A Hero For Our Time

Posted on December 22, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, December 22, 2022

As an undergraduate required to study history and philosophy, I was struck by the writings of the early nineteenth century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, specifically, the idea that has come to be known as the Hegelian Hero. In Hegel’s philosophy, heroes are individuals who have been selected by the world spirit to play a pivotal role in history. They are always with us, but only emerge as heroes when required by circumstances. Often, those who ultimately become heroes arrive, seemingly out of nowhere, but in each case the hero is exactly the right person for the situation and time.

Often, a hero is someone we would never have predicted would turn out to be one. The first in my lifetime was Winston Churchill, who throughout his early life was more of a gadfly than anything else. While he held many high-ranking offices, he was never a media darling or favorite. Rather, he was garrulous and combative, often switching allegiances and parties, until he found himself in the shoes of a not terribly popular Prime Minister defending Britain against the Nazis. Suddenly, he was the only man for the time, a charismatic figure who served as the rallying point for the Allies, without whom the second world war might have turned out quite differently.

Enter Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. A student of history and the law, there was nothing inevitable about his current role as president and inspirational leader of his country. He didn’t set out to be either, instead capitalizing on his skills as a comedic actor and communicator to become one of his nation’s most popular entertainers. A year after Russia attacked and annexed Crimea, (we sometimes forget that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine actually began in 2014,) Netflix recognized Zelensky’s potential and produced nearly sixty episodes of Servant of the People, in which Zelensky starred as a high school history teacher who was fed up with the corruption and economic problems of his fledgling nation.

Ukraine is barely in its adolescence, having come into being as an independent sovereign state after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And Zelensky’s Netflix character, after a video of one his anti-government rants goes viral on Youtube, is drafted to run against a corrupt president in the next election and wins by a landslide. As a fictional president, he has no idea how to govern, but he never stops fighting for what he believes, and we hear Zelensky the actor prophetically saying and doing the same things he does as the real life president defending his county against Russian aggression.

When Zelensky became president of Ukraine in 2019, other world leaders expected him to be the same clownish, unprepared leader he portrayed on television. American President Donald Trump assumed he could use Zelensky as a pawn and extort him into having Hunter Biden prosecuted. Vladimir Putin saw Zelensky’s inauguration as an opportunity to expand his takeover of Ukraine. But when put to the test, Zelensky turned out to be the classic Hegelian Hero. When President Biden offered to evacuate him from Kyiv, last February, after Russia’s massive invasion began, Zelensky said he needed ammunition, not a ride. Both Biden and Putin were surprised, as was the rest of the world that expected Ukraine to roll over and become subservient, once again, to Russia.

While both Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken deserve the credit for re-unifying and strengthening our alliance with Europe, none of that would have happened had Zelensky not turned out to be the magical charismatic leader we now see him to be. Zelensky wore his cloak of leadership as if he were born to it, characterizing Ukraine as the last bulwark of democracy fighting against the scourge of autocratic imperialism. He warned Europe and America that if they didn’t defend Ukraine against Putin’s ambitions, if they reacted as Neville Chamberlain had when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938, they would be next, and the result could be World War 3.

Zelensky is undoubtedly this century’s Churchill, rallying his 44 million citizens to defend and repel the massively superior Russian invasion force when the entire world expected them to be defeated in days. Three hundred days later, he stood with Biden at the White House and addressed our Congress in a speech televised around the world. And he did so convincingly, with complete humility and gratitude. In the eyes of the western media, he is an international hero with his finger in the dike that protects democracy from destruction.

I’m not easily inspired. I distrust charisma and snake oil salesmen. But Volodymr Zelensky has fully captured my imagination. Time Magazine named him Man of the Year. I’d nominate him for Hero of the Century.

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Fusion and Fission

Posted on December 14, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, December 14, 2022

Last week’s watershed achievement by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California could ultimately save our planet. It was a major step forward in the search for the holy grail of physics: unlimited, cheap, clean energy. That means no carbon footprint, no dangerous nuclear waste, and no need for uranium mines. It’s not just a fantasy; it’s real, but assuming the Livermore breakthrough means the realization of the dream of commercially viable fusion generators is like believing a baby taking its first steps is guaranteed to grow up to be an Olympic track star.

Scientists have understood the basic theory of nuclear fusion for a century. Fusion means forcing small atoms to fuse together into larger ones, releasing huge amounts of energy as a byproduct. But nothing in nature is free, and producing a fusion reaction requires a huge investment of energy to trigger the process. The key is whether the amount of energy produced by fusion exceeds the amount needed to sustain its production. That’s what happened for the first time at Livermore on December 5th.

