A Horrifying Scene

Posted on February 3, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 3, 2020

Many Americans who saw these photographs shook their heads decrying the way third world countries operate, relieved that scenes like this never happen here. The pictures must have been taken in one of those shithole countries Donald Trump referred to, places like Paraguay or Somalia, where armed rebels storm the capital and occupy government offices, where military coups d’etat usurp elected authority and suspend normal rules of order.

That’s pretty frightening stuff, even more so because those scenes weren’t from Paraguay or Somalia, or Botswana or Venezuela either. They were recorded by Getty Images three days ago at the State Capital building in Frankfort, Kentucky. The men in the pictures weren’t guerrilla fighters staging a revolution. They were red-blooded Americans, right-wing extremists all, puffing out their chests and showing everyone how tough they were with their fully loaded, military grade weapons.

Apparently, the scene in Kentucky was deemed perfectly legal and appropriate, at least for that one day on January 31st. On every other day, visitors to the capital building are carefully screened, forced to walk through metal detectors and show IDs before they’re permitted to enter. But when the group We Are KY Gun Owners staged a rally to protest proposed new gun control laws being considered by the legislature, they were welcomed with open arms.

Normally, law enforcement takes security very seriously at the Kentucky capital. Civilians carrying guns, either loaded or unloaded aren’t permitted in the building. And it’s not only guns. The Louisville Courier-Journal reported that all manner of dangerous weapons, including “umbrellas and sticks holding protest signs” are routinely confiscated from perpetrators before they’re allowed to enter.

When thousands of teachers rallied at the same location a year ago to peacefully protest a bill that would have trashed their state pension system, they were treated like suspected terrorists. But when 200 Second Amendment activists showed up in full military regalia toting loaded semi-automatic weapons and wearing camo body armor, causing terrified tourists and other visitors to flee the building, security guards simply directed them around the metal detectors and invited them in.

The gun activists were protesting against Kentucky’s proposed Red Flag law that would permit police or family members to petition a state court to order the temporary removal of firearms from a person who might present a danger to others or themselves. Red Flag laws already exist in fourteen states, including Florida, which passed one in September, 2019 in response to the Marjorie Stoneman Douglass school shooting massacre.

In part, the Kentucky protest grew out of similar (but unarmed) protests in Virginia, which until now has had no gun control laws at all. Virginia is home to the National Rifle Association, which was supporting attempts to have some counties in the state declared Second Amendment sanctuary areas, which means they would be exempt from any gun control laws passed by the state. But on January 30th, reacting to the May 2019 mass shooting in Virginia Beach, the state’s House of Delegates passed seven bills that would overhaul gun policy in the Old Dominion, [and] the state Senate approved analogues to five of the measures.

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam has indicated that he will sign the new law as soon as the legislature sends it to him. In addition to universal background checks and a Red Flag law, the legislation set a one-per-month limit on handgun purchases, restoring a restriction that had been repealed by a Republican controlled legislature in 2012. It also allows courts to issue protective orders that would prohibit abusive domestic partners and other family members from owning guns.

The Virginia law seems to have been the catalyst for the gun rally in the Kentucky capital. Those heavily armed Kentucky protesters considered the actions taken in Virginia to be a threat to their own Second Amendment rights. But are they? The Second Amendment to the Constitution is a simple statement written in straightforward terms: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” That’s it in its entirety. To most people the intent of those words is clear.

Does any serious person believe that Virginia’s new gun laws are intended to abrogate that right? Do you suppose the founders foresaw a Banana Republic scene like the one pictured above in Frankfort, Kentucky? I think not.

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The Impeachment Trial Debacle

Posted on February 1, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 1, 2020

As the smoke clears and reality sets in, we should be clear about a number of things. Before we go off the deep end about the near-certainty that Donald Trump will be acquitted by the Senate next Wednesday, we should remember that this is the outcome everyone expected from the first moment the word “impeachment” was uttered. We may have underestimated Mitch McConnell’s ability to keep his caucus in line to the extent that it had the chutzpah to exclude witness testimony and documentation, but we always knew the Senate trial would be a sham.

Most appalling was hearing every member of that caucus swear an oath of impartiality when its leaders, people like McConnell and Lindsey Graham had repeatedly told Fox News that they wouldn’t even pretend to be objective. For those of us who watched the revolting process evolve each day, seeing them all sit like good choir boys and girls as the Senate Chaplain prayed that whichever God they subscribed to would imbue them with the need to faithfully execute their responsibility was almost enough to make us cancel our cable contracts.

