Abetting Our Enemies

Posted on February 24, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 24, 2022

Try to imagine that far across the ocean, a large, powerful adversary has surrounded a neighboring sovereign nation with clear intent to invade and overthrow its legally elected government. No one has any illusions about whose military forces are stronger, but the smaller country is no patsy, and unlike the Afghan army we trained and paid for, these people will fight as long as they have life to defend their homeland. This nation is not a bunch of loosely connected regions ruled by warlords and religious zealots, but a country with a thousand years of history and tradition. The fight, now that it has begun, will be long and bloody, but allies along the beleaguered nation’s western flank have committed to support it with heavy equipment, and possibly even personnel.

That sounds troubling enough, but the reality is worse. Not since 1938 has one nation conducted this kind of aggression against its neighbor, and that led to the bloodiest war in our history. Overnight polls here at home imply that the vast majority of Americans view the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as someone else’s war. It’s understandable after two years of dealing with a pandemic and challenging economic problems, but as the experience of Europe in the last century proved, it’s completely wrongheaded. Because Ukraine is bordered by NATO countries, one stray Russian missile that lands in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, or Romania could set off a Europe-wide conflict, which, because of NATO charter commitments will involve the United States directly.

NATO countries know the only way to stabilize the situation short of global conflict is through strength and unity. The NATO Charter requires unanimity on the part of all thirty member states before joint military actions, even defensive ones can occur. Unlikely as that may appear, such unity exists and appears to be holding firm. Even the four NATO countries that border Ukraine, which lived under the domination of the Russian led USSR until its dissolution thirty years ago remain firm in their defense of Ukraine. We’ve seen no pro-Russian demonstrations in those countries, no voices raised in support of Vladimir Putin’s actions.

The only country in which prominent politicians have praised Putin and his gross violations of international law is ours. No sooner did we breathe a sigh of relief, that in Joe Biden we had a president willing to stand up to Mr. Putin and take every action short of direct military engagement, and a Republican Party that has mostly fallen in line behind Mr. Biden, then the Trumpers began marching in lockstep in support of the Russian President. Their leader, of course, was Donald Trump, who will probably be indicted for his role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection. If fomenting insurrection weren’t serious enough, he has now turned to what smells very much like outright treason.

With the rest of the Free World condemning Putin’s bald-faced aggression, our mentally ill former president has instead chosen to praise and compliment him. Supported by people like Tucker Carlson, who as Russia was beginning a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and pushing toward Kyiv and its four million residents, referred to it as a border war that’s none of our business, Trump went further. He described the invading Russian army of nearly 200,000 as “the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen.” He might as well have written Putin’s speech for him, as the Russian leader proclaimed that Ukraine is rightly part of Russia, and he is obligated to cleanse and replace the “Nazis” who now control Ukraine to protect its citizens, who Putin claims are Russians being held hostage.

Describing Putin’s lies and misdirection in the past few weeks, Trump went on to say, in his barely literate style, “This is genius…Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine — Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. He used the word ‘independent’ and ‘we’re going to go out and we’re going to go in and we’re going to help keep peace.’ You’ve got to say that’s pretty savvy.”

No, you don’t. We knew Putin was a brilliant tactician, but his invasion strategy is exactly what most American military commentators predicted it would be, and after the initial couple of days, Putin’s forces could find themselves bogged down with bloody insurgencies with both civilian and Russian casualties mounting rapidly. Is that savvy or the result of desperation-driven risk taking?

More to the point, Trump has proven undeniably that America First is the farthest thing from his mind. The only thing that ever matters to Trump is himself, and with his latest attempt to glorify and aid Putin, the master war criminal, it’s clear that he needs to be locked away in a secure facility that will prevent him from doing further damage to America.

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Biden vs Putin

Posted on February 22, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 22, 2022

Remember the testimony during the Senate trial of Trump’s first impeachment? If you watched much of it, you were impressed with Fiona Hill, who served as Trump’s chief Russia expert, which is not to say he paid any attention to her advice or expertise. Ms. Hill may be the most qualified person among the western alliance to address both Russia’s cultural history and Vladimir Putin’s thought process. Educated in the UK, she served as Chief of Staff to the British Prime Minister before becoming an American citizen and advising American presidents, beginning with a position on George W. Bush’s National Security Council.

While Ms. Hill does not work for the Biden administration, (she is a fellow at the Brookings Institution,) the President is seeking her counsel concerning the Russia-Ukraine crisis. By way of context, Ms. Hill is no idealogue. Brookings is well known as non-partisan and centrist, and Hill has advised governments at both ends of the political spectrum. That makes her remarks contrasting Biden’s approach to Russia with Trump’s most enlightening.

In an interview with CNN’s John Harwood, she said Trump’s approach to foreign policy ”was like nothing Hill or her national security colleagues had ever seen.” She went on to say, “There’s no Team America for Trump…not once did I see him do anything to put America first. Not once. Not for a single second,” claiming Trump treated NATO like a “protection racket.” In fact, historian Heather Richardson reported today that Russian state television said the Trump administration gave Putin a four-year reprieve from pushback from the west.

