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Travails of a Permanent American Presidential Campaign

February 17, 2023

"Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

- Albert Einstein


August 2016.


Late August in Vermont. The trees are beginning to show a touch of yellow, very slight, not yet beginning to turn. Some of the leaves have fallen, still green but barely hinting of the cold, short days to come. The swimming pool, heated to 75 degrees is less than I am used to, but still, refreshing after a walk on verdant mountain trails that meander up and down, their steepness growing each year.


Donald Trump has shed his campaign manager, Paul Manefort, a robotic, dyed-hair martinet, who apparently has failed in his attempt make Donald appeal to the broad center of American voter. When only 9% of voters has chosen the Republican nominee, there are many more votes that will be counted in the general election. And as discussed below, the Ukrainian-Putin connection having funneled money to Mr. Trump’s ex-consigliere.


Trump, according to Washington Post, has decided to run his campaign on the same basis as he ran his primary campaign and has selected a Breitbart executive Steve Bannon, to be his new campaign manager. Bannon is noted, according to the Post's EJ Dionne, having made a laudatory documentary of Sarah Palin, of all people, as a model for anti-establishment politics. The crux of this strategy is to appeal to the same angry white uneducated segment of the population to create more damage and negativity toward Hillary Clinton. And, for sure, letting Trump be Trump.


Waxing philosophically about this campaign is difficult because it requires a cynical perspective on the intelligence of the American electorate.


Stage left: Vladimir Putin championing Trump, since he will clearly, if one is to believe him, wreck the NATO alliance, because our allies are not paying "their fair share."  Seventy years of American diplomacy going down like the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City is one of the most dangerous policy proposals ever advanced by any American politician since Jefferson Davis. As we all know by now ad nauseum , a litany of other proposals, the wall, the Mexicans paying for it, the deportations, the fearmongering, the appeal to tribalism, the ethos contrary to the American promise, etc. etc. etc.


September


Returning to a steamy Miami, paranoia about mosquitos, we have since learned that Manefort was linked to Ukrainian money, further discrediting Trump's claim that he is less corrupt than Hillary. Trump already owning the field in Washington Post Pinocchios, even with Hillary’s deservedly less than forthcoming reputation, including the email scandal as well as 40 years of being accused of non-existing sins. 


Herein we see the flaw of the 25th amendment. The President could have easily won a third term. A scandal free administration, an exemplary President, thoughtful and considered, but hated for his being black by a large segment of the electorate. A stark reminder of how fragile our democracy is and how susceptible it is to demagoguery.


Even if Hillary wins this bedraggled campaign, one wonders if anything will be settled, unless the Democrats gain control of congress. Republican obstructionism has prevented many worthwhile Obama initiatives from succeeding.  For example, a constitutional amendment that limits spending in Presidential campaigns would never pass the Republican house, even if the President proposed it. Already Ted Cruz is gearing up for 2020, sensing a Hillary landslide. 


Hillary has just rolled out her new 757 aircraft in which she can transport the press in the same plane, proclaiming her unmitigated joy in having journalists share her multi-million dollar ride.  Billions spent to elect a president. Insanity.


And then there are the endless emails, pontificating how Hillary needs help in defeating a person as odious as the Donald. “Give now to save our democracy,” pleads every other new email.


Why it is necessary for candidates to office at any level money-grub their way along the trail? There is certainly no guarantee that superior office holders emerge from an unseemly level of servitude created by the reception of such funds.


The system, which now binds Americans to perpetual campaigns anachronistically created by our past has no reason to exist. Why do we have to start in Iowa? Why do senators have to neglect their jobs running for office for two years? Why are there battleground states in a silly electoral college that was originally established in the 18th century to ensure the balance of power among slave and free states?  Why are congressionally gerrymandered districts not against the law? Why is there not direct popular vote election of the President? The Federal system of government is not threatened by that.  No one is advocating abolition of the congress.


Our system would not be harmed by a national open primary for President. One person one vote. Voting across party lines.  Federally funded national debates and television interviews.  A true Oxford Union format debate where each issue is advocated by the candidate, for example, "Resolved: that we should have a carbon tax" or “Resolved that taxes should be raised on incomes above $250,000." You get the picture.  Then each candidate can expound, as did Lincoln and Douglas.  No stupid gotcha questions such as "why do you treat women like pigs?' And please CNN, FOX, CBS, NBC, etc. Shut the f**k up. Present some news instead of bits of information and reasons for catheter ads. No young people are watching anyway.