As jurors, Senators have the right to vote for or against acquittal as they see fit. That’s especially true of those who insisted from the start that even if he was proven guilty, Trump’s actions were not impeachable. Their issue was never getting to the truth of the matter, because to them it was irrelevant. Some, like Florida’s Marco Rubio, thought Trump deserved to be impeached, but that removing him would not be in the interest of the nation with an election nine months away. As much as I hate the idea of our immoral, self-serving president continuing in office for a single day, Rubio is right. So were all of us who cringed and urged restraint when freshman Democrats in the House screamed impeachment the day they were sworn in.

There’s no mystery here. Republican Senators had to choose between doing what they knew was right and sucking up to an out-of-control demagogue who vowed to destroy them if they were disloyal. Some of them are craven and cowardly, pandering to Trump’s base much the way he does, but it’s not entirely their fault. This was entirely predictable. Nancy Pelosi knew it, and she held out as long as she could until the whistle blower’s complaint was made public. If this was a Hollywood movie, the whistle blower would turn out to be a Trump plant who knew his actions would trigger the process we’ve been witnessing since then.

As many have said from the start, it’s up to us now. It was always up to us. We put Trump in office. We created this mess. Too many of us stayed home in 2016 thinking our vote didn’t matter or he couldn’t win or that our country could never support someone like him. We had no idea that one-third of us think the way he does. He brought out the worst in us, and now it’s our problem to fix.

If you’re a woman, an immigrant, or a person of color, why would you not walk through a raging blizzard to vote against him? I am none of those, but I believe in the rule of law and that our founders intended for all Americans to be able to compete on a level playing field, to house our families, provide decent nutrition and health care, and send our children to school knowing they won’t be shot there. That’s why I am terrified of what four more years of Trumpism will do. Nothing short of a coma will prevent me from voting this year.

The Senate acted shamefully. Knowing the fix was in from the start, the only reason for conducting the trial as they have was to prevent Americans from learning the truth. I get why they did it – if they succeeded it would be their best shot at retaining power next year. If they got it over quickly, American voters would forget by November – but they’re wrong. We’re going to learn all the sordid details. Whether out of self-interest or a sense of duty, people who know the truth will tell us. In 2020, no one will be able to claim they didn’t know what was at stake or fantasize that Trump would be any less despicable as president than he was as a private citizen.

We cannot afford the luxury of short memories or laziness this year. We’ve defended our way of life against wars and economic crises. We can’t let ennui and indolence undermine it now. No excuses this year. The Senate has thrown responsibility for our future back into our laps where it belongs.

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Impeachment and A Tale of Two Conways

Posted on January 22, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 22, 2020

Conservative attorney George Conway described Adam Schiff’s presentation of the House’s case to remove President Trump from office as an incredibly coherent and comprehensive narrative, something the president’s defenders don’t have. Much like the James Carville-Mary Matalin show that entertained us during the Clinton administration, Conway and his wife Kellyanne continue to ride a political see-saw in full view of the American public. It takes a while to adjust to the bizarre image of one of the president’s most loyal defenders telling us Trump has never done anything wrong, while her husband calls him a pathological liar who is incapable of telling the truth and describes the Republican Senate’s approach to the impeachment trial as an outrageous sham.

It’s tempting to wonder whether the George and Kellyanne Conway we see on television with such violently opposed opinions about this president really coexist in the same household or if their loud disagreements are merely a public relations scam aimed at post-Trump celebrity. But I’d rather focus on what George Conway has been saying today. Kellyanne has repeatedly said Trump can do no wrong.

The pundits at both political extremes aside, the general consensus is that House Manager Adam Schiff did a masterful job of laying out the case against Trump in the context of the intent of our founders. The latter feared that a future president might abuse his or her office for personal gain or refuse to abide by constitutional limitations on executive power. In short, the country had just spent eight bloody years fighting to free itself of a despotic king, and their highest priority was assuring that there would never again be one in America.

George Conway made essentially the same points today. If we didn’t know better, we might assume he was on Schiff’s team, but we do know better. Twenty years ago, Conway was one of a number of prominent Republicans who pushed for the impeachment of Bill Clinton, and his negative opinions about Trump aside, there is nothing to suggest that he has changed his political stripes. He, like a small number of Republican holdovers from before Trump hijacked and remodeled the party in his own image, remains committed to the conservative principles his party once stood for – things like integrity, respect for law, and reverence to the Constitution.