By contrast, she sees Biden’s strong approach to Russian President Vladimir Putin already paying dividends. “It might have deterred a full-scale invasion. Now (Putin) is basically recalibrating, recalculating.” Hill won’t go so far as to predict that Biden will convince Putin to back off, but gives him enormous credit for re-vitalizing NATO and holding the western alliance together. The final outcome, she says, will depend on whether he can keep it together indefinitely as the sanctions imposed by the US, UK, France, and Germany kick in.

The sanctions announced today are intended to cripple Russia’s ability to obtain financing from western countries, isolate the breakaway parts of Ukraine that Putin recognized as part of Russia, and prevent the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline from coming online, which would cost Russia $15 billion in annual revenue. But there will be economic pain on our side as well, as we will see sharp increases in energy prices.

There’s been an unprecedented flurry of diplomatic activity to head off a full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the possibility of a dangerous broader war involving Europe. Such a conflict would trigger the mutual defense clause of the NATO Charter, which means the United States would be obligated to defend any NATO state that came under attack. It’s a dangerous powder keg that must be handled with delicate precision, and in many ways is reminiscent of two previous situations. One is Europe’s failure to unite to prevent the Fascist regimes in Italy and Germany from seizing territory from their sovereign neighbors. Standing tough might not have averted World War 2, but it wouldn’t have looked like an open invitation to Hitler and Mussolini to take whatever they wanted…or like the one Trump gave Putin during four years of worshipping him.

The more relevant parallel is the Cuban Missile Crisis, during which a poorly prepared Kennedy administration went head-to-head with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Much has been written since then about how Kennedy’s foreign policy team handled the crisis, a lot of it negative, which is why the involvement of people like Fiona Hill matters so much now. Kennedy had filled his cabinet with what the media called the Harvard Elite, academically brilliant, but lacking an adequate understanding of the Russian mentality.

I was studying Russian at the time at Columbia, and my professor provided insights that in retrospect seem right on. Russian is subtly different from either the Latin or Germanic languages from which English evolved, and that difference can be critical in diplomacy. It’s virtually impossible to communicate clearly with an adversary if you are not fluent in its language, and many historians believe that Kennedy’s diplomacy was hopelessly outmatched. It’s possible that nuclear war was averted only by the wise statesmanship of Mr. Khrushchev. Some people attributed the disconnect to the fact that Russian does not use tenses as we understand them in English. Rather it uses “aspects” which involve entirely different conceptions of past, present, and future.

It’s essential that President Biden rely on advisers like Ms. Hill, who is both fluent in Russian and has decades of experience studying the Russian mindset. We can’t predict yet how successful Mr. Biden will be, but we should all be grateful that it is he at the helm instead of his predecessor.

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Joe Biden, Leader of the Free World

Posted on February 19, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 19, 2022

As I watched President Joe Biden address the nation, yesterday, talking about Russian President Vladimir Putin and the likelihood that Russian forces will invade Ukraine in coming days, I felt proud. He was strong and clear. There was no sign of the life-long stuttering that his opponents like to seize on and interpret as creeping dementia. He was terse and to the point making sure the world knew that America’s solidarity with the European Union and NATO was unbreakable.

He was also clear that the western alliance of democracies would continue to supply Ukraine with weapons and equipment and would strenuously execute Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, the one that requires all member nations to defend each other if any one of them is attacked, if that occurred. He promised that if Russia invaded, especially if it targeted Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, a city of “2.8 million innocent people,” the west would impose crippling economic and diplomatic sanctions.

These would include shutting down the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines Russia built to supply natural gas to western Europe. Between loans and financing by the state-owned Gazprom company, Russia spent sixteen billion euros (eighteen billion dollars) constructing pipes from Siberia to the North Sea to provide Europe with more than a third of its natural gas. Loss of the revenue it receives from those pipelines would be a devastating blow to Russia’s economy. It would also increase energy costs in Europe, but there is no sign of weakening resolve on the part of the EU.

As I listened to our president yesterday, I was grateful that the man speaking was Joe Biden. Can you imagine what we would have heard if it had been Donald Trump? Trump couldn’t even state publicly that Russia had hacked into the 2016 election after our government’s entire security apparatus had shown him and the world media compelling evidence. Recall that Trump’s fist impeachment resulted from attempting to blackmail Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky into providing non-existing evidence against Hunter Biden during the 2020 campaign by illegally withholding billions of dollars in weapons the country needed to defend itself against Russia.

