A Ray of Hope

Posted on November 6, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, November 6, 2021

Last evening two notable events occurred. One was at a social gathering of my senior community, where I took a lot of razzing from my very purple friends. Their consensus was that henceforth I would be known as “Debbie Downer” because of my predictions of doom and gloom about the future of our democracy and Congress.

I had two reactions. One was joy at the good-natured quality of their teasing and the obvious fact that they were listening and thinking about what I said. The other was – hold on. My perceived negativity was conditioned on the possibility that Joe Manchin’s fight for bipartisan passage of President Biden’s legislative agenda might fail because of Republican obstruction and the inability of progressives and moderates to compromise. In fact, I have never lost my optimism that the Democrats would ultimately prevail, not because I have great confidence in them, but because the alternative, turning the country over to a Trump-dominated Republican party is too awful to contemplate.

For months, we’ve watched Joe Manchin, the centrist Democrat nearing the end of his second six-year term as Senator from West Virginia, a red state that gave Trump one of his largest margins of victory. The 50-50 split in the Senate gave Manchin unprecedented leverage, as he alone could block passage of everything President Biden asked the Democrats to pass, and for most of us, it was impossible to know what was in Manchin’s mind.

Was he sincere? Was he enjoying his serendipitous year of power too much? Would there come a point when, if all else failed, Manchin would get on board and agree to temporarily hamstring the filibuster? Was Manchin as stubbornly uncompromising as Bernie Sanders, his chief rival in these negotiations among Senate Democrats?

All of which brings us to the second event. The House finally passed the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill passed earlier by the Senate. The final stumbling block had been mistrust among progressives over voting on the bill separately from its counterpart Build Back Better bill. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi managed to broker a deal by putting the promise to work on the second bill in writing. Wow, is that all it took? Why didn’t anyone think of that before Biden had to go off to Europe with people believing our government was fatally dysfunctional?

The even better news is that we have a bit more insight into Manchin’s thinking. I believe in his commitment to bipartisanism, which is absolutely essential if our two-party Congress is ever to to function properly again. I also believe Manchin has his own line in the sand, and if Mitch McConnell’s scorched earth obstruction policy continues, he will reach a point where he is willing accept that the only way to move the country forward is to take his partial victory and support the suspension of the filibuster.

There’s still a very good chance that we will soon see a workable compromise on the Build Back Better plan, on which the progressives have already compromised half of their original spending goals. Despite Manchin’s latest objection to the family leave provision, I believe the Democrats will get it done. The inevitable result of that will be happy responses by at least 70% of Americans, if polls are to be believed. That, undoubtedly, will restore Biden’s approval ratings to levels near what they were in the Spring, and that will set the stage for the ultimate battle faced by this Congress, Democrats in particular.

For anyone who cares about the future of our democracy and the stability of our government, the most critical thing this Congress must do is pass a new federal voting rights law. Attorney General Merrick Garland has initiated a series of law suits designed to force the Supreme Court to weigh in on the laws passed by nineteen red states that will make it very difficult for many people of color to vote. The single most important decision the courts may ever make concerning the future of our country will be determining whether these state laws are constitutional. It’s especially critical right now, as the states that are most blatantly working to assure future dominance by Republicans are going to new extremes to gerrymander elections through 2030.

Court decisions aside, it’s impossible to exaggerate the importance of passing a federal voting rights bill. America’s future as a major power and the rights of all our children and grandchildren depend on it. If two major legislative defeats don’t convince Mitch McConnell that continuing to obstruct a voting rights bill is untenable, Joe Manchin will have to make the most critical decision of his career. It’s likely going to be impossible to pass it unless Manchin goes along with suspending the filibuster in the Senate.

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Biden’s Stalled Legislative Agenda

Posted on November 3, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, November 3, 2021

Getting bills passed with a nearly evenly split Congress and the opposition party determined to prevent any of the president’s agenda from becoming law is a difficult, slow process. That’s no one’s fault. It’s just the way our Congress functions, when it functions at all.

Harry Truman said, “The buck stops here,” meaning that success or failure in any branch of our government will always be a measure of a president’s effectiveness. After a couple of decades of Congressional deadlock, the current Congress appeared to be on the same get-nothing-done trajectory, the handiwork of Mitch McConnell, who is fighting to keep the Republican party relevant, and Donald Trump, who will do or say anything to make Biden look bad.

The Democrats were backed into two corners – one concerning the filibuster and the other, Congress’ reconciliation process. To pass anything, they would have to either abolish or suspend the filibuster so they could move forward with simple majorities. Failing that, they’d have to convince the arbiters of this madness that everything could be passed in a massive reconciliation bill, a device invented for budget resolution that requires only 51 votes for passage.