Each candidate would then get to demonstrate his or her full level of knowledge, and not continue to insult the intelligence of the public, by answering prepared sound bites for already anticipated questions. Candidates would then have to stick to the important issues and give the voter enough information to make a decision, including the candidate’s level of knowledge on each subject.


Moreover, television ads should be strictly limited to the issues, if not should be banned despite the first amendment.  A constitutional re-write is in order, governing campaigns, money, debates, advertising and lobbyists. The Citizens United case should be dumped as was Dred Scott. Both decisions are shameful.


Otherwise we will continue to suffer hamstringed government unable to do anything except have politicians continually run for office. If America is polarized as much as people say, this guarantees a majority unable to exert its will.  This is a result of the slave/free state dichotomy created at the inception, and not yet negated, through civil war, civil rights movements and other national paroxysms of pain and tumult.


One source suggested, (I forget who) a board of historians to guide policy, so that the lessons of the past are not repeated, and because people forget that repeating the same failed policy is insanity. 

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GOP Hypocrisy at its Highest

By Engage Team • February 17, 2023
So the Supremes, appointed by Republicans, Bush I, Bush II, and three justices appointed by the Donald, who lost the popular vote by 3 million voters and who probably will soon be indicted in Georgia for election fraud, and maybe Federally for a failed coup d’état, have decided that 50 years of precedent be damned, that there is no constitutional right for a woman to make her own reproductive choices. Never mind an entire generation of women who have grown up under Roe. So let’s socially engineer by judicial fiat, what has been law for generations.N Let’s face the facts. The “justices” make up their own minds, and then build a constitutional rationalization to support their position from an infinite variety of decisions throughout the centuries of common law. And by the way, Bush II, like Trump, was also a minority president, except in the anti- democratic electoral college, designed originally to allow slave states to remain so. Our Constitution also ensured that woman and black people could not vote. So all you originalists and textualists can go back to where we were before Roe v. Wade, to that wonderful mid 20th century where segregation ruled, or the early 19th century where slavery ruled. Why not overrule Brown v. Board of Education to keep America white and segregated Justice Alito, that righteous avatar of Catholic abortion dogma rests at one of the pinnacles of governmental power, believes that American women should be the victim of state gerrymandered legislatures, representing a minority of the American polity. When Thomas Jefferson said famously, “keep the preachers away from government,” he surely should have included Alito. Let’s not forget the notion that the court is or should be not politicized. That train left the station in the early 20th century. When FDR’s National Recovery Act was shut down by the conservative Court, a court packing threat from the Democrats in congress caused the conservative majority to back off from shooting down the progressive programs that were to help the nation out of the great depression. The problem is now that there are not enough votes in the Senate to do any such thing because of successful Republican moves to suppress the vote; instead packing the court with ideologues, the most notable of whom is the handmaiden herself—Amy Coney Barrett, whom the Donald picked to fill the seat of a progressive giant, RBG. Never mind the hypocrisy of dissing Obama’s selection of Merrick Garland, not even given a hearing thanks to Mitch McConnell and his lieutenants, including Chuck Grassley, who should be in a nursing home feeding on double doses of Prevagen. Mitch at the helm has seen to our current “Justices”, helped by disinformation emanating from Rupert Murdoch’s FOX news, a money-grubbing Australian oligarch, no better than the Russian ones. Mitch’s net worth has increased ten-fold since he was elected and not on his Senate salary for sure, his wife benefiting from Chinese largesse to and from her uber wealthy family. Oh, and don’t forget Clarence Thomas, a black man who hates his own people, abetted by his wife, Ginny, encouraging the rioters to storm the capitol, sending emails to insurrectionists and GOP party leaders to stop the certification of the vote by the Senate. Thomas is all bent out of shape because of the dastardly leak, impugning the “integrity” of the court. But he will probably not recuse himself on Trump’s appeal if he is convicted of felonious conspiracy to precipitate an insurrection. Other dramatis personae include the repulsive Ted Cruz and the vituperative Josh Hawley, who voted against the purely ceremonial certification of a lawful election, necessary to enshrine the vote. Also, lets not omit a Bronx cheer for Bret Cavanaugh, the beer swilling frat boy, credibly accused of waving his penis in Christine Blasey Ford’s face at his fraternity house, assaulting her. While admittedly a college escapade, it does not speak well to his character. But no matter, he has absolved himself by joining in this sadistic exercise of Republican misogyny. “I like beer, Senator Klobuchar, don’t you?” Cavanaugh hubristically asked the Senator whose father died of alcoholism. No matter, there is no right to privacy in the Constitution, says the red spider veined nosed icon of the religious right. Now, poor women who live in Texas, Mississippi, or other places of enlightened Republican legislators will have to book an airplane flight or drive to a place where it is legal. But wait! They do not have the money to do so, instead they can carry them to term and drop their newly born at the nearest police station or underfunded Mississippi or Texas childcare facility. Thanks a lot, Amy. Perhaps you want to adopt some more children. This whole sordid episode of “Making America Great Again,” curdles the blood even of the most casual observer.