Recall, too, how Trump was hounded by reports of being indebted to Russian banks and oligarchs to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and that his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was sentenced to seven years in prison for fraud over his business dealings with Russia and Ukraine. Trump never divested his interest in his businesses, as he was required to by law, which, combined with his history of attempting to build Trump hotels in Russia, fueled suspicion that Putin had evidence that could have destroyed Trump. That and Trump’s public worshipful treatment of autocrats like Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un, while attacking European leaders and even Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, combined with ill-advised tariffs and a costly trade war had left our traditional alliances in a shambles.

Yesterday showed us that in one year in office, Biden has restored the Western Alliance. It’s no small thing that the EU and NATO are standing firm, diplomatically, economically, and militarily against Russia. The failure of the post-World War 1 western alliance to recognize and stand up to German and Japanese aggression made the second world war inevitable. As political scientist David Rothkopf wrote in The Daily Beast, “The reality [is] that Trump’s record on Russia—and the damage he did with our allies and at home—set the stage for the crisis that Biden and his team are expertly managing today. Don’t forget Trump said on the campaign trail that he would consider lifting sanctions on Russia and recognizing occupied Crimea as Russian land.”

Biden has shown resolve and unwavering strength in dealing with Vladimir Putin, something we never saw from Trump, who was clearly enamored with the Russian autocrat and jealous of the power he could wield unfettered by a constitution that protected human rights. Were Trump in office today, not only would Russia feel free to invade and occupy the sovereign nation of Ukraine, but that likely would have been the final blow that destroyed NATO.

Our nation is fortunate to have a president who is both a natural leader and a statesman. Joe Biden has spent his life in foreign relations. He understands that diplomacy and defending America are not about ego or personal wealth and power. They are the sworn duty of the President. He also understands that strength in the face aggressive action by a leader like Putin is the only thing that will prevent the destabilization of our essential alliances.

Isn’t it wonderful that in Joe Biden we have a president who is willing to wear the mantle of Leader of the Free World once again?

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Trump’s Waning Influence

Posted on February 15, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 15, 2022

Remember the (Bill) Clinton years? They provide interesting perspectives for today. The politics of the nineties were nasty, culminating in the 2000 election in which George W. Bush’s victory over Al Gore was as much a statement by the right-leaning Supreme Court as a clear decision based on vote counts. It could have been a national disaster. Were there even a shred of similarity between Al Gore and Donald Trump, the final decision could have been dragged through the courts and the media well past inauguration day with violent demonstrations in the streets of Washington.

Gore chose to accept defeat because healing partisan divisions over the election and the six-week battle over counting Florida’s votes, and defending the transfer of power clause of the Constitution were more important to him than winning. To fully appreciate just how venal Donald Trump’s inability to accept defeat is, I recommend Gore’s concession speech to Bush. He began by quoting Stephen Douglas’ concession to Abraham Lincoln: “Partisan feeling must yield to patriotism. I’m with you, Mr. President, and God bless you…in that same spirit, I say to President-elect Bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his stewardship of this country.” Can you imagine Trump speaking those words?

Another perspective from that time begins with the husband-wife duo James Carville (Democrat) and Mary Matalin (Republican.) Their spirited, pointed, on-air debates entertained us throughout Clinton’s presidency. They argued their points of view fiercely, but with neither rancor nor appeals to hate or racism. Consider their counterparts for the Trump years, Kellyanne and George  Conway.

Kellyanne ran Trump’s 2016 campaign and served as senior advisor throughout his administration, to all appearances a wholehearted participant in the evolution of Trumpism. It was she who first used the phrases “fake news” and “alternative facts.” George was a conservative Republican who Trump initially considered for Solicitor General, but George withdrew his name as the reality of the Trump presidency evolved. As Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party seemed unstoppable, George changed his party affiliation from Republican to Independent and became a leading voice of the Lincoln Project, prominent current and former Republicans working to assure that Trump would be defeated in 2020.

Kellyanne left the White House amid family turmoil emanating from her association with Trump. Her teenage daughter had become a social media sensation blasting both her mother and Trump, a poignant reminder of Trump’s unique ability to wreck both families and life-long friendships. Recently, Kellyanne joined the Republican primary race to replace Ohio Senator Rob Portman, who is retiring to escape the partisan gridlock. According to Forbes, Bernie Moreno, the candidate she’s advising, described Trump as a lunatic and a maniac in 2016, vowing to never support him, yet (big surprise) he’s running as a Trump ally.

George is now this generation’s James Carville, despite their very different political views. What they have in common is love for America and respect for the Constitution. George is a sought-after commentator who thoroughly understands the threat Trump poses to America and has devoted himself to stopping him. An attorney with a Yale law degree whose legal opinions are well respected and a long-time observer of presidential politics, he’s someone I listen to attentively.

Today, when George Conway granted media interviews to CNN, NBC, Yahoo News, et al, I couldn’t wait to hear what he thought about the New York State Attorney General’s revelation that the accounting firm Mazars, which had handled the finances of the Trump Organization for years had informed Trump in writing that his financial records from 2010 through 2020 were unreliable. In English that means Trump and his people falsified numbers to acquire loans and falsified them again to receive low tax assessments on their properties. That is felony fraud.