Enter Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) who has been engaged in a valiant attempt to revive the notion of bipartisanism, without which, our Congress is destined to self-destruct. President Biden, while arguing passionately for what he believes the country needs, has brought rational adulthood back to the Oval Office. Instead of ranting and calling people names, as his predecessor did whenever he didn’t get his way, he has remained calm and stolid during months of political gamesmanship by everyone else. His message is always one of calm reason, reminding people that difficult tasks take time.

Unfortunately, that message is undermined, not only by the antics of Congress, but by their unintended ally, the media. Whether you’re a fan of Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, A01, or Newsmax, you’re being propagandized every day. All media outlets are beholden to their sponsors, which means even in that sector we are being influenced by the interests of big money. They all depend on ratings, which gives them an incentive to keep viewers agitated and angry. What better way to keep an aroused public engaged than by hyping the admittedly frightening stalemate in Congress?

Concern over ratings is the mortal enemy of patience. That’s a huge problem, and it’s disingenuous for the media, all of them, to keep beating on the theme that since the government can’t get anything done, the president is failing in his job. Trump proved that Americans too lazy to research their own facts are easily led astray by politicians with personal agendas, and the media are doing the same thing. The constant braying of no progress has brought Biden’s approvals rating down so much, they’ve dropped to Trump’s level.

Biden, to his credit, doesn’t give a damn about approval ratings. But his calm, polite demeanor isn’t enough to stop the media’s ratings bias from hurting his administration and the country. There are several reasons why Trump’s candidate, Glen Youngkin won the Virginia Governor’s election yesterday, but most analysts believe the principal element was the perception the country was stagnating under Democratic leadership, and that’s simply not true – yet.

It’s possible the Democrats will fail, but it’s more likely that they will ultimately get their act together enough to pass some kind of infrastructure, build back better, and voting rights bills after months of excruciating negotiations. The longer it takes, the more the media will broadcast the delays as Biden’s failure. That didn’t help Biden in Europe last week. Every leader he spoke with understood that our dysfunctional politics is making the United States a risky place to invest their resources.

Yet, Biden persevered, looking extremely statesmanlike in the process. How classy was it to admit at an international media event that America badly mishandled the nuclear submarine deal with Australia that so angered French President Macron and to do so to Macron’s face with the camera’s rolling? Despite all obstacles, Biden left Scotland with a real victory. He reached an accord with the EU to ease Trump era tariffs on EU steel and aluminum, which resulted in harmful retaliatory tariffs on American exports, especially farm products. With the stroke of a pen, Biden erased much of the animosity felt by our European allies over their treatment by Trump.

Despite the arrows being thrown at Senator Manchin for stalling the legislative process long enough to return Virginia to Republican control, Biden calmly addressed the Senator with the whole world watching, praising his efforts and saying he was confident that in the end, Joe Manchin’s vote would put his agenda over the top. Whether or not he’s right, it was wonderful to once again see grace in an American president.

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Democrats Must Get Their Act Together or Admit They’re Unable to Govern

Posted on October 28, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 28, 2021

Presidential candidates spend every year divisible by four making promises. They argue about them at town halls and during televised debates. They attack each other’s ideas, nitpick the details, and vie for voters’ support for their programs. But they never address the most important aspect of presidential promises – they’re worthless. The idea of a president keeping or breaking promises made on the campaign trail is nonsense. They can propose and campaign all they want, but only Congress can pass laws.

President Biden proposed five key legislative initiatives. The $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill which provided direct payments to individuals and families was signed into law in March. Democrats attempted to pass it with bipartisan support, but not a single Republican voted for it, although it has been shown to be an essential stimulus to our recovering economy. That was the beginning of the Republican campaign to stifle Biden’s legislative agenda, which they hope voters will see as Democrats’ failure to govern. Frustrating the Biden administration is the only point on which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and former President Trump agree, but it’s been enough to imperil every other legislative proposal on the table.

Biden’s other four initiatives – voting rights, infrastructure, “building back better,” and addressing climate change – are all currently stalled in Congress, though some of the most important climate change proposals may be included in the building back better bill currently being negotiated. The irony in those negotiations, however, is that Republican obstruction isn’t the only thing preventive passage. Democrats have known since Mitch McConnell announced he would fight Biden at every turn that they would have to pass those bills on their own. They have the votes in both the House and Senate, albeit with razor-thin margins, but to succeed they must first resolve their internal differences.

Those differences are embodied by Bernie Sanders (D-VT) on the extreme left and Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema, who represent fiscally conservative Democrats. The Sanders faction wanted a $3.5 trillion build back better bill, which despite its brilliant alliteration wasn’t going to pass muster with “Moderates.” Manchin has worked hard to force a compromise, refusing to consider more than $1.5 trillion in new spending. He and Sinema have killed proposals for free community college, most Mediaid expansion, a big chunk of the proposed Medicare expansion, paid family leave, and to reverse the Trump tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans.

