Draining the Swamp or Trashing the Constitution?

Posted on February 2, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 1, 2018

Populist candidates for president often like to cast themselves as outsiders who will ride in on a white horse and clean up the Washington swamp. Donald Trump did it, and he managed to energize the anger of enough people frustrated by lobbyists and Congressional gridlock to win the election. Portraying himself as an outsider is probably the only thing he’s said since announcing his candidacy that was consistently true.

The problem is that he also described himself as a Conservative. Unfortunately, the meanings of political ideologies have blurred over time, and the definition of a Conservative depends on whom you ask.  Disciples of Barry Goldwater like Jeff Flake will tell you a Conservative believes in the Constitution, has a sound moral center, and respects truth and integrity.

Definitions of Conservatism in English language dictionaries vary but have a few things in common: traditional values, stability, preserving and strengthening established institutions, and resistance to abrupt changes. Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he believes in none of those things. The only aspects of Conservatism he subscribes to are keeping taxes on business as low as possible and allowing private enterprise to operate free of government regulations. Might those views be influenced by the millions of dollars in profits they represent for him and his family?

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the first year of Trump’s presidency is his lack of respect for our basic institutions, things like bipartisanship, an independent Justice Department, a co-equal Judiciary, and law enforcement agencies that operate with integrity. Once again he appears to be using the Nixonian playbook of attempting to subvert legitimate investigations by both Congress and federal law enforcement authorities, and undermining our courts.

As horrifying as that sounds to real Conservatives, it’s also perplexing. That approach led Nixon down the road to certain impeachment which he only avoided by resigning the presidency in disgrace. Yet, despite opposition from many in his own party and the thundering outcries from legal professionals everywhere, Trump thinks he can win these battles. He’s been labeled narcissistic and arrogant, but he’s not stupid. Does he think a new Phoenix will arise from the ashes left when he has shattered the pillars of our justice system?

In the 1970s, some Nixon loyalists claimed his only fault was not fighting his enemies to the death. I don’t know what goes on the snake pit of our current president’s mind, but it would be consistent with everything he’s said and done to assume that he thinks Nixon would have survived if only he’d acted more like he does. It can’t be a coincidence that one of Trump’s key political advisers is former Nixon loyalist, Roger Stone. Stone was famously outed by columnist Jack Anderson as one of Nixon’s chief “dirty tricksters,” a label Stone was extremely proud of. It’s also no coincidence that one of Stone’s heroes is Trump mentor Roy Cohn. With Steve Bannon out, is Stone the new voice of the Grim Reaper in Trump’s ear, urging him to fight on and take no quarter until the end?

Trump appears undaunted by claims that he’s headed for a constitutional crisis that will rival the Saturday Night Massacre of 1972. He seems unconcerned that his hand-picked choice to head the FBI, Christopher Wray may be driven to resign in protest if he orders the release of the Nunes memo, but the political firestorm that’s brewing involves more than Wray. It affects the morale of the entire FBI, and is also seen as an indirect attack on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Might he resign in protest too? Might Trump fire him to get at Robert Mueller? And where will Attorney General Sessions come down on all this when he can no longer hide behind silence?

The current furor is about the four-page memo written by Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Nunes is a political hack of the first order who has already been forced to step out of his role in the investigation of Russia’s interference in our election because of his obvious bias. But it’s not only Nunes. The idea of releasing a memo critical of the FBI by the majority party is a tactic that on its own represents nothing more than political hardball. But preventing the minority report from being released as well changes the game and truly threatens the integrity of Congress.

When the Supreme Court releases a majority decision, it is often accompanied by a dissenting minority opinion. If no one ever tries to suppress the view of the minority in the highest court of the land, how can the Congress justify this decision? I blame Paul Ryan for this mess. Ryan claims to be an honest Conservative (there’s that word again) who stands for what’s best for the American people. He could stop this in a second by deciding to release both memos and let the public decide who they believe.

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Space

Posted on January 28, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 28, 2018

If you believe Stephen Hawking, Neil deGrasse Tyson, the late Carl Sagan, and countless other scientists, space exploration may be the only thing that guarantees the survival of the human race. Two events coming up in the next couple of weeks bring the dire predictions that led to that conclusion to mind.

Next Sunday, during Super Bowl 52, an asteroid large enough to cause a total extinction event, were it to collide with our planet, will pass by the Earth’s orbit. It won’t come closer than 2.5 million miles, more than ten times further than the Moon – not a near miss even in astronomical terms – but the next one might be a lot closer. The astrophysics and astronomy communities consider such an extinction event a statistical certainty. The only uncertainty is when it will happen.

It has happened before, after all. Sixty-five million years ago, a six mile diameter asteroid impacted Earth and caused catastrophic changes, altering the angle of the Earth’s axis and drastically modifying our planet’s climate. That’s why there are no dinosaurs today and why we were able to evolve. The next one might well cause humans to suffer the same fate.