Conway’s take: “This is worse for [Trump] than being impeached twice,” because the worst possible outcome from an impeachment is being thrown out of office, but if Trump is proven guilty, his businesses and his private life will be threatened. Most large banks have been reluctant to loan Trump money for many years, because people on the inside knew he lacked business ethics and routinely ran out on debts. Now that his accounting firm has divorced him, accusing him of falsifying the data he gave them, it’s clear, as Conway put it, that they’re now playing on Team Attorney General and Team (Manhattan) District Attorney, not team Trump.

Conway’s final salvo caught my eye most. He said New York AG Letitia Jones can file a civil suit against the Trump organization and family under a New York statute that does not require proof of intent. The Mazars letter would then constitute sufficient proof of Trump and his associates’ guilt. Ms. James appears to be close to charging him. She knows what most of us know. An indictment will severely weaken Trump’s political influence, and that cannot happen too soon. Our country’s future is hanging in the balance.

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Classified Hypocrisy

Posted on February 11, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 11, 2022

I was one of many Americans who held top secret clearance during the Cold War and Vietnam years. Everyone took that stuff very seriously back then. We were read the riot act concerning all the federal statutes they could throw at us if we violated even the most trivial-seeming requirement. We were threatened with huge fines and long prison terms for violations, which included things like whether our own clearance levels entitled us to see specific classified materials, where they could be destroyed, stored, or even looked at, and whom they could be shared with.

This reflected the paranoia of the times. Our superiors gave the impression of a leak-proof system hardened against spying or treason, but there was always a potential loophole. While every government and military institution and every contractor had to run all clearance approvals through a strict and detailed FBI vetting process, there was and still is one glaring exception, equivalent to leaving the barn door wide open. The exception applies only to the president, who can legally grant any level of clearance to anyone he or she chooses.

As loopholes go that doesn’t seem all that serious. After all, the president is the Commander in Chief of the armed forces and the individual most clearly tasked with protecting the safety and security of all Americans. What would motivate a president to behave irresponsibly with highly classified materials?

Donald Trump answered that question as soon as he took office. In April, 2019, Reuters reported that, “A White House whistleblower has said the Trump administration overruled security experts to give questionable security clearances to more than two dozen people, including the president’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner.” Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, had been granted top secret clearances by the president because he had no respect for rules and norms observed by his predecessors. From the first, Trump considered himself above the laws the rest of us have to obey.

It might seem ironic that Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016 has been credited by many observers to the infamous email scandal fueled by Trump’s supporters and the Fox News Channel. It might, except that it was simply a political hit job conceived by people with no scruples for whom winning was everything, in other words, Trumpers. Clinton was never accused of deliberately misusing of mishandling classified documents. Rather, the entire kerfuffle was about a gray area in the then current rules for how they could be stored. As Secretary of State, Ms. Clinton used a private server in her home to do some of the government’s business, a practice that George W. Bush’s Secretary of State, Colin Powell said he had used as well. There was no evidence that Clinton knowingly acted irresponsibly or committed any act that compromised our security.

What may eventually prove to be ironic, depending on how it plays out, is evidence being provided to the House Special Committee on January 6th that Trump deliberately destroyed classified documents to keep them from coming to light. He also illegally moved documents from the White House to his residence at Mara Lago including many clearly marked “Top Secret” without securing them. It appears that there is more than enough evidence that Trump violated both the Presidential Records Act and the Rules for Safeguarding Classified National Security Information contained in federal regulations (32 CFR Part 2004.) These are serious crimes that could land you and me in federal prison for the rest of our natural lives.

It seems our lawmakers, in writing security rules, never imagined a president like Trump, who believed he could make his own rules whenever it pleased him, whose boundless arrogance extended to routinely violating federal and state statutes. People who know Trump well have often compared his behavior to that of a Mafia crime boss – total disregard for laws, morality, and common decency. If you are shocked by the latest revelations by the Washington Post about Trump ripping up Top Secret documents, flushing them down toilets, and taking a cavalier approach to national security, I’d have to ask which planet you’ve been living on for that last five years.

All this is in its preliminary stages. Eventually, all the evidence will be referred to and studied by Department of Justice investigators. If we believe Attorney General Merrick Garland, DOJ will not be intimidated by either political pressure or the media. Predicting whether Trump will be indicted or brought to trial is a losing gambit, but as the walls of justice close in on him, we can rest assured that his political star will continue to fade. I have no doubt that his actual influence is being exaggerated by the media. His fall from grace cannot happen too quickly.

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The McConnell Declaration

Posted on February 9, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 9, 2022

Declarations of war are generally issued well after conflict has begun. That’s despite the constitution’s requirement that only Congress can declare war. It wasn’t FDR’s classic Day of Infamy speech declaring war on the Axis powers that began our entry into World War 2, it was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Or if you look further back, you can argue that we actually entered the war with the Lend Lease Agreement and the release of the Atlantic Charter.