What appears to remain in the bill, which the administration now estimates will cost $1.75 trillion, was revealed to the media yesterday. Here’s the way The Washington Post summarized it:

• Extension of federal subsidies to assist seven million low-income Americans to purchase health insurance
• Addition to Medicare of hearing and home health care benefits for older Americans
• Universal free pre-kindergarten for all three- and four-year-olds
• Financial assistance to families earning less than $300,000 per year for child care and an extension of the expanded child care credits in the COVID relief bill
• Increases in Pell grants for low income student paying for higher education
• Tax breaks for the installation of solar panels, other measures that increases energy efficiency in buildings, and purchasing electric vehicles
• A 15% minimum tax on large corporations and a tax on stock buy-backs
• An income tax surcharge of 5% on incomes over $10 million and 8% on incomes over $25 million (an 8% surcharge would increase the current maximum tax rate of 35% to 37.8%)
• Empowering the IRS to crack down on tax cheaters, especially among the very wealthy

Democrats brag about the diversity of their big tent, but it only works when its occupants don’t lose sight of their priorities. Here’s the deal, as Joe Biden might say: Democrats can either act like the adults in the room and resolve their differences to give the American people some things that they desperately need, or they can fail and convince voters that they’re not fit to govern. Failure to use reconciliation, amend the filibuster, and agree on the provisions of the build back better and voting rights bills will turn Congress over to Trump-dominated Republicans for at least the remainder of this decade.

It’s up to Bernie Sanders to demonstrate that compromising on his Progressive agenda is more important than exacting revenge against those who have opposed it for forty years. It’s up to Joe Manchin to prove that he wants these bills passed more than he fears Trump voters in West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema to clean up her own murky agenda and clearly outline what she stands for.

Democrats – get your damn act together or concede that you’re unable to govern. The alternative is to turn the country over to the far right and continue to concentrate all of our wealth in the hands of white billionaires.

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Sitting on the Sidelines

Posted on October 27, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 27, 2021

As a kid trying to absorb the sanitized fantasy that my public schools called American History, I wondered how the world continually got itself into situations in which there was suddenly no alternative to war or political revolution. Even lacking the nuances of an unbiased reading of our actual history, it seemed obvious that if people had only paid attention to warning signs and been willing to act instead of looking aside, much of that could have been avoided.

I asked my teachers, my parents, and other adults who had lived through the tumultuous 1920s and 30s how they could have sat by and let what was plainly approaching overtake them. Sometimes I got blank stares, sometimes a refusal to talk about it, and sometimes I was told that history was too complex for my naive mind to grasp. If my grandchildren put those questions to me today, I’ll have a much better answer.

Retrospect was always 20-20 before it became fashionable to replace responsible reporting and recording of history with fake news, lies, and political ideologies. Looking back, hardly anyone in my generation could dispute the litany of errors that led to World War 2. If that war feels like ancient history, let me remind you that it took the lives of fifteen million combatants and forty-five million civilians, and injured another twenty-five million (surely an understated number.)

The vindictive Treaty of Versailles, the devastation left by the first war, irresponsible financial practices of the 1920s, the Great Depression, the rise of fascism and totalitarianism, and our refusal to confront them all made the second war inevitable. Without television, the internet, or social media, it’s understandable that people were pre-occupied with personal problems. Japan’s brutal occupation of China and the Nazis’ clear intent to take vengeance on the rest of Europe and commit genocide were happening oceans away. All that was someone else’s problem until our Pacific Fleet disappeared one morning in 1941.

After the war, Americans were either indifferent to Soviet and Chinese Communist Expansion or terrorized by the “Red Scare” mentality of the 1950s. We remained so unengaged, that unless they lived on either the East or West Coasts or knew someone involved in the fighting, many Americans were barely even aware of the Korean conflict. We weren’t any smarter when we made a national decision to side with Sunni Arabs over their Shia cousins, backing Iraq in its war against Iran and granting blanket immunity to Saudi Arabia, even after Saudi money and radicalized terrorists, mostly Saudi nationals helped September 11th replace December 7th as the worst day in our calendar.

What will I tell my grandchildren when they ask? I’ll warn them that our democracy, even the survival of our country depends on them awakening to the dangers. The attempts by right-wing extremists to undo the social progress of the last century and to redefine America as a white nation in which everyone else is secondary, if not enslaved, is not someone else’s problem, it’s theirs. The longer they wait to become engaged, the greater peril they’ll be in. The determination by most wealthy Americans to do whatever it takes to protect their fortunes from taxes and avoid the massive transfer of resources that would be required to level the playing field for the rest of us is not just a series of media events – it’s their future.

I’d remind them that indifference is a choice to do nothing and allow their lives to be controlled by others. I’d explain that hyper-partisanship is our most dangerous enemy because it rots us from within, that the only thing worse than a two-party system destroyed by unmanageable gridlock is the near certainty that it will be followed by a one-party system, aka an autocracy in which our hard-earned individual rights no longer exist.

