A Nation Spinning Out of Control

Posted on March 23, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 23, 2021

We’re all weary from what we experienced in the last year. We’ve suffered terribly from the pandemic, losing friends and family members, jobs, and careers. Our children’s educations have been disrupted. We talk about things returning to normal eventually, but no one can say with any assurance what the new normal will be.

Those of us who took COVID guidelines seriously and have been vaccinated are cautiously re-opening our lives, even optimistically talking about re-engaging with friends and family next Thanksgiving the way we used to. Those of us who abhorred the previous administration breathed a sigh of relief as Biden’s people quietly took their places. We wanted to relax – everything was going to be all right now that reason re-asserted itself. But has it? We haven’t been in this cocoon of calm very long. We’re not ready to leave it. We need all our physical and emotional energy to recover. We have to rest, but that is exactly what we cannot do.

Donald Trump did not invent racism and he did not cause the pandemic. He did not create Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping, Ali Khamenei, or Bashir Al Assad; he did not create the enormous gulf between rich and poor in America, nor is he responsible for our evolving climate. But in each instance, he either kicked the can down the road or left us with far worse problems than we faced when he took office.

Look at the current state of our country. Seven mass shootings in the past seven days, acts of irrational violence, which though unrelated to each other, suggest that we are nearing a breaking point. While most Americans scramble to be vaccinated against COVID, a shocking percentage say they will refuse the vaccine, endangering themselves, their families, and millions of others whose long-term health may depend on the nation achieving herd immunity.

We are moving in the wrong direction, politically, as Trump supporters and many in Congress continue to perpetuate The Big Lie and worsen rather than attempt to bridge the divide Trump used to promote his own interests. Right wing extremists energized by Trump believe their time has come, and unless law enforcement can shut them down, we will see more violence and intimidation. There is no aspect of American life that is not less stable and secure than it was five years ago, unless you’re a billionaire whose net worth benefitted from Trump’s tax cuts.

The Republican Party, once a symbol of conservative values, is at war with itself, unable to control its destructive elements and united only by a desperate need to obstruct the Biden administration and make it more difficult for minorities and the poor to vote in future elections. President Biden accomplished his first major objective, passing the $1.9 trillion stimulus/recovery act despite failing to achieve even a semblance of bipartisanship. Not a single Republican in either branch of Congress supported it, and Biden was forced to go the reconciliation route to pass it. He still has mountains to climb, and none of them will be easy.

The Biden administration must deal with voting rights, expanding affordable health care to all Americans, a crumbling infrastructure, continuing fallout from his predecessor’s trade wars, gun violence, fractured alliances, and adversaries who believe they have weakened us enough that they we can longer dominate them either militarily or economically. But first things first. We have to get our own house in order. The Democratic majority in the Senate must defang the filibuster. Like most Americans, President Biden believes in bipartisan leadership, but the Republicans, both Trumpers and McConnell followers, have made it absolutely clear that that’s just a pipe dream. Biden must continue to govern by brute force or face the kind of stalemate that plagued Barrack Obama.

Ramming through legislation by a one vote majority is not in the long-term interest of the United States, but allowing obstructionists to stall the vital elements of Biden’s agenda would be a much worse outcome. Our democracy is already in serious trouble. If we do not have the courage to do what it necessary to restore prosperity, health, racial quality, and human rights to our people, we will have little hope of fixing it.

There’s really no alternative. The voting rights bill must pass by any means possible. People must have jobs in the new normal, and the best way to provide them is to pass a massive infrastructure bill, again, by any means possible. If the Biden administration does not do those things, our future as a nation is likely to be a long downhill slide. That must not be allowed to happen.

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Hate Crimes Against Asian Americans

Posted on March 18, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell March 18, 2021

Recently, we have seen a shocking rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans. The media are tiptoeing around the possible cause of this dangerous trend, but it’s not difficult to identify why it’s happening.

The last time there any serious anti-Asian sentiment in this country was during World War II. The 1930s and 40s were a less sophisticated time. Literacy in America was far from universal, there was no television, Internet, or social media, and the Roosevelt administration engaged in deliberate racist propaganda against the Japanese as part of the war effort. Anti-Nazi propaganda focused on the German belief that they were Aryans waging war against “subordinate,” inferior races, and Nazis were seen as so evil, our government had no need to invent hate propaganda to stir up the population against them.

With the Japanese it was different. While Germans and Italian soldiers looked like us, Japanese soldiers were portrayed on posters and billboards by Uncle Sam as degenerate sub-humans. Vicious slurs against everyone of Japanese ancestry were the norm after Pearl Harbor. Given the scare tactics of the FDR administration, the confiscation of the property of Japanese Americans, (American citizens of Japanese descent,) and the removal of thousands to internment camps was achieved with relatively little controversy. In case we forgot, the embarrassment expressed, decades later, by many Americans over that kind of racism should have been seen as a warning of how susceptible our society is to bigotry and demagoguery.

