pronouncements on all sides, I’m left with genuine concern for America’s future. Donald Trump has found dozens of ways to challenge our innocence, our blind trust that America rested on a sound foundation and the Supreme Court could always be relied on to rise above pettiness and power games. That made me compare the Court to the United Nations.

The UN was a bold, brave attempt to create the illusion of world unity, but it only works when all the permanent members of the Security Council are in agreement. Situations like Ukraine and Gaza, which challenge the individual interests of the great powers invariably end in stalemate. I can’t help but look at the Court that way. It has demonstrated a willingness to strike unprecedented ground when its action is in line with a powerful political minority, but finding itself in a unique position to depoliticize an issue of critical importance to our democracy, it lacked the will.

Yet, in putting its dysfunction on display, the Court managed to reach the right conclusion. Part of me would love to see Donald Trump disqualified, his political career and financial empire in ruins, his future spent fighting to stay out of prison. But given the divisions in the country and the lies Trump effectively promulgated, disqualifying him would leave his supporters more enraged and dangerous than they were when he whined that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

The only way to silence Trump and the MAGA movement is for them to be soundly, convincingly defeated in November. The voters are us, and in America, we’re supposed to be the ones who determine our future.

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Trump is Dead Wrong on Ukraine

Posted on February 26, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 26, 2024

It’s a cliché that experience is the best teacher. As a tutor, I tell kids that learning from their mistakes is the best way to improve their skills. Every important scientific discovery was preceded by countless failed attempts. When the stakes are high, when the cost of failure is intolerable, those truisms usually spell the difference between success and catastrophe.

The elephant in the room is the two-sided coin of isolationism versus building alliances. America tried isolation after World War 1. Our soldiers returned home victorious to a country physically unscathed by war but mourning the deaths of more than 100,000 of its young men, and the survivors came back with horror stories of what they’d seen overseas. Given the devastation in Europe, and those big oceans that separated us from the rest of the world, it’s easy to see why Americans wanted to be rid of Europe’s problems, especially the millions of immigrants who’d recently fled Europe to settle here.

In the 1920s, isolationism went hand-in-hand with rising nationalism and reckless economic policies. Historians still debate how much isolationism contributed to the Great Depression, but there’s no doubt that twenty years of isolationism left most Americans eager to look the other way when Adolf Hitler turned the Weimar Republic into a Nazi war machine. Had we stood strong with our Allies in the 1930s and recognized the need for war preparedness, we might still have been involved in the second war, but with our Pacific Fleet still intact. Have we learned anything from that?

Almost a century later, those huge oceans no longer feel like protective moats. For seventy-five years, only Mutually Assured Destruction and world leaders on all sides who behaved sanely during crises kept the world from nuclear war. But the same M. A. D. that averted war left the world with a legacy of thousands of intercontinental nuclear missiles. We like to console ourselves by assuming that no sane leader would ever launch them, and therein lies the problem.

Should Donald Trump win the 2024 election, the two most powerfully armed countries in the world will be ruled by power-mad narcissists who have no regard for the people they govern. How do we know? Donald Trump thought sacrificing a half million Americans to COVID was a fair price to avoid any potential threat to our economy and the wealth of his benefactors. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has cost nearly a half million Russian lives to fight a war whose only potential benefit is an expansion of Putin’s power. A pittance compared to the seven million Russians sacrificed by Josef Stalin, but a clear measure of the kind of adversary we face in Putin.

Europeans recognize Putin as this century’s Hitler, and not by coincidence, the thirty-one nations that comprise NATO have never been more united, militarily and economically. That remarkable fact by itself should be enough to define the threat Putin poses. Could anything else possibly result in the unity of the nations of western and central Europe? Unlike the people who like to talk tough and make threats on this side of the pond, Europeans have been killing each other since the Greek and Roman Empires. They understand the causes of war better than anyone, and collectively, they learned the lesson of appeasement the led to World War 2.

Joe Biden did a remarkable job of pulling NATO back together after Trump shattered our allies’ confidence in the United States, but it was the easily recognized threat of Russia that made his success possible. The handwriting on the wall couldn’t be clearer. Turning our backs on Europe and allowing Russia to crush Ukraine will have the same long-term result as failing to stop Germany from destroying Czechoslovakia did in 1938. Poland clearly sees it that way.

Why, then, you might ask, would the MAGA extremists in our Congress refuse to aid Ukraine after they’ve held off massive Russian attacks for two years? The MAGA movement has become a complex power cult. Like most cults, it’s comprised of a few people willing to do anything to increase their own wealth and power, and a large number of followers who seem to have lost the ability to think for themselves and recognize their real self-interest. Witness the nearly 500 people serving prison sentences for attacking the Capitol who only now realize how they were deceived by Trump.

