Are You an ABT Voter—Anyone But Trump?

Are you an ABT voter—Anyone But Trump?

Wait. Before we get into the original subject of this blog, let me aver that I believe The New York Times, specifically columnist Bret Stephens, must have hacked my iPhone. Heck, if Jeff Bezos’ iPhone could be hacked, who am I to think mine couldn’t, especially when it contains a really juicy story idea about ABT voters. And to show you how nefariously ingenious The Times’ caper is, the paper also ran an Op-Ed piece entitled “Jeff Bezos’ Phone Hack Should Terrify Everyone” (https://nyti.ms/37oujrL), directly above a Stephens article on ABT voters. How cunning to try to misdirect the scent of the crime from its editorial room.

Late last week I started writing a blog on ABT. As I often do, I wrote the beginning on my iPhone in bed before sleep stopped my progress. But I couldn’t fall into deep slumber. Too much on my mind. Too many tasks to accomplish. So I wrote a To Do list in my iPhone before finally allowing zzzz’s to overwhelm my consciousness.

Not suspecting any skulduggery I posted a Friday blog on my recent purchases of cardigans instead of the Anyone But Trump theme.

Imagine my excitement then when Saturday afternoon I opened The Times to see the following headline:

“Anyone But Trump? Not So Fast,” a column by Bret Stephens printed directly under the aforementioned opinion piece on Jeff Bezos (https://nyti.ms/2Rnl0mc). 

I quickly checked my iPhone for literary comparisons to what Stephens wrote. After all, it is not uncommon for good ideas to simultaneously formulate in the minds of several journalists. That’s when the hacking was “revealed” to me. Revealed might not be the right term, for my ABT story and my To Do list were nowhere to be found in my iPhone.

Now, some of you might be thinking I just forgot to save the ABT story. You know, you’re thinking he’s already admitted to being “old,” another synonym for forgetful or just plain tech-challenged. Yeah, true on all counts. But why would I lose the To Do list, as well? I’m thinking The Times hackers stole that file to really mess with my sanity.

I’ve no proof for these wild allegations. Just a deep-seated journalist’s hunch. Or more probably, a pixieish imagination. Anyway, time to talk about ABT and Stephens’ analysis.

I am an ABTer, though I admit I am not enthusiastic about any of the choices Democrats are proffering. There’s goodness in most of them and cautionary traits as well. Unlike many punsters on the left and right I do not fear a Warren or Sanders presidency tilting our government too much to the extreme. None of the Democratic candidates has the bellicosity Trump has displayed to cower the party into cult-like submission. Any Democratic president will have to work with Democrats in Congress to forge consensus, middle of the road changes that first and foremost restore progress achieved in the Obama years to environmental, civil rights, labor, health care, and abortion rights causes, to name a few initiatives. 

Anyone, I believe, would be better than Trump. 

In offering a defense against Trump’s impeachment, Stephens wrote, “First, the argument (for impeachment) overstates the extent to which this presidency has eroded the foundations of liberal democracy at home and abroad. Has Trump abandoned NATO? No. Has he lifted sanctions on Russia? No. Has he closed the borders to all immigrants? No. Did the president steal the midterms, or stop Congress from impeaching him? No. Has he significantly suppressed the press? Again, no.”

I disagree.  Has Trump weakened respect for the judiciary? Yes. Has he weakened our constitutional checks and balances system of government? Yes. Has Trump strained relations with allies? Yes. Has he eroded the credibility of our intelligence and law enforcement services? Yes. Has Trump strengthened the dark forces of white nationalists? Yes. Has he emboldened despots and autocrats around the globe? Yes. Has Trump corroded America’s historic values? Yes. Has he debased the bond our word used to be throughout the world? Yes. Has Trump made lies and falsehoods the new standard of presidential speak? Yes. Has he made Americans and the rest of the world lose trust in what America stands for? Yes.

But all of those actions do not rise to the level of an impeachable offense. They just show he is a bad, dangerous president. 

What are impeachable offenses are his attempt to extort Ukraine into interfering in the 2020 election by announcing a corruption investigation into his political rival, Joe Biden, in return for a White House meeting and the transfer of withheld military aid approved by Congress, and the obstruction of the House of Representative’s probe of his actions by refusing to release documents and allowing his aides to testify about the Ukrainian affair. 

Stephens and I shared an editorial construct. But we diverged in our execution. I prefer mine to his. I hope you do, too.

Wimping Out: While I’m blasting away at The Times, let me also opine that the flagship newspaper of American journalism wimped out when it came to its dual endorsement of Senators Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar as the best choices for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. 

