Classified Documents

Posted on January 13, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 13, 2023

It’s obvious on its face that no matter how you feel about them, Donald Trump and Joe Biden are entirely different kinds of people. The kerfuffles over the handling of classified documents is but the latest example.

Throughout his business life, Trump consistently trod the line between legal and illegal, right and wrong, moral and unethical. He has been sued countless times by people who worked for him and accused him of not paying them for completed work, and by people who paid him for something (enrollment at Trump University, for example) and claimed they’d been defrauded. Trump, for his part, has always bragged that creating chaos and opacity and graying the line between right and wrong were evidence of his brilliant business acumen.

Throughout his decades of public service, Biden has at times been less than perfect, his two most memorable lapses being the infamous plagiarism scandal that sank his first attempt to run for president and his regrettable failure to shield attorney and witness Anita Hill from vile personal attacks during Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearing. While one can never be certain everyone told the truth, the plagiary incident appears to have been the fault of Biden’s speechwriter. No one has ever suggested that Biden was a knowing participant in the incident. And as much as I’ve admired Biden over the years, the Anita Hill incident was clearly a failure on his part, possibly the low point of his career.

In comparing Trump and Biden, it’s clear that their failures and errors were of entirely different natures. With Trump, pushing the envelope, brash, narcissistic behavior, and a general lack of respect for rules, standards of conduct, and other people is a way of life. In Biden we have what I believe is a highly moral, committed politician who does not lean toward extremes, but like the rest of us, is human and fallible. While Trump often doesn’t appear to know the difference between truth and lies, Biden’s openness and sometimes careless seeming, off-the-cuff frankness caused the media to label him a gaffe machine.

We’ll have to wait for the special counsels’ investigations of the classified documents incidents to know the details of what actually occurred, but we already have clear indications of what may have happened. Trump’s problems occurred when the National Archives and Records Administration investigated why many documents that were public property and required by federal law to be preserved under its auspices appeared to be missing.

During more than a year of back-and-forth, as investigators continually turned up more evidence of mishandling, Trump: claimed the FBI had no right to raid his office, though they clearly did; asserted that as a former president, the documents were his personal property; repeatedly said he had returned all documents requested by NARA, although subsequent searches turned up cartons filled with them; and when it was finally clear that there was no record of him ever de-classifying them, absurdly claimed that he had de-classified them with his mind. When Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel, Trump screamed it was part of the never-ceasing witch hunt aimed at discrediting him and evidence of the Democrats weaponizing the government against him.

When Biden’s own people discovered a small number of documents marked classified while cleaning out the Wilmington office he occupied after leaving office as Vice President, they immediately reported the incident to NARA and turned the documents over as required by law. When additional documents were found locked up at Biden’s home, his attorneys did the same thing, and when Garland assigned a special counsel to look into the matter, neither Biden nor any of his people objected. Notably, Biden didn’t claim to have telepathic powers.

In another interesting contrast, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has repeatedly supported Trump’s accusations that the investigation of his documents was politically motivated and characterized the appointment of a special prosecutor as window dressing.  In the Biden case, he claims that the appointment of a special prosecutor is simply a tactic to head off a Congressional inquiry.

It’s impossible for anyone to predict the outcome of either investigation, but Garland has been clear and consistent, treating them equally, even though one involves a former president who is now a private citizen and the other is a sitting president. It’s worth noting, too, that as president, Trump often claimed he was above the law. Biden has always said no one is above the law, and though his White House has been accused of handling the issue clumsily, there has been no public denial of wrongdoing. The White House is letting the Department of Justice do its job.

Whichever way the two investigations turn out, the mishandling of classified documents is a serious matter that must be exempt from politics.

