Pants on Fire

Posted on May 6, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 6, 2018

He’s lied his entire life – it’s well documented. He’s made promises he never intended to keep and defrauded people all his life. That’s well documented, too.

He lied when he said he couldn’t release his taxes because they were under audit; the IRS said that was nonsense. He lied again when he said he’d release them when the audit was done, then changed his mind. He lied when he told average Americans that the tax bill he supported was primarily aimed at lowering their taxes and then helped pass a bill that was aimed almost entirely at increasing corporate profits. He lied when he said that would cause corporations to share their tax windfall with employees; the great majority of those profits have simply been spread among their stockholders.

He lied when he claimed his “travel ban” wasn’t a Muslim ban, and the courts threw it back in his face. He lied when he said he supported the DACA kids, then tried to slam the door on them at every opportunity. Now the courts have said that was illegal and given him ninety days to get it right.

He lied when he promised affordable health care to all Americans, but cheered on Congress’ attempts to pass laws that would have deprived nearly twenty five million people of any coverage at all. Then he took direct action to dismantle protections against premium hikes in Obamacare plans, because undermining his predecessor in the White House was more important than people not being able to afford coverage. And now, even Tom Price, his departed, corrupt DHHS chief who has made a career out of attacking attempts to expand health care for Americans states publicly that the new tax law will significantly increase health care costs for most of us.

He invents his own facts and calls most legitimate journalism “fake news.” He has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than twenty women, none of whom know each other, but in the face of credible testimony against him has called all of them liars. He has lied and contradicted himself repeatedly in the sordid cases of nondisclosure agreements with a porn star and a Playboy model.  

His supporters and detractors seem to agree that he has no respect for the truth. The only difference is that his supporters don’t seem to care. Republicans who have to run for re-election this November are between a rock and a hard place. They’re afraid that abandoning him will anger his base, but equally concerned that independent voters who have had enough of his lies will vote them out of office if they don’t speak out.

Some veteran Republicans, mostly those who are in no danger of losing their seats, are raising questions about the long term effects of his lies. Questions are now being asked about their impact on international relations. Will our allies treat his lies as nothing more than campaign and negotiating tactics and assume that when serious matters are on the table in private he can be trusted to keep his word?

The problem isn’t with our adversaries. Putin and Xi don’t care if he lies. All that matters to them is increasing their influence in world affairs and economics as relations between Trump and our allies deteriorate. He’s reneged on trade agreements and backed out of the worldwide attempt to control carbon emissions and protect our environment. And now he’s threatening to tear up the Iran nuclear agreement even though his is nearly a lone voice in the wilderness. His only ally on this matter, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, is at odds with his own military and security apparatus.

Soon he will be sitting across a table from Kim Jong Un, whose belligerence has for years been based on distrust of America’s intentions. Why would he now believe an American president who declares that we have no intention of invading North Korea or upending his regime? In particular, why would he believe Trump, who has never been willing to pledge either of those things? And watching how Trump has treated our NATO allies, why would South Korean president Moon trust him to maintain our treaty commitments?

All that aside, what I am most concerned about is the effect of our president’s lies and basic lack of morality on our societal norms. Have your children ever said, “Why can’t I lie when the president does all the time?” What will you tell them when they do? What about when your business associates and colleagues treat commitments, contracts, and verbal agreements the way Trump does?

My greatest fear is watching our values erode. What will happen when cheating takes precedence over hard work? What will be left to defend our system if Trump is allowed to denigrate our courts and law enforcement? Our children deserve better than the legacy our president is creating for them.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

A Faustian Bargain

Posted on May 1, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 1, 2018

One of the clichés of modern life is “be careful what you wish for.” The problem isn’t so much with our wishes as with how far we’re willing to go to realize them, and once they’ve become actualized, with the Law of Unintended Consequences. It’s human nature to want what we don’t have, to dream and fantasize about things we believe will make our lives better.

But it’s also human to be shortsighted, especially when we’re driven by our emotions and so narrowly focused on the trees we lose sight of the forest. We’re most prone to error when we’re driven by baser, more powerful emotions like fear, greed, anger, or lust. It is then that we become susceptible to the serpent’s wiles. It is then that we are most likely to accept a Faustian bargain that will be our undoing.

Our founders did it when they permitted slavery, and the consequences nearly destroyed us in the Civil War. As our country grew in size and scope and wealth, we somehow blinded ourselves to the genocide we were committing against all of the native American peoples who stood in our way, and we live with that ignominy today.