Asserting that fusion could save life on Earth is not an exaggeration. It would make fossil fuels like coal and oil obsolete and irrelevant politically and diplomatically. Fifty years ago, the middle eastern oil-rich nations attempted to take the rest of the world hostage by controlling the flow and price of oil. In 2022, a major part of Russian President Putin’s calculation before invading Ukraine was that Europe’s dependence on Russian oil would undermine support for defending Ukraine. Control of some of the largest oil reserves on earth also played significant roles in the Iran-Iraq war and the first Gulf war that followed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

Take oil out of the equation and none of those wars need have occurred. Equally important, if scientists had proved the viability of getting energy from fusion during the Manhattan Project at the same time they proved that nuclear fission could result in a super-weapon, the world would have switched to fusion power in time to avert much of the effect of climate change. Climate cycles are a natural part of a planet’s evolution, and they have repeated many times since Earth’s creation. Humans didn’t cause the current crisis of global warming, but our use of fossil fuels and fertilizers greatly accelerated it. Fusion power could have averted much of that acceleration, and current technology like carbon-eating vegetation might freeze the process in its tracks in the future.

If you’re wondering how this is different from what is commonly known as nuclear energy, they’re like night and day. While the energy from fusion results from combining atoms into larger ones, nuclear fission is about splitting very large radioactive atoms into smaller ones and emitting huge amounts of radiation along with heat. An uncontrolled fission reaction is an atomic bomb. Controlled ones enable us to produce energy from nuclear power plants, the essential term being “controlled.”

Many of us recall the horror of Chernobyl an Threer Mile Island, and the fighting in Ukraine around Europe’s largest nuclear plant at Zaporizhzhia, renewed those fears. But even without potential nuclear disasters, fission-driven plants are problematic: they produce huge amounts of radioactive waste, some of which has half lives of thousands of years, and they depend on large untapped deposits of uranium. The countries that possess most of the world’s uranium reserves are Kazakhstan, Canada, South Africa, Brazil, China, Ukraine, Tanzania, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, and Russia. The United States is notably missing from the list, but fortunately, Canada’s reserves are second only to Kazakhstan’s, and the first four countries on the list have well over half of the world’s known total. As the demand for energy grows, the geopolitical implications of these numbers are enormous.

Fusion power could relieve us of those stresses, but lest we get carried away, the same scientists who are celebrating their recent success warn that a commercially viable fusion generator could be thirty years away, and they won’t be in general use until the last decades of this century. Still, if we survive the next few decades, think of what the future might look like. Imagine a world-wide power grid fueled by the hydrogen in water. A fusion generator could use hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium to meet almost all of our future energy needs.

Remember how clear the air was during the COVID lockdown? Even cleaner air could be the norm with fusion, with corresponding reductions in the incidence and seriousness of asthma and other respiratory illnesses. Acid rain would be largely a thing of the past, and imagine the stabilizing effect on our economy of fixed, known energy costs independent of weather, politics, and international disputes. And no more concerns about melting ice caps and rising sea levels. It sounds like a pretty bright future.

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Dysfunctional Government

Posted on December 5, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, December 5th, 2022

In recent decades, divisiveness and extremist politics have taken an increasing toll on our government’s ability to function. Despite warnings that the government itself could become a casualty, that trend, worsened by the intraparty struggle between Trumpers and RINOs, continued into the Biden administration. Yet, our seriously underestimated President, with able assistance from the House and Senate Majority leaders, has put the lie to the dysfunctional label.

President Biden and his first Congress have accomplished more legislatively in two years than any administration since FDR’s first term. What’s been done is truly remarkable, given that Democrats needed every vote in their Senate caucus to get anything done. If you haven’t noticed until now, recent actions by Congress and the White House should convince you. With a potentially devastating rail strike on the horizon, Leaders Pelosi and Schumer mobilized their members and got an emergency bill to the president’s desk in days that codified the tentative agreement reached last month by railroad and union reps into law.

Averting a railroad strike was a special circumstance, but it demonstrates that when it is most important, Democrats are capable of governing. Even more impressive is that more than a third of Republicans in the House supported the bill while a handful of radical progressives opposed it. That tells us that somewhere in the massive chaos that is today’s Republican Party, there remains a core of responsible lawmakers. For them, at least, there is a line between partisan politics and their constitutional duty to act responsibly in the interests of our country that they won’t cross.

I believe we’re about to see things shift back toward normalcy. The extremism and divisiveness that was so appealing to Trump’s most passionate supporters and which has dominated the Republican Party since 2016 are nearing the end of their run. Most Republicans never supported them, but political movements have enormous inertia, and getting the system to revert back to normal is almost as difficult as reversing an avalanche. Until now, the majority of Republicans haven’t had the courage to speak out. They either cut and run when the going got rough or they retreated into a self-protective stance to assure their re-election.