Fifty thousand years ago, a much smaller object, only 160 feet (half a football field) in diameter caused a ten megaton explosion which left a 550-foot deep crater nearly three-quarters of a mile wide in the Arizona desert. But don’t let those large time intervals fool you. In 2018, seven known asteroids large enough to cause massive devastation will pass within less than a million miles of Earth. At least 10,000 asteroids are known to exist in near-Earth orbits around the sun. They are all routinely tracked by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System in Hawaii, but the key word in the above is “known.”

Most near-Earth asteroids are discovered accidentally, by amateur astronomers. No one really knows how many there are, but the number is surely staggering, and an object can’t be tracked until it’s identified. That’s why scientists consider an eventual impact a near certainty, and they believe the only way to assure the long-term survival of humanity is to establish viable, self-sustaining habitats in outer space. These could be settlements on the Moon or Mars, space stations, hollowed out asteroids, or generation ships built to carry thousands of passengers for hundreds of years toward other solar systems.

When I was a kid reading science fiction in the 1950s, conventional wisdom said we’d have bases on the Moon and Mars by the end of the century. But once it became clear that those bases offered no military advantage, most of the funding for researching such space ventures quickly dried up. The decline of our manned space program since the Moon landings, the last of which occurred forty-five years ago, was based on economics. Manned exploration is risky and expensive, and without an obvious payoff there was no political support for continuing it as a government program.

Fortunately, private sector visionaries like Elon Musk believed that space exploration could be profitable, and companies like his SpaceX have proved them right. They’ve been quite successful launching satellites for business and military ventures, and have innovated ways of dramatically reducing costs. But while space has become a profitable industry, the most important benefits may lie in the future. The private sector may well become the salvation of the human race.

On February 6th, SpaceX is scheduled to launch what will be the most powerful rocket booster in the world. It won’t generate as much thrust as the Saturn V booster that sent the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon, but it’s far more efficient. To prove the point, Musk will use February’s test launch to send a Tesla automobile into orbit. It’s obviously a publicity stunt, but the underlying subtext is real. Musk says the rocket known as “Falcon Heavy” is capable of sending a manned mission to Mars.

That’s the real goal, and there are plans to have a viable base there by 2030. This is no longer science fiction. It’s the beginning of the next stage of the evolution of humanity. The odds of a cataclysmic impact of an asteroid destroying our civilization this year or next are very small, but projected ten, twenty, or hundreds of years into the future they grow significant. We will put future generations at risk of annihilation if we don’t provide them a safe place to live.

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Dreamers and Borders

Posted on January 26, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 25, 2018

The Trump White House offered what they described as a significant compromise on immigration today. On its face it looks like that’s true. It not only offers the three quarters of a million DACA kids a path to legal residence and citizenship, but it offers provisions that include another million such individuals.

In exchange it asks for a $25 billion trust fund for future border infrastructure and technology, some vague provisions that would enable the government to deport an unspecified number of presumably illegal immigrants, and an end to what they refer to as chain migration. That latter specifically would not apply to spouses or minor children.

It doesn’t specifically say that a border wall will be built, but we really don’t know the details yet. In principle it sounds like the centrist proposal the White House claims it is. Like any good centrist plan it will infuriate extreme factions on both the right and the left.

As he loves to do, Trump took everyone by surprise with this plan. The Alt-Right won’t like it because it might result in allowing almost two million people of various colors to become citizens – not exactly a recipe for white supremacy. And the “lefties” won’t like it because…I’m not entirely sure, specifically. They like to quote the inscription on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” and they declare any tightening of immigration policy, especially the idea of letting people in based only on merit, as a violation of our basic principles.

As always, the devil will be in the details. It’s easy to generalize, but when the proposal is fleshed out it may look very different. Perhaps the biggest problem facing it is that Trump has publicly taken every possible stand on immigration during the last three years, some more than once. He loves to play bait and switch with Congress and the voters. He no doubt thinks of it as brilliant negotiating tactic, but for the majority of Americans, it only makes the credibility of everything he says suspect.

My overall dislike and distrust of Donald Trump aside, I consider myself centrist in most ways. The proof of that is that if I truly believed he was serious this time, and there were no serpents hiding beneath the generalities, I could support this proposal. For one thing, it does seem to align with what most Americans say they want – compassion and a fair deal for the “Dreamers” and better border security. I admit I’m nostalgic for the days when I could drive into Canada with only my credit cards and a driver’s license, but I have to be realistic. Those days are gone.

We don’t yet know what border security will ultimately look like, but the Idea of a $25 billion trust fund makes some kind of sense. And the words “infrastructure” and “technology” cover a lot of ground. Most security professionals believe our greatest vulnerability lies in cyberspace. An electronic shield that protected the country from hacking everything from our military installations to our voting booths might be defined as a border wall, and I can’t think of any objection to having a deep trough of money available for when it might be needed, not to mention all those high tech jobs it will pay for to employ all those dreamers; you know, the ones who’ve been at the head of their class for years?