For centuries, hardship, poverty, and oppression have made nations vulnerable to charismatic charlatans who promised they would solve their problems and make them rich and powerful. In the twentieth century, Faustian pacts with Fascists and Communists led to worldwide conflicts and produced the legacy of revolutions and petty dictators that we still contend with today.

In our own country we are living with the legacy of a generation of bad decisions and wrong-headed policies. The twenty-first century has seen problems that have gone unanswered for decades bring our nation to the brink of crisis in many ways.

Our failure to take energy independence seriously when that was inconvenient for our largest corporations kept us engaged in the Middle East because of oil, which drew us into seventeen years of misguided conflict that has done nothing to improve conditions in that part of the world. Corporate greed nearly brought down our economy ten years ago, a shock from which we’re still recovering. And today, as a nation we are putting short term comfort and profit ahead of what science tells us is the health of our planet and the lives of our grandchildren.

Even worse, we have ignored the growth of divisiveness and partisanship until they now threaten the fabric of our country. We’ve had our eyes opened to a level of hate and bigotry that most of us thought no longer existed in America. Our gridlocked, dysfunctional government has reneged on its promise of affordable health care, and we are rejecting the values we were built on, turning our backs on the immigrants that have made us what we are.

Have we made our own pact with the Devil? When Trump took office most Americans believed the greatest threat to our existence was North Korea. As the two Koreas seem to be on the verge of ending their sixty-eight-year-old war, we have to ask some serious questions. Did Trump make this happen or was he just a side show? South Korean President Moon was elected based on his pledge to do everything possible to end the war and re-unite Korea. It’s just possible that this is a family squabble that’s finally coming to an end on its own.

Our president’s buffoonery in Michigan taking full credit aside, he probably deserves some, no matter how offensive his behavior. And therein lies the problem. Because of his ego, because of his need to be a seen as a hero, because of his vulgar, uncouth manner, he distorts everything he touches, and more often than not leaves it in worse condition than it was before.

Even if we credit his rants against Kim as one factor in bringing the two Koreas together, I reject the idea that only Trump could have accomplished this. I’m not confident that his similar rants against Iran will accomplish anything positive – they may make things worse. And when I look at the way our president is ripping at the fabric of our basic institutions and making a mockery of common decency, I have to ask, “At what price? Is it worth it?”

The people who voted for Trump may well have made a pact with the Devil that we all have to live with. Like Faust, they seemed to get what they wanted for a while, railing against an establishment that had failed them, vicariously venting their anger at an obviously corrupted and obsolete system. But in the end, the Devil always gets his due. If we permit Donald Trump to destroy the moral fabric of our country, what will we have gained in the end?

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Fifth

Posted on April 27, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 27, 2018

We all learned about the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution in school. We’ve all heard of people “pleading the fifth” to avoid incriminating themselves in court, and we’re all very sure we know what that means. But the amendment is actually more complicated than that. In part, it reads: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury … nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself. And it says quite specifically that someone in the military has no fifth amendment rights during wartime.

The word “unless” in the excerpt above threw me, but my nephew, who is a judge, explained that it does not imply that you can’t plead the fifth before a federal grand jury, even though that’s what it seems to say in simple English. Comma placement makes all the difference.

I asked about that because I just saw Michael Cohen decline to answer questions in federal court. I guess since I saw him do it he could, or the judge wouldn’t have let him, which brings me to the implications of what Michael Cohen said. We were taught in school that invoking the Fifth Amendment is not an admission of guilt. No, but let’s be clear: taking the Fifth isn’t about guilt or innocence, it’s about not exposing oneself to criminal prosecution. So let’s get back to what’s really of interest to those of us who aren’t lawyers. Is Michael Cohen guilty or isn’t he? And of what?

Before we go further, here’s another bit of information most of us didn’t realize:  …a defendant who [chooses] to testify cannot choose to answer some questions but not others. Once the defendant takes the witness stand, this particular Fifth Amendment right is considered waived throughout the trial. That makes the whole conversation more interesting.

When a defendant like Michael Cohen tells a judge that he “declines to testify under his fifth amendment rights on the grounds that answering questions might incriminate him,” what is he really saying? The key word in that sentence is “might,” which literally means that answering the judge’s questions either will or will not incriminate him. It’s not the judge’s charge to decide which of those he means; it doesn’t matter.

Presumably, the only person who knows which interpretation was implied is Michael Cohen, assuming he understands whether or not his actions were criminal. Given that, I asked myself, if Cohen knew for certain that he hadn’t committed a crime, why would he plead the Fifth? Surely if neither he nor the president was guilty of anything, answering the judge’s questions would serve both their interests.