Now that Trump can be seen to be the self-serving monster he is and the justice system appears close to holding him accountable, the solid wall of resistance to actually governing instead of squabbling like school children is crumbling. The country has had two years to evaluate Biden’s presidency against the four years of Trump’s. And as almost all Americans put the chaos of 2020, the lies and the false allegations of a stolen election in their rear-view mirrors, those things are all Trump has left to talk about.

I won’t repeat all the details, but it’s fair to say that most well-informed reasonable people can see how much better off we all are with Biden at the helm. Biden’s policies have caused a remarkable economic recovery, begun reversing the trend toward outsourcing manufacturing to other countries, initiated the first real defense against the effects of climate change, and certainly not least of all, restored dignity and moral clarity to our government while regaining the respect we once had internationally. In my view, he may also be responsible for stifling the re-emergence of the Soviet Union while it was stillborn. A weaker leader or one who wasn’t motivated to reunite and strengthen the NATO alliance would have left us in a situation in which the risk of nuclear war or catastrophic economic problems increased daily. It’s easy to forget all Biden has achieved, because he does it without fanfare, running his mouth in self-aggrandizement, or offending decent people everywhere.

The struggle for integrity and effective government are clearly nearing their endgame as Trump struggles to retain a shred of credibility with anyone not part of his rabid base. If any American who cares about the future of the country hasn’t already grown sick of everything related to Trump, his actions this week must surely cause a serious backlash. In taking up the cause of every extremist group that wants to undermine our constitution and overthrow the government, Trump now advocates terminating the Constitution so that the 2020 election can be declared invalid! All the cliches about cornered rats take on new meaning in light of Trump’s latest antics.

Trump isn’t responsible the decades of increasing dysfunction in our government, but he exacerbates and uses it because he can only win in times of chaos and confusion. With Trump out of the picture, extremists at both ends of the political spectrum will still have their voices, but they will no longer dominate our lives and news cycles. I even foresee a day when Congress has a positive approval rating.

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How High Will Justice Reach?

Posted on November 30, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, November 30, 2022

The wind blowing across the country this week may be a giant sigh of relief over the Justice Department’s successful prosecution of five people who helped the right-wing extremist Oath Keepers plan the January 6th, 2021 attack on the Capitol. The seditious conspiracy convictions of the two most senior leaders of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs, sent a strong message to anyone contemplating the future overthrow of the United States government.

Despite Donald Trump’s attempts to politicize DOJ and the federal courts, up to and including the Supreme Court, the system in place to defend our democracy worked. That all five of the Oath Keepers on trial were convicted of multiple felonies related to the insurrection sends the message that the “we were only following orders” defense won’t protect the rank and file among the insurrectionists.

The convictions are especially important because seditious conspiracy is so difficult to prove. The trial of the Oath Keepers was the first successful such federal prosecution in twenty years. In deciding to go forward with the prosecution, Attorney General Merrick Garland took a huge risk. Failure to convict would have placed the future of our democracy in doubt, and destroyed the legacy of one our country’s most talented and reliable jurists.

Garland’s courage and determination to see justice done remind us that the price of maintaining our freedoms is high and ongoing. We became complacent, and the result was Donald Trump’s ascendancy. Despite never achieving close to a 50% favorability rating, Trump was able to leverage aggressive support from hard core fringe groups and evangelists to assert his will over the majority. He literally attempted to lynch our democracy and strangle it.

Two vital questions remain: how high will the investigations by DOJ and the State of Georgia reach, and how will we deal with Trump supporters moving forward? Donald Trump is a master at keeping his own hands clean and getting others to do his dirty work. That kept him out of serious trouble in his business life, but this is different. He never understood how government works, and that may be his downfall. He will not be able to bribe and threaten his way out of the mess he created. He believes no opponent can stand up to him, but he’s wrong.

Senior aide Stephen Miller is testifying before a federal grand jury, and the convicted Oath Keepers have considerable incentive to cooperate with DOJ now that they are facing what could essentially be life sentences in federal prison. We might even see Mike Pence sit before a federal grand jury. Everyone who seeks to destroy has a price. Faced with the loss of their own life and freedom, they all turn on their leaders when their options run out. If you don’t think so, consider Michael Cohen and Allen Weisselberg. Stabbing each other in the back is the one thing all such people share in common when their own necks are on the line.

Our country needs to see Trump held accountable. He must be indicted and tried for his crimes. Whether he fights in the courts to the bitter end, or realizes that accepting guilt and responsibility for his actions is in his self-interest, he must be convicted to show all of us and the world that America can still be relied on. I expect that President Biden would pardon him to avoid the spectacle of a former president imprisoned and his vilest supporters continuing to stir up trouble, on condition that he stay out of politics and keep his mouth shut.