The thing about creating a large trust fund is that it will be up to future Congresses and administrations to determine how it is used. If they use it well, it might be a very good thing. And if it actually works out that nearly two million vulnerable immigrants are given a meaningful path to citizenship, that definitely will be a very good thing.

As usual with Donald Trump, the issue comes down to trust. Can we believe him? And even if we do, attempting to broaden his base by adopting progressive ideas is a big risk. Will he do what he’s done repeatedly and change his mind when the more extreme among his supporters scream foul? Or will he show leadership and courage, and demonstrate that he really wants to unify the country?

I for one am willing to keep an open mind. I have no reason to trust the president, except that I’m an incurable optimist. There’s no rationale that makes me believe he wants to improve things based on his performance in 2017, but I’m willing to take the bait, and wait and see.

It’s not that I think Trump deserves another chance. There’s really no alternative except to behave as close-mindedly as the people I criticize.

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Racism and Other Distractions

Posted on January 15, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 15, 2018

Donald Trump is not a racist. In fact, the term racist is an oversimplification that simply doesn’t apply to someone like him. The things that drive him have little or no relation to what most of us think of as basic moral values. So let’s stop muddying the waters by throwing terms like that around and then polling everyone in sight to find out if they agree.

Whether or not our president is a racist should not be the subject of a poll or referendum. That’s the kind of distraction we need to learn to avoid. It’s exactly the sort of thing Trump loves because it takes our attention away from the things that are really important.

Racists generally come in two flavors: ideologues and ignorant, uneducated people. Whether or not he is a stable genius, it’s fair to say that Donald Trump is neither of those. The ideologues are the Alt-righters, the Klan types, the neo-Nazis, and some of the more virulent survivalists. But those groups are far outnumbered by people who suffer from rampant ignorance.

They aren’t necessarily bad or immoral, just unenlightened and unaware, to put it politely. I learned that lesson the summer I was seventeen. I was at an orientation meeting for a summer job, working for the Herald Tribune Fresh Air Fund, which provided a place for ghetto kids to escape the city for a few weeks. Four of us, all New Yorkers, were sitting around a table congratulating ourselves for doing such virtuous work when we were joined by a fifth.

Tom was about twenty, a rather oblivious young man who spoke with an exaggerated southern drawl which we all found amusing. He was a decent-seeming kid from some rural place in Alabama that none of us had ever heard of, who was as wide-eyed as he could be about being in New York, actually about being out of Alabama for the first time. His father, a Baptist minister, had sent him up north on a mission of sorts.

As Tom babbled on it became clear that he felt helping poor “Negro kids” was doing God’s work, but what occupied most of his attention was that he’d been told he might encounter Jews in New York. He went on for fifteen minutes about how excited and nervous he was about that. At one point he said, “I’ve never met one before, have any of you? Some people back home say they have horns.” Admittedly, this was back in the dark ages of 1960, but seriously?

We assured him that that wasn’t true, and he said, with some trepidation, “I can’t wait to meet one.” Give Tom credit – he was willing to meet the Devil no matter how much it scared him. That was when we told him he was the only one at the table who wasn’t a Jew. Poor Tom was literally white as a ghost. We got to know him pretty well that summer and learned as much about our own naïve prejudices as we did about him. He was really a pretty good guy.

Donald Trump is nothing like Tom, and he’s not a neo-Nazi. He’s neither a racist nor an anti-Semite. What he is, however, is actually a lot worse.

Our president is an amoral panderer totally lacking in sensitivity and compassion. He understands ignorance and hate, and he has an intuitive feel for how to ignite those things, which he uses effectively and without compunction to arouse people’s worst instincts. He is a talented showman with a narcissistic lust for power and wealth, and that’s all we really need to know about him.

Since he announced his candidacy, he has frequently been compared to some very unpleasant people, like Roy Cohn, Joseph McCarthy, and Adolf Hitler. That doesn’t necessarily make him evil, but it does make him very dangerous. In a couple of days, Senator Jeff Flake (R, Arizona) will step to the podium of the Senate and deliver a speech that compares Trump to Josef Stalin.

Trump doesn’t hate African Americans, Hispanics, or Jews, but he knows how to energize people who do to get what he wants. He is the worst kind of predator who takes advantage of anyone more vulnerable than he is, and he is totally shameless. He has the mentality of the unscrupulous late nineteenth century robber barons whose greed knew no boundaries.

