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.