When we occupied Japan after the war, and government propaganda, in typical Orwelllian style, told us the Japanese people were now our friends, the hate that had characterized American attitudes during the war largely dissipated. It never took hold again even during our two Asian wars in Korea and Vietnam. In those wars, South Koreans and South Vietnamese were good, while North Koreans and North Vietnamese were bad. They weren’t wars against Asians – we were told we were fighting against the expansion of Communism.

One example of the change in attitude was the acceptance of thousands of South Vietnamese refugees who had been displaced by the war, who received special dispensation from Congress to settle in the United States. There was so much antiwar sentiment in 1975 that initially there were protests over easing welfare and public assistance rules to allow these people to establish themselves. But the protests never became racist, because we quickly learned that the Vietnamese who came here worked hard, were honest, and quickly became one of the most successful, self-sustaining immigrant groups in our history.

Starting in the nineties, with the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York, the target of racist government propaganda was radical Islam. Our racially motivated anger was so intense we were drawn into conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, that are still going on almost twenty years after nine-eleven. Muslim Americans are still the victims of racial profiling which was brought to a head by Donald Trump. Supported by right-wing extremists, Trump understood Americans’ basic vulnerability to racist propaganda. He based his entire campaign for president in 2016 on enflaming various groups against each other. In addition to Muslims, we were told that Mexicans and African Americans were our enemies, helped along by Russian bots in our social media, whose only objective was creating dissention.

As Americans we must face the truth. Only a thin veneer of civilization and basic morality separates the average American from a member of a lynch mob when charismatic leaders manipulate us for their own purposes. If you’re wondering where all this recent anti-Asian sentiment came from it’s easily explained. First, keep in mind that the average American has difficulty distinguishing different ethnic Asians from each other, and during the previous administration, once Kim Jong Un and Trump exchanged love letters, the notion of “bad Asians” became synonymous with Chinese. Trump spent most of 2020 slinging anti-Chinese slurs, blaming them for the pandemic, his trade war, undermining America’s economy, stealing jobs – whatever met the current objectives of the far right. The anti-China rhetoric was nonstop for an entire year.

With Trump’s demonstrated ability to rile up disaffected people even to the level of an attack on the U. S. Capitol to steal an election, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Asian hate crimes are on the rise. Donald Trump began a divisive movement based on lies and the American predilection to hate anyone who is different when we fall on hard times. Face it – as ugly as it looks, that’s who we are.

You want to know why some degenerate shot and killed six Asian women in massage parlors? Just ask Donald Trump. He’s an expert on that sort of thing.

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Getting Vaccinated

Posted on March 16, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell March 16, 2021

The very notion of politicizing a vaccine for a debilitating disease is beyond stupid, not to mention that it places countless millions of people at risk. It’s a further testament to the danger of having a divisive demagogue who cares about nothing but himself spreading lies that threaten the lives of even more Americans. With blood of half a million already on his hands, what’s another few hundred thousand? It’s criminal behavior. Back in the 1980s, people who deliberately exposed others to the HIV virus were prosecuted and sent to jail. (Hint!)

I’ll put this in the simplest possible terms. Suppose technologically advanced aliens came to Earth. Think Gort, the robot in the classic sci-fi film(s) The Day the Earth Stood Still. Gort’s mission was to find evidence that Earth and humanity were worth saving; otherwise he would destroy the planet and everything on it. What if Gort arrived today and said that all we had to do to save our planet was log on to a website and vote, “Yes”? What if he also said that Earth would be spared if at least 80% of adults did so, but otherwise, it would be the end of humanity?

Yes, that’s a somewhat strained metaphor for getting vaccinated against COVID. The only way to get rid of COVID is for the general population to achieve herd immunity, thus depriving the virus of any further human hosts. Getting 80% of not just Americans, but citizens of all countries inoculated would achieve that. In the face of Gort’s ultimatum, what would you say to people who refused to sign on to his website? Would it matter whether they didn’t believe Gort was real, or some charismatic leader told them not to, or their church told them obeying Gort’s command was a mortal sin? How would government leaders and scientists deal with the situation?

The Washington Post reported today that the Biden administration is in a full court press to change people’s minds. The President, First Lady, Vice President, and First Gentleman will all be on the road this week promoting the need to be vaccinated, particularly in the most vulnerable communities of color. In addition, they will address faith groups by recruiting NIH Director Francis Collins, who is both a respected scientist and a devout Christian as their ambassador to communities of faith. “Collins and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci — joined by 25 interfaith clergy, who will be vaccinated on camera — will lead a live-streamed event at Washington’s National Cathedral tonight.”