It’s important to be clear about who and what our president is. His first, second, and third priorities are Donald Trump. He only cares about other people and the country he’s supposed to be leading to the extent that without them, his wealth and power would be meaningless. Don’t ever expect him to change and don’t expect him to be impeached. He’s going to be president for at least three more years, and the only way to contain him is to vote next November and work for candidates who will counter his hatefulness.

It’s only 289 days until Election Day.

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Shithole Countries and the Free Press

Posted on January 13, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 13, 2018

Since the end of the second world war, we’ve had a succession of presidents who, regardless of their overall political philosophies, all believed that increased trade and friendly, cooperative interaction with other nations were the best recipe for peace and prosperity, not to mention their personal legacies. But in the Age of Trump, governing the country the way he ran his businesses means changing that. In the Trump business world, things like fairness, mutual respect, morality, and law were sidestepped any time they got in the way of profit. All that mattered was size and money, and it’s clear that if Mr. Trump has his way that’s how our government will be run.

One can only wonder how many smaller firms, customers, and business associates he trampled for the sake of convenience, and why not? In Trump’s terms there was no reason to be fair to shithole companies, shithole customers, shithole cities, or even shithole business partners and subcontractors. Is anyone surprised that our president views the rest of the world the same way?

It’s not entirely clear which countries are on Trump’s Shithole List, but it’s safe to assume that if you’re in Africa or in the western hemisphere south of the Rio Grande, you’re on it. A special exception is the American Territory of Puerto Rico. They were already on the Shithole List anyway, but putting an official stamp on it will make it easier to ignore the complaints about lack of aid for three million American citizens in desperate need.

Like the majority of Americans, I reacted to Trump referring to Africa as a continent of shithole countries with disgust and dismay, but not anger, at least not at Trump. My anger is directed at everyone, myself included, who has continued to take every piece of bait he throws out and blow it up into something far more important than it is. In doing so we help him pump up his base, who love nothing more than seeing him stick it to whatever straw man represents their anger and frustration.

The truth is that Trump’s slurs are meaningless. The only substance they have is what we give them. As the courts have ruled, he does not have the power to decide who gets into the country and who doesn’t. We should follow the lead of foreign leaders who put up with him because they have no choice, while silently awaiting a chance to make him pay. They know he will disappear one day, and it’s very likely that Trumpism will disappear with him.

When Congress goes along with his nonsense, it’s on them, which explains why their approval rating is even lower than his. It’s too much to expect most Republicans in Congress to call the president out to his face the way Lindsey Graham did. Most of them will remain silent, and many may even have valid reasons for doing so. But if those silent Senators and Representatives allow the president’s inappropriate and frankly disgusting words and tweets to find their way into law, we will have a real problem.

If Trump’s hateful rhetoric ever becomes policy, that’s a whole other ballgame. But so far, whether it’s Shithole Countries or threatening the fake news media, Trump remains an egotistical loudmouth bully who is 98% bluster. Don’t be taken in by him. He has neither the legal authority nor the guts to see his threats and slurs through to meaningful action, and if he tries to, the American system is still strong enough to stop him.

What goes around usually does come around. Consider the silent revenge of Puerto Rico. NBC News reports that nearly a quarter million people have moved from the island territory to Florida since Hurricane Maria. They’re all American citizens who can register to vote there. Imagine the irony if they turn Florida into a solidly blue state. Well done, Donald!

If you doubt that he can be stopped, go to see Steven Spielberg’s new film, The Post. Watching it was one of the most uplifting things I’ve done since the election. The theater was full, and it was no accident that everyone in it had gray hair. For my generation this film relived a truly terrifying period in our lives which affected everyone. Of all the horrors surrounding the Vietnam War, the worst part was the Nixon administration’s attempts to silence the free press.

The film takes us through the agonizing decision made by the Katherine Graham, the owner and publisher of The Washington Post in 1971. She was a lone woman in a world of powerful men, pitted against not only the government but her Board of Directors and legal staff, all white males. Her courage in standing up to Nixon and risking prison and financial ruin literally brought tears to our eyes. The timing of the film’s release and the fact that Spielberg cast the marvelous Meryl Streep as Mrs. Graham makes it absolutely clear that The Post is aimed squarely at Donald Trump.

It scores a direct hit and reminds us what our country is really made of.

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A Matter of Necessity

Posted on January 7, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 6, 2018

Two thousand eighteen has thus far been a year in which subjects that have been whispered about all throughout the previous year are spoken about openly. The president’s sanity and emotional stability, his ability to process written information, his attention span, and his ability to control his behavior when something angers him are being discussed by millions of people all over the world.

These issues are equally flooding the print and broadcast media, even Fox News. The only difference is that while almost every commentator and alleged expert is publishing opinions and analyses that challenge the president’s competence, Fox News simply repeats Trump’s denials. In all of this turmoil, we have heard only one voice stand up in unqualified defense of the president. I find it depressing that that lone voice is his.