Similarly, the civil war in the Republican Party has been brewing since Donald Trump declared his candidacy for president in 2015. His opening salvos made it clear that he wouldn’t tolerate any disloyalty, and he defined any Republican who disagreed with him as disloyal. He savaged each of the other Republican Candidates who were running in 2016, insulting people and inventing crude, vulgar nicknames for them. His conduct was so out of bounds, his opponents had no idea how to respond, and once they realized the true nature of the monster they had enabled, it was too late.

Observing how each of them reacted should have taught us a valuable lesson. The entire Bush clan slinked away with their tails between their legs, forever truncating their influence in the Republican Party. Would Representative Liz Cheney have been subjected to constant attacks from within her own party if brothers George and Jeb remained engaged? Chris Christie started out criticizing Trump, was viciously attacked because of Jared Kushner’s personal grudge against him, then became Trump’s lapdog, and finally, now that Trump’s star may be fading, has found the courage to tell the truth about him. Trump ridiculed renowned African-American neurosurgeon and committed Christian Ben Carson shamefully, yet, despite Trump’s pandering to every racist group in the country and lack of moral character, Dr. Carson inexplicably joined his administration and never spoke out publicly again.

Perhaps the most aggegious examples were Senators Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham. Time.com reported that Trump and Cruz exchanged serious public insults fourteen times during the 2016 primary campaign. Trump attacked Cruz’s wife and implied that Cruz’s father had been involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, while Cruz called Trump a sniveling coward, a liar, and consistently disgraceful – before Cruz endorsed Trump and became one of his most ardent defenders.

Trump’s attacks on Graham were equally disgraceful, calling him a nut job and suggesting that Graham didn’t have what it took to stand up to him. Yet Graham ultimately supported Trump and became one of his most enabling sycophants, remaining silent when Trump repeatedly trashed his “best friend” John McCain. Then, he got caught in the crossfire of the burgeoning Republican civil war between Trump, Mitch McConnell and the Republican National Committee. Is that a shred of integrity I hear when Graham speaks out against the insurrection and in favor of the Constitution?

It didn’t take Republican politicians and office holders long to recognize what Donald Trump was, but by then, their fear of his hold on his ignorant, racist base was so great, they were individually afraid to criticize the former president and seemingly unable to unite to restrain him. But despite their relative silence, the Republican Civil War simmered, and revelations coming from the January 6th Committee have raised the temperature to a boil. With the midterm elections looming and the Supreme Court appearing ready to permit states to gerrymander any semblance of election fairness out of existence, it was now or never.

Some Republicans joined the party out of principle and still believe it is their sacred duty is to uphold and defend our Constitution. We’re approaching crunch time if they’re going to act against the Trump faction of their party in time to save our democracy. Like most politicians, they need a truly horrendous action by the other side to give them the fortitude to speak out; fortunately for the rest of us, the RNC delivered that to them on a silver platter when it released a statement censuring Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kissinger for participating in the investigation of the Trump-inspired insurrection, which it characterized as “legitimate political discourse.”

The RNC action was so outrageous it catalyzed Former Vice President Mike Pence to speak against his former boss for the first time, reacting to all the slurs and threats around his refusal to unlawfully attempt to overturn the election of Joe Biden. Maybe Pence was the tipping point. If the RNC was the Confedracy firing on Fort Sumter, Pence and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell accusing Trump of violating his oath of office was Lincoln calling out 75,000 troops to quell the rebellion.

Now we have an acknowledgement, a declaration of civil war by McConnell. About the RNC’s statement he said, “The issue is whether or not the RNC should be sort of singling out members of our party who may have different views from the majority. That’s not the job of the RNC.” And about the RNC’s stance on the insurrection, he said: “We all were here; we saw what happened. It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election from one administration to the next. That’s what it was.”

That sounds pretty clear to me. It says the gloves are off and the so-called RINOs, the real Republicans, are ready to fight for their party. We can only hope Senator McConnell, one of the most ruthlessly partisan politicians in the country, is equally ruthless in defending democracy.

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It’s Always Darkest Just Before Dawn

Posted on February 6, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 6, 2022

Apparently, people have been saying that for four hundred years. Whenever things look really bleak, when people are terrified or sad and feeling hopeless, that mantra helps them stay sane. The darker it gets the closer dawn must be. If you’re not fond of metaphors, maybe you’ll like Bookbrowse’s take better: “Things always seem to get worse before they get better – even in the worst of circumstances there is hope.”

Anyone who has read this blog knows I have resisted melodrama when discussing the future of our country. I’ve suggested that there is far too much media hype that blows the seriousness of what has happened since the 2020 election out of proportion. I have never stopped being optimistic about our future, but protecting it will soon require action by all of us who care. Cheerleading from the sidelines while the forces of darkness attack the fundamentals on which our nation was built can only have one outcome.