To put this into clearer perspective, consider polio, measles, and smallpox. We rarely hear about those diseases today, but that’s not because humans developed immunity naturally. Vaccines were responsible for achieving herd immunity in all three cases. Would you choose not to vaccinate your children against them? Would you want them interacting with other children who weren’t?

That’s enough warnings. If you’re thinking clearly and responsibly, you don’t need them. And if you’re not, they won’t do any good. Perhaps there’s a more positive way to encourage people. My wife and I were both vaccinated in January and February. After the two week waiting period, to allow the Moderna vaccine to maximize our immunity, we decided to travel a thousand miles to visit grandchildren we hadn’t seen in a year, including one we’d never met. The feeling that accompanied that decision was like having been released from prison.

Almost instantly, the weight of the lockdowns, the need to wear a mask whenever we interacted with other people, and the fear of possibly carrying the disease asymptomatically evaporated. In its place was the security of knowing we likely were completely immune, and that with responsible behavior (masks and social distancing where appropriate) for the next few months, until everyone else was, we could begin living normally again. We won’t be eating inside crowded restaurants, boarding cruise ships, or sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with crowds at concerts or nightclubs any time soon. But there is no conflict, no stress – instead a feeling that following the lead of Dr. Fauci and others, we have done our part to protect not only our families, but everyone else as well.

Some people feel good protesting and waving signs, spewing the nonsense they hear from the former president, senators like Rand Paul, (a physician, no less,) and self-serving pundits like Tucker Carlson. I wish there was a way to convince them that being vaccinated feels euphoric. Life is beginning to be filled with joy again. It’s so much better than fear, anger, and vitriol.

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Biden’s Second Fifty Days – Voting Rights

Posted on March 13, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 13, 2021

In her morning newsletter, today, historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote “the American Rescue Plan launched the country in the direction it has avoided since 1981, using the national government not to cut taxes, which favors those with wealth, but rather to support working families and children.” Quietly, needing no ego gratification, and without slinging insults at anyone, President Biden changed the direction of our country for the better. He needed neither hyperbole nor fabrication to push through a law that has the approval of 76% of Americans including 59% of Republicans, both virtually unprecedented numbers.

The Rescue Plan will prevent more than thirty million Americans from falling into permanent poverty because of the pandemic and will enable millions more to pay rent and stop draining their remaining savings to feed their families. Despite congressional Republicans’ anger over its $1.9 trillion price tag, unlike the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act which cost even more, every dollar spent on the American Rescue Plan will quickly flow directly into our staggering economy. The part of the economy that affects most Americans is consumer driven – if consumers don’t have money to spend, the economy flounders. While tax cuts largely wound up in the investment portfolios of the wealthiest Americans and in corporate coffers through stock buybacks, the Rescue Plan will immediately spur the economy like booster cables on a drained car battery.

Republicans are at war internally about whether Donald Trump will continue to dominate the party, but that didn’t stop them from marching in lockstep to obstruct the Rescue Plan. Nothing is more important to them than returning to the policy established by Ronald Reagan, that government’s function is not to provide for the welfare of average Americans. For forty years, Republican controlled legislatures have been committed to the dominance of the wealthiest Americans. The American Rescue Plan could derail that.

The next step in Biden’s plan to return the country to working class and small business oriented Americans is the voting rights bill known as H.R 1, the For the People Act. Democrats passed the Rescue Act despite receiving no Republican votes because they could use the reconciliation procedure, designed to ease passage of federal budgets. H.R 1 will be more difficult because it will be subject to Republican filibuster. Fasten your seatbelts. It will likely be a fight that monopolizes Biden’s second fifty days in office.

It’s a fight that is critical to the survival of the American democracy, as evidenced by the hundreds of bills being considered by Republican dominated state legislatures, all designed to make it difficult for working people, minorities, and the infirm to vote. Every one of those bills is a reaction to the success of Stacy Abrams’ Fair Fight. Abrams used persistent and efficient organization to overcome decades of voter suppression tactics that were largely under the radar. But now, as Republicans believe they are fighting for their survival as a dominant party, they are waging the fight openly and brazenly.

One of the most important things H.R 1 will do is require every state to create an independent, politically neutral commission to redraw its voting districts along representative lines. Currently, gerrymandering allows state legislatures to rig the playing field in advance of elections by cramming dense concentrations of opposition party voters into a small number of districts, thus enabling the majority party to dominate state legislatures and influence which party controls the U. S. House of Representatives. The next round of redistricting, which will be based on the 2020 census, will determine the composition of every legislative body until 2030. Most political scientists believe gerrymandering is the greatest threat to the future of democracy.