Whether Trump is convicted or not, his influence will not disappear overnight. We’ll still have to deal with people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, and Lauren Boebert. In another universe, neutralizing Trump would assure their silence, but in one in which a craven character like Kevin McCarthy is likely to become Speaker of the House, they will have a voice.

McCarthy is a politician who is driven entirely by ambition. Like Trump, he’ll pander to anyone who supports his bid to become speaker. Since Trumpers control enough Republican votes in the House to hold the Speakership hostage, McCarthy’s history makes it a near certainty that he’ll cut deals that preserve Trump’s influence. With more than 220 Republicans in the House come January, is it possible that there is no one who can emerge as the consensus leader we need?

For now, I’m focused on next week’s Senate run-off election in Georgia. Raphael Warnock should easily defeat the last of Trump’s hand picked unqualified candidates, Herschel Walker. The differences between the two men are stark enough to overcome political divisions, and if the Democrats hold fifty-one seats, no one will be able to hold the Senate hostage.

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The Real Republicans

Posted on November 28, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, November 28, 2022

Donald Trump refers to them as RINOs, Republicans in Name Only. I call them the Real Republicans who still believe in the Conservative principles laid out by former Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater and his contemporary protege, Jeff Flake. Those principles include integrity in governing, a commitment to keeping taxes low, and preventing the federal government from having too much control over states’ and individual rights.

A decade ago, the Real Republicans were the objects of my ire, largely because of the legacy of Ronald Reagan and Grover Norquist, who promulgated the notion that supply side (trickle down) economics was good for all Americans, though its only goal is to insure that the wealthiest Americans maintain the income gap that exists between them and everyone else. I had been focused on that until the advent of Trumpism made realize that lack of integrity and appeals to bigotry and racism, combined with a total lack of concern for the health and welfare of average Americans are far more important than which economic team you’re on.

Unfortunately, the Real Republicans were unprepared for the no holds barred, streetfighter approach Trump brought to politics in 2015. A candidate who preached forgetting courtesy, truth, and basic decency while appealing to every despicable fringe group willing to bend a knee to him was beyond their experience. That, combined with their personal egos and ambitions allowed Trump to divide, conquer, and destroy the traditional Republican Party.

As Trump has shown that he’s an albatross dragging his party down and placing the alliances that have kept us secure at risk, some of those who jumped on his bandwagon early now realize their error. One such is Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence. In the end, Mr. Pence was the hero of January 6, 2021, but that occurred after five years of marching in lockstep with Trump. In that, he was wrong on two counts.

Besides King George’s taxes, the most powerful driving force of the American Revolution was religious freedom and separation of religion from government. Pence, whose self-righteous view of Christianity has always scared me, reinforced my concern when he succumbed to Trump’s pandering on subjects like abortion and LBGTQ rights. His one supreme act of courage, defending our democracy, earns him a pass on the previous five years. But Mike Pence is not the solution for the future.

America needs a strong Republicans Party rooted in the principles of conservatism and the Constitution, and it would benefit from the emergence of a third, centrist party. Moderate billionaire Democrats Andrew Yang and Mike Bloomberg seem to want to found such a party, but until they convince enough centrists from both parties to join them, our best hope lies in a handful of Republicans who have shown their mettle.

Leading that list is Liz Cheney, Wyoming’s lone member in the House, who will leave office in January. Ms. Cheney fell on her sword to preserve the principles she believes in. She was driven from Congress by money from Trump’s PACs, but even with her defeat a near certainty, she never wavered. She voted to impeach him and led the charge to prove that he was responsible for the insurrection that nearly destroyed Congress and left a stain on our reputation around the world. I hope that behind the scenes, bigger PACs are lining up to support her. She shows no sign of backing down from her commitment to keep Trump from ever holding office again and assure that he is held accountable for his crimes.

Adam Kinzinger of Illinois talked the same talk and walked the same walk as Cheney, although he made the decision to not seek re-election more than a year ago. I haven’t heard him discuss his reasons for quitting or whether he plans to remain in politics, but the story teller in me imagines him rounding up Yang, Bloomberg, and a few other billionaires to join Cheney in challenging Trump for the 2024 nomination for president.

There are others, like Lisa Murkowski of Alaska who put their careers on the line to oppose Trump this year. Murkowski also voted to impeach him and has consistently condemned his actions on January 6th. Even Chris Christie, the former New Jersey Governor who sucked up to Trump at the beginning has realized that his political future, already on life support, can only survive if he joins the anti-Trumpers.

There are two more prominent Real Republicans to watch. Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson is one who has never been shy about criticizing Trump’s immoral behavior. Hutchinson is an example of a Christian leader who is guided by principle, who believes in our Constitution. Yesterday, he made an extremely forceful statement about Trump hosting Kanye West and avowed White Supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes for dinner at Mar-a-lago. And don’t forget my outgoing Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland, who has been a lone Republican voice of reason throughout the period of Trump’s influence.

