Who Has Really Become More Radical?

Observers and pundits commenting on our current political strife often declare that both the left and the right are being held hostage by their more ‘radical’ elements, preventing us from reaching a bi-partisan consensus on many issues.

The term ‘radical’ is used to label opponents and create an image of an extreme, out-of-touch political movement.  Other name-calling is often used in combination with radical – Marxist, socialist, racist, white supremacist – to associate the opposition with specific historical bogeymen.

Have the left really become more radical in recent years?  What are the policy platforms and how radical are they in historical context?  Let’s take a look.

Taxes, Wealth, Income and Big Government

The left is pilloried as being radically anti-business, anti-wealth, anti-private property and pro-big government.  Recent proposals by democratic presidential candidates have included raising taxes on the wealthy and businesses.  The fact is that income and wealth have skewed dramatically toward the top since the 1970’s (https://rvgeiger.blogspot.com/2020/09/wealth-disparity-and-billionaire-lottery.html ).  To argue that this is not a healthy societal condition is hardly radical.  The US had a much more aggressive taxing policy from the 1940’s to the 1960’s, a time when our economy was very robust and successful.  Even the most aggressive new proposals for taxing the wealthy do not approach the levels that were in place during those years.

Not a single significant voice on the left is arguing for true socialism (the state owning all sources of production and capital) or abolishing private property.  To argue for some redistribution of income and/or wealth from the super wealthy to use for infrastructure, education, childcare, public transportation, healthcare, renewable energy initiatives and other important components of a modern, socially harmonious state is hardly radical.

It is of course a difficult challenge to determine how much government, with its inherent bureaucracy, is too much government.  But America has had significant governmental intervention in the economy and in business since the Progressive Era of Teddy Roosevelt and it is hardly radical to acknowledge the need for government to play a strong role.  We are no longer the nation of freeholding farmers and tradespeople that our founders had in mind as they crafted our constitution and government

Guns and Gun Control

One of the rallying cries of the right is ‘the radical left is coming for your guns!’  But the fact is that there is less gun control in the U.S. and fewer restrictions on gun ownership than at anytime in the last 50 years.  Furthermore, a majority of US citizens approve of stricter gun controls, including banning automatic and semi-automatics weapons and large magazines (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/10/22/facts-about-guns-in-united-states/ ).  No one is advocating taking all guns away.  This is a politically charged issue, but the call for stricter gun control is only radical when seen through the eyes of a minority of strident gun owners.

Abortion and Birth Control

This is another issue where it is the right who have become more conservative.  Roe v Wade has been in place for almost 50 years.  The majority of Americans have long believed that women should have the right to have an abortion under all or most conditions (https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/ ).  Anti-abortion fanatics are a small portion of the electorate, but they have had increasingly significant political clout.  Republican legislators have become far more conservative on this issue over time, fearful of the wrath of anti-abortion political action groups.

Racial Issues and Police Reform

The recent BLM protests and calls for police reform are seen by the right as a radical move toward a society that will have less law and order and more violent criminal acts.  The term ‘defund the police’ is understandably unsettling and a poor choice for a slogan, however, questioning the efficacy of our increasingly military-style policing in high crime areas and the heavy burden it places on minority neighborhoods is not radical. 

There has been bi-partisan concern for some time about the high incarceration rates and racial profiling that characterize our approach to public safety and drug problems. The US has more of its population in prison than any other developed nation. There is clearly a need for new strategies.  It is not radical to propose changes.  Some of the recommendations are more radical than others – it is up to legislators and experts to analyze the problem and come to agreements on a measured response.

Healthcare

The right views healthcare as an area that has become radicalized by the left.  The call for a single payer system is seen as an extreme and potentially catastrophic change to our current system.  However, a fairly significant percentage of healthcare is already provided under a single payer system - medicare, medicaid, military and government healthcare is all single payer and accounts for over 30% of all healthcare.  The USA spends much more on healthcare than other developed nations with single payer systems (https://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2019/us-health-care-spending-highest-among-developed-countries.html ) and has worse outcomes according to a recent Johns Hopkins study (and numerous others).  

While it is true that our unique private employer-assisted insurance scheme would be complex to reconfigure into a single payer system, it is also clear that we desperately need to look for ways to provide better healthcare for all of our citizens.  It is not radical to seek improvement, and healthcare is an area where government must play a substantial role because it does not fit into a classic free market scenario. (https://rvgeiger.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-market-based-healthcare-fallacy.html ).

Climate Change and Energy Policy

The AOC-led Green New Deal has been used by the right to portray the left as naively radical on the subject of energy policy.  This is an issue where the right’s dogmatic refusal to acknowledge scientific consensus will eventually come back to haunt them.  Some of the proposals to address climate change are indeed radical, but the threat from a continued reliance on hydrocarbon energy sources is even more radical.  The problem is existential, and there is certainly no simple solution, but putting one’s head in the sand is clearly a catastrophic mistake.

What is indeed radical here is the right’s rallying cry of ‘drill, baby drill’.  That is a death wish.  Time is running out and we need global solutions to this problem.  Radical proposals to completely eliminate coal and oil may not be feasible immediately, but they help define the scope of the problem and push us to address it.

Who Is More Radical?

When people first observed Ronald Reagan vying for the presidency, there was a general opinion that he, like Goldwater, was far too conservative to win.  But he did win and thus signaled the rightward trend of the republican party.  When Newt Gingrich first came to congress, he was viewed as a reactionary, an extreme conservative whose hyperbolic rhetoric seemed almost comical.  His subsequent rise to power in the mid-90’s signaled a further lurching of the republican party to the right.  The tea party movement of the late 2000's, a reaction in great part to Obama’s election, moved the party even further to the right and created a whole new universe of right-wing pseudo-media, social media conspiracy lunacy and deep state hysteria.  The republican party is substantially different - less traditionally conservate and more reactionary - today than it was in the 70's.  

As for the left, the current democratic party has not changed significantly since the 70's. There may be a few more radical left wing representatives in congress, the Squad being the most prominent, but the great majority of democratic representation is very similar to what has existed for many decades. 

To equate the evolution of the left with that of the right is simply pure nonsense and a classic example of post-Trumpian false equivalence.

The New Day!

I retired at the end of 2019.  Anticipating a life of travel and adventure, I did not foresee the coming pandemic or the isolated life I would experience for most of 2020.  I have been fortunate to avoid contracting COVID-19 and have led a relatively sedate and pleasant life for most of the year, other than worrying about the state of the world and the political turmoil that has seized our land.

My routine quickly became well-defined and consistent.  I awake each morning around 6:30 or 7 without an alarm.  Either Karen or I walk into the kitchen and turn on my espresso machine.  I wait 10 minutes for it to warm up, lying in bed and enjoying the sensation of the last moments of slumber departing from my body.

As I head to the kitchen to begin my cappuccino ritual, a quickening of spirit begins to animate my mind and body. The caffeine preparation is my first creative act – grinding the carefully weighed 18 grams of coffee; tamping it into the hefty portafilter; firmly positioning it into the machine; watching as the golden liquid emerges and fills the cup; carefully positioning and adjusting the milk pitcher under the steam wand to produce that perfect balance of milk, froth and microfoam; pouring a random, free form latte art.   An almost giddy anticipation possesses me as I carry the two cups back to the bedroom and take a first sip of the sublime nectar I have adored for so many years.  The new day has arrived!