I am heartened by this. If voices as disparate as Adam Schiff’s and George Conway’s believe Donald Trump has abused his office and committed impeachable offenses, it’s possible that the small number of Republican Senators who believe as Conway does will stand up to Mitch McConnell and demand a real trial with witnesses and evidence. It’s difficult to be entirely objective on the issue of impeachment, but it’s even more difficult to listen to Adam Schiff and not find his presentation compelling.

The Republicans cannot contest the facts in the case because the entire world has seen and heard them. President Trump himself seems to believe the facts exonerate him as he openly brags about his actions and claims they’re all perfect. And it’s virtually impossible to listen to Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney’s tirade on national TV in which he said of course there was a quid pro quo, that’s the way business is done and not take notice.

Mulvaney told us to get over it, but Schiff and George Conway believe that getting over an obvious attempt to ask a foreign government to interfere in our elections and illegally extort them to do so by withholding Congressionally mandated aid against Russian aggression is an invitation to undermine our Constitution. They ask whether if that precedent is allowed to stand and future presidents with a Senate majority aspire to be kings, what will be left to stop them?

Nothing has really changed for months, except that the impeachment trial is finally underway. 53% of Americans who had opinions other than “I don’t know” now believe Trump should be removed from office, and upwards of 75% want to hear key administration officials with direct relevant knowledge testify. Given all that, let’s focus on what really matters.

No one ever expected the Senate to convict the president, and now that we’ve entered 2020, it’s fair to say that the outcome of the impeachment trial is almost moot. What is not moot is November’s election. Trump and his supporters in the Senate fear that if Americans are allowed to see all the evidence they will punish Republicans in the ballot box. That happened in a big way in 2018, when Trump was merely facing growing disillusionment with his values and behavior.

Let the Senate vote to not remove him from office. That’s the peoples’ job, anyway. If the facts come to light for everyone to see, the voters will assure Trump’s tenure as president ends a year from now.

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The High Stakes Gambler at the Helm

Posted on January 8, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 8, 2020

Donald Trump has described his negotiating style as gathering all the players in a room, tossing in a hand grenade, and then swooping in to close a deal before they know what hit them. That sometimes works in business, where the grenade is a metaphor for the threat of financial ruin, but as we’ve often noted, governing the United States of America is quite different than threatening people short on resources with lawsuits.

In his speech today, announcing in effect that his advisers had restrained him from his typical bellicose rhetoric, (the immediate giveaways were the teleprompters and the strained expression on his face that means he doesn’t believe a word he’s saying,) Trump commented that having all our powerful, deadly weapons doesn’t mean we have to use them. That’s very true and we should all be thankful that our generals keep his dangerous toys locked up where he can’t unilaterally play with them.

There’s a corollary to that statement which may be more important. The fact that his latest gamble didn’t lead to all-out war with Iran doesn’t mean it was a sensible risk. Most foreign leaders and most Americans viewed it as dangerously risky and inadvisable. It’s impossible to overstate this. Trump is a gambler. He brags about it, but he’s spent most of his life gambling with other people’s money and leaving a trail of financial ruin in his wake. He’s lost millions in court-ordered settlements and relied on bankruptcy laws to assure that other people bore the brunt of his bad business decisions.

It’s important to look at why we’re not at war with Iran today. Trump and his supporters will tell us that it was his threats to unleash all that weaponry on Iran that prevented war, but I don’t believe it. Iran’s leaders, who Trump likes to characterize as irrational religious fanatics, showed themselves to be level-headed and sophisticated in choosing how to respond to the killing of General Suleimani.

Look back a couple of days and ask yourself how likely it was that we’d be where we are today. With every overpaid pundit predicting what actions Iran would take, did anyone expect them to react with the surgical precision that displayed their military capabilities without harming a single American or Iraqi? They found the only pathway that could lead to today’s outcome. The Iranian military was like a quarterback threading a desperate pass through a crowd of defenders with the game on the line, and they played it out expertly.

Fortunately for all of us, we’ve seen this movie before, but most Americans aren’t old enough to remember. On October 28, 1962, we were at the end game after two weeks of playing nuclear chicken with the Soviet Union over medium-range missiles in Cuba. Much has been written since about the Kennedy administration’s flawed diplomacy and lack of understanding of the Russian mentality. I’ve always believed it was Nikita Khrushchev who saved the world from nuclear chaos and destruction that day. When the chips were down, the world needed an adult in the room when everyone else was losing it.