The most dangerous aspect of the MAGA movement’s attempt to dominate America’s future is its blind loyalty to an amoral sociopath who is mentally ill, unwilling to learn from the experience and errors of people far smarter and more qualified to lead than he is, and worst of all, who is in Vladimir Putin’s thrall. If it’s not clear, I’m talking about Donald Trump. A Trump victory in November would put Europe, America, and the entire world at risk.

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$1.3 Billion

Posted on February 17, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 17, 2024

One and a third billion dollars! That’s the total amount Donald Trump has been fined, to date, by two different New York courts. Think about the implications of that number. If you graduated from college at age twenty-one, your average annual earnings for the next forty-nine years were $150,000, and you retired at seventy, your total earnings during your working life would have been $7,350,000. That is about one half of one percent of the amount Trump must pay for defamation and decades of business fraud.

All this after decades in which Trump’s fraudulent business practices have placed him in constant conflict with our legal system and resulted in bankruptcies and being banned from receiving loans by every major American commercial bank. And this is before any of his criminal trials on more than ninety felony charges begins. He’s being prosecuted by one red state, one blue state, and the U. S. Department of Justice, all of which, Trump tells us is part of a vast conspiracy to keep him from becoming president again orchestrated by current president Joe Biden. Trump believes average Americans aren’t smart enough to know the difference between prosecution and persecution.

CNN journalist Stephen Collinson summed up what the judge’s findings in the New York business fraud case tell us about Trump perfectly:

  • “Trump thinks rules are for other people. He will always break them in seeking more wealth, more attention, or more votes.
  • If reality doesn’t get the ex-president what he wants, he conjures a new one.
  • Trump is compelled always to fight — even when stepping back would be smarter.
  • And when accountability finally arrives, he sees justice as an act of persecution by his enemies.”

This is the man who wants to be president again, and that is the role model he presents for the rest of us. If you’re caught with your hand in the cookie jar, or in Trump’s case when it’s been lodged deep in the jar during his entire life, just scream “witch hunt!” How much sympathy do you think you’d get if you embezzled money from your employer and screamed persecution when you were caught? How would your reputation fare if thirteen women independently accused you of sexual assault, and it was proved that some received payoffs to remain silent and one received a court ruling that you had, in fact, sexually assaulted and defamed her? What would your life expectancy be if the entire world had seen you lead an insurrection on live television?

Trump intends to ride the persecution pony straight into his campaign rallies. He stands before judges accused of major crimes, and calls them corrupt to their faces. He rails against a rigged legal system and rigged elections. The person he most sounds like is Alexey Navalny, who was persecuted for years by Trump’s hero, Vladimir Putin, who has harassed, deported, imprisoned, and after several failed attempts, finally poisoned him. It’s darkly ironic, that if Trump were a Russian who accused Putin of the things he accuses Biden of, he’d be lying dead in a cell today. But in America, with its principle of free speech, someone like Trump can threaten all of its institutions, divide its people based envy and lies, and still be a viable candidate for president.

How can this be? According to Collinson, it’s because of “Trump’s political super skill — his capacity to identify and harness the frustration of Americans who feel themselves rejected and condescended to by East Coast political, economic and media elites.” Trump acts like some kind of twisted Robin Hood character, except that Robin Hood stole from the rich to feed the poor, while Trump enriches the already powerful and obscenely wealthy (and himself) at the expense of everyone else.

Great nations that claim to live according to idealistic pronouncements are all eventually tested. Critics of America’s unique system of individual protections and freedoms warn repeatedly that they make us vulnerable to power-mad populists like Trump. Without an absolute authority to assert what is true and what is fiction, and without the internal security forces that keep dictators in place, our system allows its citizens to make their own judgments about who will lead them. Trump is proving how remarkably courageous our Founders were when they drafted our Constitution. They gambled on democracy, in effect placing all their confidence in the ability of Americans to see through fluff, lies, and demagoguery and make the right choices.

I think of Trump as a stress test for America’s heart. If it fails, the America we know dies. If we pass, we vindicate the revolution that created us.