I’m not against the failure to choose a singular candidate. Rather, what immediately struck me as cowardly is the decision to publish the joint endorsement on a Monday, not on Sunday. 

I know that Monday, January 20, coincided with commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and was exactly one year prior to the inauguration of our next president, but if The Times wanted the biggest bang for its buck it would have printed its choices in the issue with the largest circulation of the week (1,087,500 copies)—the Sunday edition—which enjoys readership almost double that of the weekday issues (571,500).  

Covering Conflict in Context, Trump's Retreat, Traffic Lights, Russians on My Mind

Amid all the media coverage of the tragedy in Gaza, an Israeli Op-Ed contributor provided The New York Times with a chilling example of conditions under which reporters cover some war zones. 

While working for the Associated Press, Matti Friedman wrote, “Early in that war (in Gaza in 2008), I complied with Hamas censorship in the form of a threat to one of our Gaza reporters and cut a key detail from an article: that Hamas fighters were disguised as civilians and were being counted as civilians in the death toll. The bureau chief later wrote that printing the truth after the threat to the reporter would have meant ‘jeopardizing his life.’ Nonetheless, we used that same casualty toll throughout the conflict and never mentioned the manipulation.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/16/opinion/hamas-israel-media-protests.html)

Given a choice between untruthful, misleading reporting or no on-site coverage, I would opt for the latter. Not having a reporter embedded where the action is no doubt would limit the ability to provide a full, factual, eyewitness account. But purposely leaving out details, writing untruths or misleading information, distorts reality and provides an inaccurate record that too often cannot be erased from memory by subsequent corrections.  

Facts, of course, are vital. But so is context. Times columnist Bret Stephens provided much needed context surrounding the explosive events at the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip: https://nyti.ms/2Go1ywM

I don’t have any contacts with Palestinians in Gaza, but over the last eight years I have met more than 50 Israeli women who live along the border with Gaza. Several of them responded to an email I sent asking about conditions along the border.

“Here in Israel you can feel the tension and we pray for a solution that in these days seems sometime farther than ever,” Inbal wrote. 

For Shalhevet, “The media cannot fully explain the situation here for the Israeli settlements surrounding (the) Gaza Strip.

“The daily life is very complicated for both sides, though we are trying to keep our normal daily routine.”

“Strange as it may sound,” said Ofra, “life under constant pressure can be lived. Our sense of security is that the IDF (Israel Defense Force) will always protect us. 

“My young son serves in the Paratroopers Brigade and is guarding the northern border of Israel. I am very worried for his safety. 

“Life goes on, whether we like it or not. Even if we live on a barrel of gunpowder.”

Yael observed, “It is very scary and upsetting that quite a small child can burn tires. Those who sent them don’t have a happy childhood and they have no future as long as their leaders won’t talk. 

“It is very close to the village where we live. It is scary. So many fields of hay have burned, valleys of beautiful nature. Yet, we go to work. I work very close to the border; we have many soldiers around.” 

As if to underscore their sense of anguish and exasperation, Israelis profiled in a Times article the day after the assault on the border fence expressed no glee in the aftermath (https://nyti.ms/2Gl2diQ).

Not to be typecast as dreamers, Gazans as well expressed disillusionment with their leadership. “Nothing achieved,” said Mohammed Haider, 23 (in The Times). “People are dead. They deceived us that we would breach the fence. But that didn’t happen.”

“Our future is lost because of the Jews, and because of Hamas,” said Mahmoud Abu Omar, a 26-year-old with one arm wrapped in bandages (https://nyti.ms/2IxNnaH).

I am encouraged by their forthright comments, but the cynic in me wonders if Haider and Abu Omar have been placed at risk because of their honesty. Hamas does not treat lightly those who openly criticize its rule. Will there be retribution? I doubt The Times will, or be able to, check up on their short and long term safety.

Student Safety: His first instincts usually are acceptable if not good. I believe Donald Trump does have compassion for the students and adults killed at school shootings and other mass murder sites. His first impulse is to rein in our collective Wild West mentality with its pervasive gun availability. 

But then politics takes over. He listens to the clarion call of right wing voters who might abandon him, as if they would ever vote for a Democrat, or find another Republican who could out-Trump Trump. 

So despite saying he could stand up to the gun lobby, Trump caves in. He retreats. Safe to say, Trump would not qualify for inclusion in an updated version of John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage. Trump has no spine. He is the human incarnate of a political bully. He talks tough but weasels out of principled stances when confronted by right wing politics. 