Both Hutchinson and Hogan may challenge Trump in the ’24 primaries, but this time, the pundits are wrong. A large field of quality Republican candidates who care more about saving the country from Trump than their own ambitions will not be divided and defeated. That encourages me, because Joe Biden has done an incredible job as president for two years. I’ll sleep well at night knowing that even if he is defeated in 2024, it will be by someone who cares about our country more than him or herself.

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Gangsters, Politicians, and Presidents

Posted on November 18, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, November 18, 2022

When Jimmy Carter was president, inflation was much worse than it’s been in 2022. From 1978 to 1980, there were only five months in which inflation was below 10%, and during the 1980 presidential campaign (and the Iran hostage crisis) it peaked at more than 14%. The 1970s and 1980s were also a time when the Mafia seemed untouchable and enjoyed a Robin Hood-like folk hero status. The wildly popular Godfather movies were released in 1972, 1974, and 1990, and a decade later, we paid homage to the mob, as The Sopranos made HBO a successful venture for six seasons.

The heated 1980 presidential campaign featured three candidates: Carter, who seemed to be the only person in the United States who didn’t realize he was a failed president, Ronald Reagan, whose platform was something called trickle-down economics that Bush-41 referred to as voodoo; and John Anderson, a Republican who ran as an Independent, because Reagan’s nomination had split the Republican Party. Voters weren’t particularly enamored with their choices that year, and we frequently heard comedians, and then political pundits suggest that the country would be better off if it was run by the Mafia.

Many corporate executives felt that way about their businesses, especially in industries where the Mob dictated the rules. In the New York City area, the most lucrative of those were major construction and commercial real estate. The less ethical an executive was, the more attractive the Mafia appeared, which brings us to the father-son team of Fred and Donald Trump. Between 1954 and 1973, the Trumps were investigated for profiteering by the U. S. Senate and the State of New York and censured by the U. S. Department of Justice for violating the Fair Housing Act.

The Trump Organization became synonymous with unscrupulous business practices, like the fraudulent Trump University and the bankrupting of Atlantic City, NJ. Trump was frequently accused of fraud and reneging on payments to contractors. Looking back, one might ask where the line between unethical and criminal was. An examination of the record suggests that the line was more semantic than real, and that applied in equal measure to The Trump Organization and the Mob.

Donald Trump had gone to school with John Gotti, the leader of the Gambino crime family of New York. It was almost a cliché at the time that it was impossible to be successful in the real estate development business without the cooperation of the gangsters that controlled the concrete and construction trades, and Trump used his connection to Gotti to forge a relationship with the infamous Roy Cohn.

Cohn was a sleazy lawyer who made his name prosecuting Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and helping Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy ruin the careers of countless celebrities on charges of being Communists, though their investigations never resulted in criminal charges. Cohn was ultimately disbarred and imprisoned, but in his heyday he was consigliere for both Gotti and Trump. In the 1980s, New York gossip columnists described Trump and Gotti hanging out together in New York nightclubs and depending on Cohn to keep them out of court and jail.

Cohn’s philosophy was never back down, never admit guilt, deny everything, and attack your accuser with every resource you have. Gotti used Cohn’s playbook to evade prosecution for decades, until the FBI gathered enough evidence to sent him to federal prison in 1992. Trump used the same playbook, often using exactly the same language as Gotti when he was accused of racketeering and fraud. It’s well documented that Trump employed Gotti’s companies to construct Trump Plaza in New York. There were many charges of corruption based on that relationship, and I find it odd that Gotti, the “teflon don” went to prison while Trump was unscathed. We  won’t know until the court records are unsealed, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Trump avoided prosecution by testifying against Gotti under immunity.

Trump sees people like Gotti as gods ruling over their criminal fiefdoms. He envies their power and their ability to escape consequences for their crimes. In politics he transferred that worshipful appreciation to foreign dictators and corrupt politicians at home. There’s a reason he behaves like a gangster. That’s what he was taught by Cohn, Gotti, and his father, and it fits perfectly with his Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Look at the things Trump has done in the past seven years in that context. It’s like an epiphany, or in mundane terms, like finding the missing piece in a jigsaw puzzle.

In 2016, Trump used his gangster persona to awaken the worst among us: racists, xenophobes, misogynists, and people who shared his lust for wealth and power. Back then, he was a celebrity. Today, we know him for what he is, an immoral, self-centered narcissist who will pander to anyone who pledges fealty to him. He may be the most dangerous person in America. He simply cannot ever be permitted to hold a position of power again. Anyone else who did what he has spent his life doing would be spending the rest of it in prison.

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Near Misses

Posted on November 17, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, November 17, 2022

We’ve all experienced situations that might have resulted in tragedy or disaster but didn’t. Whether we reacted by thanking God or just feeling lucky, we came away shaken, reminded how fragile life and everything we value is. If we were smart, we took our good fortune as an opportunity to learn something.