No matter what has transpired in the previous day or days; no matter how well or poorly I have slept; no matter what worries or joys have burdened or lightened my mood;  the new day brings hope, optimism and excitement in a bafflingly resilient manner.  Like the dawn sweeping away the night’s darkness and foreboding, the new day is my daily resurrection.  It is filled with possibility, and opens up like a fresh canvas before me, to be filled with anything that I have the courage and energy to undertake.

Some days I will quickly be bogged down in a quagmire of insubstantial activities that diminish that initial feeling.  Other days I will be swept along in the ever-expanding delight of some new project or enterprise.  But no matter what happens on any single day, I have only to submit to the nightly seduction of sleep, whether deep or fitful, and some hours later I will magically emerge from my slumber with the most precious spiritual treasure in all the world – the new day!

What Does It Take?

I thought some of Trump’s cult following might finally come to their senses when he abdicated all responsibility for the pandemic, labeled it a hoax, said it would disappear, and urged defiance of precautions established by the medical and scientific community.  His actions were clearly a cynical ploy to protect the economy he felt was the key to his re-election. The irony is that it led to his downfall.  There is no way for any reasonable person to view his handling of the pandemic as anything but corruptly incompetent. 

I understand that religious and free market zealots love the fact that he littered conservative justices throughout the judiciary.  I understand that being told constantly by Trump that we had the greatest economy in the history of the universe before the pandemic hit is enough to convince his fan base, even though every serious economist considers it a gross exaggeration.  I understand that his inept foreign policy moves can somehow be interpreted as ‘putting America first’.  I even understand that some of his absurd tweets and speeches, with their paranoia, mean-spiritedness and immaturity, can, in gymnastic feats of rationalization, be understood as standing up to elites and political correctness.

But the pandemic!  The President of the United States, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, allowed a virus to kill 250,000 and what will certainly be 350,000 people or more, while other nations in Asia and Europe were able to meet the challenge and limit deaths to a tiny fraction of that number.  There is no excuse imaginable for this failure in leadership.

And now, the world looks on in a mixture of horror, schadenfreude and pity, while the nation that since its founding has been the strongest advocate for democracy spirals into banana republic style election denial with a sad, pathetic dictator wannabe holding the nation hostage.

What does it take?

In Defense of Wokeness

After the election, the dismal fact that almost half the American people voted for Trump caused a massive soul-searching and self-flagellation by the left and various progressive or moderate pundits.  A culprit was quickly identified – wokeness!  The left had overplayed the wokeness card and provoked an otherwise sane half-portion of the electorate to throw in their lot with a corrupt, tinpot dictator wannabe.

But what is ‘wokeness’ really?  The Cambridge dictionary definition is:  'a state of being aware and attentive to issues of racial and social injustice'.  Sadly, both of those terms have now become anathema to the right.  Social justice equals ‘socialism and Marxism’ and racial justice equals ‘defund the police’.

Wokeness has now displaced ‘identity politics’ as the new poster child description for political correctness and liberal fragility – the self-righteous liberal wielding a cancel culture sword, seeing everything through the lens of racism or social injustice.  There is now an oft-heard self-criticism that democrats have alienated many independents and middle-of-the-road voters by emphasizing and focusing on wokeness.

The BLM movement, which reawakened much of the country in the spring to racial issues, began with a large support base (the Pew Charitable Trust estimated overall support at 67% in early June 2020), and the broad participation in protests led many to believe that we had reached a seminal moment in our society regarding race relations.  Many who had previously discounted concerns about continuing racial inequities began to acknowledge that a problem did indeed exist.

But as protests continued and the media focused on the sporadic violence and rioting that occurred in parallel, the support dropped significantly among white Americans (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/16/support-for-black-lives-matter-has-decreased-since-june-but-remains-strong-among-black-americans/ ).  Highly exaggerated descriptions of an antifa threat became a staple of right-wing media.

The slogan ‘defund the police’, a pithy yet ill-chosen phrase for a complex topic, allowed the media and the Trump administration to frighten a large swath of the previously supportive public.  Images of rampant crime and unanswered calls to 911 were employed energetically in the four months leading up to the election.  How many independents and borderline voters were persuaded to return to the Trump fold because of this is hard to estimate, but it is not difficult to believe that it had a strong effect.

So yes, in one sense, the effort to make America ‘woke’ at least partially backfired.  And the effort to use soundbites like ‘defund the police’ to spark a discussion about funding priorities and police reform was a big mistake in retrospect. 

To the extent that ‘woke’ people become self-righteous and puritanical and heap contempt on anything that does not meet their definitions of political correctness, there is certainly room for criticism.  The culture wars have become so acrimonious that we all need to take a deep breath and relax a bit. 

But the fact remains that 55 years after the major civil rights’ acts of the 60’s we still have a race problem in the U.S.  Black people are behind in almost every area of quality of life – education, family stability, incarceration, income, wealth, life expectancy.  To ignore this deeply troubling truth is not only inexcusable from a moral and ethical viewpoint, but also foolhardy in terms of self-interest.  This problem will continue to fester and become a hideous open wound with serious implications for our society if we do not address it.

There is a similar dynamic at play in the broader sense of social justice.  The income and wealth gaps in our society have become so large that they are threatening to unravel the delicate fabric of our civil order and send us back to the worst days of the gilded age or create in our land another third world plutocracy.  The populist movement that supports Trump is at least in part fueled by these income and opportunity gaps, though like the fascist cult leaders of the 20’s and 30’s, he has transformed economic anxiety into cultural animus, xenophobia and nationalism.

So, the themes of ‘wokeness’ are not some liberal fantasy.  It is more a problem of form than content.  It is true that the efforts to engage these concepts and associated new ideas for societal change are sometimes too shrill and provocative, but these issues are at the very heart of America’s challenge for the 21^st century and cannot be swept under the rug.

America has always been a land of two minds with inevitably slow progress laboriously achieved through compromise and debate.  Those who wish for America to live up to its best ideals and dreams must be relentless, but also less combative.  Being ‘woke’ is the long game, and it must be played with passion, but also with patience.

 

 

The Electoral College Must Go

I have searched the Internet for both the history and the current justifications for the electoral college.  The history is interesting but does not have much relevance for our current situation.  In early times, the ability to effectively and accurately gather a full popular vote was doubtful.  There was also the question of population differences in the slave and ‘free’ states.  The slave states imposed their will and it is no coincidence that four of the first five presidents were Virginians (Virginia had the largest percentage of slaves and the largest overall population in that time).

The main arguments today for keeping the electoral college revolve around the idea of giving a minority of voters with a regional concentration the ability to check an out-of-control majority.  Some also claim that it gives small states more of a say in presidential elections. These are specious and convoluted arguments that make very little sense upon close examination.

The two recent elections that elected presidents who won the electoral college and lost the popular vote (Bush and Trump) were not decided by small states, but rather large midwestern states and Florida.  The vote in these states was extremely close in both cases.  The decisions were a result of complex (and absurdly expensive) election campaigning in a small number of states and the random nature of voter distributions rather than any glorious cause of a repressed minority.