And so, as it happened again in Santa Fe, Texas, we can only wonder how many days before the next school shooting in a town whose residents wonder how it possibly could have happened within their All-American community. But that’s the point—these shootings have come to define America and what it means to be a teenager in America.

Four Decades Later: After last week’s storm and tornados in New York and Connecticut, I heard a news report that all traffic lights in Southbury, Conn., were out because power had been lost. 

Forty-five years ago Gilda and I lived in Seymour, Conn., just a few miles from Southbury. We’d visit there regularly. Neither of us remember any traffic lights in Southbury. 

Russians on My Mind: With just two more episodes of The Americans before the FX series concludes its six season run, Gilda and I watch the drama with a critical eye toward recognizing local White Plains locations. 

Already this season we’ve identified several scenes filmed on Church Street, at the Bocca restaurant and in front of 55 Church Street, as well at the apartment houses at the northern end of Old Mamaroneck Road. 

Our fascination with recognizing White Plains locations began quite by chance about half a year ago. I asked an acquaintance who recently moved from a home in Gedney Farms how she was enjoying her new residence in a nearby cluster development of attached homes along North Street and Bryant Avenue. 

In telling me she liked it she related that her house served as the exterior of FBI agent Stan Beeman while the house across the street was the home of Russian spies Philip and Elizabeth Jennings. Interior sets of both homes are filmed in a studio. 

Time for a Few Good Reads

Today’s a day for some interesting reads. 

Donald Trump made himself into a champion of the coal industry. But his proposed tax reform bill might have a devastating impact on the fossil fuel segment, according to a coal company executive who has been one of his biggest supporters: 

http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/06/investing/coal-tax-cuts-robert-murray-trump/index.html

There is a romantic view we have of America before World War II. The 1930s was a time of Andy Hardy movies depicting idyllic life in small towns. Racism and anti-Semitism were never mentioned. Shirley Temple could dance up and down a grand staircase with Bojangles. The Marx Brothers were zany. 

Across the Atlantic, however, America was seen as a template for what turned out to be the greatest evil the world has seen. Hitler and his henchmen fashioned their repressive society on American laws:  

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/227396/was-nazi-germany-made-in-america?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=6184106ae5-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_12_04&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-6184106ae5-207614353

Just as neo-Nazis have resurrected the culture of oppression, the Ku Klux Klan has experienced its own reincarnation, twice in fact, as described by this book review: https://nyti.ms/2khhHPk

As Republicans in Congress push federal legislation to allow concealed weapons to be carried legally across state lines, thereby undermining the state’s rights issue they have long championed, here’s a graphic that puts in context the carnage wrought by our inadequate gun control laws: 

whiteplainsjournal.ny.newsmemory.com/publink.php?shareid=501ed282c

Not every conservative shares the xenophobic attitudes of Trump and his ignorant supporters. Consider Bret Stephens. From a speech he recently delivered on “American Greatness,” here are some facts about immigration into the United States: 

“Did you know that immigrants account for 35 percent of all U.S. Nobel Prize winners? Did you know that 83 percent of the finalists in the 2016 Intel Science Talent search—widely known as the junior Nobel—are the children of immigrants? Did you know that 40 percent of all Fortune 500 companies—accounting for $4.8 trillion in revenues and 19 million employees—had founders who were immigrants or the children of immigrants? Did you know that immigrants start businesses at about twice the rate of other Americans? Did you know that without immigrants we would have had no population growth whatsoever since 1970, putting us on a path to a Japanese-style demographic death spiral?

“It is, of course, true that immigrants put strains on their host societies. It is also true that in any immigrant population there will be thieves, rapists, killers, scallywags and layabouts—though, by the way, did you also know that the incarceration rate of illegal immigrants is nearly half that of U.S. citizens?” (For a full read of his remarks, click https://nyti.ms/2AW9VBp.)

As the Supreme Court mulls whether a Colorado baker can withhold his services from a gay couple seeking a wedding cake, it might be illuminating to think about what our world would be like without the contributions of confirmed, not rumored, famous people who were or are gay, lesbian or bisexual, according to Wikipedia. Here’s a partial alphabetical list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gay,_lesbian_or_bisexual_people:_A

Hypocrisy in Action: My friend Arthur sent along a cartoon (which I can’t reproduce because of my limited tech capabilities). The illustration shows 10 Republican senators sitting at a conference table. The chairman says, “Before we discuss raising taxes on the poor & middle class, adding $1 trillion to the deficit, taking health insurance away from 13 million, raising premiums by 10%, defending treason and swearing in a pedophile, let’s begin with a prayer.”