Democracy is under attack everywhere. It doesn’t exist in China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran, and it’s losing ground in Brazil, Venezuela, Afghanistan, and Hungary, where one-party systems led by would-be dictators are most obvious. Wake up, kids – it’s also being eroded away here at home. If Americans don’t act now to overcome radical minority opposition to a national voting rights law, our constitutional republic will soon be a slowly rotting corpse. If we continue to run up trillion-dollar deficits to assure that the wealthy are even richer, but not to make necessary improvements to the lives of average Americans, our experiment in self-government will fail. It can happen here, as Sinclair Lewis reminded us in 1935, but it doesn’t have to.

We’ve had BLM marches and women’s rights protests. We’ve had the right-wing occupation of Charlottesville, VA and the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. Those were all the result of groups of people getting angry enough to speak out. If we lose our freedom to choose, legitimate protests will become American re-enactments of Tienanmen Square. I’d tell the kids to get angry enough to fight for our future now, not after they’ve lost it.

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Today’s Republican Party

Posted on October 19, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 19, 2021

“We’re going after them!” That was what Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) told Stephen Colbert last night, referring to people who refuse to respond to subpoenas from the Special House Committee investigating the violent January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. He was specifically aiming at former Trump advisor Stephen K. Bannon, whose own published words on January 5th were a clear attempt to incite violence and revolution.

Schiff also had a lot to say about House Republicans’ hypocrisy. He noted that it was understandable that many of the rioters who attacked the Capitol may have been fooled into believing Trump’s Big Lie that the election was stolen. That’s not an excuse or a defense, but a commentary on the cult-like nature of groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. But the Republican members of Congress who were the targets of the attack all know better. They all know Trump is lying to the American people, but they’re not willing to risk their seats saying so out loud.

Schiff thinks that’s unconscionable, and so do I and the vast majority of Americans. He nearly teared up when he said he couldn’t understand why people would go through all it takes to be elected and then refuse to do their jobs. Schiff is a decent, competent man, a former Assistant Attorney General who cares deeply about the Constitution and the law. You can’t fake the sadness that showed on his face when he addressed his Republican colleagues.

That same sadness is being expressed by many Republicans. Schiff offered an interesting comparison between House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. He said McCarthy’s knee-jerk response, when he was under attack by the rioters, when he blamed Trump for causing the insurrection lasted about thirty seconds once order was restored and the threat eliminated. McConnell, on the other hand, clearly struggled, and still does, because he cares about the consequences of Trump’s actions for the country. But he too yielded when it was clear that the choice was to either get on board or be “swept overboard.”

Shining a light on today’s Republicans was especially poignant on the day Colin Powell died. Powell was generally one of the most respected Republicans in America. One of the few African Americans to reach the rank of 4-Star General, he served as National Security Advisor under President Reagan, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs under President George H. W. Bush (41), and Secretary of State under President George W. Bush (43). Between 1987 and 2005, he was one of the principal faces of the Republican establishment.

I and many others criticized Powell for not taking a stronger stand as Secretary of State against the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Whether or not he could have stopped the invasion, which was a key element in twenty years of pointless war in the region, he had to choose between supporting his boss, (Bush 43,) and blowing the whistle on shaky intelligence, an action which would likely have derailed his impressive career. The fact that he chose not to “fall on his sword” as he told Bob Woodward, exacerbated by the very serious costs of our blunders in Iraq and Afghanistan, do not, however, tarnish Powell’s reputation as a principled Republican statesman.

We all make mistakes, and Powell’s choice, given all he had to overcome as the first black officer to accomplish … the list is long … is understandable if regrettable. It’s painfully ironic that nearly twenty years ago, anger over the war combined with the trauma of nine-eleven caused Bush 43’s presidency to end in disgrace, with Powell as a chief goat, while today, most of us, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents look back at Bush and Powell as the model we wish other Republicans still followed. Reflecting on Powell’s life reminds us how the sociopathic, power-mad Trump systematically tried to force every true Conservative statesperson out of his party: former House Speakers Paul Ryan and John Boehner, Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, the entire Bush family, the Cheneys.

Powell reminds us of the time when Democrats hated Republican policies and ideology but still respected their colleagues across the aisle. He reminds us that whether or not we agreed with them, Republicans once put the country and the Constitution first. Mostly, he reminds us that even integrity and responsible leadership sometimes fail, that even people who care very much about preserving our democracy sometimes get it wrong. How awful, then, when those people are replaced with self-serving hypocrites led by someone who would rather destroy everything than admit defeat in what may have been the cleanest election since Kennedy defeated Nixon.

I don’t worry much about Trump these days. I’m confident that our justice system will deal with him and neutralize his capacity to harm the country. It’s his Republican sycophants in Congress that bother me most.

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Trump’s Legal Jeopardy

Posted on October 15, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 15, 2021

Give the former president credit for one thing – he can still make people wring their hands worrying about the future. It’s his principal stock in trade, and he uses it indiscriminately. Upsetting and frightening Americans is his knee jerk response to his own anger and anxiety. Isn’t it incredible, after five-and-a-half years during which he raised the stress level of the nation to unprecedented levels on a daily basis, that seven months into the Biden administration, the most serious concern of most Americans is the possibility that Trump may find a path back to power?  