In the Clinton/Trump election, the margin of popular vote was over 3 million in favor of Clinton, yet Trump became president.  That kind of result is an insult to the voters and has the potential to seriously erode faith in our election process.

The only reason some go through painful logical contortions to justify the electoral college is the changing demographics of the country, which in the current state of the political debate ensure that the popular vote will lean democratic.  It would be wiser and healthier in the long term for conservatives to modulate their political platform to tune into the new demographics than to look to the hail Mary of the electoral college.

The simple fact is that the USA is supposed to be a democracy.  Yes, it is also a representative democracy, but that is a practical matter, established to allow elected senators and representatives to make decisions, budgets and laws rather than putting everything to a popular vote, which would be impossible. 

Each representative is chosen by a popular vote.  The most important representative, the president, should also be chosen by a popular vote.  Having electoral ‘representatives’ choose the president places that decision one very significant step further away from the people.

Every voter should know that his or her vote goes directly toward the election of the president.  Currently, if you vote against the candidate that wins in your state, your vote is meaningless in the overall election of the president.  There is no mystery in the fact that the USA generally has a lower percentage of voting than most other democracies.  Why vote if you are fairly certain your vote will not have any meaning? 

Tabulating a national vote is no longer a logistical problem, though clearly it could be done better and in a more timely manner.  If the USA is truly a democracy, and every vote should matter, then there is absolutely no excuse for making the election of the most important representative of our government an indirect, frustrating exercise that denies the true power of the vote to almost half the population.

Thoughts Before the Election

 

I continue to be mystified by the fact that over 40% of the electorate is willing to support Donald Trump.  I would be less troubled if most of the support were begrudging - a strong distaste for the man but a willingness to overlook his character flaws to achieve certain conservative goals.  But sadly, this does not appear to be the case.  The greater part of the support appears to be full-throated and deeply emotional.  I find it quite frightening.  It is a form of brainwashing that is terribly disturbing.

I believe Biden will win, though nothing is assured, and polls are definitely not to be trusted.  The reason that I am optimistic is that it appears the number of people voting is much larger than in 2016.  I suspect that these additional voters are more likely to be people that have been disgusted by Trump’s presidency and will vote for Biden, especially young and minority voters who are probably not responding to poll queries.

The future is uncertain.  Even if Biden wins, much will depend on whether the Senate has a democratic or republican majority.  A republican majority will mean stalemate, with little chance of significant measures to combat our basic national problems.  The only area that will see improvement will be the pandemic, as Biden can mobilize resources and work with responsible scientists and clinicians to provide relief.

There is no assurance that the pandemic will be easily vanquished though, and the economic woes associated with it have not really been felt yet by most Americans. The country will face a long period of malaise no matter who wins, and the president will encounter a large backlash because of it.

When Obama became president in January, 2009, the Great Recession was just beginning.  His first two years were an epic struggle to prevent a complete collapse of the economy, the financial system and major American industries such as the auto industry.  The 2010 elections resulted in the House becoming republican, primarily due to the economic travails and the rise of the Tea Party.  Obama and the democrats were given little or no credit for rescuing the country from what could have been more drastic consequences.

For the next president, hopefully Joe Biden, there will be a similar set of circumstances.  The impact of climate change, racial tensions, manufacturing doldrums, rural stagnation and other ills will plague the country for the next several years.  The big question is whether the people can somehow unite in recognizing the challenges we face and work together to help solve them.  This seems highly unlikely in the current political climate, though perhaps once the depth of our national crisis becomes apparent a common spirit of can-do humanity can slowly emerge.

Our national problems and divisions are emblematic of a growing incivility across the world, as populist, authoritarian and nationalist movements grow rapidly and governments struggle to contain the explosive forces under the surface.  The pandemic, climate change, refugee and immigration movements and religious turmoil threaten the great gains that the world has made since the end of the cold war.  If nations do not quickly learn to work for the common good and people do not recognize their common humanity, then we face perilous years ahead. 

But human beings are often at their best when great tragedies threaten, so I will defer to hope as we face this election and the future. And I will do whatever I can to promote it and contribute my resources and energy to its service.

The Overwhelming Evidence That Trump is Uniquely Unfit for Office

Presidents and candidates for president are criticized relentlessly every election.  Somehow political opinions cause people to personalize politics and actively dislike an opposing candidate.  But normally the reason for that dislike is the candidate’s positions on key policy issues.  The strength of our political system is that the effect of these passionate disagreements on policy is a swing of the pendulum a little bit from left to right and back, and the country compromises its way into the future.

But this is not a normal election.  Although the majority of Americans disagree with Donald Trump’s policy decisions (see the 2016 election results) and initiatives, that is not the primary reason to vote him out of office.  Here is the reason:  Trump is a deeply flawed human being and is a danger to our country and the rest of the world.

Never before have a president’s own cabinet members and closest advisors described him as incompetent, a danger to the country or unfit for office.  Never before have so many of the members of a president’s own party organized to oppose his reelection.  Never before has a president received outright condemnations (not disagreements!) from so many leading magazines, scientific organizations, journals and institutions.  Never before has a president caused such a precipitous drop in the USA’s reputation around the world and such alarm in our allies (https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/09/15/us-image-plummets-internationally-as-most-say-country-has-handled-coronavirus-badly/ )

Never before has a President cried out ‘lock them all up’ at his political rallies.  Never before has one encouraged his supporters to ‘liberate’ a state from its government.  Never before has a President lashed out so childishly at every critical remark or opponent.  Never before has a President bragged so pathetically about every minor aspect of his activities nor focused so completely on himself.

I have collected a selection (not exhaustive by any means) of the reasons I believe this is a unique situation and I have included links to reliable sources.  One may argue that Trump has many political and military allies, but I believe his allies are only supporting him because of his policies or because their own political fortunes are somehow tied to him.  They are taking a calculated risk (poetically described as a Faustian bargain) that his dangerous personal defects and behavior will not have catastrophic consequences.

The depth of the following indictments is breathtaking!

Former Trump Cabinet Members, Advisors and Close Associates 

• John Bolton (Trump’s longest serving National Security Advisor) wrote a book that portrayed Trump as incompetent and a danger to the country.  He confirmed that Trump should have been convicted of impeachment.  Described him as “erratic,” “stunningly uninformed,” and “unfit for office,”
• General Mattis, Trump’s Secretary of Defense: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/james-mattis-denounces-trump-protests-militarization/612640/
• General Kelly former Chief of Staff for Trump - https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/former-white-house-chief-of-staff-tells-friends-that-trump-is-the-most-flawed-person-hes-ever-met/ar-BB1a6NLk  
• Rex Tillerson (Trump’s former Secretary of State) - called Trump “undisciplined” and  told CBS News’s Bob Schieffer“ that it was challenging  “to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of a lot of things, but rather just kind of says what’s on his mind and tries to do illegal things.”
• A group called the Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform or REPAIR for short, made up of former U.S. officials, advisors, and conservatives and organized by ex-Trump administration officials,  is calling for leadership change in the White House and seeking to repair the Republican Party," https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/administration-officials-launch-anti-trump-group/story?id=72594615
• Mary Trump (his niece and a clinical psychologist) who writes in her book that Trump paid someone to take his SAT’s (certainly not difficult to believe) and describes his multiple personality flaws – “cheating as a way of life, no principles, total narcissist”
• Michael Cohen (personal attorney) – makes a multitude of claims about Trump’s obsessions, sexual habits, lack of principle, etc.  Cohen is a disreputable character and it is hard to know what is fact or fiction, but just the fact that such a man was Trump’s attorney and ‘fixer’ for so many years is horribly damning.