Today, the world was treated to the spectacle of Donald Trump declaring himself a stable genius. To highlight how bizarre that is, consider that the only other well-known public figure to make such a statement about himself is Sheldon Cooper, a fictional character in The Big Bang Theory. Everyone familiar with Sheldon knows he’s a highly exaggerated caricature of a narcissistic insensitive misanthrope who is laughed at by virtually everyone who knows him. And although they all agree that the fictional Sheldon actually is a genius, his constant self-aggrandizing and the insulting barbs he tosses about like rice at a wedding are a constant source of ridicule.

He pouts when his feelings are hurt and he complains constantly about being unappreciated. The mockery he invites reaches its peak when Sheldon, a physicist who thinks he’s the equal of Stephen Hawking calls him on Skype and is totally unaware of the way the fictionalized Hawking repeatedly scorns him. He doesn’t hear it because he lives in a delusional world where it’s inconceivable that that could happen. Does any of this sound familiar?

In the real world, what sort of person would declare that he’s smarter than everyone else, he knows more about every aspect of governing than people who’ve devoted their lives to study and real experience, and that he’s a better military strategist than all of his generals and admirals combined? Who but Donald Trump could publicly announce in the face of everything that has occurred in the past week that the investigation of possible collusion between his staff and Russia has now been dismissed as a hoax? And who else would have the gall to call everyone who angers him a liar and invent insulting nicknames for them?

If you listen carefully, even people who for political reasons continue to support him never say they believe him or take him seriously. The best they can do is try to minimize the impact of his actions. Sure, he’s eccentric, he has his own way of doing things. Yes, he’s rough around the edges. We’ve all heard him brag about mistreating women, but that was just for show, he’s not really like that. We observe that he’s incapable of completing a coherent sentence unless he’s reading from a script, but his ramblings and rants are oh, so entertaining. His disregard for facts is just a negotiating tactic. His lack of respect for science is simply overlooked.

But here’s the thing. Back in the sixties when the Civil Rights Act was passed people said it wouldn’t make any difference in the way we treated each other. But the men and women who wrote the law knew that they were writing it for the next generation. They said young people growing up in an environment in which basic human rights and decency were the law of the land would be shaped by that, and to a large extent they were right.

The problem is that the same is true about out president’s behavior. Looking the other way and pretending it’s not happening doesn’t mean it isn’t. And the longer this insanity is allowed to go on the more normal it will seem. More and more people will lose respect for truth and basic honesty. More and more people, especially those of us who rely on some kind a guidance in their lives, will start to believe that Trump’s way is the right way, because he gets to do and say anything he wants to with no consequences.

So gradually we will evolve into a society that has no respect for law or the courts, that ridicules intellect as a massive joke on everyone else, and that thinks being white and male is an entitlement to treat everyone who isn’t as subservient. We’ll stop caring if a quarter of us have no access to health care and we’ll pretend we don’t notice when hard-working immigrants who were brought here as children are deported so people like them won’t ever be the majority. And wealth and greed will rule once again with nothing to rein them in. That’s where we’re headed if we don’t make it clear that bad behavior has consequences even if you’re the president – especially if you’re the president.

I got a fortune cookie in a restaurant today with an eerily timely message: Doing nothing is the worst possible choice in the face of necessity.

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A Clear And Present Danger

Posted on January 5, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 5, 2018

The investigation of possible collusion with Russia by the Trump campaign and renewed scrutiny of the circumstances that led to the president firing FBI Director James Comey are once again dominating the news media and talk shows. Reports that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is aware that the president ordered White House Counsel Donald McGahn to persuade Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ not to recuse himself surfaced on the heels of the president’s assertion that he has the absolute right to control how the Justice Department conducts investigations.

The White House compares Trump’s positions with President Nixon’s attempts to influence the Watergate investigations. On one hand, that seems odd, since Nixon’s actions ultimately caused him to resign under threat of impeachment. On another, the issue of using the White House Counsel as the president’s personal fixer was addressed yesterday by John Dean, who served in the same capacity for Nixon. Dean, who famously testified against Nixon before Congress, explained that the White House Counsel’s job is to protect the integrity of the Office of the President, not to defend or support the president himself.

Allegations from Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury turned the heat up further and caused the president to erupt on Twitter, attacking Wolff, Steve Bannon, the New York Times, the FBI…the list goes on. Typically, Trump is accusing everyone who criticized him or reported something he doesn’t like of lying and making up false news. Ironically, the chief architect of this approach, Steve Bannon, has now joined the ranks of alleged liars and saboteurs.

I’ve long wondered how long this tactic could be effective. I doubt that anyone but Trump could have made it work as long as he has, but I got some insight into that yesterday when a service technician came to repair my refrigerator. A television newscaster was discussing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and the technician commented that Kim was crazy and you couldn’t believe anything he said. Then he said Trump was as crazy as Kim and he didn’t believe anything he said, either. With a smirk on his face he added, “…but I love him, and I’ll vote for him again.”