Stop worrying, he won’t. America is a massive, complex organism with enormous startup inertia. When it comes to Trump’s potential legal problems, honest people who recognize the threat he poses are working deliberately, every day, to bring him to justice. Be patient. These things take time. Every “i” must be dotted and “t” crossed to be certain the courts have the evidence they need. If this were Russia, Vladimir Putin would have his goons arrest Trump and throw away the key, but that’s not how we do things in America. Neutralizing Trump’s influence on our politics is the surest way to guarantee it will stay that way.

Most of us saw what happened on January 6th, which was merely the conclusion of the sixty-four-day nightmare Trump put the country through after Joe Biden defeated Trump on November 3rd. If you believe the evidence of your own eyes and ears, you know Trump was both the driver and the catalyst for all of it. Countless millions of dollars were wasted in legal battles that resulted in Trump’s lies and alternate facts being thrown out of every court he appealed to at both state and federal levels. The barrage of lies and venom spewing from the former president since then make the physical threat represented by the attack on the Capitol a metaphor for the nonstop state of siege Trump has kept us under.

Trump continues to make noise because he knows it’s effective when people are too lazy to think for themselves. On the other hand, the January Sixth Select House Committee is populated by serious lawmakers, prosecutors, and investigators, who do not share Trump’s desperate need for attention. Don’t be fooled by their silence. It means they’re working hard and effectively. Despite the whining of Trump and his sycophants that the Committee is biased, its members have all demonstrated their commitment to principle and defending the Constitution. The presence on the Committee of former Assistant Attorney General Adam Schiff (D-CA), constitutional scholar Jamie Raskin (D-MD), and principled conservatives Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) give me great confidence that they will succeed.

The Committee is in high gear as the deadline for responding to subpoenas has passed. Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) set the proper tone responding to Steve Bannon’s refusal to appear before the committee. Bannon claimed he couldn’t testify because Trump exercised Executive Privilege despite a few obstacles to his argument: Trump did not exercise Executive Privilege; Trump cannot exercise it, since only a sitting president can; President Biden has waived it for all subpoenaed witnesses; Bannon did not work for Trump when the events being investigated occurred. Chairman Thompson referred Bannon for criminal contempt, signaling that the Committee intends to play hardball with anyone who obstructs it.

So far, most of Trump’s aides are playing a delaying game, which is probably a good thing, because they’re forcing the Committee’s hand. Thompson means business, and his determination to see it through means the issue will be resolved (relatively) quickly by the courts. That will pop Trump’s fantasy balloon that he still controls things and expose his vulnerability. Representative Schiff told the New York Times that Trump will definitely try to run for president again, because “it’s a pathology” with him, and he thinks it will keep him from being prosecuted.

I’m sure it won’t, because of people like Jeffrey Rosen, who Trump appointed Acting AG following William Barr’s resignation. It’s well documented, thanks to Bob Woodward, that Trump tried to strongarm Rosen to use the Justice Department to overturn the 2020 election and undermine the Constitution. We know from Trump’s own words that Rosen refused and would have been replaced by a more accommodating DOJ attorney, Jeffrey Clark, if not for the rebellion of the Department’s senior staff. Rosen had the courage and integrity to stand up to Trump in January. I wasn’t in the room when he testified before the Committee behind closed doors, but I expect he gave them everything they for a criminal indictment of Trump.

There are also criminal investigations of Trump’s actions underway in Georgia, New York City, and in Albany by the New York Attorney General. Long before he can influence the next elections, Trump will be facing felony charges in multiple jurisdictions. When that happens, most of his supporters in Congress will see that supporting him is toxic.

You can stop worrying.

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America’s Second Civil War

Posted on October 14, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 14, 2021

Make no mistake, our country is at war with itself. No one has deployed armed forces or launched missiles, but there have already been far too many casualties. The first was Heather Heyer, who was killed on August 12, 2017, a half year into the Trump administration, in Charlottesville, VA. Twenty years from now, historians will publish scholarly works analyzing the attacks on our democracy that were inspired by Trump and his acolytes. Would the Alt-right, neo-Nazi terrorization of the University of Virginia campus have occurred if Trump had disavowed racist terrorists like David Duke? Would right-wing hate groups have been energized to come out of their caves if Trump hadn’t spent the two years prior to Charlottesville teasing every racist and xenophobic trope?

The political divisiveness and disregard of science that determined our COVID policy and the unsubtle support of the antivax movement are responsible for the lion’s share of the 715,000 COVID deaths recorded in the United States. Adding the casualties from the steadily increasing incidents of hate-driven protests and counter-protests, culminating in the January 6th attack on the Capitol and Homeland Security’s warnings about the likelihood of future domestic terror attacks makes it clear that a second American Civil War has been underway since Donald Trump hijacked the Republican Party.

