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November 2020: The Battle for America's Soul

In the early 1930's Germany found it self beset by economic turmoil and still smarting from defeat in WWI.  Some of the population continued to support democracy and social norms, but others chose to support a boorish, anti-Semitic  who played to their prejudices and offered scapegoats to explain Germany's dire straits.  Ultimately, this shortsightedness and bigotry lead to the Nazi dictatorship and the horrors of the Holocaust and WWII and the deaths of tens of millions of people. While Donald Trump is likely no Hitler - despite his desires to be a dictator - those who support him are not much different than those who supported Hitler and chose to kill the soul of their nation.  In America on the eve of the November 2020 elections, we find ourselves in a similar battle for the soul of this nation and faced with the question of whether honor, decency, morality and a desire for a common good will survive.   One will not find honor and decency among the scamvangelists and pews filled with evangelicals who have thrown their lot in with selfishness, racism, bigotry and hatred of others.  But good people still exist in this country who seek to restore America's soul, something highlighted last night at the Democrats' virtual convention.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this battle and the need to cleanse the White House and nation of Donald Trump and his Republican enablers.  Here are column highlights: 

Democrats from Maine to Guam, assembled virtually for their convention Tuesday night, spoke of a nation that has lost lives, jobs, fairness and friends because of President Trump’s leadership.

But at core they were talking about a nation that has lost its soul.

“We are in a battle for the soul of our nation,” Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried began in a “keynote” montage of elected officials from around the country.

“We need a president who will restore the soul of America,” said Sally Yates, fired as acting attorney general by Trump because she refused to implement what she called his “Muslim travel ban.”

A young Naval Academy graduate and former Marine Corps officer, DeMarcus Gilliard, told the convention that “there is nothing more important for me right now than making sure that we restore the soul of our nation.”

Colin Powell, the Republican former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, exclaimed from Washington: “What a difference it will make to have a president who unites us, who restores our strength and our soul.”

And Jill Biden closed the night by saying that kindness and courage are “the soul of America Joe Biden is fighting for now.”

Of course, Democrats didn’t have to convince anybody that the heart and soul of our republic are on the ballot in November. Trump had already done it for them, earlier Tuesday, when he once again reminded the country that he has little regard for democracy itself.

Trump supposes the election is like his golf game: If he shanks one into the woods, he simply takes a mulligan and hits a new ball.

Even as Trump was floating an election redo on Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a bipartisan report concluding that Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, worked closely with a Russian intelligence officer suspected of involvement in hacking the Democratic National Committee’s emails — the very definition of the “collusion” Trump has denied.

This follows Trump’s talk of postponing the Nov. 3 election, his refusal to commit to accepting the results of the election, his attempts to defund and to sabotage the U.S. Postal Service to compromise its ability to process mail-in ballots, his campaign’s attempts to get Kanye West on the ballot in key states and his use of federal police to suppress protests by his opponents.

“We have just 4 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s covid cases,” a raspy and wrinkled Bill Clinton proclaimed. “We are the only major industrial economy to have its unemployment rate triple. At a time like this, the Oval Office should be a command center. Instead, it’s a storm center. ... If you want a president who defines the job as spending hours a day watching TV and zapping people on social media, he’s your man."

Far better was the Democrats’ full-throated embrace of American values, something Republicans thought they owned before Trump’s reign of selfishness, vulgarity and disregard for democratic norms. Stacey Abrams spoke of Biden as a leader who would “restore our moral compass.” Powell, long America’s most celebrated soldier, said “Biden will be a president we will all be proud to salute,” one who “will trust our diplomats and our intelligence community, not the flattery of dictators and despots” and one who “will restore America’s leadership and our moral authority.”

If American democracy still has a pulse, the voters will join the old soldier’s battle for our national soul.