A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand

By Engage Team • February 17, 2023
"A house divided against itself, cannot stand..." - Abraham Lincoln From California to New York, from Oregon to Florida, a frightening division has descended upon our country. From rural to urban America, people wonder whether the nation and its institutions can survive this polarity. There have been times in American history that the nation was divided, never more so than in 1860. Throughout that history, there had been bitter partisanship and division. From the heat of the constitutional convention in steamy 1787 Philadelphia, the founders fought bitterly to a compromise that actually welded two nations into one in a constitution which just ninety years later devolved into a insanely bloody civil war, brother against brother, father against son, family against family. A partisan press with countless newspapers and pamphleteers spewed hatred and vituperative allegations against their countrymen both at the founding and throughout the years leading to the Civil War. Twitter has nothing on them. A rural south, an industrializing north, both parts of which employed slavery, regarded Negroes as inferior, abetted involuntary servitude and a racist ethos, challenging even the most enlightened of our citizenry. During the time between the founding and the Civil War forged compromises kept the Union together. The Missouri compromise (1820) and the Kansas-Nebraska act (1854) failed as attempts to reconcile admission to the Union of new states as either slave or free. The Constitution itself had slavery baked in to its original ratification (Article 4 sec. 2.3) imposing that, " No person held to Service or Labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any Law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or Labor, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labor may be due," Later, the Fugitive Slave act of 1850 imposed the duty on citizens and officials of the individual states themselves to return slaves to their owners or face civil fines, and that persons harboring slaves to criminal penalties. Slave catchers roamed the North, collecting bonuses for bringing slaves in; captured slaves were not permitted a jury trial. Sound like a rickety Constitution? Of course, the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments cured some of that, but still, it took the bloodiest war in the history of the Republic, 700,000 dead and wounded to get the amendments passed and only in the last few years was the Confederate battle flag removed from South Carolina government buildings. The Civil Rights act of 1964, race riots in Los Angeles, freedom riders, political assassinations of civil rights leaders, and a frothing George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door shouting "segregation forever!" interceded in the 1960s, almost 100 years after the end of the war and ten years after the landmark Brown v. the Board of Education outlawed segregation in the public schools. Well, that same Constitution has given us the Electoral College, a Federalist exercise in balancing the interests of the various states, and which now presents us with a highly undemocratic underrepresentation of large populations, California for instance, with its 40,000,000 people and North Dakota with its 500,000 each carrying two senators. Do the math on fair representation. Yes, I know the House is supposed to do that, but with present gerrymandering, the Democrats are obliged to win by much bigger majorities than Republicans. With Republicans dedicated to disenfranchising voters in Florida, for example, contrary to the will of the voters, Democrats must win votes in far greater numbers than Republicans to achieve a working majority. We now have entrenched minority government. With an unleashed president, sociopathically bound to his vindictive agenda, extreme anxiety pervades the Democratic Party, fearing that this president will be re-elected, boasting that "he alone" is claiming responsibility for the booming economy, acquitted from his misdeeds by a kangaroo court, comprised of quaking GOP senators afraid of tribal banishment to an ignominious gulag of GOP opprobrium, losing their congressional health plans, positions, prestige and power andthe ultimate loss of the dignity which they inartfully tried to preserve. Instead, they have lost it anyway by their surrender to political expediency. We need either a constitutional convention or a huge movement among voters to recognize that the divisions among us are not the result of a political agenda, but instead, tribal cultism. Many of the policy agendas result from identity politics, rural against urban, wealthy against poor, a displaced working class losing out in the battle against inevitable technological displacement, climate change and nuclear proliferation, the greatest threats to the world. A leader who can heal these divisions and create forbearance and a spirit of compromise is what we need more than ever. A president of either party who can understand reality, not phantasmagorical narcissism. It is said that great crises manufacture an FDR, a Winston Churchill, an Abraham Lincoln. Where may he or she be?