It’s not just Trump fueling the war. The would-be autocrat, whose primary skill as a politician and leader is pandering to anyone who’ll support him, created a multi-headed monster that is now beyond his control. Trump feeds on the threats of armed violence by many of his supporters so much, the right-wing mob now controls him. If you doubted that Trump would rather burn down the country than concede defeat, recall his rally in Iowa a few days ago. He shamelessly justified stoking the flames of rebellion, claiming that the alternative was letting Progressives destroy the country. Is that how America works now?

History proves that when a nation’s citizens bury their heads in the sand in the face of encroaching tyranny the outcome is always disastrous. The new Civil War did not sneak up on us overnight. People have been warning about it since Trump rode his escalator into the heart of our politics. It’s here now, and if we don’t wake up to it as a nation and fight back, we won’t recognize the United States ten years from now.

I have long advocated the formation of a strong, centrist party composed of people willing to commit themselves to the defense of democracy as the only way to break the partisan gridlock and defang Trump’s attacks on the Constitution. One of the most dangerous outcomes of the Trump revolution was the departure of most of the true Centrists in Congress. Those who didn’t abdicate their responsibility, desperate to restore their party’s integrity have acted to strengthen Centrists in limited ways. Michael Bloomberg invested heavily, supporting centrist candidates, and last week, Andrew Yang announced the formation of the Forward Party and changed his affiliation from Democrat to Independent.

Those are positive steps, but they’re not enough. Another group of prominent Republicans led by former New Jersey Governor Christy Todd Whitman, concluded that creating a third party is not the solution. Instead, they kicked off a campaign to restore the centrist wings of both the Democratic and Republican parties. Whitman’s op-ed in last Sunday’s New York Times argued that the best way to restore the integrity of the Congress and badly divided state legislatures is to convince voters to cross party lines. Whitman urges Republicans who want to take their party back to vote for centrist Democrats who oppose Trump Republicans. Likewise, she wants moderate Democrats to vote for centrist Republicans running against Progressive extremists. The alternative is to continue down a road that could destroy the constitutional republic we grew up in.

The latest ominous warning is the law Texas passed yesterday, which outlaws attempts to enforce a vaccine mandate by “any entity” in Texas. That’s far more than a fight against vaccines. It’s an outright attack on the federal government’s authority, specifically the federal supremacy clause of the Constitution, which is as significant as the Confederacy firing on Fort Sumter. We apparently haven’t progressed since the days of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Texas Governor Greg Abbott believes that the Supreme Court will now be driven by Trump’s three appointees, who will support his attempt to redefine states’ rights.

I think he’s wrong. If the right-wing justices who claim to be originalists and constitutionalists are true to their word, they will see Texas’ recent actions for what they are: a blatant attempt to re-fight the Civil War in the courts if they can’t succeed by winning over a majority of voters. I don’t know if Governor Whitman’s approach is the best one, but every American who believes extremism will destroy their country should support it.

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Taking Proper Care of Your Books

Posted on October 10, 2021 by alanpzendell

Ed Carter, October 10, 2021

In this antiintellectual age when science is ignored and curiosity seems limited to 140-word tweets, it’s easy to forget that badly worded, misspelled rants by angry people were not why we learned to read. Assuming that you haven’t converted all your books to digital audio, or ebooks, for many of us the need for physical books remains, especially if you’re even locked down again during a pandemic. Knowing how to care for your favorite folios is important, whether they’re first editions or cheap paperbacks. If properly cared for, they’ll last forever. Author Ed Carter shares some tips on how to maintain your collection.

Shelve with care

There’s an art to shelving books so they’ll remain in good condition, which includes not crowding them onto the shelf, placing them upright rather than stacking them horizontally, and keeping tall books with books of similar sizes rather than mixing heights. It’s simple enough, but lack of care can contribute to the deterioration of the book’s spine. This may mean getting new bookshelves from time to time, or selling back the books you can do without. Whether you shelve alphabetically or color-coordinate is up to you.

Think like an archivist

Books are mostly paper, which will react to changes in temperature and humidity. You don’t need a humidor for your books, but if you live in a wet climate you’d probably need air conditioning or a dehumidifier anyway. Keep bookshelves in cool, dark places, away from moisture, which can damage the covers and the pages.

Sunlight will bleach the books, so if you’ve got bookshelves near windows, pay attention to where the sunlight is brightest throughout the day. You won’t retire on the value of your book collection, but they can devalue quickly without proper care, and you’d probably like to leave them to a grandchild one day. If you simply don’t have a space for storage out of direct light, you can always install some UV blocking film on your windows. This can be tricky to do well, so consider hiring a pro to ensure there are no bubbles and the end result looks nice. Sites like Angi make it easy to connect with reputable professionals who can do the job correctly and efficiently.

Remember also, dust loves books, so you’ll have to dust your books every few weeks, because eventually dust can cause damage.