This is almost too easy. Since Cohen chose to invoke the Fifth Amendment, either he thinks he’s guilty of something, or he’s trying to protect the president from prosecution, and testifying would expose him. I almost feel sorry for Michael Cohen. About as sorry as I never felt for the fictional Ray Donovan.

One thing I’m certain of is that Cohen would only have pled the Fifth if he thought he had no other option. I wrote last week about whether Cohen might flip on the president, wondering if swearing he’d take a bullet for him also meant he’d be willing to spend years in federal prison. I imagine that that decision will ultimately come down to whether Cohen believes Trump will have his back to the bitter end.

While there’s lots of evidence that returning loyalty isn’t one of Trump’s strong suits, maybe Michael Cohen is a special case. Trump has often praised him publicly, telling the media that Cohen is his valued attorney and friend, and how much he depends on him. Trump would never throw his consigliere under a bus, would he?

Cohen might have thought that when he pled the Fifth. But not many minutes later, the president was on the phone to Fox and Friends, claiming that Cohen is a businessman and that, honestly, he doesn’t get involved in Cohen’s business and doesn’t even know what it consists of. And not only is Cohen not his go-to attorney, he actually does only a miniscule part of Trump’s legal work.

Cohen is lucky he doesn’t have tire marks on his face. Does he seriously think he can trust the president to protect him after that? What are the odds that he’ll flip now?

I agree with Trump about one thing. It’s a shame we’re distracted by this stuff when we really should be watching what’s happening in Korea. But whose fault is that Mister President?

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Macron/Trump Bromance

Posted on April 25, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 25, 2018

I don’t know where French President Emmanuel Macron stays when he’s in Washington but I imagine he wishes his suite included a soundproofed room. It’s easy to picture him returning from his day with President Trump, locking himself in, and screaming his throat raw. Whatever else we might say about the French president, he seemed to put up with Trump’s insufferable ego all day without batting an eye.

I forced myself to watch their joint press conference at the White House yesterday, expecting to cringe throughout, and the Donald did not disappoint. Macron spoke in quiet, eloquent accented English, polite and diplomatic in every way, but when Trump took the microphone we were treated to his classic, nearly inarticulate style. Seemingly unable to utter a complete sentence without distracting himself, virtually every thought included self-praise.

Trump took credit for a long list of things, most of which were in my opinion neither credit-worthy nor things that could actually be directly attributed to anything he did. And when he wasn’t boasting outrageously and asserting that he could fix all the world’s problems, he was attacking his predecessors, our Congress, and leaders of nations who are supposed to be our allies, who remarkably, have done everything wrong for decades.

After listening to all that with a straight face, Macron must have wished his soundproofed room came equipped with a hot shower. If most Americans haven’t been sufficiently embarrassed by the uncouth boor who occupies the White House, the contrast with Emmanuel Macron’s civil elegance put an exclamation point on it.

Unlike many American politicians who have become lapdogs to gain Trump’s favor, however, Macron is not shy about publicly disagreeing with him. But he does so in a cultured, impersonal way, careful never to say anything that might offend our Narcissist in Chief. The media has labeled their relationship a “bromance” and  described Macron as the “Trump Whisperer.” Trump seems to love it, but imagine how that’s viewed in France. It’s crude, vulgar and offensive, and Macron is already paying a price for going along with it back home, where many view him as having an ego almost as large as Trump’s.

This morning, Macron addressed the U. S. Congress. In spite of Trump’s virulent rant against the “insane” Iran nuclear deal just yesterday, Macron asserted that it would be irresponsible to scuttle the present deal, as Trump has threatened to do next month, until there is a viable alternative in place. While Trump has slyly implied that no one but him (and possibly his new buddy Macron) knows what he will decide on May 12th, it’s difficult to imagine how he could orchestrate a sudden change in policy without prior consultation with all the signatories of the deal.

On climate change Macron did a delicate little dance. It’s clear to everyone that he thinks Trump is dead wrong on climate change and the environment. But instead of disagreeing in his speech to Congress he simply asserted his confidence that America would eventually return to the Paris agreement. His comment that after all, there is no Planet B, couldn’t have been better stated.

Finally, Macron addressed the danger of “fake news.” Listening to what he said with an uncritical ear might convince someone that he was agreeing with Trump. But in fact, he was saying the opposite, attacking the acceptance of alternate facts without corroboration as a serious threat to democracy and free elections. On close examination it couldn’t have been clearer that he has a serious disagreement with the way the Trump administration uses the term. France has a new law that the government plans to use to curb fake news, especially during elections.