The Iranian regime is hateful and determined, but what we learned this week was that they’re neither insane nor suicidal. That means they can be reasoned with. It means that chants of “Death to America” have no more substance or value than Donald Trump’s and Kim Jong Un’s threats and bluster. Trump’s belligerence has done nothing to ease the problem of North Korea, and I don’t believe it had any effect on the Iranians. They understood perfectly that in an all-out war Iran would be destroyed. The rest of the world might be too, but it’s certain that Iran wouldn’t survive it.

We got out of this whole for the time being, but we were lucky, and as Yogi Berra might have said, it ain’t over til it’s over. To the president, I say, if you want to gamble everything you own after you’re out of office, that’s your business. But when you gamble with the lives of every American, it’s OUR business. I doubt that anyone was surprised that Trump took the extreme step of assassinating a high-ranking official of another country’s government to distract from his impeachment and re-election problems. He’s as dangerous as a cornered rat.

Suleimani was a bad guy who might have suffered the same fate at the hands of the World Court, but that’s the whole point, isn’t it? It’s why we have lynch laws. Trump is only a president not a judge or an emperor.

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Every American is at Risk

Posted on January 5, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 5, 2020

I just filled out my absentee ballot for the Maryland 7th Congressional District’ Special Primary Election to fill the seat left vacant by the passing of long time representative Elijah Cummings. Cummings will be best remembered by Americans who are not from Maryland as the recipient of the brunt of President Trump’s vicious and inaccurate attacks on the City of Baltimore. Agree or disagree with him, Cummings was the antithesis of Trump – someone who cared more about truth and the welfare of his constituents than wealth and power. Because I believe she will carry on the fight her husband waged on behalf of his district, I cast my ballot for his widow, Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings.

Elijah Cummings would have been furious to see his constituents serving in the military sent into harm’s way with no justification. He’d have vented his anger on behalf of the families and friends who will wring their hands with worry every time a shot is fired in the Middle East. Again flouting norms for no reason other than his own narcissism, President Trump cloaked his notification to Congress about the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani under a security classification. Why? To prevent Americans from learning the reasons for the drone attack in Baghdad.

That is unprecedented in our history. From Franklin Roosevelt to Harry Truman, to John Kennedy to Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, presidents have explained their actions to the country whenever they initiated hostilities that put Americans at risk. Their explanations may have been partially refuted by subsequent events, but they all understood that in a republic, the government is ultimately responsible to its citizens.

Trump doesn’t think he’s responsible to anyone but himself, and that may be his most impeachable offense. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden got it right: “President Trump just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox, and he owes the American people an explanation of the strategy and plan to keep safe our troops and embassy personnel.” 

Unfortunately, it’s not only our people in uniform and those who care about them who will directly affected by Trump’s decision. Every American is at risk. It’s quite telling that one of my neighbors in Maryland quipped that he was about to head south for the winter, and he was thankful to be getting his family away from the high risk target areas near the Capital. Equally telling is the reaction of many people where I’m wintering Florida that they’re relieved to be out of the line of fire.

If you don’t feel at risk it’s because you’re not thinking it through clearly. Iran has vowed to retaliate. Believe them. The Koran is as clear as the Old Testament about the virtues of revenge. Iran’s Foreign Minister said today that retaliation would be against American military interests. That’s the kind of measured response we’d take ourselves if, say, our Joint Chiefs Chairman had been assassinated by Iranian operatives. Not a great outcome, but one in line with diplomatic conventions.

President Trump, on the other hand, while claiming his intent is to prevent war and de-escalate has done exactly the opposite. Today, he tweeted a threat to attack Iranian cultural sites. That’s not only barbaric, a threat typical of ISIS and Hezbolah, it’s a war crime. You needn’t take the word of Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on that, Senator Chris Murphy was the first of several in Congress to say the same thing. United Nations resolution 2347 condemns “the unlawful destruction of cultural heritage, including the destruction of religious sites and artefacts [sic]…,” and the same prohibition exists in the Geneva Conventions.

Legality aside, Trump’s threat could be read by Iranian extremists as an invitation to do the same thing. If you haven’t considered the possibilities of who might be at risk, now is a good time to start. I spent weeks wrestling with this issue in writing my novel, Wednesday’s Child. Opening the door to attacking cultural sites is an irresponsible provocation to outright war. There’s no way to harden them all in a nation like ours, and it’s nearly impossible to predict where an enemy like the Quds force could strike.

How do you define a cultural site? The Statue of Liberty? The White House? The National Cathedral? What about Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, where 65,000 people will be watching the Super Bowl in a few weeks? That’s the kind of threat we face when our President’s ego gets in the way of common sense and he ignores his advisers.

This is exactly what we need to put a stop to at the ballot box next November. Trump’s unilateral, autocratic behavior puts every American at risk.