Running from Ennui

By Engage Team • February 17, 2023
Passion seems to be bestowed as a blessing on few people but seeking it is a not inconsiderable chore conferred on the many. I am not officially retired, but it seems that way. The clients call less and the work I did as a trial lawyer has become less and less appetizing. Business has diminished, not only because I am seventy-nine years of age, but because I have zero desire to market myself like a snake oil salesman. I leave that particularly odious practice to well-funded and battle stationed Morgan and Morgan and others, whose legions of paralegals, investigators, paid experts and well-staffed soldiers battle with insurance companies, and “fight for you,” its overworked lawyers all the while complaining to their colleagues and family that they hate what they do. Fifty years at the bar, and I do not mean Flanagan’s, is enough, so I leave the task of transferring wealth from one party to another and taking a piece of the action the alleged passion of the many. I do still consult with clients, if I can be of help them. I wonder if I can achieve a modicum of mastery the piano, considering that when I took violin lessons as a youth, the bandleader working at my dad’s upstate New York hotel, a Catskill fiddler by the name of Billy Rogers (nee Rosenberg) who, admittedly, was not a music teacher, told my father, that I was the “dumbest, most tone-deaf child he had ever met.” But then again, he was no Isaac Stern nor even a music teacher. Music teachers do not scream at their beginning ten-year-old students. The sole reason Dad asked him to teach me was because a guest had left a violin in one of his hotel rooms. Before my dad’s discovered violin aspirations for me, I had expressed neither the interest nor the inclination to play the most difficult, annoying instrument, or torturing everyone within hearing distance. “Press the strings until your fingers bleed and you develop callouses,” said Billy. I do not recall what happened to the violin or Billy, although he was aged in 1952. Dad either sold the violin or most likely, gave it away. Another serial disappointment from his son, I guess. After becoming a lawyer, I decided I would learn to play tennis. And I loved it. I was addicted. I became reasonably competent, starting at the age of 35, and playing regularly until I hit 70 and had spine surgery laying me up a few years. I was never the best, but I was pretty good, had a good serve and tried to play again a few years ago, losing to a younger fellow who had been playing just a few years. I had beaten him soundly before. Never fast on my feet, my molasses-like movements said, time to hang up the sneakers. Life is a series of things being taken from you. At 55 I had taken up golf. I think I have a pretty good swing, but athletically, I needed time to learn, ( a nice way to say I am a slow learner) and time is running out. Although that would not stop me, if I had some agreeable companions with whom to play. Many of the friends whose company I enjoyed have died or fallen away. There is nothing worse than spending 18 holes with someone monumentally annoying. “Nice putt,” they said, as my ball sped past the hole. Plus, most golfers do not share my politics and, inevitably, an afternoon of enjoyment turns into a dumpster fire. Most players who are Republicans, cheat. The shoe wedge or miscounting the score is a frequently insufferable habitude of the right-wing selfish, individualist, “let them eat cake” crowd. Now, when my days are not consumed by interminably long doctor’s visits or some new ailment appears, I am seeking something to do with my spare time. Going to the hospital or delivering goodies to the ill and infirm is too depressing, since I already am depressed about most people walking past me as though I did not exist. I have become irrelevant and invisible, both not particularly enviable results of my wrinkles and weathered skin and increasingly whitening hair. A grey ghost. I suppose I should take comfort that a geezer like Joe Biden could be president, gaining inspiration from him. But he seems so delicate, so frail now, that a stiff breeze would blow him over or he might stumble coming down the stairs of Air Force One. It is frightening to behold. Still, Joe beats the alternative--the orange-colored crook who is still peddling the big lie. The country is in the worst crisis since the great depression, and Joe is not FDR.  Which brings me back to the piano. I asked a neighbor who is a music teacher at an exclusive private school, “Is learning the piano at 79 doable?” He replied, “definitely, it will be good for your mind. Always keep two hands on the keyboard and learn musical notation.” I replied that I had purchased a book that said I will be able to play a Bach prelude within six weeks if I practiced 45 minutes per day. Encouraging. I guess I will find out if it can be my new passion.
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