My wife and I had two such experiences driving, recently. In the first, we were stopped at a red light. When it turned green, I began a left turn, but the sun setting to my right blinded a driver coming from my left. He couldn’t see that the light had turned red in his direction and barreled through the intersection at 60 mph. If some sixth sense hadn’t made me stop, we’d have been killed. The second incident occurred on a freeway with traffic moving at about 65. Out of nowhere, it seemed, a car in the exit lane was hit by another and thrown across three lanes of traffic, directly in front of us.

Whether we survived by luck, skill, or the intervention of some beneficent entity, two such incidents made me take notice. Our reflexes aren’t what they used to be, and we viewed our near misses as a warning that at our ages we couldn’t take anything for granted. Even with the best safety technology in the world, we can’t afford the slightest lapse in attention.

In the past week, we all experienced two near misses that could have been catastrophic. A missile explosion in Poland, just across the border from Ukraine, might have triggered Article 5 of the NATO charter, potentially plunging the world into a nuclear conflict. That occurred eight days after a consequential election that might have left our Constitution in tatters and our country’s future in serious jeopardy. We can only hope our leaders got the messages.

The world has been at risk of self-destruction since 1945. We’ve lived one heartbeat from oblivion, should one person in a critical position of responsibility miscalculate, misinterpret, or overreact to provocation. Our first wake-up call came in 1962, when Soviet Russia tried to install ballistic missiles in Cuba. Premier Nikita Khrushchev had done his best to convince the west that he was an unstable madman. Our world might have ended that day if he hadn’t proven to be a responsible statesman.

We’ve been concerned about the same thing with current Russian President Vladimir Putin. Will his paranoid obsession that NATO is out to destroy Russia cause him to lash out with every weapon at his disposal, or does he have a red line of responsibility that he won’t cross? Now that it appears that the explosion that killed two Polish citizens was a Ukrainian defensive projectile attempting to intercept an incoming Russian missile, we can breathe a sigh of relief.

But we’d better not stop there. If we fail to heed the Poland incident as a warning, if every world leader including Mr. Putin doesn’t realize how easily things could have gotten out of control, we’re ultimately doomed. We can’t live on the nuclear precipice forever, assuming things will always work out. As individuals, nations, and as a species, our survival rests in our own hands. Our best hope is offering Putin an off ramp that would enable him to negotiate an end to his illegal war and save face before he is either taken out by his own people or he commits the sort of desperate error that could end everything.

We faced a similar crisis at home. That it didn’t involve weapons of mass destruction made it no less a threat to our future. We have our own version of an irresponsible leader who allows his personal demons to drive his decisions. His unfortunate, charismatic appeal to the worst, most violent elements of our society had brought us to the unthinkable possibility that a minority of us with their own selfish agendas could destroy the foundations of our democracy.

We saved ourselves from the worst on Election Day. We should be proud that Americans stood up for our Constitution, but when we’re done patting ourselves on the back, we’d best remember that Donald Trump will not go away until people of decency and good will force him to. He has proved that he’d rather burn everything down than not get his way. Just as I realized I couldn’t afford a single inattentive moment behind the wheel of my car, we can never let down our guard as long as he’s out there poisoning our country.

Remember the joke that went viral after Hurricane Katrina about a man who flees from the flooding by climbing onto his roof? He refuses to be evacuated by boat or helicopter, stubbornly claiming that God will save him. When he meets his end, he complains to God that He let him drown, and God says, “I sent a boat and a helicopter to save you. Your salvation was in your hands, but you refused to act.” The same is true for us.

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Legacies of the 2022 Election

Posted on November 11, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, November 11, 2022

When historians look back on the 2022 election, four things will stand out most prominently: America’s defense of its democracy, clear evidence that Donald Trump’s influence has diminished, the impact of young voters and women turning out in unprecedented numbers, and who stands tallest in the aftermath of the failed Red Wave.

As they always have in the past, when it most mattered, Americans got the message. Slow to awaken to the threats we faced in many cases, Americans all over the country demonstrated that the values we were raised with are still alive and well. We went out and voted in spite of implied, and in some instances, very real attempts to intimidate voters by right-wing fringe elements. Despite severe gerrymandering in many states that created disparities of as much as twenty percent between the votes each party received and how power is divided between them, the voices of reason and decency prevailed.

As in 2016, the whole world is watching. Unlike 2016, however, when most of us had to deal with the aftermath of a shameful betrayal of our values, we can stand proud today. We not only set our country back on the path to healing and re-unification, we sent a clear message to both our allies and adversaries. America is back to stay, there will be no more sabotaging of our traditional allies or sucking up to autocrats, and we can go back to working toward common goals, like saving the planet and ending Trump’s insane trade wars.