H.R 1 would reform our entire election process. You can read an excellent summary of its provisions here. Perhaps most important, it would supersede all attempts by states to make voting more difficult, to assure that no American is prevented from casting a vote. It provides funding to increase voting security and assure that each state maintains a backup system of paper ballots to deal with allegations of fraud. It requires full disclosure of “dark money” contributions and restricts the power of PACs, while creating voluntary matching programs that enhance the power of individual political contributions. Finally, it strengthen ethics laws, forces investigation of financial conflicts of interest, enforces federal divestment requirements for elected officials, and requires all presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns.

If you care about the future of democracy in America, the most important thing you can do is tell your congressional representatives that if they expect your vote the next time they run, they can earn it by supporting H.R 1 and its Senate counterpart S 1.

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The Next Election

Posted on March 9, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 9, 2021

There was never any question about whether President Biden would be able to pass the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill, only whether the Republicans would participate in a bipartisan attempt to restart our economy and help millions of struggling Americans and small businesses. The Republicans are waging an intraparty war that will determine the future of their party. One might expect that under those conditions, a handful of moderate Republicans might have joined Democrats in passing a bill that has the support of more than three in four Americans, as they did when they cast a less popular impeachment vote.

But no. While a number were willing to vote to convict Donald Trump, the cause of their current civil war, they remain steadfast in their determination to blow up the national debt to further enrich the wealthy, but cut corners whenever legislation benefits everyone else. That’s extremely revealing. Republicans are willing to fight to the death over who controls the party, but they won’t break ranks on anything to do with the class warfare that began with The New Deal and becomes more intense as America evolves toward a nonwhite majority.

That’s especially important right now because the next major legislation deals with voting rights. The tsunami of new voter suppression legislation sweeping through Republican controlled states is the last line of defense for a party, that despite talking about having a big tent, has never expanded outward from its white working class base.

According to Wikipedia, the “For the People Act (also known as H.R 1) [would] expand voting rights, change campaign finance laws to reduce the influence of money in politics, limit partisan gerrymandering, and create new ethics rules for federal officeholders.” H.R 1 is the acid test of whether Congress can still function in a bipartisan manner, and it is essential that it passes in time for states to enact the anti-gerrymandering provisions before the next election cycle. The House passed the bill in 2019 by a comfortable margin by the Democratic majority, but it was blocked from consideration in the Senate by then Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The Democratic majority in the House is much slimmer today, while Democrats now hold a razor-thin edge in the Senate. The essential features of H.R 1 (and its accompanying S 1 in the Senate) must pass with a bipartisan vote if we are ever to fix our broken election system. The fifty-fifty split in the Senate is one clear indication of how tilted the voting playing field currently is, as the fifty Democratic senators represent 41 million more people than the fifty Republicans, because every state has two senators regardless of its population. Thus, for example, each senator from Wyoming represents 286,000 people, while each senator from California represents 19,750,000, a ratio of seventy to one in leverage.

We can’t change the composition of the Senate without re-writing the Constitution, but we can assure that every American has an equal opportunity to have his or her vote counted. For the People would authorize same-day registration in every state. That would enable people working multiple jobs with little discretionary time to only have to show up at the polls once, and allow new residents in a state to vote as soon as they establish residency.

There is no rational, unbiased argument against this provision. Likewise, several others whose only purpose is to make it easier for every American to vote: automatic registration for every eligible state resident who is already contained in a state database such as motor vehicles; at least fifteen days of early voting; expanded opportunities for mail-in voting; declaring Election Day a federal holiday.

Equally important is the provision to require that states appoint independent commissions to redraw voting districts and end gerrymandering, the process by which millions of votes are rendered irrelevant. Gerrymandering distorts the representation of different population groups by party affiliation to favor the party in power in each state. Thus, for example, in a recent Wisconsin election, Democrats cast 61% of the votes but won only 49% of the seats in the legislature because Democratic voters were densely packed into fewer districts. The Supreme Court ruled that situations like this can only be changed by legislation.

The issue with respect to H.R 1 is straightforward. We can choose between a system that maximizes every citizen’s opportunity to vote and assures that every vote cast has equal weight, or we can retain a system that allows one party to suppress the power of voters in the opposition party. Shall we have partisan cheating or open free elections?

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The Enemy Within

Posted on March 5, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 5, 2021

Many people in Congress have been tiptoeing around the elephant in the room, but last month, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who at eighty, isn’t intimidated by speaking the truth, said, “The enemy is within.” When asked for a clarification by CBS News, she replied, “It means that we have members of Congress who want to bring guns on the floor and have threatened violence on other members of Congress.” Some, like Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, refuse to pass through metal detectors at the Capitol. They just walk around them unchallenged, because the Capitol Police have not been ordered to confront them.