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An Unhinged Trump Threatens All of Us

Posted on February 14, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 14, 2024

My wife summed up yesterday’s news perfectly: Trump intends to divide the world in half with himself and Valdimir Putin in complete control of their shares. She may have erred in excluding China’s Xi Jinping, who would prefer that the world be divided in three parts, but she was essentially correct. It’s obvious to anyone who has watched Trump over the last few years that he actually believes in that fantasy, and that if it came to pass, he would trust Putin to honor whatever lines they agreed to. Trump’s naïve worship of autocrats can only result in direct conflict with Russia and China in the long run, and that places our entire planet at risk of annihilation.

At the end of the second world war, America had to choose. We could return to the isolationism of the 1930s, which may have made that conflict inevitable, or as the strongest surviving nation with a commitment to democracy and decency, accept the mantle of leadership. We chose the latter, as a pragmatic attempt to lay the foundations for lasting peace and equally important, to fulfill the moral commitment embodied in our national values. We were the driving force behind the creation of the United Nations and the Marshall Plan that accelerated the recovery, not only of our allies, but of our defeated enemies as well.

We created NATO, not only as defense against the aggressive expansionism of the Soviet Union, but as the best way to ensure the security and prosperity of all nations. My generation grew up believing in those things. They made us feel secure, but they also made us proud to be Americans. The message I heard most often as a child was that kids in Europe were starving, and it was our duty to save them. Our commitments to protect Taiwan from China, South Korea from North Korea, and Israel from its hostile neighbors may not have had the same clarity of purpose as our commitment to NATO, but together they defined the America we knew until Donald Trump came along.

Trump would return us to isolation from the rest of the world, but it would be a different kind of isolation than the xenophobes of the 1930s sought. In a world without nuclear weapons and huge powerful missiles and aircraft capable of destroying civilization, isolation was viewed as defensive, as insulating us from the conflicts of European and Asian imperialism. It was an absurdly foolish notion, but given the mess the world in when the first world war ended and the Great Depression that followed a decade of irresponsible leadership, it’s easy to see why that message appealed to people.

Today that message is entirely different. We can’t run and hide, because no one on Earth is safe from the repercussions of failed leadership. And that is exactly what we got and will continue to get from Donald Trump. Trump doesn’t care about the things we grew up believing in. The world is just a stage for his massive ego. He couldn’t care less about democracy or our Constitution, because neither contributes to his wealth and power, and those are the only two things that motivate him.

Trump is the antithesis of democracy and national security. We see the former in his approach to politics. Divide and conquer. Use every unscrupulous tactic to assure the dominance of a small minority of extremists. Pander to every fringe group, no matter how heinous. Attack the integrity of our justice system when it can’t be bent to his will. Lie, cheat, steal, and defame, because those are the only tactics that can achieve his objectives.

As despicable as that is however, tearing apart our alliances and placing our national security at risk for future generations is nothing less than treason. The notion of failing to defend our allies against aggressors and dictators to gain their personal favor is a crime against America and all of humanity. It’s something that only someone as unhinged and mentally ill as Donald Trump would contemplate.

None of that is surprising. The world knows who Donald Trump is and what he represents, and decent people everywhere are horrified by the possibility that he could return to power. Perhaps more horrifying is that unless his next attempt at coup and insurrection succeeds, the outcome we fear can only occur if he wins the election next November. Given that the archaic way we elect a President is vulnerable to every kind of manipulation and voter suppression, it’s still the case that at least two out of five Americans would have to vote for Trump for him to win.

Did you ever imagine that forty percent of America could be taken in by this charlatan and that many of them would be obsessively devoted to his sick brand of politics? Our worst nightmare could come to pass if we don’t wake up and do what’s necessary to prevent it. We can start by convincing the majority of responsible Republicans in the House that Speaker Mike Johnson’s loyalty to Trump cannot be allowed to scuttle military aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.

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A M O C

Posted on February 10, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, Febru1ary 10, 2024

If you’re not familiar with the acronym AMOC, it’s the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, an ocean current that “works like a giant global conveyor belt, taking warm water from the tropics toward the far North Atlantic, where the water cools, becomes saltier and sinks deep into the ocean, before spreading southward.” If that description makes you wonder why you should care, I’ll add that the Gulf Stream, which keeps the climate in the northeastern part of North America from the mid-Atlantic to New Brunswick, Canada temperate, (habitable,) is part of the AMOC.

If the Gulf Stream stopped flowing, all of the eastern portions of the United States and Canada north of about 39 degrees latitude, roughly the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area, would be covered with glaciers within a few years. Acclaimed science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson first addressed this in his 2005 trilogy, Science in the Capital. Long an advocate of finding ways to mitigate the effects of climate change, Robinson is not a doom-sayer. Rather he is a utopian who believes science will prevail in the end.