With that segue, let’s take a good look at Donald Trump. The day he came down that escalator in 2015, I told my friends and family that he was a man who was capable of destroying our country single-handed. Trump is completely lacking in ethics, grace and class, his only redeeming value in the end, being to have forced us to face up to the divisions in our country that had lain dormant for decades. We knew groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers existed, but never accepted that they were an existential threat to our democracy or to the survival of our republic until Trump empowered them and turned them loose to wreak havoc.

Never one to admit defeat and walk away, the Donald will hang on as long he can, continually blaming others for his mistakes and failures. He will continue to stoke the worst elements of our society, spouting hate, bigotry, and greed. The most rabid parts of his base will be with us for years, and perhaps that’s a good thing. This generation will never again be allowed to pretend they don’t exist.

Not since the anti-war protests of 1960s have young voters expressed themselves as they did a few days ago. The 19-30 age group made itself heard, loud and clear. They won’t accept inaction on environmental issues, they won’t be dictated to about who they can love or marry, and they won’t be told when they can become parents. It took years of Trump’s clownish behavior and the recidivist actions of his packed Supreme Court to make them put aside their toys and take notice, but they did.

Women, after years of being relegated to second class status by the entire MAGA movement showed that no amount of gerrymanding or intimidation tactics will keep them from defending their rights. I never understood why any woman would vote for Trump, and now, many who either did or simply stood by and watched him rise to power are wondering the same thing. No one in the MAGA movement will ever doubt the political power of women again.

Finally, who came out of this election standing tallest? My vote goes to President Joe Biden, who never let unrelenting attacks from right-wing extremists and people who put politics ahead of duty phase or deter him. Always reacting with class and decency, he ignored his low approval ratings, achieved truly historic legislative victories, and persisted with his basic message that Americans needed to remember what we stand for. We’ll never know exactly how many people heard him and were motivated to come out and vote, but hardly anyone is mocking Biden today.

Yesterday, Princeton Professor and historian Julian Zelizer penned an OpEd entitled, “The Most Underestimated President in Recent History.” I’ll close by reproducing the final paragraph of what he wrote.

… [T]he midterms make clear that Biden is a much stronger president than he is often given credit for. He has been underestimated and criticized despite having a formidable first two years. The midterms should make Republicans nervous as they think about 2024. After two years of speculation about whether Biden should run for a second term, the outcome should also give Democrats reason to believe that a two-term, transformative presidency is already underway.

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Use It Or Lose It

Posted on November 8, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, November 8, 2022

Today, Americans have as important a choice to make as they have in my lifetime, which goes back to the middle of the second world war. We may be entering the end game of a fight that has been surreptitiously going on since the passage of the Social Security and Civil Rights Acts, nearly sixty years ago; many people would say since the New Deal of the 1930s.

On one side are people who believe corporations should be able to operate with no government oversight or regulation, that labor unions represent encroaching Socialism, and that billionaire oligarch types should be free to use their wealth to buy Congress and the presidency. They believe America should be a white-dominated Christian nation, although their version of Christianity doesn’t look much like anything in either the Old or New Testament, and the very notion violates the spirit if not the literal wording of our Constitution.

They believe men were meant to rule and women to serve. They believe they have the right to determine who should have the opportunity to be Americans and who should have the right to vote. A frightening number of them believe there should be no restrictions on the proliferation of weapons designed for mass killing in wartime. And they believe that basic human rights – the right to decent health care and a free public education, the right of all of us to love whomever we choose, and most urgently, the right of a woman to manage her own health and determine if and when she will bear children – somehow equate to Communism.

These revisionists and recidivists have been fighting for decades to reverse the great liberal wave that started when John Kennedy was elected president. Many would refight the Civil War and return us to a time when only White Men could wield power and the gap between rich and poor made us look more like a feudal society than a democracy. They would put partisan lackeys in charge of our elections and return us to a time when racism and bigotry were accepted ways of dealing with each other.

But not all of what they strive for is a return to the past. They also believe that lies ought to replace facts whenever it suits their convenience. They believe our leaders should be immune from criminal prosecution and be given a free pass for all manner of immoral and criminal behavior. And they are more than willing to get what they want through violence.

That’s what the Trumpers are trying to sell you. Kevin McCarthy, salivating over his hoped-for takeover of the House of Representatives made it clear, yesterday, that he is prepared to elevate Marjorie Taylor Greene and the other Trump-supported election deniers to important committee posts that will position them to direct the policy of the House. That’s the same Kevin McCarthy who hasn’t seen fit to condemn the violent assault on the husband of the House Speaker whom he is trying to unseat.

