Day 136 Nat'l Emergency: Person of the Year Choices, Turkey Time Off, Jobs Off, School Time

Five months before Time magazine releases its Person of the Year issue it is safe to say there are three significant candidates whose image could grace the front cover: 

*George Floyd, whose cellphone-recorded death at the knee of a Minneapolis policeman sparked nationwide outrage and galvanized Black Lives Matter protests; 

*Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose calm Dutch uncle counsel on the coronavirus has soothed and informed a frightened and conflicted nation; 

*The embattled frontline healthcare worker, who has selflessly placed themself in danger to heal a sick country and comfort the dying in the absence of quarantined loved ones.

Even if he wins the presidency, Joe Biden would not be elevated to cover boy status. Not this year. 

Similarly, Donald Trump wouldn’t qualify even if he manages a comeback to secure a second term. 

Chief Justice John Roberts has received lots of ink for his high-wire role in shepherding the Supreme Court, but he, too, falls short in overall dominance of the year. 

For sure, the two main stories of 2020 have been the coronavirus with its worldwide impact on health and the economy, as well as international political repercussions, and the outpouring of protest and energy for racial equality after the killings of unarmed Blacks and actions by ordinary white citizens to physically and verbally assault minorities.

It’s About Time: More than a dozen years have passed since I called on retail chains to keep their stores closed on Thanksgiving so employees could spend time with their families instead of aiding in the pursuit of every last disposable dollar. Consumers, as well, would benefit from not running out to the store once dessert has been shoveled down their throat. 

My perch as editor and publisher of Chain Store Age is long gone, but it is pleasing to note that Walmart, the nation’s, nay, the world’s, largest retailer has decided it would not open Thanksgiving. Apparently, Walmart listened to the suggestion advanced by one of its employees in a letter to management.

“We know it’s been a trying year, and you’ve stepped up. We want you to enjoy the day at home with your loved ones,” John Furner, president and CEO of Walmart USA, wrote in a memo to employees. 

Fewer Jobs: Donald Trump promised to bring back manufacturing jobs if elected in 2016. How’s he doing?

Not so great. Though manufacturing jobs increased in the first two years of his presidency, the last two have been not so good. 

Compared to when he took the oath of office there are almost 300,000 fewer manufacturing jobs. Of course, the pandemic is a key factor, an excuse Trump will surely cite if challenged on his record. 

But as The New York Times pointed out, “U.S. factory output declined throughout 2019, as Mr. Trump’s trade war intensified, and it has dropped further this year, suggesting there is no boom in new American factories. Since peaking in mid-2019, corporate investment has  declined for three consecutive quarters. Total foreign direct investment in manufacturing was nearly one-third lower in the first three years of Mr. Trump’s tenure than it was in the final three years of President Barack Obama’s.

“Mr. Trump ostensibly fought his trade war on behalf of American manufacturing. But economists say it has actually been a drag on most U.S. factories, by increasing prices for components and inciting foreign retaliation.  It has also coincided with a plunge in Chinese investment in the United States to $5 billion in 2019, the lowest level since 2009, according to Rhodium Group, a research firm” (https://nyti.ms/2CClSib).

School Time? As part of his reelection strategy Trump is pushing for a September opening of schools. But evidence on the impact of bringing children back to classes where they could become infected, and then sending them home where they could transfer the coronavirus to other family members, is mixed (https://nyti.ms/2ZjbJj5). 

New research has shown that children under 10 years are not as susceptible, but transmission is more prevalent as student age hits double digits. If schools open before the general public has appropriately contained the pandemic, a rebound in cases could occur, as happened in Israel.  

Few dispute the benefit of having children resume classes. But just as most parents believe in inoculations to protect their offspring from childhood illnesses, most also would think twice about placing their children at risk with the added fear they could be exposing themselves and other family members, especially grandparents. 