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Frankenstein’s Monster

Posted on January 6, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 6, 2023

We all know the story of Frankenstein, the obsessed scientist who creates a living creature from used body parts. There are different versions, the original Mary Shelley novel, and four Hollywood movie screenplays, but they all have some things in common. The creature, known as the monster because of its grotesque appearance, is wrongly accused of murder, driven mad by alienation, persecution, and rage, and becomes a dispenser of death and destruction. Some versions suggest that the monster ultimately turns on his creator, but it’s actually the creator who turns on it and concludes that it must be destroyed.

We can learn a few things by looking at Donald Trump’s MAGA movement through the eyes of Mary Shelley. Trump created his movement largely from the discards of society, people who felt disaffected and disenfranchised, who had retreated into a variety of cult-like settings. From survivalists to ad hoc militias to xenophobes, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis to uncared-for PTSD-damaged war veterans, Trump patched together a movement of angry people looking for someone to blame for their circumstances. The resulting grotesque political monster swept Trump into the presidency and attempted to take over the Republican Party.

No allegory is perfect, and while Frankenstein’s monster is driven mad by being falsely accused of murder, Trump’s monster is guilty as charged. Trump dreamed of becoming a Vladimir Putin-like autocrat, with his monster protecting him and keeping him in power. But like the fate of most mentally ill narcissists, his dream of wielding power and controlling his MAGA movement was delusional. He motivated his misfits to attempt a violent overthrow of the Congress and the Constitution. But having once experienced the heady corrupting force of power and notoriety, the monster realized it no longer needed him. And Trump made things worse by abandoning his minions to the justice system and ripping them off to the tune of nearly a billion dollars in contributions whose only purpose was to enrich Trump further and cover his legal fees.

The 2022 midterm election and the attempt to seat the newly elected Congress show us what happens when monsters are allowed to run free. Like Doctor Frankenstein, Trump found the monster he hoped would bring him fame and fortune was beyond his control. Having enabled it and encouraged it to release its fury against the government and the clear majority of Americans who rejected it at the polls, he is slipping into decline while his followers wreak havoc in Congress, threatening to turn what was a barely functional body into a carcass.

This is being further enabled by another, not overly smart narcissist who craves being elected Speaker of the House, while the hard core remnants of Trump’s monster vow to prevent that from happening. While there is great entertainment value in pitching Kevin McCarthy against the uncompromising MAGA holdouts and Trump himself, the drama is being played out on live television to a worldwide audience, with pundits informing us that until a Speaker is elected, the legislative branch of our government is essentially offline. That means no action on the debt ceiling or on appropriations to keep government agencies, including the Defense Department and the military operating.

Because McCarthy, like Trump, cares only about his own power and position, the priorities of governing have been derailed. Because McCarthy, like Trump, is a man of limited vision, and one who despite his own view of himself as a master negotiator and deal-maker is showing himself to be incompetent at both, the victim of MAGA’s war against the government will be the United States of America. If McCarthy is ultimately elected speaker, and reports of the things he has given MAGA in exchange for their votes are correct, we will need new words to describe the Congress’ dysfunction.

Stalemate, impasse, and logjam won’t do anymore, because they all suggest temporary situations that can be fixed. If McCarthy empowers Matt Geatz and his crew as he is reported to have done, he will have given them the tools to accomplish their main objective: to tear down the federal government. Every one of the ultra MAGA rebels holding the House hostage voted not to certify the election of President Biden, and several were directly implicated in the January 6th insurrection. They cheered when their former master recently suggested that the Constitution be suspended so he could be reinstated as President.

If like many Americans, you believed that the fading of Donald Trump’s political star would signal a return to normalcy, think again.  We still have a Supreme Court that is seriously out of step with more than two thirds of America, and we have a spineless narcissist on the verge of become Speaker of the House who is willing to give the monster all the power it needs to wreck our political system.

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Intraparty Warfare

Posted on January 4, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Znedell, January 4, 2023

Politics is cyclic. The pendulum of power swings between parties every twenty years or so. Political parties adopt sacred, non-negotiable ideologies, only to reverse themselves as their self-interests change, and parties appear unified or in complete disarray as cycles evolve. For most of the post-Reagan era, it was the Democrats who seemed unable to put a united front together, but that all changed when Donald Trump turned to politics.