Science, Medicine and Health

• Over 1000 Former CDC Officials Signed a Letter Condemning Trump’s COVID Response and suppression of the CDC. https://www.wsj.com/articles/more-than-1-000-current-and-former-cdc-officers-condemn-u-s-covid-19-response-11602884265
• The entire New England Journal of Medicine’s editorial staff issued a call to defeat Trump in an essay entitled ‘Dying in a Leadership Vacuum’ – its first ever political declaration in its 208 year history. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/07/us/politics/rebuking-trump-the-new-england-journal-of-medicine-calls-for-ousting-the-nations-dangerously-incompetent-leaders.html
• Scientific American advocates for Biden in its first ever endorsement of a presidential candidate in its 175 year history. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientific-american-endorses-joe-biden1/
• The two leading scientific journals in the world, Nature and Lancet, published editorials excoriating Trump’s COVID response and politicization of science and recommended he be removed from office. https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2020/10/15/nature-endorses-joe-biden-latest-top-scientific-journal-to-condemn-trumps-actions/#20887820232e

Former Republicans and Conservatives

• Twenty former republican U.S. Attorneys wrote a letter endorsing Joe Biden, stating that Trump is “a threat to the rule of law in our country".  This included the former head of both the FBI and CIA in the Reagan administration, William Webster.  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-attorneys-idUSKBN27C238  
• 27 Former Republican Members of Congress endorsed Joe Biden on the first day of the Democratic National Convention. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/27-gop-lawmakers-endorse-biden-campaign-launches-republicans/story?id=72566867
• There are multiple organizations of former Republicans who are actively working against Trump and regard him as both incompetent and a danger to our country and constitution.
• Defending Democracy Together https://www.defendingdemocracytogether.org/
• 43 Alumni for Biden  https://43alumniforjoebiden.com/
• Lincoln Project https://lincolnproject.us/
• Republican Voters Against Trump https://rvat.org/
• Republicans for the Rule of Law  https://www.ruleoflawrepublicans.com/
• Three of the most revered conservative columnists who formed much of the intellectual basis for conservative thought were profoundly critical of Trump – George Will, Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer - and described him as unfit for office.  

Senior Military Officers and National Security Officials (note: Trump has his list of military supporters, but they are supporting his conservative policies as military officers often do.  The military and security leaders below are convinced that Trump is a danger to our democracy and many of them have worked directly with Trump)

• 500 military and national security leaders, many of whom worked for republican administrations.  https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/09/24/22-retired-4-stars-join-nearly-500-natsec-leaders-letter-endorsing-joe-biden.html  "The next president will inherit a nation -- and a world -- in turmoil," the letter states. "The current President has demonstrated he is not equal to the enormous responsibilities of his office; he cannot rise to meet challenges large or small. Thanks to his disdainful attitude and his failures, our allies no longer trust or respect us, and our enemies no longer fear us."
• Over 70 former republican national security officials have joined organizations that are seeking to defeat Trump. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/20/republicans-for-biden/
• Admiral Mullen (former Chair of Joint Chiefs)  https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/american-cities-are-not-battlespaces/612553/
• Admiral McRaven – Head of Special Ops https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-countrys-future-could-hinge-on-postal-workers/2020/08/16/c0f7b97e-dfca-11ea-8dd2-d07812bf00f7_story.html
• General Martin Dempsey - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52931133
• General McChrystal - fired by Obama, endorses Biden:  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/01/us/politics/stanley-mcchrystal-biden.html
• Veterans for Responsible Leadership  https://vfrl.org/
• Common Defense: Veterans Against Trump https://commondefense.us/
• National Security Action https://nationalsecurityaction.org/
• Truman National Security Project  http://trumanproject.org/home/

Science, Politics, Religion and Confirmation Bias

The pandemic has focused my attention on how science, politics and religion interact.  I have been appalled at the disregard that the Trump administration has had for scientific and medical input when it does not align with their political agenda.  This conflict between politics and science in our country stands in stark contrast to the relationship between the two in other developed nations.

Before the pandemic hit, Trump also refused to acknowledge or even address the preponderance of evidence for human-influenced climate change.  He has called climate change a hoax and blamed the Chinese for ‘inventing’ it to hobble the U.S. economy.

Trump has been able to defy or reject scientific consensus because his followers are highly suspicious of science and gleefully endorse his opinions.  He knows he will not be held accountable or criticized for any disparagement of scientific opinion.

Why are a substantial portion of Americans ready to dispute or disregard scientific or medical information?  The U.S. is the most technologically advanced nation in the world.  Our universities, medical centers and research labs are outstanding.  The work done in these institutions has led to a rapidly increasing longevity, healthier lives, time-saving technology and endless devices for entertainment and other leisure activities.

It is true that science and medicine are not black and white worlds.  There is constant disagreement and debate as ideas, hypotheses and theories are introduced and go through the scientific process.  In every field there is lively discussion and sometimes acrimonious argument.  However, the scientific community has established a process of peer review and evidence-based analysis to make progress as rationally as possible and to avoid the chaos of random theories and unproven ideas. 

Science is not always about the majority opinion, but over the years the best way for the truth to emerge is for every qualified party to look at all the facts and weigh in with opinions or perform supporting or opposing experiments.  In the great majority of cases, the majority ends up being right.

There are always contrarians and outliers in every scientific discipline.  They are a necessary and important part of the process, to ensure that theories are not promoted or accepted without vigorous debate and as much confirmation as possible.  Occasionally a contrarian will cause a significant re-thinking of a theory or result and thus contribute to the onward march of science.

But there are also contrarians and outliers who simply enjoy the controversy and the renown that comes with fighting against the ‘establishment’.  And when science and politics intersect, these outliers can be given a megaphone by political supporters who like what they are hearing.

In the pandemic, Trump’s supporters have eagerly sought out any scientist or medical doctor who supports Trump’s astonishing contradictions or departures from the epidemiology community’s best advice.  With the media’s rapid-fire reporting of every new theory and collection of data, it is easy to make a case for almost any point of view.

There is a term for the tendency of people to seek out information or opinions that confirm their own political or social views – confirmation bias.  Those who support Trump, for example, assume that his handling of the pandemic is exemplary.  They are  stung and angered by the criticism of his COVID-19 record, and look around on the Internet to find interpretations of data that defend him – COVID is no worse than the flu, the death statistics are wrong, the pandemic is a hoax, only the very weak and old are dying - all at odds with the vast majority of the medical and scientific community.  They do not seek a consensus view, or try to really understand the science, but rather start with a conclusion and work back from there.

Religion is at the heart of science distrust.  Religious views have been under attack for several centuries because of scientific advances. Believers who are unable to accept the mystery and ambiguity of faith and seek out a rigid dogma have been brainwashed to be suspicious of any scientific theory or fact that does not support their religious doctrine.