Day 132 of Nat'l Emergency: Lawn Sign for Justice, Petty President, Will Trump Take a Shot

We have proudly joined the woke lawn sign brigade. Designed by Gilda, our sign displays an illustration of eight children of various ethnicities next to a Martin Luther King Jr. saying, “Injustice Anywhere Is a threat to Justice Everywhere.”

Presidential adviser and not-too-secret white supremacist Stephen Miller notwithstanding, Jews have been at the forefront of civil rights activism. We believe in the legitimacy behind the Black Lives Matter movement but have been repulsed by the open antisemitism and anti-Israel stances of some of its leaders and followers, made all the more reprehensible by the organization’s failure to call out repression and discrimination common in Arab Moslem lands. 

Our sign already has won approval from neighbors. We’re at the end of a cul de sac so the sign will get limited exposure. But it’s the sentiment that counts, not the number of eyeballs that see it.

Petty President: The pettiness, the mean-spiritness of Donald Trump continues to know no bounds as it continues to amaze. His latest denigration of the office of the president involves the removal of the official portraits of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush from a public viewing area and their placement in a non public room of the White House.

He couldn’t remove Barack Obama’s portrait because it has not been officially unveiled in deference to the longstanding animosity Trump has toward his immediate predecessor.

One has to wonder how Trump will be treated by his successor, an especially trenchant thought if it is Joe Biden in 2021 or a different Democrat in 2025. Will he be invited to ceremonial functions? Will he be shunned by the members of the exclusive Past Presidents club? 

Will foreign governments welcome him, not that he was an avid jet-setter before his election? As he was not overly complimentary to most foreign leaders while in office, his options for frequent flyer points are limited. Okay, he could visit Turkey, Russia, Brazil. And Israel. Perhaps his good buddy Kim Jong-un will invite him to a deeper visit inside North Korea. Or Xi Jinping might want to show him China’s biological warfare labs that Trump is always talking about.  

Will He Take the Shot? Should an anti COVID-19 vaccine be introduced while he is still in office, will Trump display presidential leadership by publicly taking the shot, or will he punk out and reinforce the cautionary call of the anti-vax brigade that rejects all types of inoculations? Perhaps he will claim an exemption to the injection because of a flareup of his bone spurs.

The current fight over wearing a mask to contain the pandemic’s spread will be child’s play compared to the opposition anti-vaxers will wage, especially if anyone administered the vaccine becomes infected (https://nyti.ms/2OAxMM1). 

It is truly a sad time when the health care system once touted as the best in the world has become a shell of its former prominence. 

Feds vs. States: Where does federal vs. state responsibility begin? States’ rights vs. federal authority. 

During the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has chosen to push responsibility for containment of the virus to governors, except when he sees political gain advocating opening up the economy and schools. He is trying to strongarm states to do his bidding even as case numbers and deaths rise. But his bottom line is that states, not he, are responsible for the pain the country is experiencing.

On the other hand, having clearly lost his bid to be a successful wartime general in the battle to beat COVID-19, Trump has shifted gears to be the law and order president by sending in federal troops to Portland, OR, to arrest and control Black Lives Matter and related protesters. No state or local official asked for federal troop assistance. Indeed, they have vociferously rejected their presence.

But Trump doesn’t care because this narrative fits the image he wants to project to his base and to voters who might feel threatened by the protesters. 

Day 128 Nat'l Emergency: Is the Political Pendulum Swinging?

With just under four months till the election the pendulum has given signs it is ready to swing backward.

After more than four months of jabs and haymakers that have left his administration reeling, Donald Trump appears to have regained some energy. 

Conservative voices are saying woke movements have gone too far. A federal judge has strongly questioned the sexual harassment and abuse settlement against Harvey Weinstein. Conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan is leaving New York Magazine. Bari Weiss is leaving The New York Times because she claims a bullying atmosphere that attacks non liberal stances is tolerated by management. Federal executions have begun anew with Trump threatening more. Trump is further threatening to send in federal forces to cities run by liberal mayors he says cannot control violence. He also is said to be supportive of a Missouri couple who pointed guns at Black Lives Matter protesters. The CDC director is blaming visiting Northerners for the pandemic outbreak in the South. Trump administration lackeys are degrading the expertise of Dr. Anthony Fauci. Though Joe Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania polls is double digits pollsters say a majority believe there is a “secret” number of Trump voters who could keep the Keystone State red.