Scientists have long understood that AMOC and its child, the Gulf Stream, are sustained by the salinity of the Atlantic Ocean, particularly the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. Climate change is critical here, because rising global air and ocean temperatures are melting our polar icecaps. As the ice melts it turns to fresh water which decreases the salinity (the percentage of salt in the ocean water.) There is no scientific doubt that if this continues indefinitely, a tipping point will be reached at which the salinity has decreased by so much that these critical ocean currents collapse. What scientists have been unable to predict or calculate until now is how close we are to the tipping point and when we might reach it.

Recently, however, researchers at the University of Utrecht (Netherlands) used a supercomputer to run a sophisticated simulation of ocean currents, energy, temperature, and salinity, and for the first time, were able to simulate conditions that would result in a collapse of the Gulf Stream. They still cannot predict exactly when they might occur, but there’s little controversy over the consequences if they do.

Although Robinson, who has now published six books analyzing the future impact of climate change, is a science fiction writer, the possible collapse of the Gulf Stream is not science fiction. It’s hard, demonstrable science. In this era in which facts and science have become malleable in the hands of some politicians and educators, that’s a very serious matter. The collapse of the Gulf Stream would totally disrupt the world’s economy, its politics, and the ability of many industrial nations to survive.

The Utrecht study found that “[s]ome parts of Europe might see temperatures plunge by up to 30 degrees Celsius over a century … leading to a completely different climate over the course of just a decade or two.” To illustrate why, start by looking at average high temperatures in some of Europe’s major cities (slide right for later months.). They run in the mid-seventies Fahrenheit in summer to around forty in winter:

HighJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
Berlin38°F40°F48°F57°F67°F71°F76°F74°F66°F56°F46°F39°F
London47°F48°F52°F58°F63°F69°F73°F72°F67°F60°F53°F49°F
Paris44°F46°F53°F59°F66°F72°F76°F76°F69°F61°F51°F45°F

In North America, more than 100 million people would be displaced. Homes and jobs would disappear, food production would drop severely, and energy demands would skyrocket north of the 39th parallel. Further south, the sunbelt would have to absorb all of the displaced families and businesses from up north. In Europe, whole nations would collapse, and a sudden shortage of critical resources would greatly increase the chances of major wars.

This isn’t the plot of a dystopian future novel or film, although it sounds like many of them. This is a real threat, and it may already be too late to avert it. Many people have denied climate change for political or financial reasons, or perhaps, because the consequences were too frightening or unbelievable to contemplate. If we don’t start taking it seriously and reduce carbon emissions and the global use of heat-generating fertilizers, the predictions above could become reality in our lifetimes.

A very smart person once told me it’s a really bad idea to piss-off Mother Nature. The only good news in all this is that the value of my Florida condo would soar, assuming Florida was still above water and money still had any value by then.

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MAGA’s Dereliction of Duty

Posted on February 6, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 6, 2024

Ever since a mentally ill narcissist with an unfortunate gift for coalescing anger into political force decided to build a populist movement based on lies and divisiveness, the United States has been on a collision course with catastrophe. Donald Trump distorted the once proud Conservative Republican Party into a dysfunctional clown show. Most people seem creeped out by clowns more than amused by them, and the same is true for the unamusing performance of today’s MAGA Republicans.

Until now, about a third of our country has proved impervious to truth and rational thought when it comes to Donald Trump. A continuous string of defeats in state and federal courts over his claims that the 2020 election was stolen, statements from election officials in red states like Georgia and Arizona that there was no evidence of election irregularities, and a growing chorus of former Trump allies warning that he is irresponsible, incompetent, and unfit to lead continue to fall on deaf ears.

Why? Because there are enough billionaires who believe their self-interest is served by supporting Trump, who they expect to protect their fortunes and elite lifestyles. They understand the power money bestows on right-wing media, and care as little about truth and journalistic integrity as Trump does, so they continue to spend millions of dollars supporting every media outlet willing to spread Trump’s lies.

Then, there is Trump’s claim that as president he is (and will be if re-elected) all-powerful and immune to any kind of criminal prosecution for actions he commits while in office. Today, a three-judge district court panel ruled that he is not. The judges wrote: “We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its … occupants above the law for all time thereafter. … Former President Trump lacked any lawful discretionary authority to defy federal criminal law and he is answerable in court for his conduct.”