Religion and politics have become closely intertwined.  Perhaps they always were.  Political views merge with religious doctrine.  Thus, the rejection of science by fundamentalist religious people extends into the political realm as well.

The Internet and social media have become the primary sources of information for a significant percentage of the population.  This is a very dangerous situation.  There is no moderator, no arbitrator or editor to guide people and to separate the credible from the preposterous.  This is ultimate freedom for people to choose, but it comes with a price.  That price could be the death of scientific truth.

 

 

Atheists, Agnostics and Believers – Not So Different

If religion is the human effort to reconcile mortality, pain and uncertainty, then atheism and agnosticism are the equivalent efforts to reconcile reason, science and theology.

It was the rare individual who balked at religion and belief in some sort of God before the enlightenment.  As mystifying as the world was, with all its natural calamities, wonders, joys and heartaches, there seemed to be no way to comprehend it without a foundation of Gods, spirits, devils and supernatural events.  The variety and complexity of these attempts to understand the world make up the rich mythology of humankind.

In western civilization, the growth, power and ultimate corruption of the Catholic Church during the middle ages and renaissance led to the Reformation, beginning in the early 1500’s.  By the early 1600’s, the combination of religious chaos and political machination was too volatile to contain, and a thirty-year war of catastrophic proportion ensued, depopulating continental Europe by 20% according to many estimates.

After this devastation, coincident with a growing movement of scientific and philosophical inquiry known in history as the Enlightenment (late 1600’s to the end of the 1700’s), many educated men and women began to question the dogmas and orthodoxies of formal religion.  The elevation of human reasoning and the evidence of the senses eroded much of the unquestioning obedience to the church and new ideas about the nature of God and humankind were abundant.

Such luminaries as Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Hume and many others developed ideas that undercut the authority of the church and called into question much of the earlier accepted theology of both Christianity and Judaism.

In this period, only the most radical thinkers questioned the existence of God, but many rejected the ‘irrational’ underpinnings of the Christian faith – the virgin birth, the miracles of Jesus, the resurrection, the trinity – and nurtured the concept of a more nuanced and less dogmatic religious belief.  This belief was coined deism. It acknowledged the existence of God but stripped away most of the supernatural and bureaucratic trappings – the priests, the doctrines, the liturgy – and gave each individual the freedom to relate to God in his or her own way.

The American democratic experiment was in great part influenced by enlightenment concepts.  As children of that intellectual heritage, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin and many others were either deists or were influenced by deist concepts.  Thomas Paine wrote the following:

'The opinions I have advanced ... are the effect of the most clear and long-established conviction that the Bible and the Testament are impositions upon the world, that the fall of man, the account of Jesus Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath of God, and of salvation, by that strange means, are all fabulous inventions, dishonorable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty; that the only true religion is Deism, by which I then meant, and mean now, the belief of one God, and an imitation of his moral character, or the practice of what are called moral virtues – and that it was upon this only (so far as religion is concerned) that I rested all my hopes of happiness hereafter. So say I now – and so help me God.'

In the 1800’s new scientific revelations further challenged, and to some extent, undermined the claims of established religion.  The newly established geological age of the earth and Darwin’s writings on the Origin of the Species and evolution called into question most of the stories of the ancient religious texts.

Some seekers of truth began to completely reject the notion of God, calling themselves atheists.  Others termed themselves agnostics, finding a middle ground in an ambiguous belief in ‘something’ but not embracing any specific form of religious thought or deity.

Both atheists and religious people, displaying that peculiar habit of humans to be self-righteous and judgmental, excoriated their foes with ridicule and disdain.  Neither group could conceive of how the other group could ascribe to their belief system.  Agnostics generally abandoned the entire exercise of religious inquiry, setting it aside for ‘future study’, perhaps in retirement!

One of the key questions that religious people pose is how the world would function without the moral authority of a God and His or Her religious institutions.  The investigation of this question is underway, as most of Europe and a growing number in the USA have ceased attending any regular, formal religious activities.  Initial reports seem to indicate that Europe has not devolved into an immoral, chaotic hell.  Indeed, some of the most ardent atheists and agnostics are involved in very noble pursuits such as Doctors Without Borders and other very moral endeavors.

Morality is a complex topic, but it is clear that our concept of morality has evolved, as we no longer consider it moral to stone or burn heretics, urge imperial conquerors on with prayers, or accept slavery as a God-ordained institution.  Perhaps it is best for us to use our combined human intellect and inquiry to refine our moral compass, rather than rely on ancient, questionable edicts.

In the final analysis, the three groups - atheists, agnostics and believers - have more in common than one might suspect.  As human beings, we are all faced with the overwhelming task of making sense of the world.  It seems that humanity has generally benefited by our search when it is sincere and in good faith.  There is still more mystery in our universe than fact in the big questions, and we must all live with a certain amount of ambiguity.  If we come to different conclusions about God and religion, yet contribute to the human community and do our best to avoid harming other people or ourselves, can we not call ourselves brothers and sisters and accept our varied, abstract musings without condemnation?

What God or Spirit or Divine Force, if there should be one, would not be proud of the passionate efforts of all humanity to make sense of its world?  Let us embrace the variety of thought and experience and each seek a path that is of rational or spiritual comfort.

A Tale of COVID In Four Graphs

Our country's catastrophic failure in containing the pandemic has led to over 100,000 needless deaths.  Four graphs demonstrate the difference between our response and that of Germany, a very similar country with ¼ of the population of the USA.  The wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth is now ridiculed across the world for good reasons.

The primary culprit in our failure is Donald Trump.  His most sacred duty is to provide national leadership in a crisis.  There is absolutely no question that he failed to do that.  Pandemic leadership is twofold: 

1. Delivering a strong message about the gravity of the crisis and vigorously promoting precautionary measures such as mask-wearing, social distancing, and lockdown measures until the virus is at a level where it can be contained.
2. Mobilizing the necessary national resources (FEMA, CDC, military, national guard, newly hired unemployed, etc.) to provide a level of testing, tracking, tracing and quarantining that will keep the virus in check and minimize deaths.  Working in harmony with governors to employ these resources wherever necessary.

Trump acted in the exact opposite way.  He encouraged protests and ridiculed safety measures.  He said multiple times that the virus would ‘disappear’.  He denied any responsibility for the pandemic’s consequences.  He was more concerned about his election than the lives of US citizens.

Here are four graphs that show the magnitude of our failure.  The first two show the daily deaths from the start of the pandemic to today for the USA and Germany.  Note that the average death rate in the USA has stayed nearly 1000 for the entire summer.  Germany’s daily death rate has averaged in the single digits for that period, a ratio of 100 to 1! 

The second two graphs show the positivity rate of testing during the same period.  It is a well established epidemiological fact that testing needs to be done at a high enough rate so that the positivity numbers are less than 2, or better yet, less than one, to identify any outbreaks quickly and be able to employ tracking, tracing and quarantining to quell them.  The positivity rate in the USA has never gone below 4 and is much higher in many states, while the positivity rate in Germany has stayed at or below 1 since the beginning of June.

In the final analysis, the number of deaths since June 1^st, the date by which both countries had enough time to prepare their responses and get the virus under control, tells the whole story.  Germany with one fourth the population, has had 927 deaths in that time.  The USA has had 100,196 deaths, more than 100 times the number that occurred in Germany.