In the deliberately vague terms administrations like to use when they answer questions about progress or changes in policy, we are left with the impression that Macron the Trump Whisperer might have moved Trump on some of the issues on which they disagreed. As Trump likes to say, “We’ll see what happens.” Back home, the French media think it’s all just play-acting, with each leader using the other to improve his own standing.

I’m hardly in a position to know what goes on in Trump’s head, but the whole thing reminds me of a scene from the 2003 film, Love Actually. Billy Bob Thornton, playing an arrogant American President, is visiting London for an introductory meeting with the new British Prime Minister, played by Hugh Grant. The president says he has come to listen to the needs of the UK government and he will be happy to grant anything they ask for – as long as it’s something he wants to give them. Many in France view the three day visit of Macron to Washington in the same cynical light.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Cohen Flip

Posted on April 20, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 20, 2018

These days we make predictions at our peril, particularly when they have anything to do with Donald Trump. Still, as rumors begin to fly that his personal attorney, fixer, and consigliere, Michael Cohen might flip on him when he talks to Robert Mueller, the temptation is impossible to resist. Cohen has famously said he would take a bullet for his friend Donald. Even if that’s true, would he be willing to spend the rest of his life in federal prison for him? Some things are worse than a quick death.

Would Michael Cohen flip on the president? Do birds fly? Michael Cohen suffers from the same disease of arrogance and narcissism that his boss does. It might be the undoing of both of them, but it’s far more likely to unravel Cohen’s existence.

Trump’s allegedly brilliant attorney has been derisively compared to the fictional Ray Donovan, who entertained Showtime viewers as a Hollywood fixer from South Boston who would do whatever was necessary to clean up after his clients. In the fantasy world of Hollywood, he could bribe, intimidate, brutalize, even kill people with impunity, because the television version of reality was so corrupt, there was always someone to pay off or blackmail.

But it turned out that even Ray Donovan could be brought down, and he ended his time on television as a broken shell of a man who had nothing to show for his efforts. Could that be the fate of Michael Cohen?

Cohen may or may not have once been a brilliant attorney, but decades of doing Trump’s dirty work demonstrate an uncompromising lack of scruples more than legal skills. He doesn’t even seem to have been able to craft airtight nondisclosure agreements, and as legal documents go, they’re pretty simple. This is just another example of how running the government is different from running either a business empire or a television show.

Whether or not you’re a fan of James Comey, his characterization of Trump’s management style as one modeled after the mob bosses he rubbed elbows with for years is right on. Mentored by Cohen’s almost namesake, mob lawyer Roy Cohn, Trump spent his entire business life bullying his way through obstacles using his money, his marketing skills, lies, misrepresentations, and a variety of intimidation techniques, and Cohen was at the forefront of most of those dealings. They didn’t always win, but their occasional losses could be chalked up as the cost of doing business.

Traveling in the wake of the turmoil stirred up by his boss, Cohen can be forgiven for forgetting that he wasn’t invulnerable. Decades of coming out on top in every important way and believing that unswerving loyalty to Trump would always be reciprocated if it all hit the fan made him dangerously complacent. And despite all the warnings that running the government is not a reality TV show and government isn’t a business, Mr. Cohen now likely finds himself in violation of federal statutes that will end in a series of indictments. Maybe he should have been honing his legal skills during the past two years instead of unquestioningly doing Trump’s bidding.

Now he’s finding out that losing a lawsuit or reaching a financial settlement with a plaintiff is not the same thing as facing a federal prosecutor. If you’re still stuck on television tropes, think Eliot Ness and Al Capone. Guys like Robert Mueller are the real Untouchables. Even worse, Cohen has seen Trump throw former allies under busses without batting an eye. From Jeff Sessions to Steve Bannon to Paul Manafort, the evidence is clear that when Trump has to choose between his own welfare and anything except Ivanka, Trump always puts himself first.

There are more indictments coming, and there’s no reason to believe that Trump would or even could use the power of his office to protect those who broke laws on his behalf. Michael Cohen may appear to function like a real-life Ray Donovan, living high and never letting anything get in his way, but I doubt that he’s ever seriously considered getting caught and being left out in the cold. And it’s only very lately that he’s had to confront the real possibility of life in a federal penitentiary.

Early on, Trump’s partners and surrogates believed they would be saved by presidential pardons in the end. No doubt, Trump’s sudden pardoning of Scooter Libby last week was intended to reinforce that belief in the minds of Cohen and others who likely face prosecution. But Trump is famous for making threats and promises he never intends to keep, and no one knows that better than Michael Cohen.

So the next time someone asks you if you think Michael Cohen will flip on the president, just smile.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Koch Money + Trumpism = Kentucky

Posted on April 15, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 15, 2018

In the last few years, two trends in Republican politics which on one hand seem nearly contradictory, now seem to be coming together in Kentucky. It’s a union made in Hell, and if it’s allowed to succeed, the message for our nation’s future is extremely dire.