The alternative is to return power to people with a moral conscience who believe in our Constitution. It is to remind ourselves that we are supposed to be a nation of equal opportunity and compassion, that we were once a nation that reacted to adversity by helping each other, that accepted a measure of personal sacrifice for the common good.

Since World War 2, the United States has worn the mantle of leader of the Free World, something that is anathema to Donald Trump and his followers. We have some serious choices to make as we cast our votes. Will we return to the chaotic Trump years of insane trade wars and stabbing our allies in the back or do we continue to lead the fight for basic human rights and against greed and autocracy?

Most Americans have family or friends who fought to preserve our freedom, putting their lives on the line, from the world wars to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Did they give up their lives and their physical well being to defend our way of life, only to have it squandered and given away to craven leaders who care only about their own power and wealth? This isn’t a Netflix series – it’s real life. If every one of us doesn’t get out and vote to defend for what they sacrificed for, we will have lost our identity as Americans.

Ignore the polls, many of which are partisan attemptsj to distort and mislead. Turn off your televisions and your radio talk shows. Log out of Facebook and Twitter and take a moment to think for yourselves. Then vote for what’s right. This year you still have the right to vote. Use it or lose it.

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What Next Week’s Election Really Means

Posted on November 1, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, November 1, 2022

Next week’s election will decide who gets to legislate in the House of Representatives and seat about a third of the Senate and a bunch of state Governors. Most ballots will contain a slew of other things: candidates for state and local office, constitutional amendments, referenda, and assorted ballot questions, like whether to legalize abortion and marijuana. It’s a cliché that all politics is local, but when they study the cumulative effect of all those local races, most political scientists and commentators will be assessing the health of our nation’s democracy.

Awful as it was, some good might come from the assault by a right-wing nut job spouting Trumpisms that left House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a fractured skull. The Speaker is next in line for the White House, should some equally awful or worse fate befall President Biden and Vice President Harris. The attack on Paul Pelosi, which, in the words of the assailant, was an attempt to punish the Speaker for all of her “lies” on behalf the 2020 “election stealers,” has implications for our political future that are only marginally less serious than an attack on Jill Biden or Doug Imhoff (the husband of VP Harris) would be.

Viewing it combination with the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 should convince voters that the attack on Pelosi is part of a growing pattern that threatens the future of our democracy. We got further confirmation of that today as Steve Bannon and several of the other perpetrators of the election stealing lies urged defeated Brazilian President Bolsonaro to apply the Trump playbook and claim the election he lost was fraudulent. Bolsonaro is one of the world leaders who adopted Trump’s autocratic, extremist style of governance, and Trump endorsed his re-election wholeheartedly.

There is a similar dynamic in play in Israel, as Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to lead his right-wing, anti-Arab nationalists to victory and reclaim the Prime Ministership. The winner in Israel is not clear yet. It’s too soon to tell, but we can hope that the elections in Brazil and Israel are the beginning of a reversal of the global trend toward ultra-nationalism and racial and religious divisiveness, as well as a sign that having watched Trump’s behavior over the past seven years, the rest of the of the world is rejecting it. The question for the United States is whether that trend will materialize when Americans cast their votes.

We’re always going to have to deal with a couple of elected officials who behave like Marjorie Taylor Greene. When there are one or two, they can be viewed as right-wing extremist gadflies, voices that remind us we must always be vigilant in defense of our democracy, but no real threat. When the number of Greene-like people elected to govern us grows, however, alarm bells should go off in the mind of anyone who believes in the American dream.

President Biden likes to describe the present time as a cusp or inflection point. Those are mathematical terms whose meanings are equally valid in the world of government and politics. An inflection point is the moment the direction of a trend changes, when things go from getting worse to getting better, or vice versa. In mathematics, a cusp is the point at which two converging curves like the edges of a crescent moon meet in a sharp tip, but in politics it’s more of a tipping point where everything can change dramatically without warning. Together, those definitions suggest we could see drastic changes in our way of life that seem to occur suddenly, out of the blue. In reality, however, the tipping point only seems sudden to people who have been ignoring trends that have been growing for years.

It’s pretty clear how we got where we are today. Most Americans celebrated Barack Obama’s election to two terms as President as a sign that our society had matured beyond racism, bigotry, and the subjugation of women. It was a shock, when Donald Trump was elected to succeed him, to realize that the voices (and weapons) of hate and authoritarianism hadn’t gone away, but simply retreated underground. Trump brought them out into the light, enabled their reawakening and cheered them on at every turn. The Republican Party was no match for Trump’s canny street-fighting ability, and the cowardice of traditional Republicans who abandoned Conservative values for Trumpism is what is enabling the new crop of Greene’s to gain traction.

Greene and her ilk should not get to decide the future of America. It’s up to us, the voters to do that. Forget the polls and the hype. Look at the candidates’ records and websites. Get off your butts and vote for our future.

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