Arguing about truth with people who have no integrity and even less shame is as fruitless as an argument between an atheist and a true believer. Truth and observable facts rarely stand a chance against blind faith and fear. That’s the stuff of dangerous cults, and that is exactly what Trump’s version of the Republican party has become. Until now, the danger posed by this dichotomy has been largely hypothetical, but the current fiasco of a strong, tough border bill negotiated in the U. S. Senate being declared dead on arrival by House Speaker and Trump sycophant Mike Johnson makes it frighteningly real.

It’s no secret that after demanding action to control our southern border for almost nine years, and accomplishing only a small fraction of what he promised when he was president, Trump has made it crystal clear that he cares far more about being re-elected than his hyped-up border crisis. His MAGA followers in the House set conditions for passage of the urgent security package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan that included new border policies they knew the Democrats and the traditional Republicans led by Mitch McConnell would never accept.

But the trio of President Biden, McConnell, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called their bluff and drafted a strong bipartisan bill that meets every requirement laid out by Mike Johnson. They even took out any language about a path to citizenship for Dreamers. We reached the height of political cynicism when Trump told a rally that he was responsible for his House supporters declaring the border bill dead on arrival and “the press should blame me.” We then experienced a new level of surreal governmental dysfunction when Johnson told reporters it was absurd to believe he’d scuttle a border bill just to please Trump. Yet, that is exactly what he and the extremists who support him did.

Let’s be clear. The only motivation for trying to kill this bill, which would easily pass the House if Johnson ever brought it to a vote, is to suck up to Trump. Loyalty to Trump not only makes a mockery of the MAGA claims about the “crisis” at the border, but it directly threatens our national security and that of our allies. By denying funding to Ukraine, they are essentially handing a victory to Vladimir Putin, something Trump salivates over. That victory puts Putin’s expansionist ambitions directly on NATO’s border. That should move the Doomsday clock to within a second of Midnight.

Killing the border bill also leaves Israel in the lurch after the horrendous acts of murder and rape committed by Hamas and sends a clear message to Xi Jinping that Taiwan cannot count on America to defend it if Xi chooses to invade. This single act of cynical hypocrisy threatens the world order and with it, the world itself. I’m too old to worry about World War 3, but my grandchildren have their whole lives ahead of them. Someone must talk sense into Mike Johnson.

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Extremism : Centrism ~ Trump : Biden

Posted on February 3, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 3, 2024

For most of our history, government represented the varying viewpoints and attitudes of our people reasonably well. Congress, until the last few decades consisted of a broad spectrum of Conservatives, Progressives, and Centrists. There have always been a few extremists at both ends of the spectrum. Our House of Representatives and Senate have always included a few people who were socialists, populists, warhawks, ultra-capitalists, and libertarians. It worked because they balanced each other. Since the Civil War, extremists at either end never dominated our politics – until Donald Trump entered the scene.

Right-wing extremists point to Franklin Roosevelt as the symbol of radical progressivism because the New Deal transformed our governing philosophy from laissez-faire capitalism to a society based on the needs of all Americans. But FDR took office in the middle of the worst Depression in our history, with millions out of work, struggling to feed and house their families. And Roosevelt was no slouch at defending our country when World War 2 loomed.

Every president since then has found a way to govern in a bipartisan manner, regardless of his political ideology – until Donald Trump took office. Trump’s legacy will be the President who changed the basic American ideal of cooperation and bipartisanism to divisiveness. It will include an extreme commitment to government by oligarchy and exalting the Executive Branch of government over the Legislative and Judicial Branches in contradiction of one of the most basic principles in our Constitution, while attempting to shift the balance of power from the federal government to the individual states.

The truth, however, is that when personalities are excluded, and Americans are asked what they want, we get a very different result. Only a small percentage of Americans favor replacing our economy with a welfare state, and even fewer think we should have heavily armed militias placing our basic institutions under siege. Most Americans want their government to maintain a stable economy, keep our basic infrastructure functioning and efficient, defend us against foreign adversaries, provide for the health of our nation, and assure that our children are educated and prepared for adulthood.

Most Americans want a government that balances the needs of American families against the realities of defense and security. No one loves paying taxes, but ask the average American if they’re willing to pay more taxes to build roads, bridges, power grids, and communication systems and they’ll agree. Ask them if they’re willing to pay more taxes so the wealthiest among us don’t have to pay any, and you get a different response. Everything is clear when we tell the truth and mute the chaos extremists thrive on.

That’s what the 2024 election is about. There’s no point debating whether octogenarians should sit in the Oval Office. In all likelihood, that choice has already been made for us. The real question is which one. Do we want a president and a Congress dominated by people who prefer all-powerful leaders for whom retaining power is the ultimate goal? Or do we want leaders who believe in what most Americans believe?