 Germany had a leader who believed in and valued science, who collaborated well with her 16 independent states and provided sound, moral leadership and advice to the people.  Germany has had bars, restaurants, schools and businesses mostly open since mid-May.  They, like every nation, have had protests against lockdowns and disagreements about specific measures.  But the political and medical leadership has generally convinced the German public to follow the rules and they have reaped the rewards.

Germany has contained COVID-19 while keeping their economy in relatively good shape.  The USA has done neither.  Trump must be held accountable.

Common Sense and COVID-19

Politics and science make for poor bedfellows, but unfortunately, they have been sleeping together ever since the start of the pandemic. The data and reporting associated with this disease has been confusing, but there are some basic facts that, in my opinion, make two things very clear: 

1. That COVID-19 is a serious threat to a significant portion of the population, and we should do everything in our power to minimize its impact until a vaccine provides enough immunity to allow us to move toward a more ‘normal’ life.
2. The USA made catastrophic errors in its management of the pandemic, at least partially based on an election year desire to protect the economy, which have cost us many lives and ironically made the economic downturn worse. 

Here are the basic facts that led me to those conclusions:

• The devastating pandemic health crises that occurred in Wuhan, Italy, Spain, France and the New York/New Jersey/Massachusetts area at the outset of the pandemic are clear indications of what havoc and death the contagion can wreak if no measures are taken and the virus is allowed to get out of control.
• The IFR (infection fatality rate) of COVID-19 is still under investigation. It is most likely several times higher than influenza (0.6 compared to 0.1). To achieve herd immunity by infection would kill well over a million people if we were to resume business as usual.
• It is the combination of IFR and reproduction number R0 that makes COVID-19 particularly dangerous. Unlike influenza, which is held partially in check by an annual vaccine, the reproduction number for COVID-19 is highly unstable unless strong measures are taken. COVID-19 reproduction numbers were estimated at well over 2 during the early phases of the outbreak.  A reproduction number of 2 means that one infected person will cause over 65,000 sicknesses after 16 cycles of infection (approx. 90 days). When the contagion rages unchecked, the IFR will be higher because of healthcare overload. 
• Even with social distancing, partial shutdown and partial adherence to wearing face masks, the USA has lost an average of 1,000 lives per day since late May.
• The hospitalizations and long-term effects of COVID-19 appear to be much more severe than influenza. 
• A number of countries have been able to contain the contagion with a combination of high test rates, tracking, tracing and quarantining. These countries have also been able to open up their economies to a great extent. There are many countries who have had daily death rates in the single digits (or no deaths) for several months after taking these actions (Germany, Korea, Italy, China, Japan, Vietnam, New Zealand and many others).
• The USA never had a national plan to combat the pandemic. Trump played down the danger, was convinced the virus would ‘disappear’ once warm weather arrived and encouraged US citizens to flout lockdown and safety measures. Our daily infection counts never got down low enough for us to contain the virus in most states. We have lost over 100,000 lives since June 1st, the time when we should have had the virus under control. Germany has lost 800 in that same period.

The biggest irony is that an aggressive national plan to contain the virus would have allowed us to get back to a much higher level of economic and social interaction by June. Instead, we are mired in a partial shutdown that is still killing large numbers of people. I believe that most of the world’s reputable scientists and epidemiologists would agree with the facts and conclusions that I mention above. Bill Gates, who has spent the last 20 years of his life working on healthcare issues, has come out recently with scathing criticism of our management of the pandemic. 

Only a desperate desire to excuse Trump from condemnation can interpret the facts above as anything but a catastrophic failure. A recent Pew Charitable Trust poll of developed nations found that the reputation of the USA has plummeted in the wake of the pandemic. The reputation of Trump has also decreased, but it was already so low that the difference is not that dramatic. In Germany, where there is a strong memory of a demagogue, only 10% (the skinheads, neo-Nazis and other radical right groups) approve of Trump. 

 Enough said.

Wealth Disparity and the Billionaire Lottery

The disparity in income and wealth in the USA has been increasing steadily for the last 40 years. Today, the top 1% has 33% of the wealth in the country. The top 10% has 70% and the bottom 50% has only 1.5%! 

In 1948 the top 10% had ‘only’ 30-35%, half of what they have today. The depression and the war years, with very large increases in tax rates for the wealthy, had the effect of dramatically reducing the disparity that had built up from the Gilded Age (end of the 19th century) to the Roaring Twenties. The current level of wealth disparity is quite similar to that of 1929. 

High tax rates continued to keep the disparity somewhat in check from the 50’s to the 70’s. During this period the highest tax rate never went under 70% and peaked at 90%! But beginning with Reagan’s presidency, tax rates decreased steadily, going as low as 35% during the Bush presidency. The highest tax rate today is 40.8%, though no wealthy person pays anywhere near that percentage of tax. 

It is a given that the more wealth you have, the faster it grows. Wealthy people have investment opportunities that ordinary mortals cannot access. The top 10% own 84% of the stock market. Also, both the appreciation of the wealth itself and the income generated from it are either not taxed at all or taxed at a lower level than ordinary income. For example, stocks or other investments are not taxed until there is a sale. And capital gains from stock sales are taxed at a much lower rate. Shockingly, wealthy people are also very adept at evading taxes. 

Who are these very wealthy people and how do they get so absurdly wealthy? That is a complex question with a long answer. But let’s look at one group of absurdly wealthy people – software application businesspeople, the so-called tech giants. A software development business requires a very low capital investment compared to a manufacturing business. Also, the number of workers employed in software development is initially very small, and even once the company grows it is a fraction of the people employed in a manufacturing business of equivalent revenue. 

A software or network-based business can provide services for a vast number of people for very little cost in terms of employees and infrastructure. But here is an even more important factor: Because of the ubiquity and infinite reach of the Internet, a single application business can attain monopoly status without even having to really compete. In many situations, and particularly in social media and consumer goods (a la Amazon), people tend to flock to the same application because the people they know are using it. There is a definite herd instinct. 

Facebook didn’t establish a monopoly on social media because it was better or had ingenious software. People came to FB initially because of its cache as the Ivy League place to be. Once a critical mass of college students and alumni were on board, the rest of the US and then the world followed like so many lemmings. Who is going to use another social media site when all one’s friends are on FB? 

The entrepreneurs who create software and network applications are often participating in the equivalent of a lottery. The great majority of them don’t have unique ideas or capabilities. I have seen this firsthand. Any accomplished software developer is perfectly capable of developing most of the existing billion-dollar applications. But if they manage to hit the jackpot with the right timing, market demand, investors, connections and marketing (and of course it doesn’t hurt to have some backers or angel investors who are well-known in the industry to promote your application), then the rocket ship of growth can take off and propel a typically very small cadre of founders, investors and initial workers into stratospheric wealth. 

Unlike the Gilded Age, where monopolies such as railroads, steel, oil and banking were established by thuggery, conniving and political machinations, the modern era monopolies are to a great extent self-generating. The Internet delivers all potential customers to their door, and search engines, along with a combination of human nature and herd instinct, will quickly create a dominant site that dooms competitors to obscurity. 