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Is Trump Willing to Provoke War with Iran?

Posted on January 3, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 3, 2020

President Donald Trump’s New Year’s message to Iran was a drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, a Major General in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Soleimani led the elite Quds force whose purpose is to carry out unconventional warfare and military intelligence operations, what most of the rest of the world calls terrorism. He was a sworn enemy of the United States and one of the most powerful figures in Iran’s military. Americans have no reason to mourn Soleimani’s death, but there are questions about how, why, and when it was ordered

We may never know with certainty what went on in President Trump’s mind when he made the decision to target Soleimani after American Intelligence located him on the ground in Iraq. There are a few things we do know, however, that may shed some light on what motivated him. Most illuminating may be words that came directly from Trump himself. On the three different occasions Donald Trump suggested that his predecessor, Barack Obama, would be willing to start a war with Iran to assure his re-election. Following are Trump’s own tweets:

November 29, 2011 – In order to get elected, @BarackObama will start a war with Iran.

October 22, 2012 – Don’t let Obama play the Iran card in order to start a war in order to get elected–be careful Republicans!

September 26, 2013 – I predict that President Obama will at some point attack Iran in order to save face!

One of the things Trump is best known for is projecting his own attitudes and motives onto other people. The idea that Trump would initiate hostilities with Iran if he believed it would strengthen his political position is hardly new. What’s most interesting is the timing of the drone strike that killed Soleimani.

The president is caught in limbo between the House of Representatives passing Articles of Impeachment and the Senate trial which must follow, and polls have shown that at least half of all Americans want him removed from office. Leaks from the White House have indicated for weeks that despite his denials Trump is extremely angry and agitated, and the hundreds of tweets he unleashed over that time make that description seem like an understatement.

If he was on edge before, new revelations from previously secret emails are strengthening the case for removal. It’s clear now that the order to withhold military assistance funds allocated by Congress for Ukraine’s defense against Russian aggression were ordered by Trump himself, and that the order was issued well before the July 25th phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that started all this. It is becoming more and more clear that Trump did exactly what he is accused of doing – holding back aid to a foreign nation being invaded by one of our enemies in exchange for a political favor that could help his re-election campaign.

Trump’s problem is that mounting evidence of his guilt may begin to affect the political calculations of some Republican Senators who serve as his jurors. The likelihood of sixty-seven Senators voting to convict is still a long shot, but it could only take four defections to force Leader McConnell to change his trial strategy. As damning evidence mounts it will be far more difficult to vote to acquit without first issuing subpoenas for documents and testimony from people like John Bolton, Mick Mulvaney, Mike Pompeo, and their senior staffs.

None of that may prevent the Senate from acquitting Trump, but it could do serious damage to his image among independent, centrist voters. The fact that he has defied Congress with unprecedented vehemence, claiming privilege and the right to secrecy in every situation speaks volumes about his political concerns.

And now comes this risky and potentially dangerous drone attack on a senior member of the Iranian government. It was carried out without notification of the bipartisan Congressional leaders known as the Gang of Eight who are supposed to be briefed on all Intelligence matters critical to national security, especially any planned activities that could result in international incidents.

Technically, the president has an out for “extraordinary circumstances” which he deems sufficient to limit access to information. Do current circumstances justify risking a major regional war without consulting Congress? That will be determined by people who know far more about them than I do, but all of us can add up we know as facts. Why do you think Trump chose January 2, 2020 to target a potential enemy who has been working in the same capacity for nearly thirty years?

Why now? Could it be the election cycle which is about to begin in earnest?

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Meaningful Progress

Posted on December 26, 2019 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, December 26, 2019

Rather than rely on my subjective memory, I’ve been documenting some important things in detail. I noted after Donald Trump was inaugurated that people who were optimistic about his presidency talked mostly about North Korea, Iran, and the Middle East. No one I knew talked about the economy, because lest we forget, the Obama administration had done an excellent job of creating conditions that would enable a slow but enduring recovery from the economic crisis it inherited from its predecessor.

Today, the economy is the only thing people who remain positive about Trump talk about. Our economy is doing well – not as well as Trump claims it is, but better than most of the world’s. At its core, it continued to build on the foundation Obama’s people implemented. There are more jobs, fewer people unemployed, and near-record stock prices.

Regardless of what political spinners want us to believe, equity markets rose because despite all the tough rhetoric, companies continue to do most of their manufacturing and processing offshore where labor is cheaper, and Trump and the Republican Senate traded our grandchildren’s economic prosperity for a huge tax windfall to corporate billionaires. I don’t mean to sound like Bernie Sanders, but in that regard he’s correct.