In just the last century we can cite sufficient examples: the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, the fascist takeover of Italy and Germany, the subjugation of North Korea, Hungary and Venezuela’s slide toward dictatorship. It is now clear to everyone that Donald Trump will stop at nothing to get what he wants. We all know what he is, though some of us have continued to hold out hope that at some point he’ll just give up and accept reality. That hope relies on the assumption that Trump possesses a shred of integrity and decency. He does not possess either. If there’s something he craves that he can’t own, he’d rather destroy it. Just ask the residents of Atlantic City, New Jersey.

I am still optimistic. Trump’s most recent actions clearly reek of desperation. He feels the walls closing in on him as various arms of our justice systems do their work. His disastrous appeals to the courts since the election have surely shaken his confidence in the “loyalty” of the three Justices he placed on the Supreme Court. A titanic fight for the existence of the Republican Party looms, and with it the future of Donald Trump’s influence and the survival of our democratic system. Things are going to get very tense in 2022. Billions of dollars are going to be spent by people who think they can profit from being on the winning side.

It’s going to be a political bloodbath, a scandal that the entire world will be watching on CNN, BBC, and Al Jazeera. Even if the proponents of racism, hatred, and greed are defeated in the end, the sideshow will leave an indelible stain on how the rest of the world views America. And that’s probably the best-case scenario. It’s time to develop a regular correspondence with the people who represent you in Congress, especially in states or districts where the coming election is likely to be competitive.

What is at stake is everything we believe in. Trump has already plunged a dagger into our belief in truth and science. From the very beginning he masterminded a campaign of misinformation and disinformation. He used the Nietzschean trick of simply reversing the meanings of common words and getting his sycophants to chant them at every opportunity. Nearly a third of Americans now believe “fake news” and “alternative facts” are real things. The seriousness of that cannot be overstated. When we can no longer reasonably distinguish truth from lies, we will have doomed our futures.

That is what Trump is counting on, which makes Task One for the rest of us preventing that from happening. When Trump screams to his ignorant supporters that our entire justice system is corrupt and aligned against him, the rest of us have to scream louder that it is not. When Trump calls his crazed militias to arms to defend him against legally obtained felony indictments, the rest of us have to shout them down. And when individual Representatives and Senators speak in defense of insurrection instead of the Constitution, their constituents must speak even louder at the ballot box.

This isn’t about politics. Politics is the way governing bodies negotiate their differences to move the country forward. Trump’s movement is a perversion of the natural order, an attempt by people who value power and wealth above all else to undermine our nation for their benefit. Much like the way my father and the rest of the Greatest Generation went off to war in the 1940s to defend us against fascism and dictatorship, the current generation must stand up against Trumpism. The stakes are as high today as they were then.

Yes, it’s looking dark on the horizon. But it’s always darkest just before dawn.

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The Most Dangerous Animal on Earth

Posted on February 1, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 1, 2022,

Animals aren’t inherently dangerous unless you get caught between them and their young, their home, or their food. The most dangerous animals are those that are cornered, scared, or injured. Thus, we describe trapped, deadly criminals as cornered rats, hunters stay clear of wounded game, and everyone knows to avoid rabid dogs and rodents.

Any philosopher, sociologist, or animal trainer will tell you the most dangerous species on the planet is homo sapiens. It follows that a cornered, terrified, wounded human is potentially the most dangerous creature on the planet. What if that human also possessed no moral center, acted ruthlessly in all situations, and fit the classic definition of a narcissistic sociopath? What if he had a darkly charismatic aura and a unique ability to appeal to people’s worst natures, and completely lacking in conscience, would pander to anyone who would open their checkbooks or vote for him?

If all that were true, we would be talking about someone whose niece, a licensed psychologist, described him as the most dangerous man on the planet. She takes that so seriously, she included those words in the title of her family biography. I agree with Mary Trump. I’ve believed since he came down that escalator in Trump Tower five-and-a-half years ago, spewing racist venom and lies, that Donald Trump was capable of destroying America and possibly the world.

Donald Trump cares about only one thing: Donald Trump. He doesn’t care about the Constitution, except in as much as he can find corrupt, beholden Justices who support his sick, distorted interpretation of it. (I do not think that will happen, though Trump is betting his future on it.) He doesn’t give a damn about his supporters – to him, they’re the political equivalent of cannon fodder. He lies to them, playing on their fears, insecurities, and hatred, and has gotten them to contribute more than half a billion dollars to his efforts to subvert the 2020 election, much of which he diverted to his own accounts to pay his personal legal fees.