I encounter this kind of thing frequently, and it always strikes me as mindlessly irrational. Much of Trump’s base knows he’s unstable and unfit to be President. They know he has no respect for the truth, but they seem to take a perverse joy in his ability to disrupt everything around him without regard for the harm he causes. The same impression continually percolates down through Wolff’s Fire and Fury, as he asserts that virtually everyone in the White House views the president as a volatile, erratic child who constantly needs to be managed and controlled. They continue to support and cover for him because they have to.

And now we see reports that a dozen prominent psychiatrists have concluded that Trump is dangerous and shows signs of unraveling under the pressure of being president. They’re careful to not diagnose any form of mental illness, since none of them has examined him personally, but as one of them reported yesterday, there is a list of observations as long as his arm that clearly attests to Trump’s “dangerousness,” and it can only get worse. If they’re right, we may soon see broad support for using the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to remove him from office.

But since I’m not a psychiatrist, it’s not unethical me to espouse my own theory. I believe the president suffers from severe mental disorders that include narcissism, megalomania, and an obsessive need to always control and be at the center of events. I have no idea whether he is guilty of collusion with Russia; if the Mueller investigation finds that he is, the legal system will deal with him. But perhaps more significantly, I believe the president’s mental problems drive him to do things which may well be defined legally as obstruction of justice – not because he’s guilty, but because of his conditioned response to being accused. I think he conducts foreign policy exactly the same way, and that’s frankly terrifying.

CNN’s legal specialist, Jeffrey Toobin addressed the legal issue of obstruction of justice yesterday, making the point that the courts have been clear that there can be obstruction of justice even when there is no underlying crime. The implication of that is massive for Donald Trump. Whether or not he is guilty of any federal crime, he can still be charged with obstruction for attempting to interfere with an investigation to determine if one was committed. Recall that what finally nailed Richard Nixon wasn’t the Watergate burglary, but his ham-handed attempts to destroy evidence and cover it up.

I honestly believe that every day Donald Trump is in office places the United States in greater jeopardy. But in the end, either the 25th Amendment or the impeachment process will not turn on court findings. They’re both political procedures which depend on the self-interest of the people taking the actions. I am encouraged by that, because I can’t imagine the Vice President, the Cabinet, or the Congress failing to act in the face of a clear and present danger to the nation.

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Eleven-and-a-Half Months

Posted on January 4, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 3, 2018

It’s been eleven-and-a-half months since President Trump was inaugurated. The year-long grace period many people suggested before evaluating his performance is nearly up. Given the way he behaved this week, it’s safe to say that an assessment of his first year in office will not improve by January 20th. Let’s look at a few cases in point.

After all of Trump’s Twitter insults and threats against Kim Jong Un and the entire United Nations voting for strangling sanctions on North Korea, there appeared to be a glimmer of light on New Years when the North agreed to send a delegation to the South Korea-hosted Olympics next month, and the South proposed high level talks with the North. I could be wrong, but I think the UN vote which included China and Russia and the fact that Kim now believes he’s made his point about his nuclear capability had a far greater impact on him than anything Trump tweeted.

So what did our president do in response? He tweeted that we have a lot more nukes than North Korea and ours work. Children yell, “My ____ is bigger than yours” (you can fill in the blanks) when they can’t think of any other way to win an argument. This sophomoric taunting of a potentially dangerous head of state is not only absurd, it’s dangerous. CNN reported that it prompted renewed worry among staff and allies about whether the President fully comprehends the risks he’s taking in provoking adversaries.

On Planet Trump, where the president’s perceptions of the laws of physics and the definition of truth are flexible, if we had any hope either would change, he quickly dashed them. When he opined that global warming might be the way to fix the frigid weather in the eastern US, I thought he might have been attempting irony, but it’s clear that he has no understanding of the relationship between weather and climate. It’s not really that complicated. My five-year-old grandson understood the difference after I spent two minutes explaining it to him.

The most startling thing to come out of the White House this week was Trump’s attack on Steve Bannon. He appointed Bannon senior advisor in August of 2016 and spent the nine months after the election formulating policy decisions straight out of the Bannon-Breitbart playbook. Bannon’s pervasive influence was viewed so negatively, he was portrayed as The Grim Reaper whispering evil thoughts in Trump’s ear. From Saturday Night Live, the characterization quickly spread through the media, but Trump continued to laud Bannon until the blowback by the rest of the senior White House Staff forced Chief of Staff John Kelly to fire him last August.

Bannon continued to influence Trump after he was fired, most notably by convincing him to support Roy Moore in Alabama, though there were many unconfirmed stories that Bannon, who had a reputation for viciously attacking anyone who slighted him, intended to bring Trump down. When a excerpt from Michael Wolff’s new book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House quoted Bannon as calling Donald Trump Junior’s infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower treasonous, the gloves came off, and Trump exploded in fury.