The first is the unprecedented infusion of money into local elections, most notably by the billionaires who make up the Koch network. In case it’s not clear what this is about, let me explain. In recent decades, as the middle class grew in number and financial power, racial inequalities began to ease, and immigration, primarily of Hispanics portended the end of white majority rule, warning bells went off in the councils of the wealthy. For the first time in our history, the exclusively white billionaires sensed their grip on power beginning to slip away, and with it the prospect of eventually having to share some of their wealth with everyone else.

That remained under most people’s radar until Koch money fueled Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s assault on “entitlement” spending and public employee unions, pensions, and income. He succeeded by catching the opposition completely unaware and acting with uncompromising ruthlessness. It was no secret that the Koch brothers viewed his success as a stepping stone to the White House, where they would have the perfect clone doing their bidding.

Trend number two was the rise of Trumpism, which was not aligned with the conservative billionaires’ goal of preserving their wealth and power, because Trump has no ideology except his own ego and power. And while puppets like Scott Walker say, “How high,” whenever the Koch money men say, “Jump,” Trump can’t be controlled that way. Additionally, while Walker’s meanness and venality are expressed in an urbane, if not terribly articulate manner, Trump’s come out in vitriol, insults, name-calling, and an audacious willingness to invent his own facts.

Regardless of the horror with which the majority of Americans (Trump’s approval rating is down to 39% as of today) react to his immoral lack of integrity, it got him elected, and still cows those in his own party who might otherwise speak out if they didn’t fear his angry base. If you want to lose sleep, try contemplating a future in which a Trump-wannabe strikes a Walker-like deal with the Koch Network. That’s exactly what we may be witnessing in Kentucky.

Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin has the same ambitions, untempered by scruples, that drive Walker. Backed by a legislature that was voted in on the coattails of Trump’s massive victory in Kentucky, he mounted the same kind of campaign Walker did in Wisconsin. The difference is that he’s been incorporating Trump-like campaign tactics and they seem to be winning for him.

He’s more subtle than Trump, but equally dangerous. Consider his response to the Marshall County school shooting last January 23rd. Governor Bevin proclaimed Sunday, January 27th a day of prayer “for God’s comfort upon the victims and their families, God’s healing for those injured and God’s solace…” But on that very Sunday, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported that instead of consoling mourners in Benton, Kentucky, Bevin was a featured guest speaker at the exclusive weekend retreat near Palm Springs, California, sponsored by the Koch network. If that wasn’t enough evidence of his disingenuousness, he never even mentioned the shootings in Palm Springs. Instead, he declared to the conservative billionaires, “Let’s protect our culture,” which in their terms meant preserving their wealth and power.

The controversy which has brought Bevin the public attention he craved involves a budget bill recently passed by the legislature. Kentucky, like several other states, is facing a financial crisis due to pension benefits for public employees which have not been adequately funded in the decades since they were enacted into law. Under the guise of fiscal responsibility, Bevin has decided that the way to fix the problem in Kentucky is to do it on the backs of teachers and other public employees, and to reduce funding to public education.

While having their pension systems curtailed upset teachers and their unions, the cuts to public school funding were the final straw for educators who had dedicated their lives to their students. Their outrage was so intense that several school districts canceled classes last Friday to enable teachers and school administrators to attend protests at the state capital. And here is where Bevin pulled out the Trump playbook.

Instead of addressing the public schools’ concerns, he tweeted: “I guarantee you somewhere in Kentucky today a child was sexually assaulted that was left at home because there was nobody there to watch them. I guarantee you somewhere today, a child was physically harmed or ingested poison because they were home alone because a single parent didn’t have any money to take care of them [and] some were introduced to drugs for the first time because they were vulnerable and left alone.”

At least he stopped short of calling teachers murderers and rapists. Are you still wondering why people like Matt Bevin cause me to lose sleep?

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Paul Ryan

Posted on April 11, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 11, 2018

He said he didn’t want to run for Vice President and he said he didn’t want to be the Speaker of the House of Representatives. In 2012 he’d been in the House for fourteen years, a staunch Conservative much like Jeff Flake, the heir apparent to Barry Goldwater who’d entered the chamber four years after him. Also like Jeff Flake, he was respected by the opposition and viewed as a decent, hard-working honest broker.

That made Paul Ryan a logical choice as Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012. He was scandal free and generally liked by the electorate, even those who disagreed with his political views. Good soldier that he is, he allowed himself to be drafted, but Ryan and Romney were overwhelmed by the Obama wave of populism from the left.