Trump is betting his base enjoys their White privilege even as fence-sitting voters will be repulsed by excesses of ultra-progressive woke groups. Their combined ballots will keep him in the White House for another four years

Trump is like that Philadelphia icon—Rocky. It is hard to knock him down. To keep him down.

Biden so far has played a version of Muhammed Ali’s rope-a-dope strategy against George Forman, keeping mostly to himself. He is letting Trump tire himself and the public out with outlandish tweets on all manner of national affairs alongside public displays of indifference to the personal, human losses from COVID-19, now totaling more than 138,000 lives from more than 3.48 million confirmed cases. Even now that he is wearing a mask in public the glower beneath it comes through.

The race for the presidency is a like a 15-round championship boxing match, not a three-round amateur bout. Polling can be illusory. Hillary learned that lesson four years ago.

Barring an international emergency or another vacancy on the Supreme Court, the election will be settled by three intertwined events: the status of the pandemic, the state of the economy, and the success, or lack of, school reopenings.

The pendulum might be swinging a little more in Trump’s direction but there is plenty time for it to swing back to Biden’s corner. 

Day 105 Nat'l Emergency: Extremism Reigns

Back in 1964, in accepting the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater said, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” 

It should be obvious to any thoughtful citizen that we are in the midst of extremism from the right and left. Destroying statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Ulysses S. Grant were not acts of excessive exuberance in support of Black Lives Matter but rather acts of excessive ignorance and intolerance. 

The very public displays of white supremacists bearing neo-Nazi and Confederate flags, coupled with the reluctance of Donald Trump and other Republicans to unequivocally denounce such actions, chills hope that right wing extremism can be tamped down to the fringe corners of society.

Grant’s statue was toppled, despite his being the Union general most responsible for destroying the Confederacy and slavery, because at one time he owned a slave. One slave. Without any compensation Grant freed William Jones two years prior to the Civil War, an act of courage uncommon where he lived around St. Louis, MO. 

Out of their mind protesters acted like an unruly mob absent any knowledge or context. Ridding public spaces of memorials to traitors who fought the Union or politicos who defended slavery or held beliefs counter to the nation’s creed of equality, however elusive its attainment has been, is not in itself a contemptible act. 

While Confederate generals and office holders are part of the country’s heritage, there is merit in denying them a public place of honor for actions that were not honorable and not sustainable on the battlefield. Nor should they be rewarded for the back door tributes they secured from Jim Crow laws and a media-manufactured retelling of the antebellum South. 

But tearing them down, acting like a lynch mob, besmirched the cause the protesters espouse (unless the protesters were anarchists acting under the cover of legitimate protest). 

Those who are seeking perfection in our national heroes past and present will be sorely disappointed. They come adorned with character warts we at present would find not just discrediting but also disqualifying for elective office or reverence. Martin Luther King was no saint. Neither was Malcolm X. Nor JFK. Nor FDR. Nor Barack Obama. 

What can be said of our icons is that despite their flaws they advanced the dignity of our country, they fought and sometimes died for the expansion of rights and freedoms. 

They were better than the prevailing mores of their times. They weren’t perfect. We should not judge them solely by 2020 standards. 

Perhaps it is a good moment for a collective time out to look at the Bible. Not the New Testament, not because I am not Christian, rather because Jesus seems to be beyond reproach with no flaws.

Look to the Old Testament for leader upon leader, patriarch after patriarch, who is imperfect. King David was an adulterer and conspired to have his consort Bathsheba’s husband killed in battle. He was not a great father. He turned a blind eye as his henchmen assassinated his foes. Yet, he is venerated as Israel’s greatest monarch. 