Most Americans believe women have the right to control their own bodies and health, and determine when parenthood is appropriate. Most Americans want a secure border and an end to being victimized by drug cartels, but they also recognize that immigrants have been the driving force behind science, innovation, education, and maintaining the kind of work ethic we need to be successful. Most Americans believe their right to vote should not be compromised. Most Americans believe in equal opportunity. Most Americans want to care for their families, fulfill their responsibilities to society, and otherwise be free to enjoy the fruits of their labors.

In three years, the Biden administration and the majority or our Congress have worked to give Americans all of those things. They averted the oft-predicted Recession we faced after COVID, created millions of jobs, and strengthened the economy average people depend on while driving the value of equity markets and investments to record highs. And our President has stood strong in the face of every international threat. Joe Biden restored the respect of NATO, so far enabling the western world to thwart Russia’s attempt to recreate its former Soviet empire. It has maintained support for Taiwan, defended Israel against Iran-backed terrorists, and this week, made a powerful military statement to Iran and any other bad actor seeking to disrupt the world order.

Trump, on the other hand, has become more extreme. He would have a group of twenty extremists dominate our Congress of 535 members. He will treat the presidency as his own personal playground in which he is exempt from laws and normal standards of behavior. He will continue to pander to every extremist group willing to keep him in power. Donald Trump is a greedy, venal, immoral man who will always place his self-interest above that of the country.

The choice has never been easier.

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Trump’s Hypocrisy

Posted on January 29, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 29, 2024

Futurists and speculative writers have warned that a long-term consequence of a fully open, unregulated internet would likely be graying the lines between truth and fiction. When anyone with an opinion, someone like me, for example, can share it with the world on an unvetted platform, it takes a discerning reader to know when they’re being lied to. When we add sound, video, CGI and AI technology, and the combined skills of professional influencers, almost anyone can be fooled into believing anything.

Some of the smartest writers of the past few decades told us it was inevitable that a time would come when everything we viewed as inherently true would become amorphous. Things we once viewed as hard fact would suddenly be soft and malleable. That includes mathematics, science, medicine, health, and statistics, but it applies most visibly to politics.

There are countless ways to distort truth and lie; one of the most insidious is hypocrisy, especially when it is dispensed by an unscrupulous individual gifted with charismatic appeal. I have no intention of subtlety. I’m referring to Donald Trump and his army of coattail-clinging sycophants. The Big Lie isn’t just about claiming the 2020 election was stolen. It extends to virtually everything that comes out of their mouths.

I taught my children that lies always come home to roost. Lie and cheat often enough and eventually people will catch on to you. We’re all accountable in the end. Every major religion contains some version of Judgment Day, and despite corrupt, broken legal systems, people who routinely lie and mislead usually face the consequences of their actions. Yes, I see circular fallacy, too. Ultimate accountability is only a fact of nature until it isn’t.

It’s all been hypothetical until now, and millions of people who most need to heed the warnings haven’t been paying attention. For more than eight years as a politician, Trump seemed Teflon-coated. When the 2024 election was more than a year off, we could defer concerns that Trump might get away with his crimes and win again. Until now, even his supporters acknowledged that they hate his behavior, but “like his policies,” and that’s the heart of the problem.

My first question is always, “What policies?” His only policy is pursuing what is best and most profitable for Donald Trump. His most impressive legislative achievement, the massive 2017 tax cuts that were almost entirely a gift for billionaires was the culmination of a years-long effort by Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. All Trump did was sign it. His other major policies included a disastrous trade war that alienated both allies and adversaries, and contributed significantly to inflation; disrespect of our major allies including NATO; and a love of autocrats, which goes hand-in-hand with his disdain for democracy.

But I left out his most hypocritical policies. First was his promise to appoint conservative justices who believed in the Constitution, and that his choices would be apolitical on specific issues. Trump isn’t the only politician who lied about that, but he did it in spades. Each of his three Supreme Court appointees lied to the Senate about their views on abortion. They were selected because of Trump’s pandering to evangelicals. Does anyone think Trump believes in the sanctity of human life or any other Judeo-Christian value?

The runner-up as Trump’s most heinous hypocrisy is respect for women. His adult life has been an ongoing scandal of disrespecting and sexually assaulting women. Before he became a politician, his misadventures were covered up with hush-money and non-disclosure agreements. Trump still doesn’t understand that the government isn’t his personal property, and as a politician he lives in the same bubble as the rest of us. As I warned my children, his actions are finally catching up with him. Courts have now awarded one of his victims a total of $88.8 million in damages and found him guilty of sexual assault in a civil trial.