Wednesday Morning Male Beauty

 

Senate Intelligence Committee: Trump’s 2016 Campaign Had Repeated Contact with Russian Intelligence

The Senate Intelligence Committee - a committee chaired by a Republican - has dropped several bombshells as it has released it report on the Trump 2016 campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, including a finding that a number of witnesses (including Trump family members) likely lied when they gave testimony.  Now, the committee's report lays out that the Trump 2016 campaign had repeated contact with Russian intelligence officials, adding credence to what many of us have long believed, namely that the Trump campaign colluded with a hostile foreign power to work for the election of Trump who has consistently acted as if he is taking orders from Vladimir Putin.  Under most standards from the past such behavior smacks of treason and underscores the reality that Senate Republicans sided with Trump and Putin when they refused to vote to impeach Trump.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at these disturbing findings of the Senate Intelligence report.  Here are article highlights:  

An exhaustive investigation led by members of President Trump’s own political party portrays his 2016 campaign as posing counterintelligence risks through its myriad contacts with Russia, eager to exploit assistance from the Kremlin and seemingly determined to conceal the full extent of its conduct from a multiyear Senate probe.

The long-awaited report from the Senate Intelligence Committee contains dozens of new findings that appear to show more direct links between Trump associates and Russian intelligence, and it pierces the president’s long-standing attempts to dismiss the Kremlin’s intervention on his behalf as a hoax.

Like the Mueller report before it, the nearly 1,000-page Senate document does not contain evidence of direct collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence. But the Senate report carries particular weight because it is the first major investigation of Russian interference in 2016 to be conducted by a Republican-controlled committee and endorsed by both Republicans and Democrats.

The report’s language is often stark, describing Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s receptivity to Russian outreach as a “grave counterintelligence threat” that made the campaign susceptible to “malign Russian influence.”

At one point, the document concludes that members of Trump’s transition team probably fell prey to Russian manipulation that they were too callow to recognize. Kremlin operatives “were capable of exploiting the transition team’s shortcomings,” the report says. “Based on the available information, it is possible — and even likely — that they did so.”

Trump will have difficulty taking exculpatory advantage of a report that is replete with damning details about his conduct and that of his associates.

The Senate probe is the first to flatly declare that a longtime partner of Manafort was, in fact, a Russian intelligence officer. The report also for the first time cites evidence that that alleged operative, Konstantin Kilimnik, may have been directly involved in the Russian plot to break into a Democratic Party computer network and provide plundered files to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

The committee determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally directed the hack-and-leak campaign.

[T]he report concludes that one of Trump’s core claims of innocence cannot be credited. In written testimony to the team of federal prosecutors led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Trump insisted that he could not recall ever discussing the WikiLeaks dumps with political adviser Roger Stone or any other associate. . . . . the Senate report said, “the committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions.”

The document describes Trump and associates of his campaign as often incapable of candor. It offers new proof that former national security adviser Michael Flynn lied about his conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, raises troubling questions about Manafort’s decision to squander a plea agreement with prosecutors by lying to Mueller’s team, and accuses Blackwater founder Erik Prince of “deceptive” accounts of his meetings with a Russian oligarch in the Seychelles weeks before Trump was sworn into office.

The two sides [Russia and the Trump campaign] shared the same objective — the defeat of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton — and basked in one another’s admiration.

The document would read more like a harrowing historical account were it not for mounting evidence that many of the same forces of disruption are lining up for the 2020 election. The top U.S. counterintelligence official recently warned that Russia is again waging a far-reaching interference campaign and favors Trump in the upcoming election.

Trump continues to amplify many of Russia’s divisive messages. Attorney General William P. Barr has intervened in criminal cases against Trump allies Stone and Flynn. And Trump supporters on Capitol Hill, including Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), have reportedly accepted material from Russian-tied sources to discredit former vice president Joe Biden, Trump’s opponent in November.

Five Democratic senators ­— including Kamala D. Harris (Calif.), the party’s 2020 vice-presidential nominee — asserted that the report “unambiguously shows that members of the Trump Campaign cooperated with Russian efforts to get Trump elected.” Referring specifically to their findings on Manafort, the Democrats wrote, “This is what collusion looks like.”