Ever since Trump began preaching his unique brand of divisive, morally vague extremism, the Democrats have been more united than ever while the Republican Party has been in a state of civil war, but the seeds for their current problems took root with Ronald Reagan and Grover Norquist almost forty years ago and evolved into the Tea Party in 2009.

Wikipedia describes the Tea Party Movement as calling for lower taxes and a reduction of the national debt and federal budget deficit, support for small government, and opposition to government-sponsored universal healthcare. That sounds like standard libertarian, populist doctrine, but reading between the lines revealed a more sinister, un-American agenda. Achieving those objectives meant severe cuts in discretionary government spending, most of which is targeted at helping lower income people, non-whites, new immigrants and refugees, and women’s health issues. Many people claimed that reading between the lines of its public image revealed that the Tea Party was elitist, racist, xenophobic, and misogynist.

Trump’s contribution was taking the skeletons out of the closet. Rather than pretending the Tea Party’s principles implied a desire to govern responsibly for all Americans, he reveled in bashing both legal and illegal immigration, acknowledging that he was blatantly attempting to assure that nonwhites never dominate our elections. His economic proposals were designed mostly to preserve and increase the wealth of the already wealthiest Americans. His attempt to eradicate Obamacare was merely an attempt to thwart a massive transfer of wealth from the rich to the non-rich. And Trump’s pandering to evangelists was nothing more than a promise to deprive women of their right to manage the health of their own bodies.

Trump himself may leave the world of politics, disgraced and bouncing between criminal and bankruptcy courts, but he leaves behind a dangerously stacked Supreme Court and a gang of irresponsible rebels high on their own notoriety, who show total disinterest in governing. With the rest of the world, we’re watching the results play out on television, as the Republican Party airs its dirty laundry trying elect a House Speaker.

What we are witnessing is a testament to hypocrisy and the result of a once-major party disintegrating because of the lingering influence of one man whose narcissistic lust for power was never concerned with collateral damage. There is no clearer representative of that hypocrisy than Kevin McCarthy. Bill Clinton’s political enemies liked to label him a waffler, because he sometimes changed his mind about serious issues of policy, and I always wondered if Americans preferred leaders who marched in lockstep to outmoded ideas long after they were proved unworkable.

Kevin McCarthy is a different kind of waffler. He floats in the wind based solely on what he believes to be in his self-interest. Concerning the darkest day in the last 160 years of our history, the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol, believing that Trump was guilty of inciting the insurrection, Kevin McCarthy, who had always courted Trump’s support and endorsement, spoke out publicly condemning him. For a brief moment, he seemed to rise above politics, looking like someone worthy of his party’s leadership. But within days, when Trump’s immediate demise no longer looked assured, there was McCarthy in Mar-a-Lago kneeling at his master’s feet again.

The best we can say about McCarthy is that he disagrees in principle with the unconscionable ravings of the Trumpers who are preventing him from becoming Speaker, but comparing him with Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, and Marjorie Taylor Greene is a frighteningly low bar. Until a potential leader of courage and integrity emerges to break the stalemate, Republicans have to choose between a known evil and a man who has shown he cannot be trusted to stand in support of the Constitution when doing so would threaten his political power.

However this turns out, it will at best be an embarrassment, a display for the entire world to see how dysfunctional our experiment in democracy can be. It’s appalling. It’s discouraging. It’s nauseating. As I write this, the House of Representative has failed to elect a Speaker after six attempts, while on the other half of our television screens, President Joe Biden stands with Senators Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) on the bridge connecting Cincinnati, OH with Covington, KY, demonstrating that bipartisan government works far better than the politics of hate and division.

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Happy New Year, 2023??