Box them up

If you don’t have enough shelf space for all your books, consider storing them. However, you’ll need to make sure you store them properly. Never place them in plastic bags, which can trap moisture and ruin the books. Wrap them in acid-free paper, or plain, undyed cloth and keep them sealed and away from the floor, where dirt or insects can get to them.

Treat books with respect

It may be tempting to dog-ear a page to hold your place, or lay the book face down and open when you’re interrupted in the middle of reading, but it’s best to always use a flat bookmark or plain piece of paper to mark your place. Folding down the corners of the pages can really damage a book, and leaving it lying open can hurt the spine.

When you finish the book, check the pages for any bookmarks that might have been left inside, as these can damage the pages if left too long.

Keep away from food

It’s tempting to read while eating at a table. But bread crumbs, soup stains, and greasy fingers should never go near a book. Food stains will likely attract mold, which will ruin the book.

It’s also a good idea to wash your hands before handling the book so the oils from your fingers don’t do any harm.

Keep out of reach of children

Of course you want to encourage your kids to read, so buy them their own books. Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library will send them free ones. In the meantime, they should keep clear of yours, at least until they’re old enough to understand them. That way they’re also old enough to handle them with care. 

If you tend to read the same book over and over–and many book lovers do that–think about buying two copies and putting one up while you read the other. Many collectors utilize this trick to keep their favorite books from becoming worn or ruined.

Books will last for centuries. Years ago, books were an expensive luxury, and anyone who owned them wouldn’t dream of reading while eating a sandwich, and they even wore gloves to handle them. Your books aren’t worth as much, relatively speaking, but they can last as long.

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Integrity, Elections, and Trump’s Eroding Base

Posted on October 8, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 8, 2021

When lawmakers and statesmen still valued integrity, opposition politicians would often resign in protest when they believed their government was acting illegally or about to do something that would damage their country. It was a European tradition that valued principle, honor, and patriotism over personal gain, especially in the U. K. We had one such event in the United States nearly fifty years ago, on October 20, 1973. It was such a rare occurrence that the resignations of Richard Nixon’s Attorney General (Eliot Richardson) and Deputy AG (William Ruckleshaus) in protest of the illegal firing of Special Counsel Archibald Cox, who was investigating Watergate, has since been known as The Saturday Night Massacre.

Thirty years later, George W. Bush’s Secretary of State, Colin Powell, had an opportunity to show the same kind of selfless integrity. He had been the only voice in Bush’s Cabinet to openly oppose the invasion of Iraq. Instead, he addressed the United Nations, presenting sketchy Intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, which turned out not to exist. Would Powell’s resignation have prevented the invasion and possibly avoided twenty years of pointless war? We’ll never know, because that didn’t happen, either.

A second Saturday Night Massacre opportunity arose on January 3, 2021. Then President Trump, raging over his defeat by Joe Biden, called Acting AG Jeffrey Rosen and his deputy, Richard Donoghue to a senior staff meeting in the Oval Office. According to a Senate Judiciary Committee report released today, Trump was intent on replacing Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, another DOJ attorney whose only qualification was his willingness to use the full weight of the Department to overturn the results of the election.

But integrity reared its ugly head again when Rosen, Donoghue, White House attorney Pat Cippolone, and all the Assistant AGs in the Department threatened to resign if Trump persisted, likely saving the nation from the worst constitutional crisis in our history. Cippolone reportedly told Trump his attempts to force states to ignore the will of the voters was a murder-suicide pact, especially in light of former AG, William Barr’s statement that there was no evidence of widespread fraud during the election. The Committee report, which was based on an eight-month investigation, also implicated Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows as a key player in the attempt to illegally coerce the Justice Department to overturn Biden’s victory.

Trump’s hold on Republicans who believe they can’t afford to offend his voting base is old news. Trump ranted through his revenge tour, trying to unseat every Republican in Congress who voted to impeach him or who still denies the Big Lie that the election was stolen. Pundits (the same ones who got almost everything wrong in the last two elections) opine about Trump’s political clout, almost as though they’re hyping a pay-per-view audience to shell out big dollars for a heavyweight boxing match.

I remain skeptical. With the furor over social media manipulating users, feeding them lies and misinformation, and skillfully triggering anger and rage to boost interactions on their platforms, let’s not forget that the broadcast and cable media aren’t innocent in all this. They all have biases and they’re all beholden to the sponsors who pay their salaries. They also have a great incentive to engage their viewers and keep them watching, because ratings are everything in that world. They differ from social media only in degree. With Mitch McConnell stalling any sort of progress in Congress, and polls showing President Biden’s approval suffering, the media characterize this very serious situation as a death match among gladiators.