More Tuesday Male Beauty

 

You Can “Hate Politics,” But You Can’t Sit Out this Election

I have been involved in politics for decades now and even ran for office 26 years ago - a story for another time - and over the years have heard one constant excuse from friends and acquaintances for not being involved and sometimes not bothering to vote: "I hate politics."    The excuse makes about as much sense as saying "I hate going to the doctor" or "I hate going to the dentists" as a reason for not seeking medical or dental care and dying an early death or losing one's teeth.  Politics impacts EVERY aspect of our lives from local zoning ordinances to tax rates to presidential powers that can send the nation to war and endanger loved ones.  The "I hate politics" excuse is so lame that truly thoughtful people ought to be embarrassed to utter it.   The frightening reality is that America finds itself where Germany did in 1932-1933.  Americans can either stop the trashing of our democracy and demand decency be restored to the White House and that the deliberate dehumanizing of millions cease.  A column in the New York Times looks at what is at stake and why the tired and disingenuous excuse of hating politics cannot stand in this election.  And for Trump supporters, I'd add this: I don't want to hear another utterance about your faith in god or morality since a vote for Trump confirms it's all a lie. Trump and morality are mutually exclusive. Here are column highlights:

I think I’m supposed to question whether the Democratic Party can really stretch far enough in opposite directions to accommodate a democratic socialist like Bernie Sanders and an estranged Republican like John Kasich, transcendently strange bedfellows who spoke and served as ideological poles on the opening night of whatever we’re calling this shrunken, not-in-Milwaukee, pandemic-warped political jubilee.

But this isn’t a time for business as usual. It isn’t a usual time. I’m not referring to the coronavirus per se, to the history-making selection of a Black woman as the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential nominee or to any one facet, any one dynamic of the days before us. I’m referring to the stakes of the days ahead. They’re immeasurable.

Never in my 55 years has the Democrats’ success mattered more for the welfare, the sanity — the future — of these United States than now, because never has the other fork in the road been a Republican president as profoundly amoral, fundamentally corrupt and flatly incompetent as the one seeking four more years.

Donald Trump has made clear that he’s willing to steal this election from Joe Biden if that’s the only way to “win.” He has in fact commenced that heist. He’s ready to smash all faith in our institutions and all pride in our democratic system and fashion a throne amid the wreckage. And he has a shockingly large number of accomplices — including, to date, most of the Republicans in Congress — who are cheering him on or biting their tongues to the point of hemorrhage.

In the context of that, what I saw on Monday night wasn’t something to be parsed or graded. It was something to rush toward and relish: a buffet for the starving. It was salvation. I have zero interest in decreeing whether the mashed potatoes were suitably fluffy or the asparagus overcooked.

Instead I want to note that nowhere in Trump’s inner circle is there anyone with the gravitas and grace of Michelle Obama, because someone like her wouldn’t last a nanosecond there. Trump would find the example of her too threatening, the yardstick of her too diminishing. She’d find his ethical ecosystem uninhabitable: the cold, dark surface of the moon without a spacesuit.

I want to savor her every word on Monday night, when she so beautifully distilled what’s wrong with Trump — “He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us,” she said — and so hauntingly defined what it feels like to live in Trump’s America.

“Kids in this country are seeing what happens when we stop requiring empathy of one another,” she said. “They’re looking around wondering if we’ve been lying to them this whole time about who we really are and what we truly value.”

“What’s going on this country is just not right,” she added. “This is not who we want to be.” It was an excellent speech, gorgeously delivered, and that’s in large part because she recognized and maximized the fact that many Americans see her as someone less partisan and more practical than the conventional convention orator.

“You know I hate politics,” she said, making no apologies for that. “But you also know that I care about this nation. You know how much I care about all of our children.” From that perspective came this plea: “We have got to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it.”

That was the message of many of the speakers. Their words varied; their urgency didn’t. Usually when politicians adopt such epic, dire tones, I want to reach for some bleach to wash the purple from their prose. On Monday night I just nodded (and, in Obama’s case, got a little teary, too).

There was much talk beforehand about the Democrats’ ardent desire and assiduous efforts to project unity. To my eyes and ears they took things to a higher level than that, not because they have such a talent for diplomacy or such a gift for television choreography but because they obviously and genuinely and passionately share the conviction that if Biden fails, America falls — at least the America that we’re all still trying to hold on to, the America that we sing about in songs and speak of when we put our hands over our hearts and turn toward the flag.