And the large ‘knowledge’ corporations of today don’t have to exploit their workers and pay Pinkerton agents to break up strikes to amass wealth for themselves and their cronies, because there are damn few workers and the profits and stock valuations pile up without the need for any dirty work! 

Solidifying and preserving those monopolies does take some effort, for example gobbling up trendy new variations on the theme before they can really cause any damage, or using their vast size to undersell everyone else. Bezos, Zuckerberg et al have certainly channeled Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and other robber barons in this regard. 

There is a long history of the gilded class arguing that having massive wealth in the hands of a few is the best way for civilization to progress. I will address this self-serving trope in a future essay. However, the fact that our current wealth disparity and stock market ‘irrational exuberance’ is so similar to conditions just before the Great Depression might make us all pause and reflect on where our society is headed. 

And then there’s COVID-19 and global warming . . .

Deaths, COVID-19 and 'Acceptable Losses'

 I was appalled to see a survey that said 57% of republicans believe that 170,000 deaths due to COVID-19 are ‘acceptable’.  Even in the current polarized political atmosphere this is beyond the pale.

I have heard people justify this viewpoint by saying that the primary victims of the pandemic are old and/or medically compromised, and that the pandemic is not much worse than the flu, which kills a large number of people each year.  Another rationalization is that the losses are acceptable in relationship to the risks of economic collapse and its ramifications.

First of all, the flu is a very different phenomenon than COVID-19.  It is not at all clear how many deaths are actually due to the flu.  Almost no one dies from the flu itself.  The deaths attributed to the flu are typically those involving secondary infections of pneumonia or coronary failure.  The estimates of death are purely based on statistical analysis of overall deaths with a lot of assumptions thrown in.  The flu is not tested for or confirmed in the great majority of the deaths that are attributed to it.

Until 2003, the numbers of deaths reported for the flu were very low.  The CDC began to publicize much higher estimates after 2003 in order to provide motivation for people to get vaccinated.

Even given the reported fatality rates, the flu is still much less dangerous than COVID-19.  The reproduction number for the flu is much lower, as is its fatality rate.  Additionally, the long gestation period and, the number of asymptomatic carriers make COVID-19 even more contagious.  If there had not been a near total shutdown of society in the March to May timeframe, we could have seen our healthcare systems overwhelmed and half a million deaths.  The catastrophic scenes in Italy, Spain, France, the UK and New York City would have spread across our nation.  There is no valid comparison between a typical flu season and what occurred in those places.

Moreover, many, if not most of the COVID-19 victims die directly from the disease, not from secondary infections.  Front line physicians and epidemiologists are unified in their portrayal of COVID-19 as a dramatically more brutal and dangerous disease than the flu.  It also can randomly overwhelm young healthy adults and kill them, something the flu almost never does.

Death rates from COVID-19 have decreased as healthcare experts have become more adept at managing treatment regimes.  But cases have continued to spread quite rapidly in the USA even with most cities and states in partial shutdown and people generally keeping social distance and wearing masks.

People were going to die from COVID-19.  It caught the world by surprise.  However, it is the responsibility of each country’s leader to prevent unnecessary deaths.  The initial deaths in the Northeast hub states were tragic, and certainly there were mistakes made and there was mass confusion, but that only accounts for about 60,000 of the current 180,000 deaths. 

By failing to take executive action to lead the nation in battling COVID-19, Trump must accept primary responsibility for most of the deaths that occurred after the beginning of June.  The shortened lockdown, due in great part to Trump’s reelection-conscious drum-beating to ‘get the economy back’, as well as the lack of a national testing, tracking, tracing and quarantine strategy, doomed the USA to a continuous rise in cases and deaths.

Here is the starkest comparison:  Germany, a country with similar people, technology, and healthcare capabilities, enforced their shutdown until the levels of new cases were low enough to test, track and quarantine.  Germany’s population is approximately one fourth of the US population, but the population density is higher, which should make it more difficult to control contagion.  Germany has had bars, restaurants and schools open since late May.  They continue to social distance and wear masks. 

Germany’s testing positivity rate (the % of tests that are positive) is well below 1%, usually between .3 and .6.  Compare this with the US positivity rate of 8-12%.  One cannot adequately monitor and control the contagion with positivity rates that high.

The table below shows the incredibly dramatic difference between Germany’s cases and deaths from June 1 to August 24 versus the USA’s.  The USA has had a hundred times as many deaths and cases with only 4 times the population! 

	Number of new cases from June 1 to August 24	Number of Deaths from June 1 to August 24
USA	4,037,630	71,470
Germany	52,352	718

Interestingly, the fatality rate for Germany’s known cases during this period is about 1.4%.  Given that they are testing at such a low positivity rate and testing so extensively based on tracing each infection, the number of positive tests is probably close to the true total number of people infected.   That would mean that this fatality rate is accurate for the disease in an advanced healthcare system when at risk people are taking extra precautions.  It would be higher in a developing country.  In any event, a fatality rate of 1.4% would be about 14 times the theoretical fatality rate of influenza, which 0.1%.  Again, a strong indication that COVID-19 is very dangerous.

By the way, Germany has had far fewer negative economic ramifications from its longer, but more effective initial shutdown than the USA.  Their unemployment is at about 5.6%, whereas the US is at 10.2%. 

Deaths from disease are only ‘acceptable’ when they could not have reasonably been prevented.  There is absolutely no doubt that the USA could have prevented tens of thousands of deaths had it been resolved to do so and followed the example of Germany and other successful countries.  It is heartless and willfully ignorant to claim that these deaths are 'acceptable'.

I Finally Understand How Hitler Came to Power in Germany

 

I began studying the German language in college when I fell in love with a girl whose family had emigrated from Germany.  I was fascinated by the intellectual depth of her family and their culture.  My studies of German acquainted me with the incredible wealth of German accomplishment – philosophy, theology, music, science, literature, poetry.  I studied at the University of Bonn in 1974-75, while Bonn was the German capital.

Like all Americans of that era, I had grown up on a steady diet of war movies and television shows that depicted Germans as either sadistic Nazis or incompetent German soldiers.  When I studied in Bonn, the country had just begun to intensely study the Third Reich period.  One of the courses I took focused on the period up to Hitler’s installation as Chancellor.  The professor was excellent, and it was fascinating to witness the children of the Nazi period confront their parents’ history.

But even after intense study of the causes and events of the 20’s and early 30’s, I found it difficult to comprehend how a people with such intellectual and cultural refinement could possibly allow Hitler to come to power.  It just didn’t seem to make sense.

Now, upon seeing so many of my neighbors, friends and relatives cling to Donald Trump, even after the evidence of how deeply flawed and damaged he is has accumulated beyond any reasonable doubt, I finally understand how Hitler succeeded.

I am not saying that Trump is as bad as Hitler.  I believe he has many of the same traits – the narcissism, the lack of humility, the vindictiveness, the willingness to do or say anything to promote his own interests, the mendacity, the lack of any ennobling spirit.  I also do not doubt that Trump could become as evil as Hitler if he were given a similar set of circumstances.  But for now, he is inhibited, thank God, by a much more established set of laws and political practices that provide a bulwark against his authoritarian instincts.