Posted on January 1, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 1, 2023

After we experienced a whole winter’s worth of weather in December, after Ukraine, with massive assistance from NATO, held off an invasion by what everyone thought was a hugely superior Russian military, and after two years of testimony linking Donald Trump to the January 6, 2021 insurrection, we ceremoniously said goodbye to 2022. We enter 2023 uncertain about what will follow, as well as by the triple threat of COVID, influenza, and a surge in RSV cases, and whether a viable Republican Party can emerge from its internecine struggle. Add a couple of other minor issues, like the survival of American democracy and the risk of a recession while the Parties rev up for the 2024 election, and we set the stage for an interesting year.

There were many surprises in 2022, and there are likely more in store this year. Despite more than a quarter of Americans inexplicably believing Donald Trump should still be president and rampant skepticism about whether our legal system can respond effectively to his criminal and unconstitutional behavior, 2023 will almost surely see the unprecedented spectacle of a former president indicted for multiple felonies. Today, outgoing representative Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans with the courage and integrity to serve on the January 6th Committee, said Trump must be charged and prosecuted. If not, Kinzinger fears for the future of our country. He said if what Trump did wasn’t criminal, he didn’t know what was, and if Trump isn’t held accountable, the bar for future presidents will be that it’s acceptable for a president to attempt to retain power by any means necessary.

In 2023, the world must learn to deal with a severely diminished Russia which is still led by a paranoid autocrat with a huge ego who has the capacity to wreak nuclear havoc. Vladimir Putin often threatens to use nuclear weapons when his back is to the wall. The world knows how ruthless he is, but is he crazy enough to unleash nuclear war? Are there enough checks and balances within Russia’s government or society to prevent him from doing so? These are serious questions, but they’re not things the average American can influence.

We would be well advised to focus on what we can control, chief among which is the future of our democracy that’s under assault from multiple directions. One thing we can control is the movement among Trumper-dominated state legislatures to rig elections in favor of Republicans. Both parties are guilty of gerrymandering, which has the affect of magnifying votes cast for one party, enabling it to maintain majority control without ever receiving fifty percent of the votes cast, but Republicans use it more abusively than Democrats. The same legislatures are intent on passing laws that undermine our constitutional right to elections determined by voters rather than partisan politicians, but the courts are beginning to take notice of these threats.

2023 will either see the foundations of our democracy strengthened or left vulnerable to politicians who are more interested in preserving their power than defending the Constitution. Congress took a giant step toward the former when it included language in the 2023 omnibus spending bill to assure that an incumbent president can never again attempt to overturn an election as Trump did in 2020. That should clarify any gray area in the Constitution, but if politics is allowed to derail criminal investigations of the actions by Trump and his supporters leading up to the January 6th assault on the Capitol, everyone who believes insurrection is an appropriate way to retain power will be vindicated and enabled.

Since it appears that both the U. S. Department of Justice and the state of Georgia are heading toward prosecuting Trump, we should turn our attention to the upcoming Congressional session. In a fascinating twist, fear among traditional institutionalist Republicans that Trump supporters will dominate and likely destroy their party is forging an unlikely political alliance between Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Joe Biden. For all his obstructionist tactics, doing everything possible to thwart efforts of Presidents Biden and Obama to pass bipartisan legislation, McConnell appears to value the Constitution over the Trumpian notion of clinging to power at any cost.

With House leadership in question and Kevin McCarthy having to constantly bend to the will of the more rabid Trump supporters to gain their vote for Speaker, McConnell and McCarthy are on a collision course. As his cooperation on getting the 2023 spending bill passed showed, McConnell wants our government to function, and he’s signaling that he will not permit Trump supporters in the House to return Congress to its dysfunctional recent history.

Americans did their part in the midterm elections, telling our leaders that most of us want democracy and a fair, effective government, but the fight isn’t over. 2023 will likely be a pivotal time in our history, and it’s up to all of us to assure that it turns out well.

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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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