Not everyone benefited from the 2017 tax law. Wage growth among average workers lags badly, and the skyrocketing cost of health care and prescription drugs wipes out the savings many people thought they would see from lower tax rates. Millions of reasonably well off middle class people were clobbered with the cap on the amount of state and local taxes they could deduct from their federal taxes, and nothing was done to relieve the unanticipated impact of the Alternative Minimum Tax on middle class incomes. 401-K accounts are up, but they’d better be, because the cost of retirement is going through the roof.

Back to what Trump supporters talked about in 2017, let’s take North Korea first, since it was the subject most Americans were anxious about back then. After summit meetings, love letters between Trump and Kim Jong Un, and terrifying brinksmanship over nuclear missiles (remember the panic in Hawaii when Civil Defense authorities thought NK missiles were headed there?) where are we? Our relationship with South Korea has deteriorated, and today, former National Security Advisor John Bolton told Axios, “We’re now nearly three years into the administration with no visible progress toward getting North Korea to make the strategic decision to stop pursuing deliverable nuclear weapons.”

Our withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal set that nation back on the path to developing nuclear weapons of its own. Our European allies who were signatories to the deal are left hanging and powerless, and Iran has shown itself willing to suffer our economic sanctions to pursue its goals. Among the information that constantly leaks from this administration is the growing fear among military leaders that Trump will use escalating danger from Iran to spark armed conflict if he thinks his re-election is in doubt. There’s nothing like a nice hot war to make voters nervous about change.

The Middle East? With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unable to form a new government under indictment for corruption and bribery, it’s clear that his hawkish attitude toward Palestinians and the rest of the Arab Middle East no longer has majority support at home. It’s even clearer that Jared Kushner, who Trump appointed to fix the Middle East has accomplished nothing, though the president didn’t help matters by making contradictory statements about the often discussed Two State Solution.

Not only have we backslid in all our major foreign policy initiatives since Trump took office, we  seriously undercut international attempts to alleviate the effects of climate change, and despite all the fakery, rust belt workers are no better off now than in 2016. Trump’s highly touted promises to restore our domestic steel and coal industries have gone nowhere.

As we enter what may be the most critical election cycle of our lives, voters need to look closely at their own personal journeys during the Trump years. Ronald Reagan used to ask voters if they were better off than they were four years ago. It’s more complicated for us because we’re dealing with an administration that runs on lies and “alternative facts.” Remember that it was Kellyanne Conway, senior adviser to Trump who coined that phrase with a completely straight face.

Please, take the time to reflect on your own truths, not Trump’s, Fox News’s, or CNN’s. Remember where you were three years ago and where you might have been today if the outcome of the 2016 election had been different. Then go out and vote.

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The Conservative View of Impeachment

Posted on December 21, 2019 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, December 21, 2019

Because I believe that all Americans have the inalienable right to a roof over their heads, nutritious food on their tables, and access to basic health care, many people “accuse” me of being a Liberal (whatever that means.) Yet, I found a real affinity for the man who was the purest Conservative in the Senate until this year, Jeff Flake. It’s hard to argue with someone who describes the roots and basis of Conservatism as respect for truth and fidelity to the basic ideals and values on which our Constitution rests.

Senator Flake chose not to run for re-election last year because the president’s base was targeting him in the primary election and the polls suggested that Trump would win that fight. I wish Flake had made a different choice, since subsequent events show Arizona going purple and possibly blue, surely not a bastion of Trump support if it ever was. But that ship has sailed.

Republicans and Democrats both have a huge stake in preserving and restoring the Republican Party to what it was. Whether or not you agree with Conservative dogma, drowning it out with lies, racist hate-mongering, and bluster cannot possibly be healthy for our nation. The principles Jeff Flake espouses are essential to who we are as Americans. Policy differences are simply details to be negotiated in a bipartisan manner.

The horror show of the impeachment of President Trump had a clear light shone on it yesterday when Jeff Flake published an open letter to his former colleagues in the Senate. He appealed to them to recall how their better selves would have reacted if not steeped in the chaos created by this president. He reminded them that their duty to the Constitution was to act as Republicans, not as Trump’s lackeys. To me the most meaningful lines in Flake’s letter were:

“…the danger of an untruthful president is compounded when an equal branch [of government] follows that president off the cliff, into the abyss of unreality and untruth.…Call it the founders’ blind spot: They simply could not have envisioned the Article I branch [Congress] abetting and enabling such dangerous behavior in the Article II branch [the President.]”