We must take care not to be sucked into the vortex of their hyperbole. Our country is not teetering on the edge of an abyss. Objective eyes see several prominent Trump supporters who understand the risk of being in bed with a dicttorial narcissist backing away to a safe distance. In recent weeks, Trump savaged SC Senator Lindsey Graham, GA Governor Brian Kemp, (suggesting Georgians would be better off with Stacy Abrams,) FL Governor Ron DeSantis, former NJ Governor Chris Christy, and the Republican Arizona legislature. Does that sound like someone who has a secure hold on his base?

Democrats will come together and pass the legislation they need to, because they know not agreeing among themselves will cede control of the Government to Republicans for the next decade. This is their best and probably last chance to keep the promises that made Americans vote for Biden. They’ll get it right eventually because they have no choice.

Much of the country is recovering from COVID, and as more information about Trump’s post-election antics and the January 6th insurrection are made public, his base will erode. Whether because of integrity or fear, no one running for re-election wants to be involved in a suicide pact with Donald Trump.

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Artificial Intelligence

Posted on October 6, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 6, 2021

The phrase artificial intelligence (AI) literally means intelligence displayed by inorganic entities (i.e., machines, computers) as opposed to humans and other animals. Beyond that simple definition lies much confusion and misunderstanding.

In practical terms, AI refers to any computer program with self-learning capability, but that phrase, too, is rife with ambiguity and misinterpretation. Self-learning systems operate on probabilities. They gather huge amounts of data from which statistically likely correlations are built. The more data we feed into an AI system, the better it becomes at predicting outcomes and guessing at optimal solutions.

Your physician uses a medical AI system that processes the information collected during your examination, combines it with your entire medical history, and evaluates the result against a massive database that contains everything doctors and epidemiologists know about similar conditions. In the past, your doctor relied on training and memory, supplemented by looking up esoteric details in one of the massive medical texts on his or her bookshelf. Today, the laptop your doctor carries around instantly informs him about every condition consistent with your symptoms and its likelihood.

Your doctor is now armed with a tool that brings the entire body of medical knowledge and experience to bear to help diagnose what’s wrong. But, and this is the essential point, the final diagnosis is made by the physician, not the medical AI system. Your doctor applies years of knowledge and acquired wisdom, professional human judgment, and some undefinable quality – instinct? intuition? gut feeling? That’s very different from, say, an automated assembly line, in which all actions and decisions are pre-programmed. Everything about the manufacturing process is known in advance; it simply has to be accurately coded in the system’s decision-making algorithm.

The mid-twentieth century was the heyday of speculation and fantasy concerning AI, what people imagined it might be capable of one day. In the 1950s and ’60s, the most popular visualizations of AIs were in the form of robots that mimicked human behavior. The classic science fiction writer, Isaac Asimov, invented laws of robotics that are still used today whenever people envision robots performing activities traditionally thought to require human judgment. Asimov’s robots were so sophisticated, they were almost indistinguishable from humans. It was argued by some that AI-driven systems actually made better decisions than humans because they were entirely logic based, unaffected by emotions. An entire new genre of speculation thus evolved based on machines with human-like intelligence, sometimes beneficent, but more often, like the Terminators, cold-bloodedly malignant in their attitude toward humanity.

The problem with all that speculation is that science and technology never successfully bridged the gap between collecting and correlating massive amounts of information and basic human judgment. It remains theoretically possible, as computer speeds and statistical algorithms evolve, that we might one day build a machine that closely simulates human thought and decision-making, but that time is not now, and may never be.

That’s the fundamental error Facebook and other social media platforms made when they decided to rely on AI-driven algorithms instead of humans. When Google directs an ad to you based on keywords in your emails or Amazon recommends a book based on your observed interests, whether you find them annoying or helpful, they’re relatively benign. But social media algorithms can’t distinguish between truth and lies, honesty and dishonesty, altruism and harmful intent. They can’t anticipate what may be harmful to the psyches of adolescent girls or gullible individuals too lazy or too busy to fact-check what they read.

The term Artificial Intelligence is a misnomer. AIs are not intelligent. They’re actually incredibly stupid, dumber than the dullest person you’ve ever met, nothing but logic and instructions based on whatever knowledge was programmed into them. And that’s the problem. They can’t comprehend the intangibles humans use to make decisions, and they know nothing about the dark side of human nature. Because AIs are deterministic and predictable to anyone who understands the algorithms they use, they are dangerous unless humans constantly review and modify their decisions.

Did Mark Zuckerberg set out to create a malevolent monster? No, but neither did Doctor Frankenstein or the scientists who developed the atom bomb. Zuckerberg’s crime was hubris, the sin that the Old Testament suggests got humans thrown out of paradise. Zuckerberg and his people are way over their heads like cowboys trying to control herds of stampeding buffalo. They built a monstrosity that requires constant surveillance and checking by human intelligence, but that costs money, and if we’ve learned anything about Facebook, it’s that profit drives all its major decisions.

Clearly, they’re not about to voluntarily replace their algorithms with expensive, labor-intensive human tasks. Can we count on our government, which can’t even agree on how to pay its debts to force them to? I’m not holding my breath.

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