Jacob was a trickster, on multiple occasions. Samson married a pagan. Saul failed to follow God’s command to kill all of the Amalekites and destroy their possessions. 

Even wise King Solomon, who should have known better, succumbed to excess—excessive taxes, excessive marriages to pagan women and excessive construction of temples to his wives’ gods to whom in his old age he followed. 

Despite his shortcomings, Solomon is lionized. Perhaps the lesson to be learned is a figure’s place in history must be measured by his entire resume, not just a smudge on the page. 

At the 2015 funeral of one of the nine martyred at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC, Obama concluded his eulogy by singing “Amazing Grace.” It was a stirring moment. 

But that haunting hymnal was written by a one-time slave trader, John Newton. By today’s ethos of puritanical extremism, should “Amazing Grace” be stricken from the roster of messages of consolation, forgiveness and redemption because of its originator? 

I think not. 

Day 98 of Nat'l Emergency: Provocateur-in-Chief Could Turn Into Cable TV Agent-Provocateur

It was a busy week for the provocateur-in-chief even by his grotesque standards. Pick your offended targets:

Blacks and supporters of Black Lives Matter protesting police brutality and systemic discrimination; 

An elderly, injured-by-Buffalo-police protester accused of being a member of Antifa; 

Military leaders who criticized his use of troops to clear constitutionally permitted protest across from the White House so he could have his picture taken in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church; 

Episcopalians and Catholics vexed by his photo op performance holding a Bible;

Anyone who believed military bases named for traitorous Confederate generals should be renamed; 

Professional football and soccer leagues for permitting athletes to express political dissent; 

Nascar for banning Confederate flags;

LGBTQ community for being denied Obama-era health patient protections; 

The media for questioning his many actions; 

Abraham Lincoln for not doing enough; 

And of course Joe Biden and Democrats for everything they do. 

Donald Trump did, however, try to put to rest the fear among his detractors that he would barricade himself in the White House should he lose the election November 3. 

“Certainly, if I don’t win, I don’t win,” Trump declared on Fox News in an interview with Harris Faulkner. “You go on, do other things” (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/12/trump-says-will-leave-office-peacefully-if-he-loses-315736?cid=apn).

Of course, given his footloose and fancy free track record with the truth the liar-in-chief cannot be trusted on his word. Skepticism is called for. 

Removed from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue by force or tradition January 20, the provocateur-in-chief will not go gently into the night. 

He will turn into an agent-provocateur unrestrained by any protocols of office (as if he ever was) to dispense bilious dissent and conspiracy theories as the featured anchor of a cable television network. 

Probably not Fox. Either one of his own creation or OAN, One America News Network, a far-right pro-Trump cable channel founded by Robert Herring, Sr., owned by Herring Networks, Inc. of San Diego. OAN is well-liked and often cited by Trump for its conspiracy theory stories. OAN is not considered to be reliably truthful. 

A deposed Trump will seek to keep the divisions in our country red hot, thwarting any chance Biden might have to forge harmony among the citizenry and our traditional international allies. Trump will act not as a dedicated, doctrinaire Conservative Republican but rather as a vindictive egotist seeking revenge for his ultimate humiliation. 

A chair in front of a cable TV camera would stoke his goal of recapturing the seat behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. As a one term president the 74-year-old would be eligible to run again in 2024. Biden has shown a candidate who would be 78 years old when taking the presidential oath is not disqualified by voters.  

Neither would a conviction for tax fraud or any other felony bar Trump from holding federal office again. Even if in prison he could run. Aside from his cable gig Trump could also try for the U.S. Senate from his new state of residence, Florida. 

Sadly, the cult of Trump will linger as long as The Donald and his three henchmen eldest children stay in the public eye. Trump has sucked the soul out of the GOP. 