Finally, the winner! Immigration. We have a serious southern border problem, one for which every president and every Congress in the past fifty years bears responsibility. The drum Trump has continually beaten since 2015 is that to make America great again we have to keep out undesirables, i.e., dark-skinned non-Europeans. He convinced millions of people, in 2016, that most immigrants and refugees were rapists and murderers.

Trump accomplished little in terms of controlling our border, and Mexico didn’t pay for any of it. But President Biden and Senate Leaders Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell hammered out a strong, bipartisan compromise to spend billions on border enforcement personnel and cutting-edge technology, and to authorize the President to close the border if necessary to preserve our security. Candidate Trump is publicly lobbying his supporters in the House to scuttle the bill because it would given Biden a legislative victory and rob Trump of what he perceives as his strongest campaign issue. At a rally on Saturday, he told the media to blame him if the bill doesn’t pass.

There’s a reason Nikki Haley hasn’t dropped out of the primary race, the same reason the Koch Network of Conservative billionaires who believe in our Constitution continues to fund her campaign. They know the power of women in the voting booth, and as the Wall Street Journal suggested, Trump’s cynical attempt to scuttle border legislation will likely come back and bite him.

Enough is enough. By the time we reach this year’s nominating conventions, the glaring truth about Donald Trump will be out there for everyone to see. Millions who supported him will no longer be able to hold their noses while they cast their votes.

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Donald Trump’s Alternate Universe

Posted on January 25, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 25, 2024

I sometimes wonder if I took a wrong turn and wound up in an alternate universe. The one in which I grew up and lived most of my life had its problems, but in the end, it always seemed to value facts and truth. Academically trained in math and science, I was taught to see the world through a lens of logic, rationality, and common sense. To understand my dilemma, let me share a fantasy with you.

Suppose you lived in an alternate version of the United States in which an incoming president inherited:

  - a world-wide pandemic

  - an international trading crisis that disrupted imports, exports, and supply chains

  - shortages of all kinds of critical parts and finished products resulting from the disruption caused by the pandemic

  - a well-documented expectation of runaway inflation in food costs stemming from the fact that farmers could not harvest their 2020 crops and ranchers had to destroy or sell off their herds at salvage prices

  - severe unemployment and the loss of countless jobs that no longer existed

  - dire warnings about the near certainty of a major recession looming

  - a divided Congress that was virtually dysfunctional, in which the president’s party held bare minimum majorities in both houses

  - millions of small businesses barely holding on, having still not recovered from the pandemic-related shutdown

  - a nation plagued by conspiracy theories that had no evidential basis and a frightening lack of confidence in truth, basic facts, and our entire judicial system.

That’s a pretty daunting list. Yet, even with no support from the opposition party, the president was able to unify his colleagues in Congress to pass massive legislation that put money in the pockets of consumers, every dollar of which flowed directly back into our economy and acted as an overall stimulus. He passed legislation to repair America’s critical infrastructure, make the internet available to millions of people who never had access before, assured that the production of critical items like computer microchips could be controlled by American companies, and made the largest ever investment in mitigating the effects of climate change.

In my fantasy world, this president’s administration was the most productive since Franklin Roosevelt’s, ninety years ago. The president also launched a worldwide initiative to restore our allies’ confidence that America could be counted on again, just in time to counter Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which could not have survived even a week without unwavering support from NATO. In doing so, he may well have averted the risk of a major war in central and eastern Europe, in which a single misstep might have resulted in a nuclear holocaust. In case that wasn’t enough of a challenge, the portion of the Islamic world that is dominated by Iran chose this time to foment a new war in the Middle East, which remained contained only through the impressive diplomatic efforts of the current administration.

In my nightmare universe, a former president who is under indctment for nearly a hundred felonies by state and federal prosecutors, who was found by a state court to have conducted his billion-dollar businesses fraudulently, who has been credibly accused of sexual assault by thirteen different women, and who has maintained the well-proven lie that the current president had rigged his election, is now running against him.

In the America I grew up in, the outcome would be a slam dunk. As a result of our president’s efforts, financial markets are at record highs, unemployment is being sustained at unprecedented lows, and inflation has been reversed more than in any other developed country, despite gasoline prices having spiked to over $5 a gallon after Russia invaded Ukraine. Surely, Americans would have been buoyed by these results and rally around their president. Surely, Americans would have valued the rule of law, respected carefully documented facts and rejected equally well-documented lies. Surely, they would reward success and demand that they be led by someone who respects our Constitution, swears to defend our democracy, and demonstrates a moral compass that includes our basic American values.