But most important of all, Donald Trump couldn’t care less about making America great or whether Americans prosper, starve, or die of COVID or for lack of affordable health care. He doesn’t care about the people who elected him in 2016, and cares even less about those who sent him packing in 2020. He cares only about salving his wounded ego, accumulating personal wealth, and keeping the legal wolves at bay, because they’re closing in on him on several fronts. As many experienced observers, as well as Dr. Mary Trump warned us, when he feels threatened, Donald Trump will do anything to survive. He will throw anyone he needs to under the bus. He will slander and libel anyone who opposes him. If necessary, he will destroy our republic if he believes that will give him a chance to regain power.

The Special House Committee investigating the January 6th insurrection is systematically building a terrifying picture of a President so desperate to win, he was willing to violate federal and state laws, as well as every precept of common decency. He threatened and lied about state election officials, most of whom he declared traitors, because they were Republicans who put the law and the Constitution ahead of loyalty to him. He was prepared to seize voting machines by Executive Order. He blatantly, before a national audience, directed several Secretaries of State to “find” votes for him. He directed a plot in six states to falsify the certification of electors and submit fraudulent election results when the Congress met to certify the new president.

Prosecutors in Georgia believe Trump is guilty of committing felonies, and after his unhinged rant in Texas last weekend, attacking our entire legal system as corrupt, the people investigating him in Georgia have had to request heightened security from the FBI. Both the New York State Attorney General and the Manhattan District Attorney are nearing the end of a multi-year investigation into Trump’s business practices and the actions of his family. People who understand such things tell me investigators only leak information nearing the end of their research when they are certain of their case. Previewing their finding of a persistent pattern of misinformation and distorted valuations of multi-million-dollar properties means they have the goods on the former president. And don’t be surprised if records from Deutsche Bank, which has already been fined hundreds of millions for money laundering, result in Trump being indicted for racketeering.

If he somehow manages to extract himself from his legal jeopardy and is able to corrupt our political system enough to regain power, he will destroy us. Donald Trump is truly the most dangerous animal on Earth, a jungle creature whose credo is kill or be killed. He does not possess a shred of charity, humility, generosity, mercy, or empathy. He is a vicious animal who must be stopped, and soon, before he turns the midterm election into a shambles.

Make no mistake – Donald Trump is America’s most dangerous enemy.

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How Much of a Threat to Democracy is Donald Trump?

Posted on January 22, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 22, 2022

2021 was a torturous exercise in having to be patient at a time when our national identity crisis appeared to require immediate action. Anyone who understands how our Constitution structured our government knows that momentous decisions take time. Leaving out scenarios like responding to an attack from another country, knee jerk responses during crises are almost always a mistake.

Throughout the year, we witnessed ever-growing threats to our democracy. Former President Trump spent it promulgating his Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen and rife with fraud, despite the fact that every audit and investigation, even by members of his own party found no evidence of problems that might have affected the outcome. He has done everything possible to undermine the nation’s confidence in his successor and threatened every Republican in Congress with brutal retaliation during this year’s primaries if they do not oppose every initiative by the Biden administration.

At the same time, Republican-controlled legislatures passed more than thirty state laws that use every imaginable tactic to suppress the votes of traditionally Democrat-leaning populations, specifically those dominated by nonwhite voters. The double-barreled opposition to two new federal voting rights bills, from both Trump loyalists and traditional Republicans seduced by the dream of holding on to power indefinitely, is a bald-faced ploy to give those states time to complete their redistricting based on the 2020 census, which we have already seen elevates partisan gerrymandering to unprecedented levels.

A third issue that may eventually be the deciding factor in the future of our democracy is the composition of the Supreme Court. Trump’s three appointments, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, established a 6-3 Conservative majority that, based on the ages of the new Justices, is likely last for decades. Trump has openly demanded loyalty from them, hoping to compromise the integrity of the Court and coerce them to support his activities. But predicting how Justices will rule is problematic. Chief Justice John Roberts is a perfect example. His extremely conservative past views convinced observers that Roberts would be a right-wing hardliner, yet he has subjugated his ideology in favor of common-sense rulings that were in the best interests of most Americans. Might that be true for the three new conservatives as well?

All three describe themselves as originalists who believe in a literal reading of the Constitution and the Founders’ intentions. If they were to approve state laws clearly designed to subvert the Constitution’s guarantees of universal suffrage and cave in to Trump’s attempts at insurrection, it might well spell the end of what Americans hold most dear. We must ask: just how much of a threat to democracy does the former president pose?

The Court’s performance so far has been interesting. It permitted Texas and Mississippi to ignore fifty years of legal precedent and make abortion nearly impossible for many of their citizens. It acted twice to overturn President Biden’s mask mandates, first, as it applied to large corporations, and second to federal employees, though the latter decision may not be final. But on the key issue of loyalty to Trump, they did what most legal scholars hoped they would. They threw out his request to block transfer of working papers and White House communications concerning the January 6th insurrection from National Archives to the Special House Committee. Knowing in advance, from the testimony of several witnesses that those materials would likely be very damaging to Trump, they allowed their release, demonstrating that there are clear lines they won’t cross to support him.