Short of a cataclysmic election debacle the Republican Party has cast its foreseeable future with a modern day Dracula and his offspring, both biological and ideological. 

United Is Far From Our National Heritage

The UNITED States of America. Sounds great. A diversified people forging common goals for the common good and welfare of its citizenry. 

Hardly any politician does not extol his or her commitment to unifying the country while lamenting, sometimes in extraordinarily harsh language, the divisive nature of his or her opponent.

Monday morning on NPR, Roger F. Villere Jr., chairman of Louisiana’s Republican Party, said the high hopes that an Obama presidency would bring the country together had not come to fruition, that there was more distrust now than before. He laid the blame squarely on Obama’s shoulders, ignoring Republican infatuation with the birther movement that questioned the president’s legitimacy for office, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s marching orders to try to make Obama a one-term president, disrespect by a GOP congressman during one of Obama’s speeches to Congress, the invitation to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to Congress in opposition to the Iran nuclear deal as a way of undermining Obama’s leadership, and continuing efforts to obstruct any Obama initiative including the naming of a replacement for the seat on the Supreme Court left vacant by the death of Antonin Scalia. 

But so goes our political discourse these days. Reality is not part of the dialogue. We seem to want unity; we wax euphoric for those halcyon days when it pervaded the land. 

But really, people, it is hard to think of a time in our nation’s 240-year history when we enjoyed long-term unity. From the get-go our leaders took sides. They were so antagonistic to each other that our second president, John Adams, signed the Alien and Sedition Acts, four bills that were passed by a Federalist-dominated Congress in 1798.^[ As described by Wikipedia, the laws “made it harder for an immigrant to become a citizen (Naturalization Act), allowed the president to imprison and deport non-citizens who were deemed dangerous (Alien Friends Act) or who were from a hostile nation (Alien Enemies Act), and criminalized making false statements that were critical of the federal government (Sedition Act).” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts

When Thomas Jefferson succeeded Adams, a new Democratic-Republican Congress repealed all but the Aliens Enemies Act which, modified, remains in force today. 

Differences existed even before the U.S. of A. came into existence. Not everyone in the 13 colonies favored independence from Great Britain. And after liberty was proclaimed and won, not everyone living in the 13 states enjoyed the fruits of liberty. Slavery stained our nation from even before its inception and its legacy divided us through the decades before and after the Civil War, manifested after the conflict by the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow laws, segregation, the fight for civil rights and voting rights, and most recently the Black Lives Matter movement. 

America has been divided on the merits of temperance and Prohibition, on the suffragette movement, on the entries into World War I and World War II, on the combat in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, on the treatment of immigrants from Ireland, China, Eastern Europe and now from Muslim and Latin American countries, on treatment of Catholics, Jews and now Muslims, on the right to life versus the right to choose, on the meaning of the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms, on the balance between saving the environment and exploiting our natural resources. (For the sake of brevity I’ll stop the list here.)

Trump has latched onto a slogan of “Make America Safe Again.” Hardly anyone would reject personal safety as a lofty goal. But by declaring himself the “law and order” candidate Trump invokes the racial origins of Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy to stigmatize Afro-Americans to appeal to white voters (http://wpo.st/-avm1).  

Politicians stoke the illusion of unity, but the reality is unity might be achieved if political dialogue accepted the right of one’s opponents to hold and air contrasting principles. Here’s what Utah Senator Mike Lee told CBS News’ Scott Pelley after his side lost a convention floor fight to challenge the nomination of Donald Trump:

“We need to do things that united people do, which is respect each other’s opinions. Treat each other with dignity and respect and allow people to cast their votes, express their differences and then we move on.”

Sounds fair, but Lee has not accorded similar sentiments toward President Obama. 

Indiana Governor Mike Pence was chosen as vice presidential running mate because of his potential to unite the party, especially evangelicals and social conservatives, behind Trump. Maybe so, but the real challenge for Pence and any candidate during this national election is whether they can unite the country. 

Doubtful.