“During this president’s term, the unthinkable has become normal,” Sanders said during his remarks. “The future of our democracy is at stake. The future of our economy is as stake. The future of our planet is as stake.”

He specifically and pointedly instructed his frustrated supporters to get with the program and vote for Biden. “We must come together,” he said. “My friends, the price of failure is just too great to imagine.” He didn’t sound quite like this in 2016. Back then the damage from a Trump presidency was merely predicted, theoretical. Now it’s on the unemployment lines and in the morgue.

Biden doesn’t have everything I wish for in a president, but he has goodness, and for a country that needs to reclaim its decency, re-establish its dignity and right its course, that’s not a bad place to start.

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

 

The Democratic Popular Vote v. Minority Rule

The Founding Fathers perhaps unwittingly created a system now being used by Republicans to impose minority rule over the majority of Americans.  Between the Electoral College and the U.S. Senate that gives small rural states a disproportionate amount of power over states with many multiples of their populations.  Odds are that come November, Democrats will win the popular vote for the seventh time in the past eight presidential elections.  If somehow Trump scores another Electoral College win, the question then becomes how much longer the majority of Americans will stand for rule by a minority party that makes no attempt to woe them and whose base openly hates them. The past suggests that at some point this situation will boil over and violence against the tyrannical minority can't be ruled out.  A safety valve would be a Democrat trifecta in November that allows some structural changes - two more states and voting right protections - that could blunt the rule of a self-centered minority.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at the growing problem of minority rule in America.  Here are excerpts:

If Joe Biden maintains his steady lead in national polls over President Donald Trump through Election Day, Democrats will win the popular vote for the seventh time in the past eight presidential elections – something no party has achieved since the formation of the modern American political system in 1828….

Since…1828, no party has won the popular vote more than six times over any eight-election sequence. Democrats did that from the 1820s to the 1850s, Republicans did it from the 1890s to the 1920s and Democrats managed the feat again from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Republicans, of course, have won the presidency twice in this century while losing the popular vote. That only happened three times in the previous 211 years.

Since Trump’s strategy assumes another Electoral College win combined with a popular vote loss, a record- a record-breaking Democratic streak is, well, nearly a lock. And unless the Republican Party gets serious about expanding its narrow coalition to include nonwhite voters and urban areas, its presidential candidates will likely to continue to rely on an Electoral College advantage to win the presidency – until they lose and are forced to change.

But unfortunately, they have another, sinister option: hanging onto power by strengthening the institutions – not just the electoral college, but the U.S. Senate, the states, the federal courts – that allow for minority rule.

Republican heretic Geoffrey Kabaservice on this point: The Republican appetite for vote suppression ultimately springs from the lack of confidence in the popular appeal of its ideas. Otherwise you wouldn’t need to do that. … I think the party has not just given up on ever winning majority status, it has given up on trying to persuade people who are not already in the camp.

[M]ost observers consider it more likely that a unified Democratic government would pursue the election agenda the House passed in 2019 – and that former President Barack Obama recently endorsed in his eulogy for Rep. John Lewis. That would include approving a new Voting Rights Act, measures to ease registration and access to voting, limits on gerrymandering of congressional districts, constraints on unregulated political spending and potentially making the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico new states. (The House has already voted for DC statehood but has not addressed Puerto Rico.)

A trifecta Democratic government would also at least seriously consider abolition of the legislative filibuster, a goal Obama endorsed in those same remarks at Lewis’s funeral.

At some point the Democratic popular majority is going to reject being regularly consigned to the tender mercies of a GOP minority that’s mostly interested in fighting to protect its illicit power. And then you’ll see some Democratic radicalism for real.