In his January 3 statement, Trump claimed Bannon never had any real influence in the White House, that he exaggerated his role to impress others and his agenda was self-aggrandizing and not in sync with the president’s. Trump said Bannon “lost his mind” when he was fired, and charged that he spent all his time at the White House leaking false information to the media. Where else but on Planet Trump could that have happened?

All this occurred after the president was angered by reports from his lawyers that Robert Mueller’s investigation of possible collusion with Russia had no end in sight. The shocking revelations in Wolff’s book could only have poured fuel on the fire, and it’s likely to get worse as his description of Trump’s first year as President, based on hundreds of interviews with White House staff and other government officials paints a picture of complete chaos. Based on its own January 3 interviews with “a dozen White House officials, lawmakers and other Republicans,” CNN characterized the beginning of 2018 at the White House as “Trump’s Two Days of Fury.”

This evening, Governor John Kasich (R, Ohio) attacked Trump’s behavior, albeit politely, and warned that it was dangerous for the country. Kasich said it could only lead to disaffection among Republicans, defiance by Democrats, and even worse polarization than we’ve seen in recent years − just what we need, more gridlock and stagnation in government.

But 2018 hasn’t all been horrifying. Trump also tweeted that because of his tight management of the FAA, there were no airline deaths in the United States in 2017. But he failed to mention that there were none in the last seven years of the Obama Administration, and none after 2001 in George W. Bush’s. That would be comical if Trump didn’t actually believe his claim.

So we’ve been through a whole year of madness. And the beginning of 2018 suggests that it’s only going to get worse.

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Wishes for 2018

Posted on December 30, 2017 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, December 30, 2017

Civility – That’s the motto of the county I live in. You see it everywhere, on bumper stickers, lawn signs, government letterheads: “CHOOSE CIVILITY.” It sounds corny, almost naïve, but it works. While my state is traditionally blue, my suburban/rural county is as purple as it can be. So the quest for civility isn’t a red or blue thing, it’s the voice of the community.

We aren’t merely tolerant here, we thrive on our diversity. Immigrants from all over the world make up almost a quarter of our population, and our very purple county has designated itself a place of sanctuary. We have dozens of Christian churches of every denomination, more than ten synagogues, a mosque, two Hindu temples, a variety of interfaith centers, and large number of people who choose not to affiliate with any organized religion. We all get along and live in harmony despite our differences. I hope we see more of that next year.

Just Desserts – 2017 has been a very upside down year when lies became the norm and outrageous behavior was applauded by far too many. Too many deserving people were ignored while many of the worst were rewarded. I hope next year sees people all getting exactly what they deserve. Let’s make sure everyone gets the credit they’re entitled to for everything they do next year.

More Voices – 2017 saw what I hope was the beginning of the re-awakening of the silent majority. There was far too much noise at both extremes; at times it was so deafening we tried to tune it out. While the president was picking fights on Twitter, crowds were demonstrating against the police, and the Alt-Right attempted to re-assert white supremacy, there was a danger that those were the only voices that would be heard.

But once again, the strength of our system began to re-assert itself. After the shock of Charlottesville, thousands who had been silent while the neo-Nazis terrorized that city spoke up loud and clear when they tried the same thing in Boston. There was no violence and very little noise, but their quiet strength spoke louder than those hate-filled Nazi chants.

And those silent voices were even louder in the privacy of the voting booths in several states. The voices of change, quietly crying out for decency and an end to the extremism that Trump stokes every day, won out in Virginia, Washington State, and most importantly, in Alabama.

Less Violence – Have we forgotten so quickly? Las Vegas was only the latest example of what happens when there are no controls on the havoc the worst of us can cause. Responsible gun owners are not the problem. We all know what it is, and even some very conservative Republicans talked about a new law outlawing assault-style weapons after Las Vegas. But where have those voices of reason gone? Has anyone heard a word from them lately? I hope 2018 will be a year in which sanity begins to reign again.

More Diplomacy – While the president’s tough guy act scores a lot of points with much of his dwindling base, the great majority of Americans spent 2017 cringing under his Tweetstorm attacks on foreign leaders. It doesn’t matter whose side you’re on, common sense and centuries of recent history prove that diplomacy is more likely to lead to peaceful settlements of disputes than threats and bluster. We probably can’t stop Trump from impulsively tweeting every angry thought he has, but maybe that silent majority can address them the way they did extremism. Because I have faith in our system and our way of life, I have to believe that if more people spoke in opposition to aggressive, harassing behavior and demanded that our president conduct himself appropriately, they might not silence him but they might well drown him out.