That will enable the House Committee to tighten the noose around Trump’s involvement in the insurrection. The fact that the committee has asked Ivanka Trump to testify tells us they are very close to determining whether to recommend criminal prosecution of the former president by the Justice Department. Fulton County, Georgia prosecutors have convened a grand jury to investigate whether Trump violated state and federal laws when he attempted to pressure Georgia election officials to “find” him 11,800 votes. The New York Attorney General and the Manhattan District Attorney are nearing the end of long civil and criminal investigations into fraud and racketeering activities of the Trump family and their business.

How much of a threat is Donald Trump to our democracy? Surely not the threat he wants us to believe he is, and not nearly as dangerous as the hype on social and traditional news media make it seem in their competition for relevance. Our system is finally beginning to show its resiliency. As momentum builds, we’ll see rapid progress. As more indictments are handed down, and Trump’s attorneys continue to be dissed by judges and courts, as Trump himself appears in greater danger of being charged, his influence will wane quickly.

Trump’s most rabid supporters, racists, white supremacists, hatemongers, and ignorant people who are easily led by the nose will continue to support him. But there aren’t enough of them to subvert the nation or the Constitution. The people who will make the critical difference are those who voted for Trump for any number of other reasons, who since awakened to his true nature. They won’t turn into Progressives, but they will act to preserve our nation.

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The Will of the Minority

Posted on January 17, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 17, 2021

When our Founding Fathers proposed that our nation be governed by democratically elected leaders, intending that we would be led by people who reflected the will of the majority of voters, it was a bold new concept. The entire civilized world was governed by kings, queens, emperors, and petty warlords. Could the idea of electing leaders actually work?

We’re still asking that question today, and it’s not looking good for democracy. In the eighteenth century, our Constitution appeared to support majority rule in concept, but reality fell far short of that. Majority, in 1789, meant a majority of white, male landowners, who were, in fact, a pitifully small minority of the population.

That held true for nearly fifty years, but in the 1820s, America achieved nearly universal white male suffrage. New York began the trend in 1821, when it removed the land-owning requirement for white males, but not for nonwhites. It took until the end of the decade for full voting emancipation (for white male adults) to be legislated in most of the other states.

After the Civil War, the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth Amendments expanded voting rights to all Negroes, whether they were former slaves or not. In 1840, non-property-owning whites were allowed to vote in the presidential election in most states, but it took until 1856 for that to become law in every state. At the end of 1865, Congress and the states incorporated Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation into the Constitution in the Thirteenth Amendment. Three years later, the Fourteenth Amendment granted equal citizenship and civil rights to all Negroes, both former slaves, and those who had lived free. In 1870 Congress and the states finished the job of repatriating former slaves, by adopting the Fifteenth Amendment: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Finally, the Constitution had provided for governance by the majority of citizens – as long as they were male. (Women, who always comprised more than half of our adult population, didn’t get the right to vote until 1920.) Some states wouldn’t accept the general statement of Amendments 13-15, and a battle between states’ rights and the federal government ensued until 1965, as state after state claimed the right to control its elections, legislating poll taxes, literacy requirements, and any other restriction they could think of to keep nonwhites from voting. The 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed to correct that, but the fight continued, as states and the Supreme Court chipped away at the 1965 law.

Today, we face a critical time for voting rights, and it’s one that drips with irony. The Supreme Court now has a 6-3 Conservative majority – or does it? All three of Trump’s additions to the Court claimed to be strict constitutionalists, or “originalists.” That literally means adhering to the letter of the Constitution and the perceived intent of the Founders, which can be summarized in two concepts: democracy and majority rule. If they adhere to the principles they professed at their confirmation hearings they will find most of the provisions of the restrictive state voting laws of 2021 unconstitutional. But will they?

This is a critical question because it gets to the root of the Big Lie. If the Court allows current practices in many states to stand, democracy and majority rule are in serious trouble. Gerrymanding allows political operatives to skew the vote toward the party in power in each state. In some cases it nullifies the ballots of as many as one quarter of a state’s voters, whose only crime was registering with the opposition party. The proposed new redistricting map in North Carolina would allow more than 70% of the seats in the legislature to be captured with less than 50% of votes cast.  Voting restrictions designed to keep down the nonwhite vote count assure under-representation by blacks, Hispanics, and native Americans.

All this is what is on the table in the fight to pass a new federal voting rights law. Think about that. Democrats control only half the votes in the Senate, but those Senators represent the views of more than two-thirds of Americans who support democracy and majority rule. The only thing preventing passage is the filibuster.

The fight over the filibuster will go on indefinitely, but this is not about eliminating it from Senate rules. Carve-outs are nothing new. All the President and forty-eight Democratic Senators are asking is that the filibuster be suspended for one vote to save our democracy. I want to hear Senators Manchin and Sinema justify their opposition to that in open forum. Wouldn’t you love to see Jake Tapper and Chris Wallace grill them in a national Town Hall?

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