In October of 2015, John Boehner resigned as House Speaker, and Ryan immediately announced that he would not seek the speakership, instead intending to nominate Kevin McCarthy for the position. But McCarthy was too liberal for the right wing of the Republican party, and once again Ryan was seen as the consensus Republican, and he reluctantly allowed himself to be drafted for a position he didn’t really want.

I never feel sympathy for ambitious politicians, any more the than I do for overpaid athletes who make bad investments and wind up broke after they can’t play any more. The one exception to that might be Paul Ryan. Imagine his horror when he saw his party being overrun by Donald Trump. The two-and-a-half years he has served as Speaker can only have been a nightmare for him.

Of course, there’s another point of view. Ryan was one of dozens of influential Republicans who stood by and let it happen. Trump was a master at dividing and conquering, someone who had no scruples when it came to winning. One by one he wiped out his opponents in 2015 and 2016, including promising candidates like Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich. In retrospect, it’s obvious that the only way to have stopped the Trump tsunami would have been for those other Republicans to unite behind the one most likely to beat him.

Ryan could have played a significant role in that movement, but like all the others except Kasich, who held out till the end, he was unwilling to join the fray. Paul Ryan isn’t a street fighter. Like his politics or not, he’s a nice guy who doesn’t have the stomach to behave the way Trump does. After Trump was elected, I and others sometimes described him as weak when he could have stood up to Trump and chose not to, but it’s not that simple. Deciding when to fall on your sword is a tough call, and until we have to make that choice ourselves we should be hesitant to criticize.

On the other hand, when you’re fighting sewer rats you have to be willing to get down there with them, and clearly Paul Ryan has no taste for raw sewage. He’s a family man who has never been able to incorporate that into his value system.

He may have had additional reasons for quitting, but when he said he was resigning to get back to his family and he wanted his kids to know him as more than a weekend dad I believed him. When he said he accomplished what he set out to do, I believed that too. The 2017 Republican tax law was, more than anything else, the embodiment of Ryan’s conservative philosophy. It was something he’d fought for since he entered the Congress. It was Ryan’s victory far more than it was Trump’s.

While I wish he had spoken out against the president’s more outrageous behavior, in not doing so Ryan was simply following the pattern set by the rest of his party, notwithstanding that he was supposed to be one of their leaders. But now, he’s joined the ranks of those who’ve announced they won’t seek re-election, an act which has loosened the tongues of several Republicans who wouldn’t otherwise have spoken up.

Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Ben Sasse have never hesitated to criticize the president, but they’re not up for re-election this year. Others who are, like Bob Corker and Jeff Flake, used their decisions to leave the Congress like get-out-of-jail-free cards, once they had nothing to fear from Trump’s base.

I’d love to ask Paul Ryan if he plans to join his freed colleagues now that he’s out of the line of fire, or if he plans to continue to echo Mitch McConnell, his mealy-mouthed counterpart in the Senate. If he really wants his sons to see him as the moral leader he claims to be, what better way than to call out the president’s disgusting behavior? What better way than to call a spade a spade whenever Donald Trump attacks our basic institutions or demonstrates that he’s unfit for his office?

Please do it, Paul. Show all of us who thought you had class and integrity that you really do.

Posted in Articles, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Women and Trump

Posted on March 26, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 26, 2018

The other day, a woman friend told me she wondered how any evangelical Christian woman could continue to support Donald Trump after all the credible allegations of his mistreatment and lack of respect for women that have come out. In asking that, she echoed what I’ve heard from my wife and sister as well as from all my other female friends. She also echoed what I’ve heard from most of my male friends.

Recent polls show that Trump’s support among women has dropped from the nearly fifty percent who voted for him to under thirty, but if we’ve learned anything in the Trump era it’s to not rely on polls. The recent election in Pennsylvania’s 18th district lends some support to the idea that Trump’s support among women, particularly white suburban women, is dwindling, but that still leaves the perplexing question, why would any woman support him after everything we’ve seen and heard?

We know that many women voted for Trump in 2016 because of the “Hate Hillary” movement that’s been spreading negative propaganda for decades. Others simply believed, rightly or wrongly, that the Democrats haven’t done enough to assure our security or reduce crime. But with respect to evangelical Christians, specifically, Trump’s support by women in 2016 is downright creepy and inexplicable.

In an era when we thought women had finally found their own voices and stopped letting men tell them how to live, what are we to infer from the way they voted? How many women were still being dictated to by the men in their lives? And even worse, how many had their political opinions shaped from the pulpit? Isn’t that a violation of the spirit of the Constitution?