A 2,000 page report issued last week by California Representative Zoe Lofgren documented publicly reported contacts between members of Congress and individuals involved in the January 6th demonstration and the insurrection at the Capitol. Representatives Paul Gosar (AZ), Mo Brooks (AL), and Andy Biggs (AZ) were all reported to have been in contact with people who planned the rally in response to former President Trump’s call to action to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. We didn’t need a report to know that Senator Josh Hawley (MO) thrust his fist in the air exhorting the crowd in front of the White House to march on the Capitol and interfere with the constitutionally mandated process of declaring that Biden would be inaugurated two weeks later. We all saw and heard him.

Nancy Pelosi chooses her words carefully. She takes the threats from her colleagues seriously, as she should. People like Hawley, a lawyer smart enough to know where the line between free speech and insurrection is, are careful not to urge protesters to overthrow the government in so many words. They understand that the Constitution defines treason extremely narrowly – to be found guilty of treason one has to either physically participate in an attempt to overthrow the government or personally aid an enemy in time of war. So Hawley, Brooks, Donald Trump, Jr, and Rudi Giuliani, who all clearly incited the crowd to physically act to prevent Congress from  on January 6th, cannot literally be charged with treason for their remarks at the rally. Does that absolve them of responsibility?

Both FBI Director Christopher Wray and soon to be Attorney General Merrick Garland have stated publicly that they consider the White Supremacist Groups who invaded the Capitol to be the most serious terrorist threats in the nation. Garland said DOJ will investigate thoroughly and follow wherever the evidence takes them, no matter how high it leads. All this brings us to the real question: how far are we willing to go and how much are we willing to risk to protect our so-called democracy? As badly divided as we already are, how do we balance the risk of doing nothing in the hope that this will all go away against the risk of pre-emptively removing the worst actors from the scene before they can do irreparable damage?

We need to decide those questions before we go too far down the road, because while it may be impossible to prosecute anyone for treason, it’s quite likely that the FBI will find enough evidence to charge several high-profile people with sedition. On January 14th, The Saturday Evening Post explained exactly what sedition is – a federal crime punishable by up to twenty years in prison:

According to Title 18, second 2384 of the Code of Laws of the United States, sedition can meet any of three conditions.

If two or more people in any place subject to U.S. jurisdiction:

  1. conspire to overthrow, put down, or destroy by force or wage war against the government
  2. forcefully oppose government authority, preventing, hindering or delaying the execution of any law of the U.S.
  3. seize, take, or possess any U.S. property contrary to its laws.

That sounds a lot like what the aforementioned individuals did. Could they be charged with sedition? Perhaps more important, if there is evidence to do so, will our leaders have the courage to act? If history has taught us anything, it is that failing to act preventively when the enemy is gathering at your gates is an invariably losing strategy. When the enemy is already within your walls, there is no choice at all.

What has occurred since the November election was not the protected expression of dissent by a loyal opposition. It is an attempt to undermine our Constitution. The people responsible, no matter who they turn out to be, must be prosecuted with zero tolerance if we expect our republic to survive.

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Biden’s Foreign Policy Challenges

Posted on February 27, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 27, 2021

After Donald Trump’s America First policy, I was glad that President Biden’s first international call was to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. No two countries’ futures are as inextricably tied to each other as Canada’s and the United States’. Twentieth centruy futurists predicted that we would eventually form a North American Confederation with Canada, if not actually merge into a single nation. National pride and cultural differences aside, that made perfect sense fifty years ago; it makes even more sense today.

Fifty years ago, such a confederation would have been one-sided, since Canada’s climate caused chronically high unemployment in seasonal industries like construction and farming. But our evolving climate is leveling the field, if not reversing it. America’s southern farm lands are moving toward another dust bowl, as Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas overheat and experience worsening droughts, while Canada’s agricultural belts benefit from the overall warming trend. Our mutual interests are strong enough that we should be finding more ways to cooperate instead of fighting over dairy products and energy production. As both countries strive to become greener, issues like the Keystone pipeline would be much easier to resolve if we treated Canada like a partner instead of a competitor.

The commendable peace deal between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain brokered by Jared Kushner should expand trade and enrich all parties, always a good thing, but it doesn’t address the Middle East’s worst problems. Barack Obama attempted to project a more even-handed policy toward Arab-Israeli relations, which to the Arab side had always appeared heavily biased toward Israel. I understood his intentions, but he failed, and in doing so convinced strong supporters of Israel that Democrats couldn’t be trusted to support the Jewish state, one of many things that hurt Hillary Clinton and helped elect Trump in 2016. Trump’s close ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu worsened prospects for a lasting peace with Israel’s neighbors. Netanyahu has done more to alienate his neighbors than build a lasting peace.