More Puppies – Donald Trump, among his many unpleasant qualities has a well-known dislike for dogs. Earlier this year at Mar-a-Lago, the philanthropist Lois Pope presented him with “the perfect puppy,” the golden doodle Patton. The idea was to help soften his image if not the man himself, but Trump rejected both the gift and the idea. Many articles have been written about why Trump is the first president in more than a century to not own a dog, whether out of love or just for its PR value, but I don’t think it’s very complicated, and it says more about him than anything I could write.

Dogs are forthright, loyal, and loving. They give back what they receive in full measure, they don’t lie or cheat or deceive. What can we infer about a president who has no room for that in his life? More to the point, what sort of man would reject this?

patton

My fondest wish for 2018 is for all the puppies in the world, especially those who are sick or injured, to be happy and healthy so they can continue to love the people who love them.

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December Reflections

Posted on December 27, 2017 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, December 27, 2017

For almost my entire life, December began with a remembrance of Pearl Harbor, but that changed somewhat after nine-eleven. At the time, a Japanese newspaper columnist writing in the Seattle Times even thanked Al Qaeda for finally accomplishing what more than five decades of commerce and good relations couldn’t: displacing the Japanese navy’s destruction of our Pacific Fleet as our national Day of Infamy.

This year, I didn’t hear Pearl Harbor mentioned even once, though it’s possible someone talked about it and I just missed it. The silence really affected me because that event impacted so much of my generation’s life. It was a wake-up call unlike anything that had ever happened to our country before.

We had survived the Black Friday stock market crash and the Great Depression, and then the radio dispatches and newsreels about the growth of fascism and Nazism. Japan was gobbling up east Asia and Germany was devouring Europe, but isolationist America tried to look away. We were shaken, but still inviolate; surely those wars wouldn’t reach across the oceans. Yet, in a single morning, we learned how vulnerable we were and a fear like nothing we’d ever known spread across this nation.

In a sense, nine-eleven was this generation’s Pearl Harbor. We learned that our greatest threat came not from Russia or China, but from a bunch of religious fanatics planning a Jihad in primitive caves, and that some of our alleged allies in the Middle East were financing them. In the sixteen years since, we learned that the sickness of terrorism and mindless murder is much closer to home than we ever imagined. The enemy had become us, and we now knew we lived in a country in which anyone could wreak havoc and mayhem at any time, any place.

For most Americans, 2017 was an evolving horror show in which everything we thought we knew about our country turned out to be wrong. Although most acts of mass murder and terrorism in our country were committed by deranged Americans, we found ourselves at war with Islam because an opportunistic President with a unique talent for playing on fear was so skillful at inventing a divisive fantasy of hate and bigotry. And that same president evoked memories of our former bogeymen by attempting to elevate the cause of the Alt-Right, neo-Nazis, and White Supremacists to a false legitimacy.

From the point of view of the poorest Americans the terrorists turned out to be their own elected representatives who threatened to take away their access to health care. Our unemployed and underpaid were fed the lie that it was their fault their jobs had emigrated to Asia and Central America for not electing a Congress that would allow American corporations to avoid taxes. And although nearly three fourths of us recognized the new tax law was a blatant attempt to reverse the massive transfer of wealth that was finally beginning to level our economic playing field, the Congress and the president still managed to assure that the wealthiest Americans would grow even wealthier, while nothing significantly changed for the rest of us.

December 2017 marks a full year in which our most precious institutions and traditions have been under assault. Our president has denigrated our courts and attempted to undermine our free press. He has relentlessly attacked the very notion of truth and behaved like a petulant child every time he didn’t get his way. He complains that he gets no credit for everything he has accomplished, but in doing so he misreads the reaction of the public and the media. We know full well that he has made great strides in tearing down what we hold dear and destroying our relationships with our allies. We understand full well that his unprincipled approach to governing is poisoning the well from which our national vitality springs. We readily acknowledge all of it, but we’ll be damned if we’re going to praise him for it.

2017 may well turn out to be the year of North Korea, which now shows us that what took the entire Japanese navy a full day to accomplish in 1941 can occur with a single nuclear-tipped missile fired by an outlaw regime. We can’t blame Trump for this, however, as the Korea problem has evolved through sixty years of mishandling by eight prior administrations. But we may ultimately blame him for his recklessly belligerent approach to diplomacy, which has led his friend Vladimir Putin to offer to mediate. That may be the worst outcome of all, as Russia gets to be the grownup in the room keeping two schoolyard bullies from tearing each other apart and perhaps destroying the entire neighborhood. How mortifying, and we owe it all to Donald Trump.

One tradition which has happily survived is the restorative effect of the 2003 film Love Actually, which my wife and I have watched every Christmas since it was released. The film was made in reaction to nine-eleven, to show how love survives and continues to bring people together. It still works. For one blissful evening, insulated from the news media and Twitter, we lived in a world in which Donald Trump didn’t exist.

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