But in my alternate reality, the challenger’s followers made use of loopholes in our governing institutions to refuse to continue funding our support for critical allies who are victims of brutal aggression and war crimes. And the challenger himself has been explicit about his intentions to undermine our Constitution, execute a campaign of retribution against his opponents, and conduct himself as though he were immune from all laws and standards of behavior. In this universe, a year from now, we might be inaugurating the most dangerous man in America for a second term as president.

I’ve spent eight years trying unsuccessfully to puzzle out how my America could possibly have turned into this one. My America would never have turned its back on everything we’ve fought for in our quarter millennium of existence. This is the way great nations decay and eventually collapse. The only possible conclusion is that this isn’t the universe I grew up in.

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Christie’s Last Chance to Redeem Himself

Posted on January 9, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 9, 2024

My lack of confidence in the presidential polls that show Trump with a commanding lead in the Republican primary race is well documented. Everyone I know who is qualified to discuss sampling universes agrees – it doesn’t seem possible, the way polls are conducted by emails and mobile phone calls, that the people polled are representative of the voting population. Still, a trend is a trend, and the one reported today in New Hampshire could have huge implications.

The result in the latest primary poll in that state are: Trump – 39%, Haley – 32%, Christie – 12%, Ramaswamy – 8%, DeSantis – 5% and Hutchinson <1%. Whenever there is a sharp change in poll results, we have to be careful to wait for more data before we jump to conclusions. The change might have been an aberration, or it might have been the first part of a growing trend that is still ongoing. Since November, Haley’s support grew by 12%, which is actually a 60% increase over her previous level of 20%. That would be remarkable in any campaign, but in this one, it shows what credible, centrist Republicans like NH Governor Chris Sununu can accomplish when they unite behind a candidate. It certainly suggests that Trump’s invincibility is overrated.

It’s also an opportunity, perhaps his last, for Chris Christie to win back some respect. I expect that his 12% showing has more to do with the fact that he’s the only candidate to take Trump on head-to-head than how much voters believe in him. Christie has credibility issues going back to his support for Trump in 2016. His recent mea culpa TV ad, in which he admits that supporting trouble was a mistake might have helped if he’d released it six months ago. Today, it looks like a desperate Hail Mary, and even at that, it fails to address the months that Christie worshipped at Trump’s feet hoping for a Cabinet position. Even worse, for the Republicans, should Christie pull off the miracle of the millennium, and win the nomination from Trump, he has about as much chance of beating Joe Biden as I do, and you couldn’t pay me enough to accept the job.

The MAGA crowd hates Christie, for his current attacks on Trump and for putting Charles Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner’s father, in prison. No one is more vindictive than Donald Trump. If Christie had the Republican nomination, Trump would run as a write-in or third party candidate. He’d do whatever he could to torpedo him out of spite, and the winner would be Biden. In short, Christie’s candidacy is doomed whether he wins the nomination or not, but one classy move when it really matters could change everything for him.

If Christie had any integrity, any motive beyond satisfying his own lust for power, he would make a deal with Nikki Haley, today. Right now, without wasting a minute. He would drop out of the race tomorrow and urge everyone who supported him to vote for her. The proverb about the enemy of your enemy being your friend couldn’t be more applicable than in fighting to defeat Trump. Trump is the enemy of everyone who believes in our Constitution and our flawed, fragile democracy, which makes the former SC Governor their friend.

If Christie spends the next few months stumping for Haley in the primary race and nominates her at the Republican convention, he’ll earn forgiveness for his past wrongs, or to put it in terms he and Trump understand, we might grant him amnesty for all his past behavior. He might even wind up as Haley’s running mate which would say a lot about his ability to suppress his ego for the common good. For most of his political life, Christie has behaved like a bully, and hasn’t always practiced what he preached. Remember when some journalists caught him sunbathing with his wife on a New Jersey beach while he was enforcing the COVID lockdown for everyone else in his state?

If Chris Christie believes anything he says on the campaign trail, if he means it when he calls Trump dangerous and the enemy of democracy, this is the way to show it. If getting in line behind Haley is the action that derails Trump’s run for the presidency, we might build a monument to him. So what’s it going to be, Chris? Do you care more about this country than your own ego? Are you willing to take second place to a woman? Stranger things have happened in politics.

In this very surreal primary season, when it seems as though the country is on a precipice, maybe we need a miracle. It might as well be Christie, who said last week that Trump needs to be defeated by voters, not justices. This is best chance.

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