Biden attacked the issue by going after Israel’s enemies. Under Biden, there will be no free passes to the Saudi monarchy, who enjoyed a love affair with Republican administrations going back to George H. W. Bush. Biden withdrew support for Saudi’s war with Yemen, put a large sale of state-of-the-art warplanes on hold, and held Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman responsible for the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashogi. MBS will no longer be treated like a golfing buddy. Biden also struck at Iranian installations in Syria that supported attacks on American forces. These actions demonstrate more support for Israel than propping up a corrupt Prime Minister.

With respect to Europe, Biden kept his campaign promises to renew support for NATO, particularly the commitment that an attack on any member nation is an attack on all. He rejoined the Paris Climate Accord and will pursue a renegotiated Iran Nuclear Deal. Good first steps, but it’s unclear how he will address trade relations or whether he will continue troop drawdowns from NATO countries. More importantly, he is hamstrung by domestic politics. Knowing Donald Trump still has a significant voice among American voters, it’s difficult to see how Europe can have confidence in America as a dependable ally. Policies could easily be reversed in 2024.

Turning to our most dangerous adversaries, we may rest assured that Biden’s foreign policy will not be ego-driven. He will not engage in hyperbolic threats and insults, and he will be as transparent as national security permits. Trump’s attacks on the original Iran nuclear deal were disingenuous. He offered no evidence that it hurt American interests, just noise and bluster. The issue is extremely complex, best left to diplomatic and military experts, not someone who flies by the seat of his pants and undercuts his own State Department. I have a degree in nuclear physics, but I freely admit that I have no idea how to best police Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Biden has been silent on North Korea, deflating the elevated status conveyed on Kim Jong Un by Trump, whose theatrics left us no better off with respect to North Korea than we were when Trump took office. Worse, our relations with our staunch ally, South Korea, were damaged when Trump undercut the South Korean government’s attempts to improve relations with the North. The best way to deal with Kim is to ignore him publicly while squeezing him in private.

I don’t know the best way deal with China, but I’m certain that hurling insults at President Xi and continually referring to COVID-19 as the China virus is the worst. Approaching China diplomatically makes more sense than blowing up trade treaties and starting trade wars. Trump likes to posture as a high stakes gambler willing to throw the dice and see where they land. But Biden understands that taking calculated diplomatic risks in negotiation works better than chaos. The best way to deal with China may be to penalize American companies that offload jobs to improve profits. That’s a far better use of tariffs than hurting our farmers’ export markets.

Finally, Russia and Vladimir Putin. Joe Biden doesn’t worships autocrats or wish to become one. Mr. Putin will neither weave a spell over Biden nor keep him in thrall as he did Trump. The way to deal with Russian interference is clear. Cyber wars are analogous to the nuclear standoffs of the last century. No computer system is safe from hacking, and our people are as talented as theirs. In the absence of voluntary disarmament, mutually assured destruction prevented us from blowing up the planet; now, both sides have the capability to destroy the other’s infrastructure and disrupt social and economic systems without firing a shot. Biden should make it clear to Putin that Russia has as much to lose from cyber warfare as we do, and maybe emphasize his point by taking out a power plant or two.

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The Legacy of Misinformation

Posted on February 26, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 26, 2021

The 2020 election and its aftermath demonstrated that the majority of Americans wanted an end to the lies and hateful rhetoric of the Trump years. They proved that nationally by electing Joe Biden, and in Georgia, under the intense scrutiny of the entire world, by defeating two incumbent Republicans Senators in a cherry-red state, turning it a lovely shade of purple. No amount of extremist media reporting can change what we saw and heard. On the other hand, fifty years after the fact, there are still people who claim the Apollo moon landings were faked.

Back in the day, I worked on the lunar landing craft, (LEM,) so I have no doubt that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin really stepped onto the lunar surface and planted the flag. Even so, having observed the lunar simulator used to train Armstrong and his colleagues first hand, and seeing how incredibly real the (fake) television transmissions from the Long Island training sessions looked, if I didn’t know better, I could see how people might buy into the lie that the missions never happened. If not for the fact that every country with tracking capability followed the path of the Apollo spacecraft independently, and were able to intercept the voice and video transmissions from the Moon themselves, the whole thing could have been a Hollywood special effects coup.

Compare that to the unabashed, shameless campaign to discredit the election. It’s not a creation of the Dark Web. It all occurred in plain sight, starting with the seeds planted by Trump months before the election that there was no way he could lose unless the election was rigged. In fact, many actors attempted to rig it, most notably Russian and Ukrainian hackers, who our entire national security apparatus tell us did their best to help Trump win.