If the long, drawn out, nearly impossible to watch impeachment hearings and the accompanying political spins have left you frustrated or lost in the weeds, let those two statements remind you what this is all about. The people who wrote our Constitution (Alexander Hamilton, et al,) feared two things above all. One was allowing our young republic to fall back into an autocratic monarchy. The other was our vulnerability to foreign interference.

The two Articles of Impeachment drafted by the House Judiciary Committee address those fears directly. More than half of America believes the president abused his power and that he was willing to put his own lust to remain in power over our national security. I applaud Jeff Flake for taking on the role of Congressional Conscience.

We can debate whether Trump’s actions rise to the level of impeachable, but we cannot sanction Senators openly declaring their political bias and blocking testimony from the people in the best position to tell the truth to the American people. As Flake implied, that would make Congress culpable in undermining the most important provisions in the Constitution. Every American with an open mind must hear what John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney have to say, and presidential privilege be damned.

If Flake’s admonition is ignored, what use are laws and the judiciary? If the Constitution can be flagrantly violated by an egomaniacal, paranoid president with no moral or ethical compass, what becomes of the precedents on which our laws are based? And if Congress succumbs to political blackmail and becomes a rubber stamp for the president…you fill in the blanks.

That’s not the America I grew up in. It’s not the America I want my grandchildren to grow up in. I urge you to read Senator Flake’s letter and give it the honest consideration it deserves. Flake says in the clearest possible terms that whether or not each individual Senator believes the president deserves to be impeached, the notion that he did nothing wrong as the House Republicans unanimously claimed is unsupportable. He doesn’t specifically come down on the side of impeachment, but he decries the possibility of acquitting the president without considering the facts.

The real issue, of course, is next November’s election. Americans need to know who they’re voting for next year. They need to see for themselves what he did so they can decide whether he deserves another term in office.

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We’re Still Fighting the Civil War

Posted on December 15, 2019 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, December 15, 2019

It’s been 154 years since the Civil War ended – or has it? In 2008, I naively interpreted Barrack Obama’s victory to mean we had finally outgrown the hatred and prejudice that grew out of a century and a half of slavery. When Hillary Clinton was nominated in 2016 I naively believed we had turned the corner after three centuries (a couple of millennia if we reach back through world history) of treating women as second-class citizens.

Though I loved what they symbolized about how the country had matured, I wasn’t a particular fan of either Obama or Clinton when I voted for them. Despite Obama’s eloquent and charismatic commitment to the ideals I believe in, the idea of voting largely for charisma scared me – until Sarah Palin left me no choice. Likewise, Clinton would not have been my choice, especially after the Democrats rigged the nomination process for her. When push came to shove Donald Trump left me no choice.

The problem was that my premise was dead wrong. As Roger Ailes and Donald Trump have clearly demonstrated, more than a third of us haven’t changed. That third, the core of the base of Trump and Fox News think it’s perfectly all right for Trump to have picked White Supremacist Stephen Miller to manage his immigration policy. They rose up in righteous indignation against the scandalous realization that a black president saved the country from the near economic collapse of 2007-2008 which resulted from the greed and corruption of the white, male banking industry. Even worse, he overcame massive opposition to begin the process of assuring universal health care for Americans.

Recently, a friend turned me on to a daily newsletter written by Heather Cox Richardson, a History Professor at Boston College who studies and teaches about post-Civil War America. Her December 14th letter spells out the root cause of what we’ve been seeing for three years, namely a revolt against law and the Constitution by a Republican Party that has been hijacked by angry, rich white men. Republicans were once the party that defended the Constitution – that’s what Conservativism with a capital “C” means. Yet today, they deal in lies and distortions, and flout the Separation of Powers mandated by the Constitution to prevent the president from becoming an autocrat.

Why? Professor Richardson explains the modern roots of Trumpism this way: “When a Republican Supreme Court unanimously decided that segregation was unconstitutional in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, the way was clear for these men to argue that an active government was not about protecting equality; it was simply a way to give benefits to black people, paid for by white tax dollars.” She further pointed out that this argument had lain dormant since the days of Reconstruction, just waiting for the repressed anger it generated to boil over.

Thus we had the Tea Party, which not coincidentally was founded weeks after Obama took office. The Tea Party may have signaled the beginning of Trumpism. Masquerading as a party fighting to lower the tax burden on all Americans, a summary of the things they fight for reveals their goals as racist, elitist, and misogynistic. Trump’s candidacy was the perfect storm that catalyzed the coalition that would rather undermine our Constitution than share their wealth. The very phrase “for all Americans” is anathema to them. For Trump’s base America means themselves, and any action or statement that secures their wealth and power is acceptable.