Monday Morning Male Beauty

 

Virginia GOP House Candidate To Rally Clergy Against Gays

As readers may recall, Virginia 5th congressional district Republicans in a parking lot "drive by convention" rejected the Republican incumbent, Representative Denver Riggleman due to Riggleman's unpardonable sin of officiating at a same sex wedding of two gay Republicans.  Ironically, Rigglemen was viewed as a sure thing for reelection in November, 2020.  In Riggleman's place, the Virginia GOP nominated right wing loon Bob Good (pictured at left), who has ties to Liberty University, a nut bag "university" founded by the late Jerry Falwell, a true enemy of LGBT Virginians.  Now, Good is making attacking gays and assailing Virginia's new non-discrimination laws a hallmark of his campaign for a district Republicans are viewed as less assured to hold.  The whole situation exemplifies the ever growing extremism if the Virginia GOP - and also coincides with the party's inability to win a statewide race since 2009. The New York Times looks at the blatant gay bashing and hysteria that is a key piece of Good's campaign.  One can only hope he goes down to defeat as too extreme even for his gerrymandered district which lumps Charlottesville, perhaps Virginia's most liberal city, with reactionary rural areas. And yes, Good is seemingly the darling of white supremacists.  Here are highlights from the Times piece:

Bob Good, a self-described “biblical conservative” who is the Republican nominee for a House seat in his conservative Central Virginia district, is hoping to rally clergy members with meetings this week attacking a new state law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, which he characterizes as an assault on religious liberty.

And in at least one of the invitations directed at clergy members and Republican county leaders, which was obtained by The Times, the organizers of the event make clear that they intend to leverage anti-L.G.B.T.Q. sentiment in the district to generate enthusiasm for Mr. Good.

The offensive language about transgender people came in an invitation signed by Travis Witt, a former Virginia Tea Party official who identified himself as the Faith Coalition leader for Mr. Good’s campaign. The subject heading of the invitation was “Re: when a man becomes a woman.”

Mr. Good’s campaign has scheduled a series of six “Virginia Liberty Summits for Pastors” in three cities to discuss the new law.

“Religious liberty in America is under assault like never before,” said an Eventbrite posting for one of the meetings, scheduled for Tuesday at a Charlottesville church. “Failure to act in its defense is concession, and if we fail to act religious freedom in America will be lost, not just for our generation, but for the next.”

[T]he invitation, along with other language in Mr. Good’s campaign, illustrates just how far to the right Virginia Republicans have veered, taking positions that have prompted worries from some party members.

With the party badly fractured, the Republican-leaning Fifth Congressional District in Central Virginia is now on the radar screen of Democrats as possibly within reach. It is one of only four seats held by Republicans in the state’s 11-member delegation to the House of Representatives.

Cameron Webb, the Democratic candidate facing Mr. Good, is a practicing physician who also teaches at the University of Virginia. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, citing Mr. Webb’s performance in the Democratic primary, has pledged assistance to his campaign. If elected, Mr. Webb would become the first Black physician in Congress.

“The G.O.P. is likely hoping that Good can win without outside intervention, but Webb’s resource advantage and the currently poor G.O.P. environment nationally, if it persists, may force their hand,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a political newsletter at the University of Virginia, which still regards the district as Republican-leaning. Mr. Kondik said the key to a victory for Mr. Webb would be high Black turnout in southern parts of the district, which stretches from the outer Washington, D.C., suburbs to the North Carolina line.

“We’re in the middle of a pandemic that has infected over 100,000 Virginians and a recession that has put millions across the country out of work, but all Bob Good wants to focus on is same-sex marriages,” said Grant Fox, a spokesman for the Virginia Democratic Party. “Virginians need help, and Bob Good is spending his time convening church officials to figure out how to best discriminate against the L.G.B.T.Q. community.”

When Mr. Good was elected to the Campbell County Board of Supervisors in 2015, he signed a resolution declaring the U.S. Supreme Court “lawless” for legalizing same-sex marriage nationally. He also voted for a county resolution urging that the state and federal governments “not recognize gender identity as a protected class” and allow Campbell County to bar transgender people from public restrooms.

In addition to anti-L.G.B.T.Q. statements, Mr. Good has taken policy positions against immigration and in favor of making English the nation’s official language. Mr. Good also failed to disavow comments made by a key supporter, Eddie Deane, that surfaced on social media this year. . . . In the clip, Mr. Deane went on a diatribe against a Black Lives Matter march, using racist and homophobic language.

On July 1, Virginia became the first Southern state with a statute prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The invitation to pastors in Central Virginia, obtained by The New York Times, cites the new law as a call to action.

Those who might feel inclined to donate to Good's Democrat opponent can do so here.