I understand his disappointment and frustration. If not for the pandemic, which gave Americans an opportunity to watch him perform during a national emergency and utterly fail except for allowing funds for vaccine research to flow, Donald Trump may well have been re-elected. But he is incapable of accepting defeat. That’s the only thing that generated the horrifying post-election reality show the world got to see while they were locked down watching television.

While the events leading up to the insurrection at the Capitol were the final straw for many Americans, a sizable number still believe the Big Lie. It’s hard to know how many, although polls suggest that as many as two-thirds of Republicans either still believe it or are willing to support the narrative, because they see Trump as their best hope of regaining power in the future. Political differences are normal and healthy. Without the ability to freely express dissent and opposition, our republic could not survive. But when dissent is based on a massive campaign of deceit, our nation is in serious trouble.

That was brought home to me yesterday, when one of my neighbors, a very decent, intelligent man with whom I hadn’t discussed politics before lectured me about how the Democrats stole the election. I was stunned. He doesn’t even like Trump. He began by saying, “Trump is a jerk,” and went on to repeat right wing media sound bites. It was as if he’d been hypnotized to recite them in a trance. I listened, fascinated, to see if I could discern even a shred of truth. I threw in the towel when he said that in some blue states, the number of votes cast exceeded the total population of the state. He was unable to name any of them, and his only evidence was what some whacko on Newsmax said.

That’s only one of false claims that drive the Big Lie, but it’s worth focusing on because it’s not only untrue, it’s absurd. Every state certified its election results, and more than half were signed off on by Republican administrations. Does he believe that any Secretary of State certifying elections wouldn’t notice if four million votes were cast in a state with a population of three million, a fourth of whom aren’t even of voting age?

We’re about to enter a new arena as state and local prosecutors in several locations investigate Trump’s actions, both as president and private citizen. If what results are indictments, prosecutions, and convictions, what happens next? The thought that Trump and his people may have poisoned the well of truth and believability to the extent that his followers are capable of rejecting everything that disagrees with their narrative is terrifying. Trump has undermined the credibility of the free press in the minds of perhaps a third of Americans. If he succeeds in making law enforcement and the courts irrelevant, how can we possibly move forward from that?

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An Epic Supreme Court Decision?

Posted on February 22, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 22, 2021

Did you ever wonder why beavers spend so much time and energy building dams? When I asked Google, it said because those that do survive and those that don’t, don’t. Beavers are rodents, and not terribly smart ones; they don’t think too hard about what they do. They’re instinct-driven, and their most basic instinct is survival. Their dams create ponds where they can live safely, relatively free of predators most of the time. But every so often, their creek floods, and there’s too much water for their dam to hold back. Their security is breached.

Substitute Donald Trump for the beaver, an army of high-priced lawyers and henchman for the twigs and detritus that form the dam, and the safe harbor Trump retreats to whenever courts and law enforcement start looking into his affairs for the pond. Now you understand why the Supreme Court decision to remove all legal barriers from the release of Trump’s tax records to New York City District Attorney Cyrus Vance is so important. His lawyers created a logjam in the court system that has lasted for decades to prevent exposure of information that could land Trump in prison. The Court, one third of which was appointed by Trump, ruled against him with no dissent.

In most complex criminal investigations, the war cry is, “Follow the money.” If you wonder why tax records matter so much, consider that mobsters like Al Capone were untouchable until the FBI realized they could convict them of tax evasion. Federal and state investigators will be looking for that in Trump’s records, but examining how people spend money and how they represent their holdings on official documents can expose a variety of other crimes: bribery, extortion, fraud, racketeering, campaign finance violations, money laundering, hush payments – the potential list reads like a B movie script.

In 2018, Trump’s fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen, pled guilty to eight counts of tax evasion and campaign finance violations in federal court. In 2019, he testified to Congress that when he committed those crimes he was acting at the behest of his boss, Donald Trump. He also claimed to have evidence of Trump’s ties to Russia and of his involvement in Roger Stone’s relationship with Wikileaks. After being exposed as the sleaze he is, Cohen’s public attempt at redemption didn’t convince many people, but if money changed hands in either of those activities, Trump’s tax records could validate Cohen’s allegations.

His tax records were the subject of Trump’s first and most persistent lie since he became a politician. First, he promised to release them “at the appropriate time.” When that time, which was never specified, had become moot, he claimed he couldn’t release them because they were under audit. When voters seemed not to care whether he released them, he started playing the victim card. He was the subject of a vast conspiracy to destroy his presidency, the likes of which…you’ve heard it all before. A lot of people wondered, after he’d become president, and his supporters clearly couldn’t have cared less, why Trump continued to go to such lengths to hide his tax records.