Like Hitler, Trump is a man who an objective, unaffected observer would never choose to be a leader.  But between ignorance, cynicism, hunger for power, self-interest and indoctrination, close to half of the nation is willing, if not eager, to keep Trump in office.

Here are the different groups that fall prey to Trump’s appeal, just as they did to Hitler’s:

• The ignorant, whose blind nationalism, subliminal (or overt) racism,  and lack of comprehension and study of economic, social and political issues make them completely susceptible.  This group is mesmerized by the man, just as Germans were bewitched by Hitler.  Now, Hitler’s speeches seem ludicrous and comical, just as Trump’s speeches are incomparably idiotic to anyone not in his thrall.
• The fundamentalist and evangelical Christians, who are so fearful of changes in our culture and society that they are willing to make a pact with the devil himself to attempt a forced return to a mythical world that never really existed. 
• The cynical and self-interested, who recognize Trump’s character flaws but see in his policies financial gain for themselves and are thus willing to ignore them.  This includes all the billionaires and wealthy Americans who are so opposed to any brake on their accelerating good fortune, and so selfishly immersed in the worship of pure capitalism, that they eagerly take the risk of having a demagogue and charlatan as President.
• The power-hungry, whose access to power is currently predicated on loyalty to Trump.  Many of them castigated Trump during his ascent to power and surely still harbor dislike, if not outright detestation of the man.  But they meekly kowtow to him so that they can retain their positions of power, because power is their only desire.  And like the Weimar politicians who believed that Hitler was controllable, they convince themselves that Trump can only cause so much damage.

When do ‘good people’ turn into bad people?  Every human being has the potential for good and evil.  The good person, who is a wonderful friend and neighbor and treats his or her children with love and affection, and goes to church every Sunday, is the same person who stands in a mob opposing peaceful BLM protesters, face distorted with hatred, ready to fight or even kill.  The dark side of human beings is always close to the surface. 

The good Germans who welcomed Hitler with gleeful, patriotic fervor, believing he would ‘make Germany great again’; the good Germans who turned a blind eye because they thought his ascension would bring stability and financial advantage; the good Germans who supported him to keep their positions and power; they all became the bad Germans who set the world on a path of incomprehensible death and misery.

Those good-turned-bad Germans are not unique.  We are the same people, with the same potential for good and evil, walking the same thin line between love and hate, nobility and savagery.  Let us pray that enough of us have the strength, the wisdom and the courage to hold the line.

The Myth of the ‘Assault on Religious Freedom’

In my efforts to understand how otherwise sane and wonderful people who identify as Christians can support Donald Trump, I have identified a basic fear that many Christians have that undergirds this support.  They fear that they are ‘losing their religious rights’, that there is an ‘assault on their religious freedom’.  They are panicked that America is becoming a secular nation and that the ‘family’ values they hold dear are under attack.

They point to the decreasing role that the church and religion play in our society.  They fret that more and more people are leaving the church and becoming agnostics or atheists.  They see changes in sexuality, family make-up, patriotism, demographics and other cultural phenomena and fear that we are on a downhill slide to immorality and decadence.

What do these anxious Christians view as their religious rights, their morality, and their values?  Jesus spoke most about seeking spiritual rather than material wealth, welcoming the stranger, meeting the needs of the poor and hungry, being humble, forgiving and loving.  Are these the values that American Christians think are under assault?  Are these the values that Trump personifies?

No, the values that American Christians (mostly the evangelical ones) espouse have more to do with sexual practices, abortion, homosexuality, prayer in schools and government and other issues that Jesus never or rarely addresses. 

No one is saying that these Christians cannot hold their beliefs or practice their religion.  If they want to remain celibate until marriage, they are free to do so.  If they want to suppress any homosexual urges they or their children may have, no one will stop them. If they want to carry a bible around with them and pray constantly, fine, but don’t force others to do it in school or anywhere else.

And if they want to spurn birth control and have a large family, by all means go for it!  Let’s face it, if they really wanted to dramatically limit abortions, they would be encouraging birth control and sex education rather than trying to pretend that we can go back to an age of no pre-marital sex.  Shall we have our children marrying at 13 again?

On the family values front, it is indeed sad that many families fall apart, that divorce is common, and that single parenting occurs so frequently.  But that trend began well before the decline in church attendance and its causes lie more in the realm of the changing and complex world we live in, and the evolving roles of women and men, than in our religious practices.

Europe and Canada have transitioned to mostly secular societies.  Church affiliation and attendance in those nations is generally below 20% and much lower in Scandinavian nations, for example.  Where is the moral degradation and decline that Christians fear would result?  It is not to be found.  In fact, an argument can easily be made that these nations are much more moral and ethical than America.  They have taken the true substance of religion to heart and jettisoned the façade.

I understand the anxiety that animates conservative, evangelical Christians.  There are always unsettling changes in society as it evolves.  Unfortunately, the rigid dogma that these Christians embrace makes it difficult for them to adapt to these changes and work within them for a better world.  Fundamentalists are profoundly uncomfortable with ambiguity.  They long for absolutes and certainty.  And as they cling desperately to biblical inerrancy, scientific skepticism, and other doomed fallacies in thought, they have blithely enabled, in Trump, the most dangerous assault on our true values (honesty, humility, love, forgiveness, kindness, community) that the country has ever seen.

We Moved Heaven and Earth After 3000 Were Killed on 9/11

Three thousand people died on September 11, 2001.  It was a tragic and horrifying event.  The nation rallied and mobilized to respond to this event.  Nothing could stand in the way of the most powerful nation on earth.

In 2020, a pandemic threatened our land with clear malice and deadly potential.  We saw the chaos and death that followed in its wake in China, Italy and Spain.  We had the resources, the economic resiliency, the healthcare capabilities, and the technology to combat this enemy.  But somehow, we failed miserably, and we have lost 150,000 lives, with perhaps an additional hundred thousand or more likely to be lost before it is all over.

What we lacked was the presidential will and leadership.

Other nations' leaders with fewer resources and more complex obstacles rose to this challenge.  They spoke earnestly and deliberately to their people, basing their policies and mandates on trusted scientists and physicians.  They shut down their economies and kept them shut down until the virus counts were low enough that the experts predicted they could be managed through extensive testing, tracing, tracking and quarantine.  They mobilized massive national resources for testing, tracking, PPE and other needs.

Donald Trump did not rise to the challenge.  On the contrary, he mocked and stood in the way of those who made efforts to warn the public and chart a sensible course.  Instead of using the vast presidential powers that he has to mobilize FEMA, the National Guard, the military and industry in a united effort to contain the virus, he dithered and complained bitterly about the contagion’s impact on ‘his’ stock market and economy.  

He rejected any responsibility for leading the efforts to combat the virus and chose a role of criticizing various governors, who do not possess anywhere near the access to resources that he has.  He even encouraged protestors to fight against the efforts of individual states to maintain shutdowns until the virus counts were low. The only time he seemed eager to use his presidential powers was to orchestrate disproportional federal force against BLM and social justice protesters

The USA should have been an example to the world about how to fight COVID-19.  Instead, it is yet another cautionary tale about how hubris, ignorance and other character flaws in a single leader can cause a massive loss of life and plunge a country into deep despair and misery.  There is simply no excuse for this failure and we must take a cold, hard look at our country and ourselves to understand how we have come to this point.