We won’t really know how much women’s attitudes have changed until November, and many people, myself included, see little point in continuing to try to understand what happened in 2016. Better to look to the future. In that regard, we should be asking a broader question. Writing for the Chicago Tribune last month, Heidi Stevens said, “Maybe it’s time to stop asking why a percentage of women are fine with what Trump’s offering and start asking why anyone is.”

In support of that idea, she said that continuing to ask why so many women supported Trump makes it sound like it was their fault Trump was elected. That’s true to some degree, but there were many reasons Trump won, and blaming the result on women is disingenuous. But more importantly, Ms. Stevens noted that focusing on women’s support of Trump “turns sexual assault, rollbacks on birth control access, gendered insults and domestic violence into women’s problems, rather than humanity’s.” I couldn’t have said it better.

Trump’s behavior with respect to women is an affront to everyone. And while I love seeing women speak out in their own defense, it’s time all of us men spoke up just as loudly. Any man who has a wife, sister, or daughter should be appalled by what comes out of Trump’s mouth. I wonder what those who continue to support him say to their little girls when they see this stuff on television. All of my children and grandchildren are male, but I have the same attitude with respect to them. I’m proud that my sons see it the same way, and as my oldest grandson becomes old enough to understand, I make sure to give him the same message.

Americans have mocked European leaders for decades about their seemingly endless sex scandals. Now they’re mocking us, as the number of women who have publicly accused Trump of sexual misconduct or adultery has risen to nearly twenty. But this isn’t just about morality.

It’s also about abuse of power and the possibility of criminal actions by the president. Twenty years ago, Bill Clinton was impeached for lying to cover up an affair that occurred years before he took office. Today, the sordid details of Trump’s attempts to cover up affairs with Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal and adult film star Stormy Daniels have become the new face of America, not only at home, but everywhere. Is there any reason he should be treated differently?

If you’re not angry and embarrassed by all this, I have to ask, “Why not?”

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Facebook

Posted on March 23, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 23, 2018

When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was interviewed on CNN a couple of days ago he said he was sorry – kind of. If you’ve ever had a disagreement with a loved one, you know there’s a huge difference between, “I’m really sorry,” and “I’m really sorry this happened.” One is a sincere apology; the other is a statement of regret. Zuckerberg’s was clearly the latter.

He also offered long explanations of how Facebook has been used by Russian operatives and bots to sow discord and disrupt our election process. He admitted knowing these things were happening as early as 2014 and 2015, long before the campaigns were in full swing, and what shocked me most was his assertion that he had dealt with them by obtaining statements from the principals certifying that they hadn’t violated Facebook’s rules. He even said that when people promise to do the right thing he tends to believe them. Really?

That kind of naivete creates things like the outrageous breach of trust, if not of our personal data itself, that Facebook is guilty of allowing to occur. Zuckerberg is a pretty smart guy, smart enough according to Forbes magazine to start a company from scratch and become the sixth wealthiest man in the world in fifteen years. I’m willing to assume that he’s basically honest, too. He didn’t do anything criminal, and probably no one at Facebook did. The problem is much bigger and harder to fix than simply assigning blame.

A hundred years ago, another pretty bright, honest fellow named Albert Einstein figured out relativity and developed the foundation of quantum theory. A lot of other very bright, honest people (Werner Heisenberg, Enrico Fermi, Robert Oppenheimer, and Edward Teller, to name a few) used Einstein’s work to figure out how to split the atom. Do you suppose any of them realized or even speculated about the planet filled with nuclear weapons they gave birth to? (Actually, Teller did toward the end.)

The Terminator stories warned us of the danger of automation gone wild, of robotic machines with artificial intelligence that developed self-awareness and decided they didn’t need humans any more. While that may or may not be a bit far-fetched, ever since the first commercial computers were perfected, they’ve grown exponentially in processing speed and number, and the result is a cloud of data whose size is nearly unimaginable. All that data poses two serious problems. One is that most of it is personal – everything anyone might wish to know about you and me and everyone else. The other, is that no matter what anyone tells you, it’s basically unmanageable and dangerous.

We see evidence of that danger every day: computer viruses, hackers, ransomware, identity theft, corporate data breaches. We’re involved in a world-wide cyber war, and it’s not clear we can win it. Our power and communications systems are vulnerable, as are our most sensitive weapons and defensive systems. What’s worse, we are so dependent on computer and data systems that a sudden catastrophic failure in them could throw us back to the pre-industrial age. Just ask your favorite techie what a powerful electromagnetic pulse would do to every device that depends on computer chips, including your car, your phones, and your household appliances.