Maybe it was the $400 million in Trump’s debts reported by the New York Times. The fact that the only major bank who would do business with him in the last decade was Deutschebank, which was fined nearly a billion dollars by the EU for money laundering, naturally raised the question of whom he was in debt to. The statements of his son, Donald Trump, Jr, bragging that Trump would never have trouble borrowing because Russian banks loved him might shed some light. There’s enough smoke there to call the Fire Department.

The only thing that’s clear is that Trump has been and remains desperate to keep prosecutors from examining the details of his tax returns. Only a fool would conclude that it’s because he values privacy and has nothing of a criminal nature to hide. Trump has repeatedly shown himself to be totally without scruples. Did he, as Michael Cohen charged, undervalue his properties to avoid taxes while simultaneously overvaluing them when using them as collateral? Is he seriously indebted to Russian and Chinese oligarchs? Those question are not academic, and their answers may explain why Trump was willing to provoke insurrection to remain in power, where he was exempt from prosecution.

Donald Trump continues to dominate the Republican Party and says he intends to runs for president again in 2024. If that’s true every American should know exactly who and what he is.

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The Mind Of a Trump Supporter

Posted on February 21, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 21, 2021

Don’t let the title fool you. I have no idea what goes on in the mind of a Trump supporter. The things they say usually make me roll my eyes. Absent any other information, it would be easy to conclude that they’re stupid, ignorant, and uninterested in thinking for themselves. But I know that’s not true as a generality. I know too many intelligent, well-educated people who call themselves Trump Republicans. If anyone out there can explain how they think, please let me know.

Watching Trump take over the Republican party and savage the other contenders in the 2016 presidential election was a humbling experience. I used to be pretty good at predictions, at least when they were based on a sound analysis of valid data. In 2016, I understood why people responded to his populist appeal and why they gave him a pass on having no respect for truth and even less character. They had been harboring years of built-up anger and frustration, and for all that time they had nowhere to vent it and no one at whom to direct it. Trump gave them both, and they loved him for it.

But I had no idea that there were so many Americans looking for someone to blame for their unhappiness, so many millions who could be easily provoked into what was effectively a lynch mob with a moving target. Trump’s tweets might have been the Pied Piper’s flute. “Yesterday we hated immigrants. Today let’s go after the courts. Tomorrow – let’s see – let’s string up every pro-choice woman in our neighborhoods.” The crazier his claims got, the more violent his exhortations, the more people he attracted. I realized, then, that my knowledge of human nature was inadequate, so I stopped making predictions, except one, that Trump would overreach until he finally undermined himself. That was an easy one. There was no way he would ever represent the majority of Americans.

I also made an exception for COVID. Once there was solid data for professional modelers to sink their teeth into, I was back on solid turf. I even bought a tee shirt that says, “In Fauci We Trust.” Last Spring, I predicted that the COVID death toll would reach a quarter of a million Americans by Election Day, and some of you scoffed. When I said 400,000 by Inauguration Day, there were still people claiming that either the pandemic was a hoax or it was being exaggerated just to hurt Trump. That somehow got merged into the Big Lie that the election was stolen, and I began to wonder if among Trump’s gifts was the ability to drive his supporters crazy and make loyalty to him a psychological imperative. The death toll reached a half million today.

And then came the ultimate test on January 6th. We all saw the insurrection at the Capitol and the events that led up to it. We all know what happened. We saw the Proud Boys and the Oath Takers lead the assault on the Capitol in the name of their president and loudly proclaim that he had ordered them there to interfere with the Congress’ business of certifying the victory of Joe Biden. Yet, a new USA Today poll of Trump supporters reported that 58% of them believe the riot was perpetrated by Antifa, the largely fictitious organization of left-wing terrorists who support the Green New Deal and eat babies.

After living through a year in which Trump’s criminal malfeasance allowed the pandemic to spread out of control and destroy the lives of tens of millions of Americans who lost their jobs, homes, and families, many of whom were Trump supporters, 41% said they would follow him if he formed his own Party. More than 90% think he is not responsible for the insurrection, and 85% said they’d vote for Trump again if he ran for president in 2024. To me, the result that best describes their mentality, is that of the 58% of Trump supporters who said Fox News was their most trusted source of information last October, that number is only 34% today. The others all defected down the rabbit hole to Newsmax and AONN.

Despite now having a president who cares so much he brings tears to my eyes when he speaks, Trump supporters have a new mission – preventing President Biden from getting anything done. If nothing else, that puts Mitch McConnell who has made a living obstructing Democrats in an interesting place in his fight to regain control of his party.

Knowing all this, I have to ask again. Can anyone explain how these people think?

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