As we proceed down the impeachment road, there’s no need to wonder why, with the exception of a handful of individuals who fear backlash from their own bases, the Republican Senate has predetermined the outcome. For the Senate Majority Leader to announce on Fox News that there is no chance that the Senate will convict the president is appalling. It marks a blatant disregard for the most solemn and sacred responsibility outlined in the Constitution. They don’t even have the decency to pretend to be objective.

This is what Trumpism stands for: there are too many non-white people in this country, women have too much power, and the “unalienable Rights [to] Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” that Thomas Jefferson described in the Declaration of Independence from the British crown were intended to be the province only of wealthy, white men.

That is how the Republican Party was hijacked, and it is what we will see play out in the farce in the Senate in coming weeks. We can’t prevent it from happening, but we can assure it never happens again. Remember this next November.

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The Mockingbird is Dead

Posted on December 12, 2019 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, December 12, 2019

The House of Representatives’ attempt to impeach President Donald Trump and have him removed from office has gone from reality TV to surreal madness. Watching the two sides fight over every detail, like kids in a schoolyard, is simultaneously frightening and boring. If I can’t stand to watch any more, what does that say about the average American?

Watching House Judiciary Committee Chairman Gerald Nadler is like watching a robot read from Roberts’ Rules of Order. You can buy a copy for $0.99 on Google Play and save yourself the agony. Watching the scripted process of interruptions, points of order, and other delaying tactics led by Republican Ranking Member Doug Collins is above all, woefully depressing. I want to scream, “Grow up!” at my TV. After the hearings conducted by the House Intelligence Committee, what was the point of these Judiciary Committee hearings, and why, for God’s sake are the media giving them minute-by-minute coverage?

Some people are referring to the whole disgusting process as sausage making. Not a single word spoken by either side in the Judiciary Committee hearings told us anything we didn’t already know. I find the spectacle of the House displaying its dirtiest laundry for the world to see horrifying. Is this what our Constitution and our alleged democracy have degenerated to? The distressing process of debating and voting on articles of impeachment could have been done in private in a couple of hours if there were no TV audience to play to.

We’re going to be in for more of the same when the gavel is turned over to Mitch McConnell for the Senate trial. McConnell announced yesterday that there are two options, get a simple majority of Senators to vote to refuse to try the president, or hold a truncated trial consisting of a formal reading of the charges followed immediately by a vote to convict which will surely fail. So after all this pain, Trump will either get to claim vindication and exoneration, or the whole thing will come crashing down like the proverbial lead balloon. And that’s beyond sad.

The question of whether our president acted to further his own interests at the cost of degrading both our national security and the sanctity of our elections has become moot. By turning the conversation into a debate about whether Trump’s actions are impeachable, the House has forever obscured the real significance of his actions. The process in the House is pure hypocrisy. The question is what sort of precedent that sets for future administrations.

The Republicans are correct when they argue that impeachment was a foregone conclusion before there was any presentation of factual evidence. Many of the freshman Democrats in the House were elected based on a campaign promise to impeach the president. From the beginning of this term, Speaker Pelosi was engaged in a holding action to prevent a premature rush to judgment. Have we learned nothing? What are we to conclude from this mess except that our Congress is even more dysfunctional that we feared?

Donald J. Trump, who has done more as president to worsen America’s standing in the world and degrade the institutions on which our country was founded than any of is predecessors, will walk away claiming victory. His base will raucously cheer that he defeated the deep state, and intellectually lazy, misinformed Americans will continue to believe everything they read on Facebook. Could this have ended any worse?

I’ve had a surreal feeling about it all because it seemed so familiar. I didn’t realize why I felt that way until I heard Mitch McConnell speak yesterday, and I realized it was like listening to the foreman of an all white jury discussing the pre-ordained fate of a black defendant in mid-twentieth century Alabama or Mississippi. Where is Atticus Finch when we need him?

Don’t hold your breath. Donald Trump’s version of reality TV is nothing like the movies in which unlikely, unexpected heroes emerge to save us from ourselves. I never understood the meaning of the title, “To Kill a Mockingbird” until I looked it up. The mockingbird was a symbol for innocence. Thus, to kill a mockingbird is to destroy innocence. In turning a blind eye to Trump’s guilt, by not considering for a moment whether he’s fit to lead our country, his supporters in the House and Senate are destroying whatever remains of our naïve innocence as Americans.

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