Did you ever imagine that social media would be weaponized against us? The truth is, many of us did. I’ve long considered Facebook an abomination that could easily spell our doom as a society. Facebook is simply data gone wild without regulation or control, and flooding the media with unvetted, unverified, unsourced information could well destroy us.

Mark Zuckerberg assured us that his stable of geniuses could develop tools based on the same artificial intelligence (AI) as the Terminator, that will tell us just how much of what you read on Facebook is Fake News. But don’t believe him. It’s not that he’s deliberately lying, but he lives in a world in which AI can accomplish almost anything. First, it can’t. It’s only as smart as the algorithms it runs on and those only reflect what occurs to the programmers who build them. And second, if it could, we’d really have reason to be terrified.

If the government couldn’t (and still can’t) protect us from having our emails and elections hacked, how can we expect Facebook to safeguard our personal data? And beyond that, consider the cult of personality that has developed around our social media. We all know people who are so immersed in their Facebook personae, the line between fantasy and reality has been all but obliterated.

The revelations about how Facebook has been used against us by people with ulterior motives is a wake-up call that cannot be ignored. I’m not innocent in all this − I use Facebook to disseminate this blog. But I’m thinking we’d all be a lot better off without it. If we all closed our Facebook accounts and tried living without them for a month, imagine what our lives would be like.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Another White House Leak

Posted on March 21, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 21, 2018

Oh no! Someone in the White House leaked another embarrassing bit of news to the media. Apparently, the president’s national security team “instructed” him not to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his election victory, but he did it anyway. Many in Congress reacted immediately, calling Trump’s action wrong and inappropriate. Senator John McCain (R, Arizona) was perhaps the loudest and most pointed, saying: “an American president does not lead the free world by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections.” Senator Ben Cardin (D, Maryland) added his voice in a live interview this morning.

That’s the story on the surface, but there’s a lot more to it. The disregarded warning to the president was included in his classified daily security briefing. Chief of Staff John Kelly was furious, and an aide said that leaking such information is a fireable offense and likely illegal because of the sensitive nature of these briefings. This becomes more interesting because the usual suspects for this leak are a relatively small list; only a few people in the White House have access to the briefings, and no one outside the White House is supposed to.

The story actually gets worse. White House staff are now saying the president probably never read the briefing, that he frequently calls foreign leaders disregarding the advice of his security team, and it would not be unusual if he hadn’t looked at the briefing before calling Putin. I can’t decide whether it’s more disturbing that the president generally ignores advice from his inner circle or that he doesn’t even bother to read it.

I and many others have commented since Trump took office that running his real estate empire on gut feeling is quite different from governing the country that way. In his businesses he only places his family and employees at risk, and he has a long track record of not caring about the latter. But as president, he must care, and the people he puts at risk are all of us.

If leaking the contents of the security briefing could cost the leaker his job and possibly result in a felony charge, why would anyone take that risk? If the people who regularly leak sensitive or scandalous information from the White House were sworn enemies of the president, it would be understandable. But some of the most damaging leaks come from within the president’s inner circle, which is comprised of people he appointed, and we know that the single most important quality Trump seeks in his appointees is personal loyalty.

That tells me the reports of chaos in the White House are accurate. It says that even people whose job is to protect the president politically have such serious concerns about his actions and decisions, they’d risk career-ending consequences to assure that people know. Very few on Capitol Hill doubt that fired Secretary of State Tillerson actually called Trump a moron. And even if we discount half of what Michael Wolff wrote in Fire and Fury, the fact that so many people on Trump’s staff were willing to speak to freely about the horror show they work in ought to concern every American.

This latest mini-scandal is no laughing matter, and everything else aside, Trump’s reactions to Putin’s victory against the backdrop of his inexplicable admiration for the murderous dictator, say more than the words themselves. Equally inexplicable is that virtually in the same breath, Trump continued to attack and attempt to discredit the Mueller investigation into Russian interference and possible collusion with Trump’s people.

Things look bleak enough when Trump acts outrageously with clear motive and intent. But this thing he has for Putin is even more distressing simply because it appears to make no sense. No doubt Mr. Mueller has the same reaction, which is why he keeps expanding his probe and is now looking into Trump’s business dealings. When every other rational explanation for Trump’s behavior falls apart we are left with only one inescapable conclusion.

Fantastic as it seems, Putin and his friends among the Russian oligarchs may have something very damaging on Trump, and the president’s fury over Mueller’s actions admit to only two reasonable explanations. One is that his ego and natural tendency to react violently to personal affronts dominate his actions. The other is that he’s really guilty.

Which would be worse?

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments